Funnel Vision: How We Break Down Paid Social Ads

Like many relationships, a bond with your customers isn’t really ‘official’ until you’re engaging on Facebook. But organic reach has its limits. You can only interact with direct followers, and you’ll have to rely on likes and shares to measure the impact of your posts.

A paid strategy, on the other hand, blows the lid off your social media marketing. You reach a lot more people on diverse platforms like Messenger and Instagram. Plus, there are deeper targeting options to explore, helping you to test, trial and optimise new slants on your communications.

But you won’t get very far by simply boosting organic posts and hammering home offer after offer. To get the most out of your paid social campaigns, you need to tweak them to fit a three-stage engagement funnel. Here, we break down the objectives:

Stage 1 – Awareness

When you target customers at the very start of the sales funnel you have to make them aware of what you do, and why they should be interested. There are two main types of awareness ads to help make this happen: reach (showing your ads to as many people as possible from your target audience) and brand awareness (the clue’s in the name). Both are proven to deliver measurable outcomes.

Unlike Google Ads (which are seen by people already searching for a solution), these ads must create a need and stop someone scrolling on social media. They have to be bold, hooking a potential customer’s attention straight away – either through a question, a quote, or a visually interesting design that makes people take note. Videos and carousel ads do a lot of the heavy lifting here, showing the buyer exactly what you’re about in just a few seconds.

The best thing about awareness ads is they’re cost effective. By paying as little as 1p per result you can run a couple of ads alongside other tactics in your campaign, to identify what brings new business your way.

Stage 2 – Consideration

Little nudges can turn someone who’s even slightly familiar with your brand into a bona fide buyer – you just have to be subtle about it. Get a desired action in mind for your customer. This could be installing an app, viewing a video, visiting a webpage or leaving their details for more targeted comms later – it’s all part of the consideration phase.

Unlike awareness ads which are measured in frequency, or the number of times the ad has been distributed to your audience – these have a cost per result. So whether it’s a video play or filling in a form for lead generation, you’re only charged for each successful action.

Consideration advertising can be rolled out at any point during the sales funnel. Prompt a new audience, strengthen your existing prospects, or market to those who’ve dropped off the radar. Whatever your strategy, make sure you’re using tracking pixels to retarget them for the final stage: conversion ads.

Stage 3 – Conversion

Conversions are the ultimate goal for companies – and rightly so. Essentially, they measure the effectiveness of your paid social ads and can be defined as either an online purchase, a web sign-up, or even an intro call booking. If your leads didn’t generate a sale or a newsletter subscription on your site, you can retarget them with tailored ads. But who do you earmark, and how?

As a business, you want to maximise conversions from a warm audience. Whether it’s people you brought through the sales funnel with awareness and traffic ads, or those who found your website through other sources, such as an email marketing campaign. By retargeting ads, you can add value while reminding your audience why they visited your website in the first place – providing that final nudge to make a purchase.

As a PPC agency, we’re experts at fine-tuning paid social ads. To find out how to get the best out of your paid social strategy, take some time with our dedicated team. Email [email protected]
or call 0161 660 9206 to discuss all things digital copywriting.