Most small business owners who advertise on Facebook limit their advertising to the ‘top of funnel’. This is where ads are shown to a ‘cold’ audience that has most likely not engaged with their ads previously. But to harness the power of Facebook advertising, it’s important to understand the middle and bottom of funnel.
Many people may see your ads, and over time, some of these people take further action. This may be as simple as engaging with your ads again and watching a video, or even making a purchase or booking an appointment.
The top of funnel (TOF) is where people are introduced to your product, service or brand. In Facebook advertising, we refer to this as a cold audience, and it is usually based on interest targeting.
When someone takes action from these top of funnel ads – whether that is submitting a lead form or even just engaging with the ad, they then move to the middle of funnel (MOF).
Middle of funnel targeting in Facebook Ads
The MOF is a great opportunity to build the ‘know, like and trust’ factor with your audience. Usually, most people will need to be exposed to your ads before taking a particular action, such as booking a call with your sales team, or buying your online course. Relying only on TOF ads in this situation means opportunities to connect with your target audience as missed.
Even in situations where people do take the desired conversion action at TOF, the MOF is a great tool to support yourself or your team in your sales calls, and often results in leads more willing to purchase.
This is where you can use all of your best assets – blog articles, videos, testimonials, or even just organic posts from your page that had great engagement – to show more about who you are and what your business does.
When creating clients’ ad funnels, we usually do 30-day retargeting in the MOF, using these assets as a digital newsletter. By this, we’re usually, we’re retargeting (or showing ads specifically to people who took an action that we define), to anyone who has engaged with an ad in the last 30 days.
Where possible, we use 30 pieces of content, set up in a way that each MOF ad will be shown to the prospect. Think of this like a digital newsletter.
Using the bottom of funnel in Facebook ads
These ads are usually to ‘follow up’ a prior action or engagement with your ads, such as prompting the person to make a purchase decision, or sign up for an appointment. This is especially useful when you consider how and where people consume Facebook Ads – on their mobile device.
If someone sees your TOF ad when they’re waiting to be served at a supermarket checkout, they might not have the time or be able to take the action you’ve presented in your ad. However, we use BOF ads to remind them to take this action, or to take an action that is closer to a sale.
Usually, we retarget people in the BOF for 7 or 14 days, and limit the number of impressions they see of the BOF ad within each 7 day period. This also runs in conjunction with the MOF ads, and a a level of familiarly develops as people move through the funnel.
When advertising on Facebook, it’s definitely worth thinking through your funnel, and setting up your campaigns to leverage these opportunities to build relationships with your target customers.
If you’d like to know more about how we help advertisers create full funnel Facebook ad campaigns, book a free strategy call with us today.