Utilizing a full-funnel approach to Facebook advertising is the easiest method to guarantee that every dollar of your ad budget is maximized. It also gives you better control over audience targeting, brand perception, and campaign results. So, if you want to increase the return on investment for your ads but are unsure how a funnel can help, this article is for you.
What is a Facebook Ads funnel?
A Facebook Ads funnel is a model for visualizing, tracking, and analyzing the business impact of your ad campaigns. It helps you deliver targeted ads for prospective buyers and improve the convertibility of campaigns.
Explore differences in marketing and sales funnels in our dedicated blog post.
On a high level, the ads funnel has three components: top of the funnel (ToFu), middle of the funnel (MoFu), and bottom of the funnel (BoFu). However, let’s use the AIDA framework to explain the purpose of ads at different stages. AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.
Awareness (ToFu). At this stage, your target customer has a problem but is not actively looking for a solution. The goal of an awareness ad is to spark curiosity in potential customers and familiarize the audience with your brand. Ads should be eye-catching and have widespread appeal.
Interest (ToFu). Once you’ve got their attention, the next step is to generate interest. At this point, the target customer is aware of the problem but hasn’t explored any solutions. Your interest ads should describe the core benefits of your product and explain how it works (or what it can do for them).
Desire (MoFu). Now it’s time to show prospects why your solution is better than market alternatives. With desire ads, you must highlight the added value of your product, emphasize its problem-solving features, and ‘prove’ that your product is the best available option.
Action (BoFu). Finally, you need to prompt target customers to make a purchase. At this stage, they have already visited your website and know what you have to offer. So your ads should focus on creating a sense of urgency, utilizing exclusive deals, sign-up discounts, and so on.
It’s important not to forget about the post-purchase stage of the funnel. These ads are designed to encourage customers to buy from you again, upgrade their subscription or product, or be rewarded for their loyalty. The overall goal is to increase customer retention, satisfaction, and repeat purchases.
How to create a Facebook ads funnel that converts
I won’t go into detail about how to set up an ads funnel, as we’ve already covered the steps in this Facebook Ads Analytics blog post. Instead, I’ll briefly describe the flow of funnel creation, so you’ll have a basis for further analysis and optimization.
1. Define your target audience
Segment your audience based on their stage in the buyer journey. Start by dividing them into two groups: cold (top of the funnel) and warm (middle/bottom of the funnel).
A cold audience – people who have never interacted with your ads before – can be narrowed down by:
Interests and demographic markers. For example, a pet insurance company can select interests and topics like pet food, dogs, cats, etc. to target their cold audience, on top of relevant demographics (e.g. location, age, and gender).
Lookalikes. Create a target audience based on the characteristics of your existing customers. This will help maximize your chances of reaching people with the relevant interests, motivations, and problems.
A warm audience is made up of people who are familiar with your product or service. It includes website visitors, users who converted through your website, and existing customers. You can use Meta Pixel, Google Analytics 4, and your customer database to obtain this data and create custom audiences in Meta Ads Manager.
2. Set campaign objectives
There are five Facebook ad campaign objectives to choose from: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, and Sales. In general, your ad objective should match your audience. Awareness objectives are always for the top of the funnel, while Traffic, Engagement, and Leads can be assigned to the middle/bottom of the funnel ads.
3. Create compelling campaigns
How can you create compelling ads with a full-funnel approach? Let’s explore campaign types using an example from a retail shoe company.
Awareness campaigns
Primary goal: Get the target customer to stop scrolling in their Facebook feed/reels/etc. and pay attention to your message or offer.
Target audience: Cold, e.g. people with interests in shoes, boutiques, women’s clothing. Lookalike based on the shoe company’s current customers.
Potential creatives: Short video ad highlighting the unique features and designs of the shoes. UGC image ad that shows an influencer modeling a popular pair of shoes.
Interest campaigns
Primary goal: Engage the audience, prompt them to learn more about the brand and products.
Target audience: Cold/warm, e.g. people who watched 50% of the awareness video ad.
Potential creatives: Carousel ad showcasing different shoes from the product collection. An interactive poll where people can vote on their favorite style for the season.
Desire campaigns
Primary goal: Emphasize the benefits of the shoes, how they compare to competitors, etc.
Target audience: Warm, e.g. those who visited the website. Also retargeting prospects who engaged with your previous campaigns.
Potential creatives: Short video ad based on a review from an influencer in the fashion accessory niche. Lead ad where the prospect can take a style quiz and get a personalized product recommendation.
Action campaigns
Primary goal: Drive conversions by motivating interested prospects to buy the pair of shoes.
Target audience: Warm, e.g. people who visited several product pages on the website.
Potential creative: Collection ad featuring styles the prospect viewed in the past, with a CTA offering 20% off the first purchase.
Remember, there is no set formula you need to follow. A Facebook Ads funnel can still be effective with fewer stages and objectives. For example, Kateryna Halstian, PPC Specialist at Webpromo, kindly shared her team’s strategy with me:
Meanwhile, for Dan Burykin at Top-Rated Team, the ecommerce Facebook Ads funnel is structured around a typical sales journey:
Examples of Facebook Ads funnel campaigns
Let’s explore examples of campaigns for each stage of the AIDA funnel model.
Awareness ad examples
Let’s start with this image ad by Loop Earplugs for its ‘Loop Quiet’ model. We can presume the campaign aims to raise brand awareness while introducing the product from a problem/solution perspective.
What makes it a good awareness-oriented ad?
- Clearly outlines the audience’s pain: ‘Tired of feeling tired?’
- Describes the audience’s potential triggers: ‘Street noise?’ ‘Snoring partner?’
- The image itself demonstrates the product and how it solves the problem
- The CTA – ‘Shop now’ – offers an actionable next step, even if purchases are not immediately expected.
- Provides social proof in the CTA block to establish legitimacy: ‘2 million happy customers.’
Here’s another awareness ad example from ThirdHome, a home exchange service specializing in luxury properties.
Again, it swiftly outlines the problem in the caption – ‘unused time,’ ‘vacation home sits empty’ – and the solution ‘…turn those empty weeks into free luxury stays.’ The images are also descriptive and eye-catching.
Interest ad examples
Now that you’ve got your target customer’s attention, you must explain the ‘why’ behind your product. What’s in it for your audience? What does your product/service actually do, and how will it enhance their lives? TropicFeel, a travel gear brand, achieves this with its video ad for one of its backpacks.
And here’s a more unconventional image ad by Topaz Photo AI. The company collaborated with a photography influencer to highlight one of the product’s core features.
What makes the above campaign good for generating interest?
- Demonstrates a key product feature based on a common use case.
- Captures the essence of the solution with a side-by-side comparison.
- Shows an industry expert actively using the product, establishing credibility.
- The feature’s main benefits are briefly elaborated on in the caption.
Desire ad examples
Again, at this point, the audience is evaluating the options on the market and looking for the product that will best solve their problem. Desire ads should make this process as smooth as possible. They can also recapture leads who interacted with your interest campaigns but didn’t take further action.
Let’s take this image ad from ClickUp as our next example.
Why does it work as an ad for the desire stage?
- Contains lots of social proof: ‘2+ million teams;’ ‘10K+ 5-star reviews;’ ‘Rated #1.’
- Includes logos from well-known tech review platforms for additional credibility.
- The creative highlights some helpful and notable product features.
- Summarizes the product purpose and benefit: ‘the everything app for work;’ ‘free workspace for your team.’
- Invites prospects to learn more about the product before they make a decision.
Action ad examples
As I explained earlier, ads at the action stage of the funnel are designed to drive purchases. The content of these ads often differs from previous campaigns. Take this example by Babbel for instance. It focuses on the offer (rather than product benefits) and seeks to instill a sense of urgency.
Here’s a similar example from Huel, a meal replacement company.
What makes this ad appropriate for the action stage?
- Highlights the product value in both the caption and the creative, e.g. ‘ready in seconds;’ 34 servings for 2.21;’ ‘free welcome kit.’
- Bold language – ‘ultimate high-protein meal – which describes the core solution.
- An evocative image showing the prospect what they could miss out on.
- Copy that creates a sense of urgency: ‘While stocks last.’
Post-purchase ad examples
Now we arrive at the post-purchase stage. Here, your Facebook ads should nurture existing customers by offering an enhanced product experience, exclusive deals, and other incentives that will strengthen loyalty.
To explore this approach, let’s return to the Loop Earplugs we saw in the first awareness ad.
How does this ad support the post-purchase stage of the funnel?
- Demonstrates that the company paid attention to customer feedback
- The creative exemplifies the product improvements while providing a clear use case (nights out, dancing).
- Offers a motivation to purchase: ‘100-day free returns’ with a clear ‘Shop now’ CTA.
Here’s a carousel ad from Hyatt, showing a different take on the added value concept of post-purchase campaigns.
The caption copy clearly outlines incentives, emphasizing the benefits of being a loyal customer. The phrase ‘private sale’ compounds the exclusivity of the deal, and the CTA offers a quick way to take advantage of it. Meanwhile, the creatives are vivid images that play into customers’ fear of missing out.
Metrics for measuring funnel performance
After setting up your funnel, you will need to track and measure the results of your campaigns. Here are some suggested metrics for monitoring progress at each funnel stage.
Metrics for top-of-the-funnel Facebook Ads
Impressions – the total amount of times your ad was viewed by your audience. The more impressions you receive, the higher your chances of conversion.
Reach is an estimation of how many Facebook users have been shown your ad at least once. If impressions and reach are close in number, it suggests that your campaign is gaining traction among the target audience.
CPM (Cost-per-mille) is how much money you need to spend to have your ad shown in the feed 1,000 times. A low CPM indicates that you are getting bang for your buck in terms of impressions.
Ad frequency is the approximate number of times someone on Facebook sees your ad. Typically, if it’s higher than four, it means your campaign is not compelling enough and you should optimize it.
Metrics for middle-of-the-funnel Facebook ads
Link clicks measure the total number of times people click on a link in your ad. This metric is important because it tells you whether your audience is interested in what you have to offer.
Unique link clicks are the number of individual Facebook users who clicked on the link in your ad. It helps you gauge how well you attract target customers and convert them into qualified leads.
CPC (cost-per-click) is the average amount you pay for a prospect to click on your ad. It differs from cost per conversion, as it focuses on the cost of acquiring a click rather than the cost to achieve a purchase or sign-up.
CTR (click-through rate) is the rate at which people click on your ad and end up on your landing page.
Metrics for bottom-of-the-funnel Facebook Ads
Conversions refer to the meaningful actions taken by prospects after clicking on your ad. Examples include:
- Lead form submissions where they expressed interest in speaking to someone on your team, receiving more information about your offering, etc.
- Sign-ups to your product subscription, newsletter, webinar, or other product-related resources.
- Checkout initiated. For instance, they clicked on the ‘shop now’ button in your ad and proceeded to checkout but didn’t make a purchase.
- Custom conversions are actions specific to your advertising goals. It could be a demo request, whitepaper download, subscription upgrade, and so on, depending on how you define a notable conversion.
Cost per conversion assesses the efficiency of your campaign in terms of generating conversions. A high conversion cost indicates your budget should be adjusted or reallocated.
Amount spend is the total amount of money you invested into a Facebook ad campaign. The lower it is and the higher your engagement scores, the more cost-effective your campaign.
ROAS (return on ad spend) measures the ability of your campaign to generate revenue. It helps you report on the business impact of individual campaigns and identify the most valuable types.
Metrics for post-purchase Facebook Ads
Repeat purchase rate is how often a customer buys from you, following their first purchase. It is useful for understanding when to launch a retargeting campaign for existing customers.
Customer lifetime value (LTV) refers to the total financial value a customer brings to your business throughout their engagement with your brand. It helps you measure long-term Facebook ads success and improve budget allocation.
Custom metrics (for more than just conversion metrics) can also help you pinpoint where campaign optimizations are needed. Here’s a case where an online math school, Mathema, created a custom metric – Target Lead – to evaluate the quality of their leads. Hanna Sitnikova, Mathema’s Marketing Operations Manager, explains how it has helped them decrease the average number of non-qualified leads (NQLs) by 10% so far.
Here’s a snapshot of Mathema’s results:
Quick tip: You can learn about industry benchmarks for Facebook metrics in the article PPC advertising statistics.
Tools for managing, analyzing, and optimizing your ads funnel
Meta Ads Manager
Meta Ads Manager is the central hub for managing creatives, budgeting, targeting, and other ad campaign activities. In addition to the basics, it lets you customize attribution settings for each campaign, helping you better understand the customer journey. You can also generate templated or custom reports to analyze the performance of campaigns and the overall funnel.
Discover more about customer decision journey in our dedicated blog post.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
GA4 is an essential tool for ads funnel analysis. It lets you track engagement and conversion actions after click-throughs from your ads. For instance, with GA4’s event-based tracking, you can analyze button clicks, video plays, form submissions, and purchases on your landing pages. This allows you to see where drop-offs occur and make changes accordingly.
Coupler.io
Coupler.io is a reporting automation tool that lets you aggregate data from multiple sources (e.g. GA4, Facebook ads) and visualize it in a single dashboard. It’s ideal for keeping track of funnel metrics, discovering areas for campaign improvement, and making data-driven decisions quickly and easily.
You can choose from a free Facebook ads template with predefined metrics (e.g. CTR, impressions vs clicks, CPM, etc.) or build a report from scratch with your custom KPIs. It’s also easy to set up automated data refreshes, ensuring you won’t waste time on manual updates.
Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity
To make targeted landing page improvements, you need to understand how users interact with them. Behavior mapping tools like Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity allow you to track and optimize engagements on your pages.
With heatmaps and session recordings, you can see how prospects interact with your CTAs, lead forms, checkout process, and so on. It can give you ideas on what to change, and help you identify where (and why) drop-offs are happening.
Benchmark reports
More of a resource than a tool, industry benchmark reports can be useful for gauging the success of your campaigns at each funnel stage. For instance, you can check the average CPC, CPM, and conversion rates for your industry and see which campaign objectives bring better results (in general). Here’s a recently updated report for 2024: Facebook Ads benchmark report.
FYI: Meta Ads Manager has a dedicated benchmarking feature, but it is currently only available to a limited number of advertisers.
How to manage your Facebook ads funnel with Coupler.io
Can you use Ads Manager’s native reporting tool to track campaign results? You can, but in my experience, it’s not enough. The tool has several limitations, particularly when it comes to data visualization, filtering, and campaign comparison. So, I recommend using one (or more) of our free Facebook ads report templates.
Facebook Ads dashboard
This is a dedicated dashboard for tracking and analyzing the results of your Facebook ad campaigns. It’s available as a free template, takes less than five minutes to set up, and can be used daily to monitor trends and guide campaign budget allocation.
Here are some of the dashboard’s most useful features:
- Scorecards with important funnel metrics (e.g. impressions, CPM, CTR)
- A graph for keeping an eye on campaign frequency
- Ability to drill into performance by campaign and assess funnel efficiency
There is also a monthly dynamics tab where you can dive deeper into your funnel campaign results. Analyze clicks by age, gender, or location demographics. This will help you identify the countries and age groups that bring the highest ROAS, so you can get the most from your budget at each funnel stage.
The dashboard template is available for Looker Studio and Google Sheets. Check them out:
PPC multi-channel dashboard
As a full-funnel marketer, you likely run ads on platforms such as Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. In this scenario, I suggest creating a single-page dashboard to track the performance of your cross-channel advertising efforts. This will eliminate the need to switch between account tabs to compare results and monitor budget efficiency.
This PPC multi-channel dashboard template aggregates data from up to 8 sources (e.g. TikTok ads, Quora Ads, Instagram ads) and lets you visualize performance metrics in a simple report. For instance, you can analyze clicks by source and campaign type, compare CPC across channels, keep track of spend amounts, and drill into metrics like impressions, CPM, and CTR for each source.
It’s an easy way to spot bottlenecks in your PPC marketing funnel and monitor Facebook ad ROI against other channels. The dashboard can also be set up to refresh data on a schedule (potentially every 15 minutes) so you always have the latest funnel insights at your fingertips.
Depending on your needs, you can use this template in Looker Studio, Power BI, Google Sheets, or Tableau. Take your pick:
Tips for optimizing your ads funnel strategy
There is no silver bullet that can transform a boring, frequently skipped ad campaign into a viral sensation. Facebook Ads funnel optimization is an ongoing process. So, here are a few suggestions for gradual improvement.
Test bidding strategies, audiences, and campaign objectives
Play around with campaign set-up options in Ads Manager to find the optimal approach for each ad type.
- Bidding strategies. Meta offers three types of bidding: spend-based, goal-based, and manual. You can experiment with different goals and budget amounts to find the most cost-efficient types.
- Audiences. Create custom audiences based on past campaign results or existing customer data. Analyze how well they perform against saved or lookalike audiences.
- Campaign objectives. For instance, assign a Leads objective to a newsletter sign-up promotion, and check how it performs compared to similar campaigns with a Traffic objective.
- Ad placements. Instead of defaulting to automatic or news feed placements, test ads in Facebook Stories, Messenger, or Reels.
For example, the team at Marketing Pot tested different campaign objectives and found Leads to be most effective for their clients (B2B service companies). CEO Alina Zaiets shared with me how it works:
Experiment with creatives
While image, short video, and carousel ads often yield the highest results, don’t be afraid to experiment with less popular formats. For example, you could try playables for gaming app promotion or collection ads for an e-commerce product showcase.
At the same time, switch up your content to find out what brings the best ROI. Here are a few suggestions for optimizing your creatives:
- Create infographics to explain the benefits of your product in an easily digestible way.
- Collaborate with influencers on short video product/service demonstrations.
- Experiment with humor (if it makes sense for your industry or niche).
- Test videos with an ‘underproduced’ style i.e. no fancy camera equipment. Focus on authentic, relatable content.
- Incorporate interactive elements like polls, quizzes, or 360 product views.
Pay close attention to landing pages
Let’s say you are advertising a SaaS product and you want to improve conversions for landing pages corresponding to your funnel ads. What kind of changes could you make?
- For awareness landing pages, find ways to increase brand visibility and draw attention to your product offering. If it’s a blog post, for instance, you could weave a CTA organically into the text or include a sticky banner in the side menu.
- For interest-generating landing pages, you could experiment with dynamic hero visuals or dedicated blocks where product use cases are described.
- For desire-oriented landing pages, consider including an FAQ, customer testimonials, and short video case studies to help prospects make decisions faster.
- For landing pages at the action stage, ensure CTAs are clear and concise e.g. Sign-Up For Free. You could also implement a pop-up to encourage discount claims or a chatbot to resolve any pre-purchase doubts your prospects may have.
Additionally, you should ensure brand messaging is consistent across ads and pages, content is personalized for the target audience, and webpages are optimized for mobile.
Kateryna from Webpromo has one more tip to share:
Leverage a storytelling approach
It’s no secret that customers prefer to engage with ads that tell a story. Humans naturally gravitate towards narratives, and we are 22 times more likely to remember stories over facts.
So, to optimize engagement and conversions, think of your funnel as a storytelling vehicle. Each stage is an opportunity to connect with your audience on an emotional level.
- ToFu is where you introduce the audience to the context of your brand story. Your awareness and interest ads hook the target customer and compel them to learn more.
- MoFu ads provide the audience with the ‘meat’ of your brand story. The target customer comes to understand what you do, why it’s important, and how it can positively impact their reality.
- BoFu is where you provide closure and emphasize the value of your offering.
- Post-purchase ads are about reinforcing the key ‘lessons’ of the story and helping customers see the deeper value of your solution.
Kevin Urrutia, Co-Founder and Facebook Expert at Voy Media, shared this advice for ads funnel storytelling.
Note: You can find more tips – particularly around bidding strategies, interest targeting, and creatives – in the article How to Optimize Facebook Ads
Why it’s crucial to use and optimize a Facebook Ads funnel
You can definitely run ad campaigns on Facebook without using a funnel. However, if you don’t tailor your campaigns to different target audiences, your return on ad spend (ROAS) will likely be lower. On the contrary, adopting a full-funnel approach to Facebook advertising offers numerous benefits, including:
- Higher conversion rates and return on ad spend.
- Lower ad frequency and reduced ad fatigue.
- Better user experience, a stronger brand reputation, and increased customer retention.
- A competitive edge over advertisers who don’t take a full-funnel approach to Facebook ads.
Ready to start tracking, analyzing, and optimizing your Facebook Ads funnel? Then, set up a free Coupler.io account and try one of our Facebook ads or PPC dashboards today!
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