Facebook Ads: Create a Sales or Marketing Funnel

Introduction

Are you thinking of creating a sales or marketing funnel yet worried you’ll waste your money on ineffective ads? Do you want to get the most out of your Facebook ads but don’t know how to get started?

This step-by-step guide will walk you through the process, showing you exactly how to create your first sales or marketing funnel using Facebook Ads Manager.

Who is this sales or marketing funnel automation guide for?

This guide is prepared for small-business owners/managers, advertisers, and social media marketers who are looking for a DIY solution to growing their business through Facebook advertising using a sales or marketing funnel.

However, if you’re the type who wishes to hire a Facebook Ads Manager yet wishes to understand the approach, this article is still for you.

Facebook Ads

Before diving into the nitty-gritty stuff, let us get some Facebook ads statistics. 

• Facebook US ads are expected to surge 15.5% year-over-year in 2022
• Facebook ads reach 34.1% of the global population over the age of 13
• Facebook ads reach 63.7% of all Americans over the age 13
• 50% of consumers want to discover new products through Facebook Stories
• Facebook Marketplace ads reach 562 million people

I do understand that you may have some apprehensions and questions. I recommend reading the following:

• Google ads vs. Facebook ads
• Facebook ads vs. boosted post

Note: In my experience, if you have a budget of less than US$300/month per ad set (funnel), it might be good to simply use boosted post. Using a marketing funnel via Facebook ads is really good, but it would entail a decent budget for the funnel to be effective and for you to gain reasonable data to analyze.

What is Facebook Ads Manager?

Facebook Ads Manager is your starting point for creating, managing, and tracking your ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network. 

Please note that If you’ve been creating ads from your Facebook page and not from the Facebook Ads Manager, you can manage them through the Ad Center. 

How does the Facebook ads manager fit in with the sales or marketing funnel automation?

We will create your sales or marketing funnel inside your Facebook Ads Manager.

Marketing funnel vs. sales funnel

Many times, the marketing team and sales team are working on the same funnel. 

The only distinction might be their perspective.

What is a marketing funnel?

For the marketing team, the marketing funnel existence is to advertise a product or service to give leads a reason to buy. 

What is a sales funnel?

Whereas for the sales team, the sales funnel existence is to deal with the leads (from the marketing funnel), enticing them to buy, not once, but as often as possible.

3 Basic stages of a sales or marketing funnel

You can have different stages of a sales or marketing funnel. You can have as many stages as necessary. However, there are three (3) basic stages you can start with:

1. Top — this is the lead generation stage.
2. Middle — this is the lead nurturing stage.
3. Bottom — this is the purchasing stage.

Some may use the funnel this way:

Others may use it this way:

And there are still many other more complicated sales or marketing funnels used out there. 

There are many different types of funnels as well as many different ways to put funnels into purpose.

For the sake of this discussion, I will put through what I have been using since I started creating a sales and marketing funnel on Facebook Ads. 

There have been a lot of tweaking and adjustments along the way to simplify something complicated in the beginning to something easy to create, monitor, adjust, refine, and replicate. 

I hope you may find this sales or marketing automation funnel useful.

What to prepare when creating a Facebook sales and marketing funnel

You may need the following:

1. A Facebook account
2. A Facebook Ads Manager
3. A Facebook Business Account
   1. Recommendation: Run ads through the Business manager

Custom audiences

Before we start setting up your campaign, we will create several different custom audiences. 

1. Log in to your Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/
2. At the left sidebar of your Facebook account, click See More.

3. Click Ads Manager.

4. Then select Audiences.

5. Under Audience, you have three (3) choices:
   1. For this purpose, we use Custom Audiences.
   2. You may use other choices if you already have them in place.

First custom audience: Visited my page (365 days)

1. Under Choose a Custom Audience source, I will use Facebook page (for this purpose as this is where I want my traffic and conversions, such as leads and sales, to come from)

2. Fill out the following:
   1. Select Any (under Include people who meet the following criteria)
   2. Page: Select your Facebook page.
   3. Events: Select Anyone who visited your page.
   4. Retention: 365 days.
   5. Audience Name: Visited my page (365 days).
   6. Description: Optional.

Second custom audience: Engaged my page (30 days)

1. Click Create Audience > Custom Audience > Facebook page.
   1. Select Any (under Include people who meet the following criteria)
   2. Page: Select the same Facebook page you’ve selected in the previous steps above.
   3. Events: Select Everyone who engaged with your Page
   4. Retention: 30 days.
   5. Audience Name: Engaged my page (30 days).
   6. Description: Optional.

Third custom audience: Sent a message (30 days)

1. Click Create Audience > Custom Audience > Facebook page.
   1. Select Any (under Include people who meet the following criteria)
   2. Page: Select the same Facebook page you’ve selected in the previous steps above.
   3. Events: Select Everyone who engaged with your Page.
   4. Retention: 30 days.
   5. Audience Name: Sent a message (30 days).
   6. Description: Optional.

We are ready to use these custom audiences on our Facebook Ads Manager.

Build a Facebook Ads sales or marketing funnel

1. Log in to your Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/
2. At the left sidebar of your Facebook account, click See More.

3. Click Ads Manager.

4. Under Campaign, click Create.

5. For this purpose, we select Sales. Then click Continue.

Please note that some of the nitty-gritty may change depending on your campaign’s objective/goal and conversion location.

Creating a campaign

Under Campaign, Fill out the following:

1. Campaign name (for this purpose, we name it Marketing Funnel),
2. For Special Ad Categories, skip if the nature of your business is not under those categories,
3. To set up a total spending limit for the campaign, you can click Show more options under Campaign details. (I suggest you skip this unless you’re sure of the budget limit. We can always set the budget later under the Ad Sets section.)
   1. Check Add campaign spending limit.
   2. Then set the budget.
4. Click the Next button.

Creating ad set: Top-of-funnel

What is the purpose of top-of-funnel? 

The purpose of top-of-funnel is to target people who haven’t visited our page within 365 days. We are hoping to increase brand awareness to drive sales in this campaign.

Ad Set name, conversion location, optimization & delivery, and budget & schedule

Under Ad set, fill out the following:

1. Ad set name (for this purpose, we name it top-of-funnel.)
2. Under Conversion > Conversion location, select what is most appropriate for you. For this purpose, we choose Messenger. (This means we want all our leads to contact us via the Messenger app, whether desktop or mobile.)

3. Cost per result goal (optional) – if this is your first campaign/ad set, I suggest you leave it blank. If you already have previous data on hand from earlier similar campaigns/ad sets, you may adjust this accordingly. Check your previous data under cost per result.

4. Under Budget & schedule > Budget, choose between Daily Budget or Lifetime Budget. (I suggest you use the latter if you are unsure.)
   • Add the amount you wish to start with.
5. Under Schedule, set the start and end dates.
6. Under Ad Scheduling, leave it to Run ads all the time unless you are sure of the schedule based on past experiences and data.
   • You will adjust this later when you have more data. 

Audience

7. Under Audience > Custom audiences, click Exclude.

8. Under EXCLUDE, please select the first custom audience we created: Visited my page (365 days)
9. Under Locations, I recommend selecting any of the two only:
   • People living in or recently in this location
   • People living in this location
10. Add the top 3 locations where you think your clients/customers are located.
    • Please don’t select all countries/locations.
    • We may add more locations later.
    • You may choose specific states/cities, but don’t be too narrow when selecting locations. 
11. Age
    • Unless you are pretty sure of the age bracket of your audience, choose 18+65+
    • You can adjust this later during the campaign when we gather more data.
12. Gender
    • Unless your business is very particular, select all genders.
    • You can adjust this later as you gather more data.
13. Detailed targeting
    • Brainstorm the demographics, interests, and behavior of your target audience.
    • You may type a term and click Browse to get some idea.
    • Don’t be too broad or too narrow.
    • We simply need a bit of common sense here to start with. You can adjust this later.
14. Languages
    • Select what is appropriate for your target audience.
15. Under Placements
    • Unless you have a clear idea of what your audience uses, select Advantage+ placements (recommended).
    • Select Manual placements if you have a clear picture of the places where your target audience is. You may select and adjust this later once you have more data gathered.
16. Leave everything as it is.
17. Click Next.

Creating ads

It is important that you understand your funnels well. These are the funnels you created above. Understanding what each of your funnels is will dictate the type of ad you are going to create.

This means that each funnel will have its own set of ads. And these ads are aligned with the purpose of each funnel.

Granting the above is not an issue; let us create your ads by filling out the following:

1. Ad name: For this purpose, I name the first ad: Top-of-funnel Ad 1.
2. Identity > Facebook Page: Select the same Facebook page we use throughout this campaign.
3. Select an Instagram account related to this page if you have one.
4. Under Ad setup,
   1. There is no right or wrong answer. 
   2. This is where we sharpen our creativity and experiment with what will work best.
   3. I always want to start with the following:
      1. Creative source > manual upload
      2. Format > Single image or video

5. Under Ad creative, here are some points I usually consider:
   1. Be descriptive
   2. Show the benefits for your target audience: What will they get from it?
   3. Avoid hype
   4. Call to action: For this purpose, I select Send message as the conversion we used previously in the campaign’s setup is Messenger.
   5. Click Publish when ready.
      1. I suggest you go through everything first before publishing.

Creating ad set: Middle-of-funnel

What is the purpose of middle-of-funnel? 

The purpose of middle-of-funnel is to target people who have visited our page within 365 days but have not engaged. These visitors remain passive, with no engagement whatsoever. The ads may be something that will entice them to engage.

Middle-of-funnel only runs when we get a large enough size audience from the custom audience we excluded in top-of-funnel.

You can access the above by going back to the Audience section of your account when you were creating the custom audience.

1. Click duplicate under top-of-funnel.

2. Under Select, a campaign for your ad set, select Existing campaign.
3. Under Number of copies, select 1.

1. Uncheck Show existing reactions, comments and shares on new ads.
2. Click Duplicate.
3. Rename the Ad set name: Middle-of-funnel (for this example).
4. I prefer to keep everything as they are in this funnel unless I have a reason (backed by data, especially). The only change I like to make is the section on Custom audiences.
5. Under INCLUDE, add Visited my page (365 days).
6. Under EXCLUDE,
   • Remove Visited my page (365 days).
   • Add Engaged my page (30 days).
   • Add Sent a message (30 days).

10. Then click Next to create your ads for this funnel.

Creating ad set: Bottom-of-funnel

What is the purpose of bottom-of-funnel? 

The purpose of bottom-of-funnel is to target people who have engaged on your page within 30 days but have not shown interest by sending a message. The ads may be something that will entice them to inquire or purchase, like bundles, discounts, coupons, etc.

bottom-of-funnel runs when you have enough size for engagement.  You can check this under the Audience section.

1. Click duplicate under middle-of-funnel.
2. Under Select, a campaign for your ad set, select Existing campaign.
3. Under Number of copies, select 1.
4. Uncheck Show existing reactions, comments and shares on new ads.
5. Click Duplicate.
6. Rename the Ad set name: Bottom-of-funnel (for this example).
7. In this funnel, I prefer to keep everything as they are in this funnel unless I have a reason (backed by data, especially). The only change I like to make is the section on Custom audiences.
8. Under INCLUDE,
   • Add Visited my page (365 days).
   • Add Engaged my page (30 days).
9. Under EXCLUDE,
   • Remove Engaged my page (30 days).
   • Keep Sent a message (30 days).

10. Then click Next to create your ads for this funnel.

Note:

You can create/add as many funnels and custom audiences as you want to as long as it makes sense for your business. 

These can be funnels/custom audiences for those visiting your website, not just your Facebook page.

Monitoring and adjusting the campaign, ad sets (funnels), and ads

What to look for or monitor?

Overall. I usually look for the top 3 metrics:

• Frequency. less than 2.
• Cost per result: The lesser, the better (usually, this becomes lesser in time and as you go deeper into the funnel.)
• Results: This has to be tied with your overall marketing budget and profitability.

What to consider as conversions?

For this purpose, two (2) things are considered as conversion:

1. Messages via Messenger 
2. Sales

Engagements (likes, shares, comments, and the rest) are good. But apart from those two above, they are just social proofs, not conversions.

Set up some rules for your sales or marketing funnel automation

This is a must to capitalize on the automation of your funnel fully. The rules you’ll create will take away some pressure of trying to spend more hours staring at your computer. 

You can have as many rules as you need. 

However, you may start with these rules:

1. Stop when ad frequency is greater than 2 in 7 days.
2. Turn off ads when the CPR is greater than [$xx.xx]
   • You can set this after 7 days of running the ads basing it on your current campaign.

This section is where you can set the Rules.

When and how to adjust the campaign, ad set, and ads?

In the beginning, you may need to check your campaign daily. When you get the hang of it, you may check on it 1-3 times a week, depending on how many adjustments you’ve made. 

The more adjustments you make, the more you’ll have to monitor those changes and how they affect your campaign and funnels.

Conclusion

This sales or marketing funnel automation can help free your time to do other important things like taking care of your customers’ concerns, replying to inquiries, and improving your business (product or service). 

I know we could have added more details here. Send us your questions and concerns, and we’d be happy to address them.

We will update this post regularly with more details and more up-to-date information. Therefore, I suggest that you bookmark or subscribe to this website.

Till next time.