The newest type of advertising funnel is the Facebook Ads sales funnel which gives you access to both cold and warm buyers. Here's how to set it up.
Every month there are more than 2 billion people who are active on Facebook. That's a LOT of people that could be in your Facebook Ads sales funnel. These users go to Facebook in search of something. Some come to connect with friends and families. On the other hand, some of them are in need for information about certain products or services.
With this huge number of users, Facebook creates a great marketing opportunity. Better still, Facebook’s average CPC (cost per click) is still low compared to other advertising platforms.
Facebook Ads, for instance, is one of the marketing tools you can use to reach your campaign objectives and goals, whether they be acquiring fresh leads or increasing sales.
For example, a sales funnel that is fed through Facebook Ads can help you create brand awareness. It can also have as a goal to attract new leads or just boost traffic to your business website (although traffic only is not a well-thought sales funnel goal). Note that Facebook Ads can give customers the opportunity to redeem your offers instantly. That means instant sales!
Ads can boost engagement between these customers and your business too. Most customers are attracted to companies that respond to their issues and give solutions on the same. Therefore, you should take advantage of Facebook Advertising to keep customers updated.
How is Facebook Ads different from other PPC platforms?
When you compare it to Google Ads, Facebook needs to be approached in a different way. Facebook is not about buying impressions for keywords that people search. It goes beyond that. It can target behaviors, demographics and interests.
The truth is that the majority of people will not make instant purchases when they come across your ad on Facebook. So, relax, do not try to yell at people "buy now!"
Instead, craft a Facebook Ads sales funnel. However, your funnel should be as smart and authentic as it can be. By doing so, you’ll be successful with Facebook Ads.
But what is a Facebook sales funnel all about? And how do you sequence up the advertising funnel to convert more buyers?
What does a sales funnel (ie. advertising funnel) entail?
There are many businesses offering the same products as yours. Have you ever wondered how customers connected with your business in the first place instead of choosing your competitors? Maybe you can do some research here and find the origin.
Take a moment and think of how customers found your business. It could be that you shared content from your site, or a piece of content went viral or, simply, a Facebook advert caught their attention.
Either way, there are some steps you can follow for people to connect with you and for them to notice your business. These steps include:
• Awareness in terms of engagement, tips and sharing content.
• Consideration through videos, long/detailed content, and special offers.
• Conversion via webinars, testimonials, trials and remarketing.
Then, there is retention and upselling by providing more value through consistent marketing efforts.
Having listed these basic automated sales funnel steps, let’s now check out how you can build your Facebook Ads sales funnel.
Step 1. Start Your Facebook Ads Funnel by Installing The Facebook Pixel
The first step is to download the Facebook Pixel and install it. Facebook Pixel comes in the form of a code snippet that you place on your site. Its role is to track the activities of your visitors on your website. This tool is highly powerful in retargeting and tracking traffic – you can’t afford to miss it.
Apart from tracking traffic, your Pixel will collect data as well. It will do so even when you don’t have any ad.
Any person who visits your website, the Pixel will track their activity. Hence, you’ll be able to know how many people visit your site and what they do. Further, you’ll learn of the interaction you get in all of your social profiles and it'll basically timestamp prospects in your advertising funnel.
Do you need an advanced analytics tool with behavioral tracking features that can map out exactly what people do along all the steps of your funnel?
Is tracking visitors the only thing the Pixel can do?
Of course not! The Pixel will guarantee that your Facebook adverts are visible only to the right audience. Therefore, you'll be able to segment your audiences and utilize Facebook Ads in your Facebook Funnel in a more sophisticated way.
Watch the following video to see how to install the Facebook Pixel to work with your complete Facebook Ads sales funnel.
Step 2. Develop captivating content for your Facebook Ads sales funnel
For leads to progress through your sales funnel with the lowest friction possible, you need to facilitate the leads' journey with captivating content. There are different content needs for each stage of the Facebook Ads sales funnel. Read this post about how to create the right content.
You need to content specifically for different audience segments. For example, the way you address cold traffic is different from warm leads. Promote your top-ranking content to cold audiences, and narrow down to problem-specific solutions as you start to define the interests and behaviors of cold leads.
Now, apart from installing the Pixel and creating some kind of content, you should actually create epic content. Read this post on how creating captivating content will, undoubtedly, attract people’s attention.
Step 3. Concentrate on warm audiences
With regard to warm audiences, that is audiences that know your brand and have indicated that your product might be a good fit for them, are audience that you could possibly advertise directly to.
You can start with your warm audiences. Add them as custom audiences in Facebook Ads and include them in your marketing campaigns.
Here's a video about what custom audiences are and how you can create them to serve your Facebook Ads sales funnel.
Here you can try a few things. For instance, you can send people directly to your product page. Then, see what trend your conversion rate takes. Or maybe send them to a limited-time offer page. As a result, you’ll note that certain products yield great results – especially when you're aiming for an intuitive low-price purchase.
Nevertheless, you shouldn’t take the same approach with all of your products - specifically if they are expensive and people know little about them. Typically, people won't buy spontaneously, so running a campaign that sends traffic directly to your sales page won't help your bottom line, instead it could consume your advertising budget in a jiffy.
What you can do instead is what we are describing in this article; create a Facebook Ads sales funnel. And in the next section we will explain how that looks.
Step 4. Attract similar audiences
So, you have installed the Facebook pixel and have created amazing content for every step of the funnel. You have also separated warm leads as custom audiences.
Now, it's time to take advantage of lookalike audiences to reach out to a larger group of people on Facebook.
You can use your custom audience data to classify your visitors and build lookalike audiences. Read this guide to learn how to build these expanded, yet targeted, audiences.
See the power of similar audiences? Users in the new audience will have similar interests and attributes to those already buying and interacting with you. Facebook knows the characteristics of your buyers (from your custom audiences) and can expand this group to include more people with similar demographics, interests and behaviors (lookalike audiences).
Now, to paint the picture, your Facebook Ads sales funnel should look like this:
EXAMPLE OF A FACEBOOK ADS SALES FUNNEL
Top of Funnel
Cold traffic to your epic content coming from basic demographic and interest targeting.
Middle of Funnel
Warm traffic to conversion-optimized content that provides a solution.
Traffic is coming from custom audiences that have already visited your pages.
Bottom of Funnel
Hot traffic to a conversion-optimized product or sales page.
Traffic is coming from lookalike audiences and has the purchase as an objective.
This indicative Facebook Ads sales funnel will help convert cold traffic into warm leads and eventually buyers.
But is there one more step in the Facebook Ads sales funnel that is missing?
Step 5. Focus on retargeting
If you stopped in our previous step, you would miss out on a great opportunity. Remarketing.
Most of the time, even if people have gone through your complete sales funnel, they are not yet ready to buy. Sometimes, force majeure makes them leave products in their shopping cart. And you don't want them to forget to come back.
By the way, we have a done-for-you cart abandonment email sequqence readily available for you to download and plug into your autoresponder. This can work in parallel with your Facebook Ads remarketing to get forgetful buyers back to your checkout page.
Also note that, as some marketers say, people will see your products and brand at least 7 times before they make a purchase decision. Buyers are also hesitant to even enter their card information.
This is exactly why you need to add another step to your Facebook Ads sales funnel. Retargeting campaigns that will show ads to people who have interacted with your other campaigns. For example, you can set ads for abandoned carts or other bottom-of-funnel audiences, e.g. people that have visited a product category page. Also, you can run ads for middle-of-funnel leads to inform them of new, interesting content that you just published.
Here's a guide by Facebook that explains how you can create remarketing ads for your products. And this is a piece we wrote about advanced advertising strategies to build a high-conversion Facebook Ads sales funnel.
The point is, you should keep on remarketing to people who visited your site but never made a purchase, until either they do or you decide you don't want to deal with them anymore.
Warm Traffic VS. Cold Traffic in your Facebook Ads sales funnel
Keep tabs of how 'hot' your folks are inside your advertising funnel is interesting... Largely because you ad funnel starts off with cold traffic.They're cold when they first see an ad or first experience your brand.
Then, the advertising funnel warms them up, so ...
The Cold Traffic Progression
We build all of our advertising for our clients this way. Basically, there is always a set of ads that is specific cold traffic. Your cold traffic audience is made up of those who they don't know who you are. They've never heard of you. In the Facebook world, they aren't necessarily even searching for the solution that you provide. They're not going to Google and typing in a keyword phrase, because Facebook traffic is all interruption-based.
In the Google world, they are going to Google and searching for the keyword phrase that you are advertising for or that is related to your business . So that is kind of one of the differences between Google and Facebook and how they are similar in the cold traffic sense.
But this cold traffic person doesn't know who you are. They've never heard of your business, because if they'd heard of you, then they'd be a little bit warmer. You know what I mean?
Warming Your Target Market Up
The way the advertising funnel works is that folks an ad as a cold prospect. Then they take some sort of an action... That action might be:
- Watching a video that for 50% of its length or more, 75% or more...
- It might be clicking on the ad and going to your website.
- It might be opting in for a report for a lead magnet.
- It might be just full-out buying something.
But that cold prospect is, in their action, warming up to you... Warming up to your brand. So that is what the advertising funnel is all about, because when we warm them up, then we can do additional things with them.
Now The Transition In Your Advertising Funnel
So after they do something, they are no longer cold prospect.
They move past that cold traffic ad, and now they are seeing a retargeted ad, because they did something... They watched the video. They clicked the link. They landed on a page. They opted in. They bought something. They're no longer cold. They are warm, and, because they are warm, they are seeing a different type of ad from you.
So with Facebook Advertising, it might be a welcome back ad, or a shopping cart abandonment ad. It might be telling them about a product that they might be interested in that they didn't already purchase.
So there's lots of ways that you can carry out this retargeting campaign. One of the things that we really like to do is, once they move from cold traffic to warm to a retargeted ad, then we also acknowledge that they are probably getting warmer or colder within our sphere of influence. So we might have a retargeted ad that shows a lead magnet for days 1 through 4.
So if they land on our website, then, for this four day period, they see something on our ... They see a Facebook Video Ad, talking about a lead magnet, and then if they don't do anything, then, days 5 through 8, we give them something else. Maybe it's a checklist or we promote a different product or newsletter.
Then day 9 through 13, we do something a little different.
When Prospects Cool Off
With the understanding that they're getting colder. The longer they go without doing something, the colder they are getting. They are moving past what we do because a buyer is only really hot for a very short amount of time. It might be a week, it might be three days, it might be three weeks, but they usually buy and consume a bunch of stuff in the same period of time, and then they move on.
Think about your own experience. Let's say you're looking for a piece of software, like a video-hosting platform. Chances are, you recognize the need, that you need a video-hosting platform like Wistia or Vimeo or whatever.
...So you do a little bit of research, you find all of the companies in the market. That might not have even been triggered by you internally, but by an ad. Maybe you saw a Wistia ad, and then you think, "Wait, this kind of makes sense. I need to keep my videos private. So who else has this technology?" Then you do a little bit of research, and then you buy. You do free trials and everything, but you've come to your decision in the first week or two, typically.
You've settled on one, you've canceled everybody else, and now you are done. You've moved on. You're past that. So you might still open some emails and do something, but you're kind of done signing up for free trials until you're dissatisfied with a Wistia, and then you're moving on to something else.
How It Relates To Your Buyers
So that's typically how buyers react. That's how your buyers react. So understanding that they're cold, and then they're warm, and then they're leaving you... And you can engage those customers differently through your advertising funnel with different ad types.
Now, Facebook is a little bit different when you're doing these advertising funnels, because:
- You can do a lot with Facebook Video Ads.
- You get cheap clicks.
- You can do video views campaigns and then target people based on how much of a video somebody watches... Which is really important for capitalizing on momentum and moving somebody through this advertising funnel.
But it all comes back to the targeted website traffic you get from the Facebook pixel. Thats how you increase website traffic fast... It's by utilizing paid traffic sources the right way.
So, on the Facebook ... You add the Facebook pixel to your website, and then that pixel tracks:
- Which pages your prospects visit
- Where they go on your website
- What your conversion events are
- Which ads are sending you leads, sales, and ultimately conversions.
So the pixel is really, really important in this entire makeup, and that's how we actually set up the staggered Facebook Ad Funnel process where you target different creative for:
- Day 1 through 4
- Day 5 through 8
- Day 9 through 13
- And so on...
We actually go in and say, "Okay, if somebody is brand new to this audience because of the pixel, show them this ad. If they're between five and eight days, then show them this ad. If they're between 9 and 13 days, show them this ad."
Progressive Lookalike Audiences Based On Your BEST Segment
It's all based on the pixel and the audience that that pixel creates.
And from that audience, we create lookalike audiences of our most successful segment of folks. So if first, if we have no data whatsoever, then we're creating a lookalike audience based on the people who watch 50% or more of a video or 75% or more of a video.
Then, if we get a significant population of people who hit a webpage or opt-in for a report or buy, that's always the next lookalike audience that we're, we're engaging with. We're always creating a new lookalike audience based on our best set of data, and then we're moving all of the ads to that lookalike audience. So we're always optimizing the audiences and letting Facebook know exactly who we want to get in front of.
So all of this stuff is really, really important for your own advertising funnel. Now, the ad funnel itself, as it's moving prospects through, it needs to tie in with your sales funnel. The sales funnel, your landing pages, your automated webinars, your VSLs, all of that stuff really comes out to party in these Facebook ads. We like video a lot. We do a lot of video views, campaigns.
DIY or DFY Facebook Ads sales funnel
As you try out different strategies and mix up sales funnel elements to create the perfect recipe, always keep track of your conversion rate. Conversion rate is arguably the best indicator of the success level of your campaigns.
If you just want to run your business and you are not a DIY kind of person, then our team at DoneForYou is equipped with all the skills and tools to create high-conversion sales funnels for you, ones that start with Facebook Ads and end with filled-up shopping carts.
Schedule a call with us to discuss how we can create a funnel that serves your business goals and adds to your bottom line.