Speed to lead is how quickly your business responds after someone submits a form from your ad. Meta ads appear on Facebook and Instagram. For local service businesses running Meta ads, text the person as soon as their form comes in, then call within five minutes during office hours. If they don’t answer, keep calling and texting for about a week. Your team handles every step, so improving follow-up is often the cheapest fix when your ads generate leads but not appointments.
How much does slow follow-up cost?
Suppose a dental practice spends $6,000 a month on Meta ads and generates 200 leads at $30 each. Ninety book appointments, while the other 110 don’t—meaning about $3,300 of the ad budget goes to people who never make it onto the schedule.
Now say the practice starts calling back faster, and 60 out of every 100 leads book instead of 45. Nothing else changes:
| Current follow-up | Faster follow-up | |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | $6,000 | $6,000 |
| Leads | 200 | 200 |
| Booked appointments | 90 (45%) | 120 (60%) |
| Showed up (2 out of 3) | 60 | 80 |
| Became patients (4 out of 10 who showed up) | 24 | 32 |
| Revenue at $1,500 a patient | $36,000 | $48,000 |
| Return on ad spend | 6:1 ($6 back for every $1) | 8:1 ($8 back for every $1) |
That’s eight more patients and $12,000 more revenue without spending another dollar on ads.
What should happen in the first five minutes?
Get these steps in place before your ads go live, so new leads don’t sit and wait for someone to notice them:
- The lead goes straight into your CRM. A CRM is the software your business uses to keep track of customers. Connect your ad’s form to your CRM, so each new lead shows up the second someone hits send, along with the ad it came from. If someone has to download a list from Meta by hand, leads can sit for hours before anyone sees them.
- The lead gets a text within a minute. Thank them, name the offer they asked about, and say who’s going to call.
- The right person gets an alert. Let whoever handles new leads know as soon as one comes in, and tell them what the lead asked about.
- A call goes out. Some phone systems can place this call for you and connect the lead to whoever on your team is free. If you don’t have that, the person who got the alert makes the call.
- A missed call gets a text. If the lead doesn’t answer, send a short text so they can reply when they’re free.
Forms also come in at 10 p.m. and on Sunday afternoons. The text still goes out, but it says when a person will call, like “first thing tomorrow morning.” Put those leads at the top of the list when your office opens.
Posted Social sets up these steps in Asera Edge, its CRM and automation platform, before a client’s first campaign launches.
What should you say to a new lead?
Start the call with the offer they asked about. Plenty of people forget they filled out the form, and hearing the offer again helps them remember who you are. Keep the first call short, and try to book the appointment before you hang up.
Suggest two specific times instead of asking when they’re free. A question like “I have Thursday at 3:30 or Saturday at 9. Which works better?” is easy to answer. Asking “When are you free?” often gets a reply like “Let me check and get back to you.”
Here’s what the first text might sound like for the dental practice:
First text: Hi Jordan, it’s Sam from the dental office. Thanks for asking about the $67 new patient special. I’ll give you a call in a few minutes from this number.
What does a full follow-up sequence look like?
Many leads won’t answer the first call. Keep following up by phone, text, and email for about a week, then stop as soon as the lead replies, books, or says no. A sequence might look like this:
| Day | Calls | Texts and emails |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Call within five minutes. If there’s no answer, call right back and leave a voicemail. Try again that afternoon. | Text when the form arrives. Email the offer details. |
| 2 | Call twice in a row in the morning and leave a voicemail | Text two open appointment times |
| 3 | Call once in the afternoon and leave a voicemail | Email an answer to a common question, like cost or insurance |
| 5 | Call once and leave a voicemail | Text to ask whether they’re still interested |
| 7 | Make one last call | Text to say you’ll stop reaching out and how to book later |
When a lead texts or emails back, let the person responsible for follow-up know so they can answer while the lead is still on the phone.
Make sure your form requests permission to call and text, and remove anyone who replies “stop” from your list. The rules for automated calls and texts keep changing, so check with your attorney before you set them up.
How do you get more leads to book?
Let people book themselves. If your appointments have a set length, such as a cleaning or estimate, show available times right after the form so leads can choose one. Anyone who books a time on their own avoids phone tag. Adding a calendar after the form is a web design task, and it’s worth doing before you increase your budget.
Check your numbers every week. Your lead-to-booking rate, the share of leads who book, is one of the Meta ads KPIs that show whether follow-up is working. If your team replies quickly and few leads book, the problem is probably the offer or the ad. Fixing those is part of lead generation.
How do you keep booked appointments from turning into no-shows?
In the dental practice example, 30 of the 90 people who booked never came in. These four habits help more of them show up.
Shrink the gap between booking and appointment. The longer someone waits, the more likely they are to forget or find another place that can see them sooner. Hold a few openings each week for new leads so you can offer a time within a few days.
Confirm right away and send two reminders. As soon as someone books, send a text and an email with the date, time, address, and what to bring. Remind them the day before and again that morning.
Show them what to expect. A short video from the person they’ll see, or a note about what happens during the first visit, makes them less likely to skip it.
Make rescheduling easy. Let people reply to a reminder to change their appointment time—anyone who reschedules stays on your calendar.
Start with your last 10 leads
Pull your last 10 leads from Meta ads. For each one, record when the form came in, when the first call came in, and whether they booked. Did more than five minutes pass between the form submission and the first call while your office was open? If so, fix that before you change your ads, who sees them, or how much you spend. Then track how quickly your team responds. Add that number to your Meta ads reporting so you can check it every week, right next to cost per lead and the number of leads who book.
Speed to lead is just one part of running Meta ads for local service businesses, alongside your offer, the ads themselves, and how you track results. If you’d rather have the texts, calls, and reminders set up for you, Posted Social can handle that as part of paid ads management. Contact the team to discuss how you currently follow up with leads.
Common questions
What is speed to lead?
Speed to lead is how quickly your business responds after someone fills out a form from your ad. For Meta ads, that means a text message right away and a call within five minutes while your office is open.
How many times should you follow up with a lead before giving up?
Plan on several calls, texts, and emails spread over about a week. Stop once the person replies, books, or tells you they’re not interested.