Facebook Lead Ads Follow-Up: How to Call and Text Social Leads the Right Way

The best Facebook lead ads follow-up is a phone call made soon after the form comes in. Start the call by confirming what the person asked for, then book a next step. Behind that call you need clear consent wording in the form and a careful approach to SMS, because Australia's texting rules are stricter than most advertisers expect. This guide covers each step for businesses running lead ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Why lead-ad leads behave differently

Facebook and Instagram lead forms fill in the person's name, email and phone number from their profile. Submitting takes one tap, so there is very little effort involved, and that is why the ads work. It also means intent varies a lot. Some people are ready to buy. Some tapped out of curiosity while scrolling. Some don't remember the ad an hour later. Some have an old phone number on their profile.

This changes how you follow up. A lead from a website form has usually typed out their details and maybe a message. A lead-ad contact has often done neither. Your first call has to do more work: remind them who you are, confirm what they wanted, and find out quickly whether there is a real need.

Call quickly, while the request is fresh

Speed matters for two reasons.

The first is practical. With low-effort forms, interest fades fast. If you call while the person is still on their phone and remembers your ad, the conversation starts warm. If you call days later, you are close to cold calling someone who barely remembers you.

The second is regulatory. Under the Do Not Call Register Regulations 2017, a call is not a telemarketing call if it responds to a customer's or potential customer's order, request or inquiry about goods or services, is mainly about that request, the request has not been withdrawn, and the call is made within a reasonable time. The same regulations give the example of a person who fills in an online form on a mortgage website asking for more information, and a mortgage broker who then phones them to discuss mortgage products.

Note the conditions: the call has to be mainly about what they asked for, and it has to happen within a reasonable time. The legislation doesn't put a number on "reasonable", so don't rely on stretching it. If you're unsure how this applies to your situation, check with the ACMA or a lawyer.

Practical steps to call quickly:

• Connect your lead forms straight to your CRM or calling system instead of downloading CSV files by hand.
• Alert whoever makes the calls the moment a lead arrives, not in a daily batch.
• Decide who covers evenings and weekends, when a lot of social browsing happens.
• Stick to permitted calling hours unless the person has asked for a call at a particular time.

On calling hours: under the telemarketing industry standard, calls outside permitted times are allowed only if the account holder or their nominee gave express consent in advance to that particular call on that day or at that time, and the caller can show this to the ACMA if required. A general opt-in on a lead form is not the same as agreeing to a call at a specific time.

Open the call by confirming what they asked for

Because intent varies, your opening line is the most important part of the call. Don't launch into a pitch. Confirm the request first.

A simple opening structure

• Say who you are and the business name clearly.
• Mention the ad or offer they responded to, in plain words.
• Ask whether you've caught them at a good time.
• Confirm what they were after, then ask one or two questions to qualify the need.
• Agree a clear next step, such as a booked appointment, a quote visit or a callback at a time they choose.

Confirming the request does three things. It reminds the person why you're calling, which lowers the "who is this?" reaction. It keeps the call mainly about their inquiry, which matters for the regulations above. It also screens out accidental taps early, so your team spends time on real prospects.

If the person says they didn't mean to enquire, or doesn't want calls, respect that straight away. The Do Not Call Register says that if a consumer indicates they don't want telemarketing calls from an organisation, consent ends immediately and can no longer be inferred. Record it in your CRM so nobody else on the team calls them again.

Get the consent wording in the form right

The lead form is where you set up everything that follows, so put real thought into the custom disclaimer and question fields.

The ACMA recommends express consent based on clear terms and conditions, readily accessible where consent is given, that explain what the marketing is for, who will use it, how long it will be used and how consent can be withdrawn. The ACMA also says businesses should not use pre-checked tick boxes, bundled consent or refer-a-friend arrangements to obtain marketing consent.

For a lead form, that usually means:

• Name your business clearly, so people know who will contact them.
• Say how you'll contact them, for example by phone call and SMS.
• Say what the contact is about, such as the specific service or offer in the ad.
• Explain how long the consent lasts and how to withdraw it.
• Use a separate, unticked opt-in for ongoing marketing, kept apart from the request for a call about this enquiry.

Think about how long consent lasts. Under the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, express consent that is not given for a specified period or an indefinite period is taken to be withdrawn 3 months after the day it was given. The ACMA's consent guidance likewise says consent to telemarketing that is more than 3 months old becomes stale unless the consumer agreed to a longer period under terms and conditions. If you plan to re-contact older leads, the form wording needs to support that, and you need to track when each consent was given.

Also note that, under the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, consent to telemarketing calls cannot be inferred merely because a phone number has been published. A number appearing in a social profile is not permission to call.

Texting lead-ad leads: the rules are stricter

Many businesses send an automatic SMS as soon as a lead arrives. That can work well, but marketing texts fall under the Spam Act, which works differently from the rules for calls.

Key points from the ACMA:

• Before sending marketing emails or messages, a business must have consent from each recipient, even if someone else sends them on its behalf, and it is up to the business to prove consent.
• Inferred consent usually needs a provable, ongoing relationship that the marketing directly relates to, and the ACMA says it does not cover sending messages after someone has just bought something.
• You cannot send an electronic message asking for consent, because that message is itself a marketing message.
• Automated SMS and email "welcome journeys" to new and prospective customers often contain commercial content and must comply with the spam rules.
• Automatically adding someone to a marketing list because they simply submitted an enquiry may breach the consent requirements.

Put simply, a lead form submission doesn't automatically give you permission to put someone into an SMS nurture sequence. If you want to text, include SMS explicitly in your consent wording, keep messages tied to what the person asked for, and keep promotional sequences for people who have clearly opted in.

Check your sender setup too. The ACMA warns that people generally can't reply to an SMS sent with a Sender ID, so an unsubscribe process that relies on replying to a Sender ID doesn't work and will break the law. If you use an alphanumeric sender name, give people another working way to opt out.

Keep records you could show the ACMA

Lead platforms store submissions, but don't assume that's enough. The ACMA expects consent records to show how consent was obtained, the terms that applied, and the date and time it was obtained, and those records must be produced if the ACMA requires them.

In practice:

• Save a copy of each version of your form and disclaimer text, with the dates it was live.
• Store the submission timestamp and the form version against every lead in your CRM.
• Record opt-outs and withdrawals the moment they happen.
• Flag leads whose consent is close to going stale so they aren't re-contacted by mistake.

What to do with leads who don't answer

Plenty of lead-ad contacts won't pick up the first time. Keep follow-up attempts tied to the original enquiry and spread them sensibly across different times of day. If you leave a voicemail, mention the ad they responded to. Once the enquiry is no longer recent, or the person has said no, stop. Further contact then depends on the consent you actually hold, not on the original form submission.

Putting it together

A strong lead ads follow-up process looks like this: clear consent wording in the form, an instant alert or call when a lead arrives, an opening that confirms what the person asked for, SMS only where you have consent, and records you could hand to the regulator. The hardest part for most teams is speed, especially after hours.

That's the gap Dialessa is built for. It's an AI voice agent that calls new enquiries within a minute, books the appointment and follows up past leads whose consent is still current, so your team can spend its time on the conversations that matter. Whatever tools you use, review your form wording and texting setup against the ACMA guidance, and get advice from the ACMA or a lawyer if your situation isn't clear-cut.