When managing a conventional Search PPC campaign, it’s the accepted industry standard to align your campaign with various stages of the conversion funnel. But this is rarely the case with social media promoted posts, which are often planned in less detail and intention than a Search campaign.
The power of social media as an influence on a customer’s eventual conversion cannot be overstated. 47% of UK users aged 35-44 interact with social media to follow companies or brands, with 50% of 16-24 year olds using social media to follow celebrities or influencers. Both demographics can become a part of your paid social targeting, you just need to know where they fit in the funnel.
It’s time to level up your paid social campaigns by examining various funnel stages and how they can be assigned the most relevant and useful ad types. This quick-reference guide will take you through what you should be focusing on at each stage. Let’s get started.
Key objectives
This is the first time users are exposed to your brand, so you need to think about what is unique to your product or service, and how you’d like it to be perceived. First impressions count for a lot!
It’s all about building brand visibility and reaching new audiences. Ideally, you want to create a positive first impression to establish brand awareness.
Ad formats to use
- Image Ads with eye-catching visuals to help you stand out from the crowd.
- Video Ads to tell your brand story or highlight key benefits in an instantly engaging way.
- Carousel Ads to showcase a range of products or services, allowing the curious to explore your brand at their own pace.
- Story Ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook to drive engagement, so that new audiences can discover your brand while more casually browsing in their down time.
Targeting tips
- Use interest-based targeting and broad audience settings to reach new users.
- Use lookalike audience segments based on existing customers. These can be found in Google Ads’ Demand Gen campaigns.
- Incorporate demographic, geographic, and behavioural targeting. This can help you uncover more information about who your brand is resonating with.
Metrics to monitor
- Impressions and reach to assess brand visibility. You can do this at both a campaign and ad-specific level, to really see what’s making an impact.
- Engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments. These will help you better understand your new audience.
- Video views (e.g., 3-second or 10-second view rates). This way you’re scrutinising what’s actually bringing in results.
- Click-through rates (CTR) for initial interest. What’s stopping the scroll? What are users naturally engaging with?
Key objectives
At this stage, the user should be leading their own journey a little more. You’re looking to drive traffic to your website or landing page, encouraging users to engage further with your brand.
It’s time to favour ads that are a platform to educate potential customers about your offerings.
Ad formats to use
- Collection Ads, pulled from a source like Shopify or a Google Product Feed to showcase products or services.
- Retargeting Ads for users who visited your site but didn’t convert. It’s still early in their journey, so give them a gentle push. The most interested users will welcome a reminder.
- Lead Generation Forms to capture email addresses. This is a great first-party data collection strategy that can help you a lot further down the line.
- Explainer Video Ads to address pain points, features and solutions. You’re taking things a step further and revealing a little more detail to an interested audience.
Targeting tips
- Retarget website visitors and engaged social media users. Again, at this stage it’s a useful reminder.
- Use custom audiences, such as email subscribers to build up some specific lists at this earlier stage.
- You can afford to be a little more cutthroat at this point, and focus your budget more exclusively on what’s converting.
Metrics to monitor
- Traffic to landing pages or product pages. Where are users spending most of their time?
- Engagement with lead forms or downloadable content. Seeing who is engaging in a more active way is a quick hack to split audiences into engaged and less-engaged lists.
- Bounce rates and time spent on site to measure interest quality. Once you’ve got them to your site, are they actually staying, or does your site need a little refresh?
- CTRs for deeper engagement. It’s useful to see what ads users aren’t responding to, to help refine your brand’s copy and style.
Key objectives
This is potentially your most vital stage, which can be backed up by a strong foundational understanding of the phases that come before it. Here, you turn interested users into paying customers. It’s finally a chance to get some ROI!
At this stage, you want to drive purchases, sign-ups, or other key conversion actions. This can usually be assisted through creating both a sense of urgency and reducing barriers to conversion. Make users feel valued, unique, and relevant to your brand.
Ad formats to use
- Dynamic Product Ads to show personalised product recommendations. In today’s AI digital world, users are expecting ads to be totally tailored to them.
- Limited-time Offer Ads with countdown timers to create urgency and foster engagement.
- Testimonial Ads featuring satisfied customers or case studies. This helps build trustworthiness in your brand.
- Direct Response Ads with strong calls to action (CTAs). This is a great way to make a lasting positive first impression of your brand, offering something out of the ordinary.
Targeting tips
- Use retargeting for users who abandoned carts or browsed products. Just because they didn’t make that conversion the first time doesn’t mean they’re not interested.
- Exclude users who’ve already converted (but don’t forget about them!) This is a separate group to target uniquely.
Metrics to monitor
- Conversion Rates for purchases, sign-ups, or bookings. It’s the best way to see the frontrunners of your campaign.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This helps you keep a good overview of your entire campaign.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) to track efficiency of any spend.
- Cart Abandonment Rates for insights on missed opportunities, and who to retarget.
Key objectives
The clue’s in the name with this penultimate stage. You want to maintain engagement with existing customers, bringing them back to your brand. Ultimately, it’s about encouraging repeat purchases or ongoing use of your services.
A great way to build brand loyalty is through personalised experiences, so the details really matter here.
Ad formats to use
- Email Subscription Ads to share offers and updates. You can make these unique to existing customers, to really make them feel special.
- Loyalty Programme Promotions to reward frequent buyers. Again, it’s about fostering a sense of community and belonging with these audiences.
- Retargeting Ads for customers who purchased previously. It’s clearly useful at every stage!
- Dynamic Ads showcasing products complementary to past purchases. If a customer likes something, help them start the collection.
Targeting tips
- Focus on past customers with retargeting and email-based audiences.
- Segment audiences by purchase history or preferences.
- Use messaging that reinforces the value of your product or service.
Metrics to monitor
- Repeat purchase rates and customer lifetime value (CLV). This highlights some of your most valued and loyal audience segments.
- Engagement with loyalty programmes or subscriptions.
- CTRs and conversions for cross-sell or upsell campaigns. What’s making your customers return?
Key objectives
Once users have become customers, it’s time to turn them into brand advocates.
Ads and marketing efforts at this stage should encourage users to share positive reviews or referrals. It’s a stage where things like user-generated content (UGC) can provide added credibility. The final stage of the funnel actively helps the first stage, very tidy!
Ad formats to use
- Referral Programme Ads with incentives for sharing. These can often tie in nicely with social media campaigns.
- Campaigns Spotlighting UGC, such as images or videos from customers. It’s all about highlighting what your customers are most satisfied with.
Targeting tips
- Retarget highly engaged customers or loyalty programme members. This stage is difficult to find success in if you don’t focus on your top percent of engaged customers.
- Identify social media users who frequently engage with your brand as a good blueprint for building up audience segments that reflect users at this stage.
Metrics to monitor
- Volume of reviews, testimonials, or UGC submissions. Keep an eye on what’s bringing in the most voluntary feedback.
- Social share metrics; see where engagement is coming from with your most loyal customers.
- Advocacy-driven conversions or purchases. The dream is getting a repeat customer, so take note of where they are originating from in their previous interaction with your brand’s online presence.
Finally, here are a few key points to consider when integrating your marketing efforts across multiple stages of the funnel.
- Use learnings from one stage to refine strategies for other stages.
- Align paid social strategies with organic content for consistency.
- Analyse audience overlap and drop-off rates to identify gaps in the funnel.
In Conclusion
The most effective paid social campaigns are the ones that are closely aligned to customer intent, addressing the unique goals and desires of the customer at each stage of the buying process.
By using this article and working through some of the actionable steps laid out, you can create a paid social campaign that meets customers where they’re at, in a way that is intentional and automatically relevant to the user. Success in this area is based on integrating your social marketing with your overall PPC strategy, making use of performance data and continuously optimising. Now all that’s left to do is start experimenting.
Written by Adele Webb
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