Applying an acquisition funnel strategy with Facebook ads
“Time and time again I see advertisers make one big mistake when media planning. They invest only in low funnel campaigns. It might be the right strategy in the short run, but choosing the full funnel approach is key to long-term media planning and scaling a business.” – Julie Amanda Nyholm Petersen, Head of Social Marketing MediaGroup Worldwide.
Visualize your customer acquisition process as a funnel with different stages, including making people aware of your brand, getting them to consider your brand, and then getting them to purchase your brand. All of these stages require different advertising tactics across a range of marketing channels.
In keeping with this way of thinking, Facebook offers a range of options to advertise across the funnel. Facebook is one of the rare marketing channels that allows you to build a full funnel strategy in one platform. It helps you create series of ad campaigns that are designed to take users along the buyer’s journey, from absolute strangers to paying, loyal customers.
The Facebook Ads funnel consist of campaigns with ads that contain different value propositions that are delivered to the right audience at the right moment.
Within FB, there are three main stages:
Awareness – Top of the Funnel (TOFU)
Consideration – Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
Conversion/Decision – Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)
The last part of the Facebook funnel is the Post-Purchase stage, where your goal is to turn your existing customers into loyal promoters.
At every stage of this buyer’s journey, Facebook allows you to target a variety of groups:
Strangers (cold audience) – People that are not aware of your brand and the product/service you are offering.
Prospects (warm audience) – People that are aware of your brand and are showing some form of interest.
Leads (hot audience) – Highly interested customers that are willing to share their contact info and are willing to learn more about your brand.
Customers – Your existing customers.
Loyal Promoters – Customers that appreciate your product/service. They buy from you regularly, and share and promote your brand (for free).
The Facebook Ads funnel is a great tool. It can bring you high conversion rates, grow sales and even save money on advertising. But it’s important to be aware that creating a brand image through your ads is not going to be achieved only just after one ad. As most people in the audience will not be ready to buy your product or service immediately. High-value conversions will typically happen once a user interacts with your brand multiple times.
It’s important to note that the Facebook Ads funnel was really well thought through, before it was brought to marketers. Each step is considered to bring value to your brand image through ads. And it’s important to be aware of how to build a great funnel with FB. We need to take into consideration the process of mapping out and configuring Facebook campaign series across the buyer’s journey. From attracting and warming up cold audiences all the way to transforming them into loyal customers.
To conclude, Facebook is a marketing channel that allows you to build a whole funnel strategy in one place. As such, it doesn’t make much sense to apply just a lower-funnel strategy and miss some of the most important touchpoints. With a full-funnel strategy, you can think through every step of the process and move all your metrics, including especially conversions, in the right direction.
If you would like to get recommendations on how to improve your media planning feel free to reach out.