Can you guess the most common mistake we see with Facebook ads strategies? Okay–there are actually a bunch of them. But today we’re focusing on one in particular: not using a full-funnel Facebook ads strategy!
It’s true: a singular focus on only ONE part of the sales funnel will almost always mean you’re not getting the conversions you deserve.
In this post, we’re going to explain not only exactly what a full-funnel strategy looks like, but precisely why you need one.
Let’s start by breaking down what we mean by a full-funnel strategy in the first place.
What is a full-funnel Facebook ads strategy?
This type of ad strategy is far more comprehensive than a one-off Facebook ad to promote a singular event, product, or service.
Instead, a full-funnel ad strategy needs to be considered as part of your broader digital marketing strategy. That means every part of it should be thoughtfully considered so it’s in line with your company goals.
Maybe in the past, you’ve created a Facebook Ad on a whim for a one-off purpose. You didn’t go into it with any particular strategy or long-term goal. You simply wanted to promote something at the moment. But now, you’re going to learn why a long-term strategy is the key to your Facebook Ads success! Rather than considering a single part of the funnel (in this case, making the sale), you’re instead going to focus on every part of the funnel…from awareness to interest, to decision, and finally, to action!
Rather than just asking yourself, “how can I use this ad to promote my product?” ask, “How can I use this ad as part of my greater digital marketing strategy?”
To understand exactly what we mean, let’s start by discussing sales funnels. More specifically, we’ll talk about the different components of sales funnels.
What are sales funnels?
The best way to understand sales funnels is–surprise!–by picturing an actual funnel.
If you fill it with liquid, the smallest amount will make its way to the bottom, with more volume toward the top.
Think of the top–where there’s the most volume–as the start of your sales funnels. This is where you target a broader audience with more generalized interest.
As you move down the funnel, your audience gets more specific and more serious about what you’re offering.
In digital marketing, sales funnels are usually broken into either three or four parts and stages. We’ll talk about these more in-depth in a moment, but here’s a handy overview to start us off.
The four-part Facebook ad funnel (AIDA)
- Awareness: This involves the user simply thinking of or noticing the product.
- Interest: At this stage, consumers begin to develop opinions or impressions of the product. For example, they may have “liked” one of your Facebook posts or ads.
- Decision: Here, consumers decide they’re ready to make a purchase or move further down the sales funnel.
- Action: Finally, a consumer makes a purchase or takes action in another way.
The three-part Facebook ad funnel
Alternatively, they’re broken into three parts:
- Top of funnel (TOF): This part of the Facebook Ad funnel involves awareness and progresses into interest.
- Middle of funnel (MOF): This stage involves active interest in a product or service, including performing searches for products that will solve their problems or meet their needs. It transforms into action and decision-making.
- Bottom of funnel (BOF): At this point, a consumer is ready to buy and commit to a product. In this part of the funnel, your goal is to convince them to choose your product or service over another’s.
If your ads aren’t focused on each of these stages (AKA having a full-funnel strategy), your conversion rates won’t be where you want them to be.
Sales funnel stages
Let’s talk more about each stage to understand sales funnels better.
The awareness stage
Getting your audience to this first part of the funnel means getting their attention in some way. Basically, you need them to know you exist!
Someone who is aware of your brand but hasn’t necessarily interacted with it is found at this stage. While this may not be where sales happen, your audience needs to move through EVERY part of the sales funnel to get the results you’re hoping for.
The interest stage
Once your audience is aware of your business, you need to get them interested in it.
Now that they have an idea of what you’re about, it’s time to get more specific to build their interest. For example, “interest stage” ads might display your top-selling product along with the biggest benefits of using it. They might even go so far as to visit your website and add this product to their cart.
The decision stage
Getting your product in their cart is one thing, but having them complete the checkout process is another.
To do this, you need to help them DECIDE it’s the right choice. And this takes some convincing! But if your full-funnel Facebook ad strategy is done right, this becomes a lot easier.
In the decision stage of a full-funnel ad strategy, you might utilize retargeting tactics. That means specifically advertising to an audience that has made it through the first two stages of the funnel.
Maybe they’ve signed up for your newsletter or put your item in their cart. Now it’s time to make them decide to take the next steps.
The types of ad copy you’ll see for the decision stage include
- “Items in Your Cart are Going Fast!”
- “Act Now – Only 3 Left!”
- “Your Favorite Items are On Sale”
As you can guess, these ads wouldn’t be effective on an audience who has no idea what you’re selling!
The action stage
As you might have guessed by its name, the action stage is where your audience takes the ultimate action you’ve been hoping for. Usually, this involves having them complete a purchase.
This is the stage of the sales funnel a lot of business owners put ALL of their focus into. And while it’s incredibly important, without effectively setting up the other stages, your chances of getting them here are much lower.
By the way, if you haven’t created a full-funnel ad strategy, your ads won’t be getting the reach you want. Here are some other reasons this could be happening.
Other ways of looking at sales funnels
In addition to the four stages we just outlined, some people view sales funnels in three stages: top of the funnel (TOF), middle of the funnel (MOF), and bottom of the funnel (BOF). While they have different names, they cover the same bases.
The TOF stage includes “cold traffic.” Those who haven’t interacted with your business but have been targeted based on lookalike audiences or interests. Typically, the best way to target this audience (which is the largest audience in the funnel) is with a wide range of content. That includes blog posts, social media content, online ads, influencer marketing, and video ads to target as many people as possible. During this part of the funnel, you’re focusing on building brand awareness and interest.
As for the MOF, this audience has started engaging with your content, but they haven’t pulled the trigger. They’re what’s known as “warm traffic.”
For this stage, you’ll want to focus on demonstrating the value of your product or service. Along with your Facebook Ads, this can include webinars, email marketing, and live events.
Finally, we get to the BOF stage, AKA “hot traffic.” This stage is where your audience is incredibly likely to convert: maybe they’ve added your products to their cart, they’ve asked for more information, or they’ve even purchased from you in the past.
As for the content for this stage, you’ll want to focus on persuasiveness. Consumers in this stage are familiar with your business, but now it’s time to convince them they need to make the purchase and finally convert.
The problem is, a lot of people only focus on one part of their funnel. usually, it’s the bottom.
They want the sale!
But if they don’t put the work into creating Facebook ads for EVERY part of the funnel, they lack what’s known as a full-funnel strategy.
Creating your full-funnel Facebook ad strategy
No matter how you break up the stages of a sales funnel, one thing is clear: they need to work together!
There’s no use targeting existing customers with ads that tell them about products they already own. Just as it’s not the best use of your ad spend to show ads to users who haven’t demonstrated any interest in what you offer.
Now that we know how important it is to have a full-funnel Facebook ad strategy, how do you go about creating it?
It starts with considering every stage of the funnel and creating specific ads for each one!
First, you’ll create ads to boost brand awareness. Then, you generate interest and engagement. To get your audience to the last stage of the funnel, you’ll offer incentives for doing so.
We talk more about how to use Facebook ads to maximize e-commerce revenue in this post. But in the meantime, don’t wait to get help!
Our approach
Our full-funnel Facebook ad strategy services will help you:
- Increase Clicks from Facebook Ads: To move users further down the sales funnel, you need them to click on your ads! Whether a click simply gets them to check out your page in greater detail or it takes them directly to a checkout page, every click helps you move one step closer to creating a new customer.
- Boost Conversions from Facebook Ads: Clicks are the first step, but then we need to focus on actually converting those users into paying customers. One of the ways we help you do this is by optimizing and scaling campaigns through Facebook’s advanced tracking and analytics system. We also gain valuable information about your target audience that will help you grow your sales.
- Improve the Relevance of Facebook Ads: Facebook offers the most advanced targeting methods known to any business. Due to the incredible amount of data that Facebook holds, your ads can be placed in-front the most relevant audiences for your business. However, it takes a comprehensive strategy to ensure the audience you’re targeting truly is relevant…and we’ll take care of that for you!
- Increase the Overall Awareness of Your Brand: The more brand awareness you can build, the better. Right off the bat, this moves your audience from the awareness stage to the interest stage the next time they interact with your ads or content.
Our Facebook Ad Strategy
At our Facebook advertising agency, Blue Water Marketing breaks down our Facebook ad strategy into four components. Each one is as important as the next and they work together for a comprehensive, full-funnel Facebook Ad approach:
- Business Learnings & Research: At the start of the project, we take the time to understand your business, your products & services, business objectives, and target audience. We need to be thorough in planning your social media marketing strategy.
- Strategy & Planning: Every business is different so it’s important we take the time to figure out the strategy that’s right for you.
- Audience & Targeting: Facebook offers the most advanced targeting methods known to any business. Due to the incredible amount of data that Facebook holds, your ads can be placed in-front the most relevant audiences for your business.
- Ads Management: We have a very clear method in place for gaining the maximum amount of return from the budget. This could be increasing the budget, removing certain age brackets, split testing the creative, tweaking the audience and many other things.
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