A guide to making a high converting Facebook Ads Funnel for your Business

Most businesses forget that every customer starts as strangers and their business is also stranger to their customer. No one will trust the brand/company for the first time they knew them, BUT the first impression can start something that will lead to a longer brand-customer relationship.

Just like meeting strangers for the first time–your appearance, and how you speak will leave a great impact.

Facebook is one of the top social media bootstrappers offering many features that every business can use to find and reach their target audience, promote valuable content, create campaigns, and generate leads to make high sales. Creating Ads, in particular, is the most powerful tool that Facebook offers.

One of the strongest evergreen marketing strategies is Facebook Ads Funnel which helps businesses to grow, generate new leads and increase ROI. Unfortunately, many businesses skip this part of marketing and overlook their potential because:

• They are not aware Facebook Ads Funnel exists.

• They have no idea how to start and how it works.

• It’s too complicated and a long process which can be too confusing and you might get lost along the way.

Most businesses and even some marketers are too aggressive to get results that they tend to neglect to understand Facebook Ads Funnel before they start running paid ads. This usually resulted in a high Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and low Return Of Ad Spend (ROAS).

A ratio of 4:1 ROAS is considered as a successful campaign so we can say that a good ROAS should be at least 200% which means for every $1 you spent you should be generating $2 profit, and by returning 50% means you are bringing only 50 cents profit and you’re losing money. Worst, you spend all your budget not meeting your campaign goals or getting conversion at all.

This can lead to the wrong assumption that running Ads on Facebook is not working for their business.

So before you start running your Facebook Ads, you should structure your Facebook Ads Funnel first. This will boost your conversion and maximize your ROI. Don’t worry, I’ll guide you along the way.

Let’s get started.

WHAT IS FACEBOOK ADS FUNNEL

Businesses usually expect customers to take their offer or purchase just after 1 Ad. It’s like asking someone to marry you before taking them to date. Hell no!

Facebook Ads Funnel is an effective marketing structure designed to plan the brand-customer journey from how a customer will know your brand for the first time up to what will happen after they engage in your brand. When making a Facebook Ads Funnel,

You have to consider how long your sales cycle is = how long they take to convert and how.

There are 3 Main Stages of Marketing Funnel:

 

 

• TOFU (Top of the Funnel) – The Awareness Stage

• MOFU (Middle of the Funnel) – The Consideration stage

• BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel) – The Decision stage

Finally, an extra funnel at the end called BRAND EVANGELIST is the After Purchase funnel which increases the customer lifetime value.

Facebook Ads is a perfect channel to do an effective Marketing Funnel as it allows you to move your audience from 1st stage down to the last funnel. It also allows you to target customers at every stage of their journey.

There are actually 5 Levels of Audience Awareness that you need to know to help you create a campaign that suitable to your target audience and goal:

• Level 1: Unaware – At this level, the audience is called the Stranger or Cold Audience. These are the people that never heard your brand and products/service yet. They didn’t even know that there was a problem to solve so your approach should be pointing out the potential problem first.

• Level 2: Problem Aware – Your audience at this level is still Cold audience but are aware that they have an issue, and they need someone to align with their pain so this is your chance to introduce the solution that you can provide.

• Level 3: Solution Aware – Your audience at this level is aware of the problem. They know what they want, but they don’t know your brand. Your goal here is to make them a prospect.

• Prospects or Warm audiences are the people that know you and have shown some form of interest but they still want you to prove how your solution is better than other brands.

• Level 4: Product Aware – At this level, your audience becomes Potential Customers. These people have heard of your brand, but they are still making decisions. Now you need to show them why you are the best.

• Potential customers usually have shared their contact info and they want to learn more or try your product/service.

• Level 5: Most Aware – These are your warmest audience. They are almost ready to convert and just need an offer they can’t refuse to become your Customer.

Once they convert and become a Customer, there is a high chance (depending on your quality of service/product) that they become a Loyal Promoter where they keep coming back to your brand to avail your product/service, and then share it and promote your brand (for free).

WHY DO MOST PEOPLE DON’T CONVERT ON THE FIRST TIME THEY SAW A BRAND?

The Number 1 answer is they probably don’t care about you and they don’t trust you!

Real talk: You are a stranger to them who are just passing by to show off.

But don’t take that too personally because THAT’S NORMAL and that’s what we are trying to resolve here: To have them double-take when you pass by.

Keep in mind that people on social media, in this case, Facebook and Instagram, do not exist primarily to find products and make purchases. They are there to connect with their family and friends, meet new friends, share memes and daily stories, interact with different communities based on their interests, and watch adorable funny cat videos.

To sum up, they are there to connect with other people and interact with something that only matters to them.

Usually, high-value conversion happens when they start to interact with your brand over multiple touch points. That’s why thumb-stopping content is a MUST because grabbing your audience’s attention is like attending a party full of celebrities.

However, don’t be over the top if they stopped to look over you because keeping their attention is harder than grabbing it. Do not demand more than their attention such as asking for their personal info in exchange for something you offer.

Because it’s like asking someone to marry you from the first time you met. Even a ‘Love at first sight’ scenario still needs to go into a deeper complicated road. Here’s a few words from our slay queen, Elsa.

You need to convince your audience that ‘they need you’ and ‘you are a trustworthy brand.’ If you have their attention, introduce yourself properly, and strike up an interaction.

Because people are too attached to their hard-earned money so they won’t exchange it instantly to a brand that is stranger to them. You probably know that feeling too, right?

Facebook Ads are like an invitation to attend a party and a chance to meet your first love. Getting to know each other is your Ad campaign, and true love’s kiss is the sale you’ve been longing. (Yep, the bad analogies continue)

HOW TO CREATE A HIGH CONVERTING FACEBOOK ADS FUNNEL

Creating Facebook Ads Funnel is the process of mapping and configuring the structure of your Facebook campaign sequence across the buyer’s journey.

 

 

STAGE 1: TOFU (TOP OF THE FUNNEL)

This stage of the funnel is about reaching and catching the attention of your new audience. This is where you should boost your brand awareness because you are targeting the 1st and 2nd Level of Audience Awareness which is least expected to convert.

Your goal here is to warm up the Cold Audience and turn them into a prospect. To do that, you have to introduce your brand and make a good first impression.

Start your funnel with raising awareness and make a campaign that will let them realise they need you. Do this by highlighting their interest, touch their pain point, what you can do to solve all that, the benefits they can get from you, and how ‘life-changing’ everything you offer.

You can do a campaign in a form of video, infographic, social media posts, FAQs, webinars, newsletters, podcasts, and blogs.

When you are at this stage, it’s too early to ask your audience to get free stuff like e-book, downloadable report or checklist, demo, consultation, trial, etc because sharing personal information in exchange for freebies make most people uncomfortable and hesitate to be committed.

Don’t worry if you don’t get any sales at this stage yet. You just need to build up a strong foundation first for the later phases of the funnel, and to boost your conversion rates that will last to a much longer connection.

a) Audience targeting for the Awareness stage.

To target a Cold Audience, you can use these two types of Facebook Audiences:

• Saved Audience

• Lookalike Audience

Saved Audience is a good way to reach a targeted audience since you can define them with a very specific information like interest related to your niche, age group, location, behavior, language, and even their profession.

 

 

For example, you are selling iPhone straps, you can target both Men and Women in the age group between 18-40 years old who are using iPhone and living in Australia or recently in this location.

But in this stage of the funnel, you should start targeting a relatively high and broad audience then let Facebook Algorithm do the magic.

However, keep in mind that Facebook has a Learning phase wherein a machine learning needs to figure out who your optimal target audience is. It usually takes 3 days so leave it alone and let Facebook do its job.
On the other hand, Lookalike Audience is the type of audience where you can reach those people who have similar interest with your existing audience who interacted with your brand.

 

 

You can define your Lookalike Audience from your existing customers, those who added products to their carts, or your website visitor.

 

 

You can even create a Lookalike Audience that is similar to your most valuable customers based on their lifetime value (LTV or CLV).

b) Top of the Funnel campaign objectives

Facebook wants your campaign to win for you because if it works, it means you will keep investing. But, you have to tailor the right objective for your campaign.

Be more specific to your goal and choose your objective accordingly.

The best campaign objectives for Awareness Stage are:

• Brand Awareness

• Reach

• Traffic

• Video Views

• Messages

 

 

Take note that you are setting an initial goal so getting conversion is really low BUT this can help you reach those people who can become your prospect then eventually become a customer.

Do not make objectives such as Conversion, Catalog Sales, and Lead Generation during this stage since that will not work with Cold Audiences.

It is better to focus on micro-conversions such as reach, post engagements, traffic, and video views.

A good combination of RIGHT audience and a corresponding objective will give you a longer conversion opportunity and will surely pay off in the later stages of the funnel.

c) Optimal ad type for the Awareness stage

Make sure that you use an attention grabbing Facebook Ad format that can establish a longer brand recall.

Here are the Ad creatives that are proven work best in the Awareness stage:

• Video

• Collection

• Single Image

• Carousel

• Instant Experience

Facebook video ads are the best way to start your customer’s journey.

Video ad allows you to showcase the unique benefits and strong points of your products/services in a more engaging way.

It is a perfect thumb-stopper for Cold audiences. Focus your video ads on your unique value proposition which can leave a strong first impression.

Make a video that will tell a compelling story about what makes your product/service amazing and unique which will leave a memorable experience. So, the next time users see your ads, your brand will be recognised instantly.

There are actually other critical benefits of using video. It is called Video Funnels that provide an opportunity to retarget cold audiences based on how much and longer they watched your video.

This is a perfect way to move them in the next stage of the funnel.

 

 

For the next stage of the funnel, you can create a Custom audience for people who watched 25% or 50% of your video.

When you choose to have a Video View objective, facebook will charge you on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis,

d) Best ad copy, CTA, and offer for cold Audience

Make your content easy and fun. Your ultimate goal during this stage is to get noticed and be memorable.

Here are some good example of offers that getting user:

• Watch a video

• Visit you website

• Take a quiz

• Check out your product page

• Read a blog post or a guide, etc.

A content that doesn’t require committed interaction is good for the cold audience. Even a giveaway is a tough task since it requires giving contact information or completing tasks such as sharing your content to their profile or tagging someone in the comment.

Never sound like a door-to-door salesman. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing but doing that tactic in social media is not as effective as physically doing it.

Here are some Facebook Ad CTAs for TOFU that proven worked well:

• Learn More

• Watch More

• See More

• Listen Now

• Send Message

‘Learn more’ button is the least intimidating CTA for a cold audience that’s why it is the most commonly used CTA.

Do an A/B test to know what CTA will work best to your audience since you can still try to use “Shop now,” “Download,” or “Sign up.”

Do not put prices on your contents when promoting to Cold audience as being too salesy will just drive them off. Save them for the next two stages instead.

STAGE 2: MOFU (MIDDLE OF THE FUNNEL)

Once you successfully turn a stranger into a prospect, you can now proceed to the next stage.

This stage is where you will showcase your products and services from people you targeted on the TOFU. Your goal now is to turn prospects into leads by collecting personal data such as  email address and contact number.

Your contents should drive your audience to your website or landing page and be exposed to your core offer which eventually will lead them into leaving their contact information.

Since this is a good time to be more direct to your audience, you make them offer something of value in exchange with their contact information. You can give them a downloadable ebook, pdf, special offer, coupon, free sample, webinar, etc.

The most important thing is to have a dedicated landing page that is optimised for capturing a lead.

This is an opportunity to build trust so make sure the process will go smoothly since at this stage your prospect will have a glimpse on what it feels like to be your customer.

Capturing Lead information is essential to bring your customer closer to purchase. However, make sure you are not too pushy as it might scare them.

a) Audience targeting

Start defining your targeted audience based on your buyer’s persona. The best Facebook Audiences in this stage are:

• Custom Audiences

• Lookalike Audiences

Unlike on the first stage that you’re targeting broad audiences, at this stage you can use Custom Audience to target those who previously visited your landing page, clicked your ad, or shown interest in your product/service.

 

 

Basically, target those people who interacted to your ad on the previous stage.

You may also target those people who interacted with your Facebook page and as mentioned previously, target those people who will watch your video (Facebook video Funneling).

You can even target those people who opened your collection ads or Instant Experience.

 

 

Aside from the custom audience, you can also include in your target a Lookalike Audience that will make your ad optimised to those who are most likely to take similar action.

b) Campaign Objectives

Turn your prospect into leads by collecting important information with they such as email address and contact number that’s why choose an objective that’s focused on lead generation, such as:

• Traffic

• Engagement

• Lead Generation

• Messages

• Conversions

 

 

Use traffic objective this if you want to drive clicks and visitors to your landing page or a product page.

While message objective is good for businesses that involve direct communication with the potential customers.

But the best way to generate leads is the Lead Generation objectives that allow potential customers to fill up a form directly on Facebook and your ad. This will improve customer experience since they don’t need to go outside Facebook to open your landing page which may end up closing the page without looking at the content because of the following reasons:

• Slow internet connection

• Longer page loading time

• They don’t want to open other app while on Facebook

This can lead to a high bounce rate that can affect your website or landing page ranking in serp result.

Lead Generation will save your time and money to create a dedicated landing page. However, this is only available on mobile and you may not get all the customization you want unlike landing pages or websites.

Lastly, if you are seeing good results with your MOFU Campaign, you can start doing conversion objectives to test how it will perform in terms of conversion rates and acquisition costs. This is in preparation for the BOFU Stage.

c) Optimal ad type

In this stage, some of the best performing ad formats are image and carousel ads. Actually, image ads are the most popular one.

You probably notice now that the process is getting straightforward since the prospect is already acquainted with your brand.

So, keep your campaign simple and focus on delivering the right message.

d) Copy, CTA, and Offer for Warm Audiences

Your prospects are warmed up at this stage of the funnel and most probably interested in your product/service but still need a little push to make them desire it.

Now, you need a desirable lead magnet campaign that aims to get high-value actions such as sign-ups.

A good trade is a freebie in exchange with their phone number or email. This will eventually lead to a trust which is essential to convince them to do the ultimate action: purchasing.

These are some lead magnet campaigns that proved a good result:

• Webinars

• Free Trial

• Free Samples

• Product demo

• Special deals and discounts

• Giveaways

• Downloadable e-books, reports, case studies, etc.

Just keep in mind that your offer for a warm audience should be different with your cold audience where your ad copy is focused only on the features and benefits. When targeting the warm audience, you need to highlight:

• Social proof

• No risk

• The perceived value of the freebie, etc

The common ad copy cues are “100,000 happy customers,”30 days free trial,“ and a start ratings and testimonials from customers.

Since the prospects knows you better at this stage, you can use a bit more aggressive CTA such as:

• Sign up

• Get offer

• Download

• Get Quote

• Subscribe

• Learn more

• Book now

• Shop now

• Install now

STAGE 3: BOFU (BOTTOM OF THE FUNNEL)

This stage of the funnel you will aim for to get conversion. So, it’s time to start selling directly using your ads.

The first thing you have to make sure of in this funnel is that you clearly communicate your value proposition to get your leads to have a strong desire to get what you offer.

Act fast while they are hot!

The main idea is to get those hot prospects covert by availing your core offer.

a) This stage is where your customer is ready to make a decision.

Make sure to exclude those users who already become customers during the TOFU and MOFU stage as we are aiming to get conversion from warm audiences who desire your offer but still hesitate to get it. Save those customers at the final part of the funnel.

In this stage, your target audiences are:

• Custom Audiences consist of your leads

• Lookalike Audiences similar to your custom audience

You need to set up your custom audience that will reach those who already visited the website, lead and people who already interacted with your ads from TOFU and MOFU stage.

You may do this by targeting those people who visited your website from a specific span of time in a specific landing page such as the Thank you page.

 

 

And just like before, create a Lookalike Audience to extend the reach to users who are similar with your custom audience.

If you are an e-commerce store, you may retarget those potential customers who already added product to their cart but did not proceed to purchase.

 

 

This is a very powerful way to get back potential customers and recover abandoned carts.

b) Campaign objective for BOFU

Make sure you set up your Facebook Pixel that will pass the data you got such as revenue and conversion back to your Facebook ad campaign. This is to let Facebook understand what works and optimise your campaigns to have an even better result.

The main 3 campaign objectives are:

• Conversions

• Catalog Sales

• Store Traffic

 

 

The conversion objective is a good choice for BOFU campaigns since your ad will be optimised for maximum conversions and since your audience are already pre-heated, there is a high chance that they will convert when they see your ad.

Catalog Sales objective is of course for e-commerce stores which can integrate their products with Facebook Business Manager then trak Add to cart, actual purchases, initial check out, and more important data you need to create a high converting campaign.

But don’t forget to monitor your conversion performance, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), revenue and other KPIs to determine if your campaigns are converting and to measure its success.

As for the Store Visit objective, it aims to get potential customers to visit your physical store.

c) Optimal Ad Type

The best performing ad format in this stage are:

• Image ads

• Dynamic Product Ads

• Carousel Ads

Image ads are always good when selling one core product or service. You don’t need to make it complicated and just focus your campaign in a single product in a most simple way.

Use carousel ads to show new or best selling products to your recent visitors.

While Dynamic Product Ads will let you show the right products to people who have expressed interest similar to what you offer.

Ad copy such as “Is this your style” question hints to your customer that the exact product you are looking for is available and just waiting for them to purchase.

d) Best CTA, offer, and Ad Copy

Your message should be specific and direct to the point.

Make it irresistible that will boost your prospects confidence in buying from your store.

Your ad copy should include the following:

• Price

• Shipping option (free or fast delivery)

• Special deals or discounts

• Amount saved

• Free gift

• Social proof

• Sense of urgency

• Risk-free purchase, etc

Think about what holds them back from purchasing and focus on it, whether it’s the price, shipping or purchasing obstacle such as putting credit card details or using another payment gateway.

Add pressure to your audience by including a sense of urgency to your ad copy like limited offer, only today, until supply lasts, etc.

Here are some of the strong CTAs you may use:

• Shop now

• Get offer

• Sign up

• Subscribe

Once you successfully convinced them to take action and purchase, don’t let them get away right away. Because this is the start of a new and longer relationship.

BRAND EVANGELIST (After-Sale Funnel)

So, you have a new customer, now what?

Keep them and make sure that the customer journey continues by turning them into loyal customers and promoters. Increase your Customer Lifetime Value (CVL) and generate referral through word of mouth marketing–a powerful free promotion that everyone loves.

In this stage, you may focus on doing two things:

• Repeat purchase

• Word of Mouth promotion

Your existing customers are the most profitable since they are cheap and easy to re-acquire since they literally skip the three funnels.

When a customer purchases repeatedly, it will increase the CVL in relation to the acquisition costs (CAC). So the better the CVL to CAC ratio, means the customer is more profitable.

 

 

Having good experience with your brand means a social media post that will boost you up. People trusted reviews coming from someone related to them or they follow.

So make sure that you deliver the best quality services and products you can offer.

a) Audience targeting

Create a customer audience based on your previous customer. Again, you can do this if you integrated the Facebook Pixel code to your landing page or website.

You can even set up and segment your existing customer based on CVL data.

 

 

With this, you can increase your budget for re-arranging the most valuable customers and then allocate a smaller amount for the rest.

b) Campaign objectives

Depending on your business model, you may choose any of the following conversions:

• Conversions

• Catalog Sales

• Store Traffic

With these objectives, Facebook will optimise your campaigns to generate as many repeat sales as possible within your budget.

To get an even better performance, optimise the campaign for Aggregated Value to receive higher-value purchases and improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).

 

 

c) Ad Type

The ad format you can use are the following:

• Video ads

• Image ads

• Çarousel ads

• Dynamic Product Ads (DPA)

The best way to introduce a new product to your existing customers are Video ads. This is best in explaining its benefits and highlighting its key features.

Carousel and DPA are also best in showing new product collections especially for ecommerce that sell multiple lines of products.

While Image ads work best for promoting a special offer just for existing customers.

d) Best CTA, copy, and offer

Existing customers know and trust you in this stage of the funnel. Showing them that you care and provide high-quality service will make them happy.

Giving freebies, exclusive offers, special discounts and referral incentives are simple ways to reward their loyalty.

Campaigns in this stage work best in the following cases:

• When launching new product or features

• Asking for feedback or reviews

• Giving incentives to social media shares

• Ask for referrals

• Encourage user-generated contents which you can use for promotion

• Provide useful contents such as how to use your products/services

• Reminding them about when their supplies are about to run out (especially if you are selling essential products)

A 10% coupon is also a good incentive to keep your customers coming back. Remember, everyone loves free stuff and offers that can save them money.

You can also configure an Essential post-purchase campaign by targeting your customers who previously transact to your store 30 or 45 days ago, depending on how much supplies you offer.

 

 

Best CTAs to use are:

• Shop now

• Get offer

• Sign up

• Subscribe

HOW TO MOVE YOUR AUDIENCE FROM ONE STAGE TO ANOTHER

Now that you know the fundamentals of the Facebook Ad Funnel, you just need to know how to move them from one funnel to another.

This is done using custom audiences that include and exclude users based on their behavior and action to your ads.

For example, you can set up a Conversion Stage Custom Audience by including those who visited your landing page then excluding those who already converted.

 

 

Filtering and excluding audiences is very important to your funnel.

Not using it will end you up targeting a mix of cold, war, and hot audiences which can result in a confusing ad and low conversion.

Basically, everything I mentioned above will just turn into waste as well as your budget.

Keep in mind that you have to exclude people every time you move from one funnel to another to keep your ads relevant and succeed with your Facebook Ad Funnel which is the key to creating winning ad campaigns.

Have you implemented this?

Download the Ultimate High Converting Facebook Ads Funnel Guide.

What questions were brought up?

Get in touch – hello@juneaye.com