How To Create A Customer Journey In Facebook Ads
Reading Time: ~5 Mins | Written By: Simon Frackiewicz
Running Facebook Ads is a skill that is simple to learn but difficult to master. There are so many structures and builds you can use to target your ideal audience on the Facebook Ads Network that it’s often hard to decide where to start. A great place to start is a traditional funnel, or, Customer Journey.
What is a Customer Journey?
In digital advertising, a Customer Journey is a series of deliberately crafted online interactions with your brand that a user can experience. These interactions can have different intentions and effects depending on the creative, copy, and targeting you use. In general, you want to follow the marketing funnel when constructing a Customer Journey:
The Marketing Funnel
Awareness
Create that first touchpoint with your customer by sharing your brand with them. This could mean sharing your vision, mission, or brand statement with them. Whichever route you choose, you will want to introduce your product or service gently while focusing on why you exist.
Consideration
Invite the user to learn more about your product or service. Get them onto your website and let them sell themselves if it’s right for them. Use copy and creative that leads with value on why your product or service is different from the others, and why they should click.
Conversion
Tell the user to take action. Maintain contact with users who have expressed interest in your product or service by retargeting them, or prospect for users who are similar to them using machine learning features on ads platforms. Use copy and creative that reminds the user to purchase your product or service and calls them to action.
Each of these stages of the Customer Journey are vital to generating the most meaningful results for your business. The trick is to learn how to speak to your customers at each stage of their journey, and have the appropriate targeting to match the message you’re conveying. Let’s talk about how you can use Facebook’s targeting features to nurture your prospective customers at each stage of their journey.
Targeting Your Customers
Now that you understand your objectives at each stage, how do you bring their journey to life in Facebook Ads? Let’s talk about Campaign Objectives and how they can serve a purpose at each stage of your Customer Journey:
Awareness: Brand Awareness Campaign Objective
This campaign objective has four different items you can optimize for:
Reach
Brand Awareness
Video Views
Store Location Awareness
Make sure to choose one that matches the needs of your business, and what the ‘flavour’ of the first touchpoint with customers you want to have. After you’ve decided on that, it’s time to set up your targeting.
For a Brand Awareness campaign that is meant to establish a strong first impression, you may want to consider:
Interest-based targeting - target users who share interests that your product or service relates to
Broad targeting - target a large audience of users by simple demographics such as age and gender in a given geographic area, allowing the Facebook Ads algorithm to sort out the best users for you
The reason you want to select these targeting options is because it allows us to have a large source audience that you can introduce our brand to. As the user engages with our ads, they will self-qualify themselves by their actions.
Consideration: Web Traffic Campaign Objective
This campaign objective has four different items you can optimize for:
Link Clicks (If you do not have a Meta Pixel installed)
Landing Page Views (Recommended, requires Meta Pixel to be installed)
Messenger and Whatsapp Conversations
Calls
It’s recommended to select Landing Page Views as often as possible because it is a deeper, more involved action than a mere Link Click. Link Clicks can fail or load slowly which create opportunities for users to drop off. By selecting the Landing Page View optimization item, our campaign will get smarter based on how many users it can get to actually load up and see the landing page.
The recommended targeting choices for this stage of the Customer Journey are:
Ad/Post Engagement Retargeting (Recommended) - target users who have interacted with your organic posts or Brand Awareness ads on Facebook and/or Instagram, pushing them closer to getting on your website
Interest-based targeting (Optional) - target users who share interests that your product or service relates to
Lookalike Audience of Website Visitors (Optional) - target users who are similar to ones who have already been to your website and expressed interest in your product or service
The reason you want to select Ad/Post Engagement targeting as a priority is because it serves ads to users who have already interacted with your Brand Awareness ads. They will be more trusting and willing to click through to your website than a cold prospect. Retargeting engaged users is among the best ways to run a successful funnel for a Customer Journey.
Conversions: Leads or Sales Campaign Objective
These campaign objectives have multiple optimization items each, however a common one they both have is Conversions. This is a vital business action that a user takes on your website as a result of your ads. You can select any optimization item that fits your needs, however we are going to focus on the Conversions optimization item.
Here are some of the recommended targeting choices at this stage of the Customer Journey:
Website Visitors Retargeting (Recommended)
Target users who have already visited your website or specific page as a result of your Web Traffic ads earlier. This is usually a high-intent audience that is warm and ready to purchase, however simply need to be reminded to take action.
Lookalikes of Purchasers (Optional)
Target users who are similar to those who have already purchased your product or service. Having a well-seasoned lookalike audience of past purchasers is the end goal for any Facebook advertiser, but will require sufficient conversion data to be logged on your Meta Pixel.
The reason you want to select Website Visitors Retargeting is because it allows you to drive home your value proposition to users who are familiar with your product or service and have expressed interest in buying. Being able to target the warmest audience at any point in the Customer Journey is key to having an efficient funnel. Adding in a Lookalike audience of Past Purchasers is a supplement to the retargeting structure you have been using up to this point, and allows you to tap into sophisticated machine learning algorithms to boost your results at this stage.
Combining these campaign types with the appropriate Customer Journey stage, powered by targeting and ads that match the message you’re trying to convey is key to scalable success with this strategy. By riding the momentum of trust you created from your first touchpoint all the way to the purchase, you can be sure that your ad dollars are being spent on the most intentional audience possible.
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