Using Facebook Ads Manager as a small business isn’t easy. Not only do you need a clear understanding of your goals for each ad, but you must take the time to understand the platform (and its constant changes), monitor your ad, and ensure that you’re maximizing your return on investment.

It’s not easy, and we don’t blame you for taking the time to figure it out. The key to mastering your Facebook marketing objectives is to have a clear understanding of a conversion funnel, or the way in which potential customers interact with your brand before making a purchase.  

However, understanding customer behavior takes time that small business owners don’t always have. Lucky for you, the experts of digital marketing Pittsburgh are here to break down everything you need to know about your conversion funnel for Facebook ads. We’ll begin by overviewing what a conversion funnel is and how it works, exploring different ad objectives, and walking you through how to properly execute a basic conversion funnel on Facebook Ads Manager.

What is a Conversion Funnel?

The Leader in Digital Marketing Pittsburgh Break Down a Basic Sales Process

Take a minute to think about the process you go through when deciding to make a medium-sized purchase: not a car or a house, but a nice coat or pair of boots. Chances are that you will take the time to shop around, find the style and color you want, find a great deal from a brand you like, then decide to shop when the brand is running a sale or promotion on your item. 

This is the way many consumers make purchases. While some people move through these steps quickly (deciding not to wait for a deal because of a time-crunch or knowing which brand they want to buy from quickly), the steps fundamentally exist in some capacity during the sales process.

A conversion funnel, or sales funnel, is a model used to represent potential customers as they move through the sales process. A large number of people exist at the top of the funnel, but as they make their considerations whether or not to make a purchase, the number of people in your funnel dwindles down to only a small fraction of that initial audience. This is a normal part of making a sale so it’s important not to be discouraged by people who decide not to buy. Rather, you should do what you can to nurture your audience and maximize the number of people who make it through your sales funnel.

Depending on who you talk to, your sales funnel can include anywhere from 3 to 6 steps. No matter how many steps are included, the same sentiment remains as people move through four primary steps:

• Awareness: Potential customers are introduced to your brand for the first time. This puts an ad in front of a potential customer so that by the time they see the next ad it is less of a ‘cold call’ and they can recognize the brand in some way.
• Consideration: Potential customers are presented with an ad that allows them to consider the benefits and value of the product or service. This is typically done with a video or a blog post. People who interact on the consideration portion of your campaign can be considered an MQL, or marketing qualified lead: someone who has shown enough interest to continue receiving marketing efforts.
• Intent: Your MQL is now paying more attention to your brand and intends to make a purchase. They may be pricing different options, looking for sales, or viewing different packages that you offer. This is a great time to gather information and provide a discount in return, creating an SQL, or sales qualified lead.
• Conversion: At this stage, the SQL is ready to seal the deal and makes a purchase. 

Depending on your type of business—ranging from an e-commerce business to a service-driven business—this funnel will vary. An e-commerce business will complete the full funnel online by completing the conversion with an online sale. However, a service-based client will end their ad campaign at the intent stage after obtaining an SQL. This person can then be contacted and is primed to convert over the phone or in person.

Types of Facebook Ad Objectives

Optimizing Campaigns to Push Customers through Your Funnel

When building an ad on Facebook Ads Manager, the first thing you are prompted to do is choose your ad objective. There are 11 total objectives, each of which helps you accomplish different goals and is reported using different metrics. The leaders in digital marketing Pittsburgh have found that even if your ad looks the same across these objectives, they perform differently because they are optimized to reach your objectives.

The leaders in digital marketing Pittsburgh at Responsival use 5 of these 11 objectives to help progress our clients’ customers through their sales funnel:

Reach Campaigns

Reach campaigns are designed to maximize impressions, or the number of people seeing your ad. You’ll be paying for a reach campaign based on the CPM, or cost per 1,000 impressions. Reach campaigns are great for the awareness stage of your conversion funnel because they reach the largest audience. Additionally, you are able to add a button that takes your audience to your website or app so that you can begin building lookalike audiences.

Traffic Campaigns

Traffic campaigns are designed to drive your audience to your website or another landing page. This objective is ideal for your consideration stage because it can provide customers with information that could influence their decision to purchase, like a blog post or more information about the product or your company. Measure your success with your CPC, or cost per click, which you should aim to be less than or near the $1 per click mark depending on your industry.

Engagement Campaigns

If you choose engagement as your objective for your campaign, you can choose to optimize for page likes,  post engagement, or event responses. Engagement campaigns can be used at multiple steps in your sales funnel depending on your end goal. If you want people to RSVP for your Facebook event, an engagement ad may be used during the conversion step of your funnel. Otherwise, you may ask people to engage with a post or follow your page to show intent.

Lead Generation Campaigns

Facebook offers lead generation campaigns to capture SQLs. You can customize a form directly in Facebook that asks for demographic information, contact information, and more. These are perfect for the intent phase of your campaign, allowing people to submit the information need to convert offline—or subscribe to your mailing list for 20% off their first purchase.

While lead generation campaigns work great, you can also create a form directly on your website with the help of Responsival. This essentially kills two birds with one stone: drive traffic to your site and get a SQL. Need help building out a site or landing page for your campaign? The team at Responsival is here to help.

Conversion Campaigns

You guessed it—conversion campaigns are great for the conversion stage of your funnel. This objective works by setting up conversion events on your website using your Facebook Pixel. You can track lead-generating actions, add to cart, contact actions, and more, helping you optimize your ad based on the actions your audience takes once they leave Facebook. How much you pay for these conversions is heavily dependent on the lifetime value or your customer and the average cost per sale.

The leaders in digital marketing Pittsburgh like to use conversion campaigns for on-site form completion. This is a great way to garner valuable leads for service-based industries that allows them to follow up and make a sale.

The Leaders in Digital Marketing Pittsburgh Break Down a Potential Campaign Format

Reaching New Audiences & Making the Sale

In a traditional sales funnel, you’ll be selling an item at the end of the funnel. To do this, start with a brand awareness campaign with a reach objective. You can put out a branded video or image to share with a new audience that your brand exists. Add a button to this with a link to your website in case people want to begin moving down the funnel themselves.

Next, create a traffic campaign for the consideration section of your funnel. Drive traffic to a blog post that showcases the benefits someone can gain by using your product or service. Make sure your Facebook Pixel is installed so that you can retarget these people that click through to your blog post.

Next, you want to retarget the people who viewed the blog post and gauge their intent. You can do this by gathering emails in exchange for a discount on their first purchase, asking them to follow your page for a chance to win a free item, or presenting them with package bundles that sweeten the deal if they decide to make a purchase. Depending on which option you choose, you’ll want to choose the objective that fits best.

Finally, retarget the people who have not yet purchased your item using your Facebook pixel, giving them an in-ad discount code to seal the deal. If you’re in a service-based industry, make the sale on your own using the information gathered during the intent stage.

Think it’s time to tackle your Facebook marketing the right way? Get in touch with the team at Responsival today to get started.