How to Build a Facebook Ad Funnel

Do you want more conversions from your Facebook ads?

Wondering how funnels can help?

To explore how you can build Facebook ad funnels that improve conversions, I interview Susan Wenograd.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Susan Wenograd, a Facebook ads expert who specializes in Facebook ad funnels. She's also a consultant and regular speaker on Facebook ads.

Sue explains how video-based funnels create micro-conversions.

You'll discover how to nurture prospects using a Facebook ad funnel.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Facebook Funnels
Susan's Story

Susan got her start in ecommerce in the mid-2000s, when she worked for Circuit City. Back then, her focus was email marketing and paid search. After she moved to another job, she learned about Facebook advertising. At the time, Facebook ads were easier to learn because Facebook had half of the advertising features it does now.

Running Facebook ads, Susan was able to experiment and get to know the platform. She loved that these ads took her back to the marketing 101 stuff she enjoys: branding, content, the language you use, and so on. Facebook ads allowed her to use a little more creativity than paid search did.

Listen to the show to hear Susan discuss how Facebook ads became one of her specialties.

Common Mistakes

When people set up a Facebook ad, they often choose the wrong objective. With a conversion-focused campaign, you can set up a multitude of conversions that you want to track or optimize for. These include custom conversions based on interactions with your site. The standard ones are view content, lead, add to cart, and purchase.

Susan finds that people often pick a conversion objective that doesn't get a lot of conversions. For example, they'll target filling out a contact form on their site or something that just happens a handful of times per week.

However, Facebook recommends that the conversion type you choose happens about 50 times per week per ad set. Those numbers are formidable. A lot of people don't know that, though, so they pick something that doesn't happen very often.

When you run a conversion campaign that doesn't have enough data, Facebook isn't exactly sure how to optimize for it. With few exceptions, Susan finds that the Facebook recommendation is accurate. If you have a super niche audience with one kind of person who's buying one type of product, your campaign can sometimes work with a lower number of conversions.

Essentially, Facebook needs at least 50 conversions to look at the users and see who they are and what they do in order to find other users who are like them. Without that data, Facebook just struggles. It doesn't really know who it's looking for.

To maximize your ad spend, Susan suggests changing how you think about conversions. The ultimate conversion might be someone signing up for software or buying your product. But your audience takes steps before they convert that are also worth noting. Your initial engagement goal might not be your ultimate conversion goal, but a cue that helps you reach those who sign up or buy.

For instance, a coach who sells an informational product wants customers who'll sign up for an expensive mastermind or a similar offering. People aren't going to do that right away. The incremental goals you use to get there might include downloading a free guide, signing up for a webinar, and so forth.

In other words, you need to think about those smaller steps where maybe you do get 50 conversions per week. By targeting an action that happens earlier in the funnel,