Facebook advertising - which funnel strategy should you choose?

When we work with Facebook as an advertising tool, we also work in funnels: top, mid and lower funnel. We do this to give users the best possible experience with you and your brand.

Let's use a metaphor most people can relate to, imagine that your funnel strategy is like building a house. First we lay a solid foundation, then we build the shell, put up walls and floor, and finally we paint and decorate.

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1) Topfunnel

By topfunnel we mean introducing new potential customers to your brand. This is the first time they get to know your company and your products. A topfunnel campaign should therefore be informative and inspiring. It is in topfunnel campaigns where we lay the "foundation" for our metaphorical house. This is where we create the foundation for your future campaigns, as you have the opportunity to collect a lot of useful data - and more data = more solid foundation for your marketing.

When a brand first starts spending money on Facebook advertising, it can be frustrating when online orders or leads don't just pour in! And I can understand that, but but but but... You can't move into a house when only the foundation is laid (does the metaphor still work?).

In the topfunnel stage, our ultimate goal is one of two scenarios; either to drive the user to your website via a traffic campaign, or to reach as far and wide as possible with a reach or awareness campaign. The data we get on the other side of the campaign is worth its weight in gold going forward! Let me elaborate.

Our topfunnel campaign is now well and truly over, we've directed a lot of relevant users to your website and collected a lot of great data. That data is only good if we use it for something - and that's where our midfunnel comes into play.

2) Midfunnel

Now the foundation is laid, we can move forward with our house project and put up walls, lay floors and other things that make a house a little more house-like. For mid-funnel campaigns, we can use retargeting to our advantage. Retargeting means that we go in and expose your campaign to users who have already been exposed to your brand before - we assume that they are more likely to click on it again, as your brand is no longer a complete stranger to the user.

It's also in mid-funnel campaigns where we can allow ourselves to be a little more playful in our wording. We can speak to users with the assumption that they know who you are as a brand. In the ads themselves, we can go a little more in-depth and be more specific by, for example, showing images and descriptions of some of the products or services your brand offers.

Examples of a midfunnel ad can be one of the "regular" ad formats such as image, carousel or video, but you can also move into creating a lightning experience. A lightning experience is a page that opens up inside Facebook when you click on the ad - the user is not redirected to an external website.

Lightning experiences can be set up in a few different ways, but when talking about midfunnel, I want to focus on how you can use a lightning experience to set up a storefront or a digital tour of your brand. As a brand, you have the opportunity to showcase your products in a more inspiring and vibrant way while introducing the user to your universe and aesthetic.

Once our midfunnel campaign has run, we have EVEN more data that we can use to achieve our goal, which is ultimately to get conversions/leads - or move into our house, if we continue in the house project metaphor.

3) Lowfunnel

We've laid the foundations, we've put up the walls and laid the floors and we're finally at the fun part! We're painting and decorating our new house - or rather, we're going out to get our conversions/leads that we've worked hard to lead up to. We need to get started with lowerfunnel.

Lowerfunnel is the final stage of our advertising journey. This is where we can assume that the user has met us before and therefore has a good amount of trust in us.

Start with yourself - would you ever buy something from a brand you've never heard of the first time you saw an ad on Facebook from them? Most people would probably answer no to this, which is why we can't expect users to do this with your brand (hence why we work with top and mid-funnel).

Now that we're coming to the end of our funnel strategy, let's dive into what a lowerfunnel campaign can be. You have the opportunity to really dig deep and communicate with users as if you were old friends!

In the most literal sense, imagine you are talking to someone you know well. You can talk about things they like, you know their favorite color, you know what type of car/bag/cake they like, etc. It may sound creepy, but you can actually go in and advertise specific products that the individual user has been looking at themselves! You can do this by creating a conversion campaign with a dynamic catalog.

A dynamic ad works particularly well when we're talking lower funnel - because we have some facts straight; we know that the user has looked at that particular product before, and therefore we can afford to put a CTA button that encourages "buy now" or similar. It will also be at this stage where instead of writing more fancy words about your brand, you go a little more to the point and say something like, "We see that you have looked at the following - buy now and get delivery within 2 days!" It's short and sweet, but we've used the previous steps to soften users up and build trust.

A lowerfunnel campaign doesn't have to be a dynamic ad, it can also be a "regular" ad where you simply show products or services in an image, video or carousel ad - for example with a CTA that encourages you to take action here and now - whether that's buying something or making contact.

Want help with your Facebook funnel?

I hope this post has given you more clarity about the different steps and that you have the courage to take the plunge into Facebook advertising! If you want professional advice on Facebook and social media marketing, don't hesitate to contact us for a no-obligation chat.

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