There's a group of people out there that I often hear say, "Facebook Ads Are Dead!"

When I ask them why they think this is the case, they state that the return on ads have diminished from what they've used to run and campaigns just don't last as long as they used to. This may be true, but that doesn't mean Facebook is dead. It just mean the game has changed.

In July 2017, Mark Zuckerberg posted an image of just how alive Facebook is today.

Facebook's reach makes it one of the best platforms today to run your advertising. Not only do they have 26% of the world's population on the platform, but they also allow you to reach demographics that don't use Facebook through Instagram. This also means that your competition is able to reach your target audience just as easily as you, so if you expected to generate conversions without changing your strategy, you're going to lose.

To create a successful marketing strategy on Facebook today, you have to run a more sophisticated campaign that ensure your company stays top of mind. 

Here's how the pros do it.

The Power of Multi-Touch Campaigns

If you're running a single campaign strategy, chances are that over time you will experience diminishing returns. Ad fatigue is real, and as more brands increase their Facebook Advertising budget, the chance of your ad compelling someone to purchase something on the first impression diminishes. 

Logically, this makes sense.

Your audience is seeing more ads per minute than they used to. As far as you know, your ad could have been the 3rd ad they clicked that had to do with what you're selling. With so much content being put in front of them, only a fraction of your audience base will be compelled to purchase from you right away. But the good news is that done properly, you can create a funnel that converts the part of your audience that didn't convert the first time.

You can do this with multi-touch campaigns, and I'm going to show you exactly how to do it here.

First and foremost, this strategy requires you to have the Facebook Pixel installed, so make sure you do that before moving forward. 

The essence of a multi-touch campaign is simple: your audience needs more than one interaction, on more than one platform, to get them to become a customer. 

Let's break down the funnel.

1. The Top of The Funnel

If you've never implemented a funnel strategy before, the top of the funnel is usually the first time your customer learns about your brand and offer. Because many companies use Facebook to bring in new customers, a lot of the people interacting with you at this stage will be first time buyers. 

What 99% of Facebook advertisers do wrong is jump the gun and present the product offer on this very first interaction. They then deem the success and failure of a campaign based on the amount of sales it generated. The truth is the person interacting with your ad could be at work, browsing Facebook on a device they don't make purchases on or may have been interrupted by a phone call.

But with a multi-touch campaign, you see this stage as an introductory stage to your brand, and sales as a bonus. Gary Vaynerchuk describes this step as a jab in the sales process

The top of the funnel sets up the rest of the steps, so the #1 thing to keep in mind when designing the top of the funnel is that all actions taken have to be traceable. These are things like:

• Ad Engagement

• Website Visits (Requires Pixel)

• Landing Page Visits (Requires Pixel)

• Product Interests (Requires Pixel)

• Page Engagements

This gives you the ability to reach people that didn't convert on the first encounter in the future.

Setting up this part of the funnel successfully looks something like this:

1. Create an ad that aligns with the pain points, desires or aspirations of your customers

2. Create a valuable call-to-action that describes the solution

3. Provide valuable content with no friction

Here are some examples of companies implementing a top of funnel strategy:

HubSpot

HubSpot is a public company worth $2.63 billion that provides inbound marketing software products with packages that go up to $2,400/month. Like any company, they're goal is to turn visitors into paying customers, but their first interaction with audiences is fully value driven.

When you come across this ad, it has nothing to do at all with their product, but on how you can grow your business with Instagram. The solution they provide is in the form of an eBook. This type of strategy is a win-win for them because they will either a) get your e-mail address for the next part of the funnel when you download the eBook or b) retarget you with other valuable content if you visit the offer page but don't opt-in. Its not only valuable, but trackable.

The PuffCuff

The PuffCuff is another brand doing this multi-touch funnel brilliantly. They've developed the only hair clamp on the market for thick and natural hair, and offer them in multiple sizes. Their first interaction with their audience is through a highly produced video explaining the problems the PuffCuff solves and the call-to-action guides interested visitors on which size is best for them by having them take a test. 

This approach provides value and allows them to track anyone who watched the video or took the test for later.

2. Creating Your Funnels

At this stage of the funnel, you should only be targeting people who interacted with your ad, landing page and or other pages from step 1. This is is where the real power of Facebook comes in and allows you to engage with your audience at very precise levels.

When you installed the Facebook Pixel on your site, you gave Facebook the ability to track every action your visitors took on any given day. By combining the tracking ability of the pixel with the ability to track people who engaged with your first ad, you can put together the second part of this funnel strategy.

Ad Engagement + Offer Engagement = Retargeting Type

Here's how I break it down. If a person interacts with:

• My ad but not the offer page, they're considered luke warm leads

• My ad and the offer page but not the product page, they're considered warm leads

• My ad, offer page and product page, they're considered hot leads

Setting up the targeting for this part of the funnel can be achieved through custom audiences. Custom audiences allow you to target people based on actions they've taken, but more importantly, exclude them as well.

For this particular stage, you'll need to create Website Traffic and Engagement Audiences. 

Assembling Your Ad Engagement Audience

Engagement Audiences create a list of people who engaged with your content. At the moment you can target people who engaged with your videos, lead forms, canvases, Facebook page or Instagram profile. This is more than enough to cover any ad type you've run, but the based on the options, running video ads, lead ads or canvas ads are better than text or carousel ads, since you can pick a specific video, lead form or canvas to build an audience around.

So, if you ran a video ad for example, you'd find the video and set the timeframe of engagement to be from the day you started your advertising, like so:

Assembling Your Website Traffic Audience

Similar to Engagement Audiences, Website Traffic allows you to target people who visited specific pages and took specific actions, thanks to the Facebook Pixel. We'll want to create a few audiences for this, including:

1. People who visited your landing page since you started your campaign

2. People who visited your website since you started your campaign

3. People who visited the product page since you started your campaign

4. People who added items to cart since you started your campaign

5. People who purchased products since you started your campaign

For options 2-5, Facebook already has these as pre-set options from the dropdown menu, so all you have to do is choose that option and let the audience populate. But for your landing page, you'll have to put it in manually by choosing People who visited specific web pages and putting in your landing page, like so:

2a. Categorizing Your Leads 

With both your Website Traffic and Engagement Audiences populated, you're ready to begin categorizing your audiences for the second part of the funnel.

Luke Warm Leads

These type of leads showed enough interest in your brand to interact with your offer, but were not compelled enough to continue to your website.

They will require more engagement and information and can be found by creating the following custom audience:

• Include the specific video, canvas or lead form they interacted with

• Exclude your landing page and website visits

• Exclude purchasers

Warm Leads

The people in this segment went one step further and actually visited your offer/landing page but never went forth to the product page. They are more accustomed with the brand and are more likely to purchase.

Your leads are only warm (versus hot) if the offer/landing page you sent people to at the top of the funnel isn't your product page. These leads can be targeted by creating the following custom audience:

• Include the specific video, canvas or lead form they interacted with

• AND include your landing page

• Exclude the product page

• Exclude Purchasers

Hot Leads

Finally, hot leads are people that took every desired action in your funnel except for purchasing. They interacted with your ad, visited the landing page and made it to the product.

These leads can be targeted by creating the following custom audience:

• Include the specific videos, canvas or lead form they interacted with

• AND include your landing page

• AND include the product page

• Exclude Purchasers

With these audiences now populated, you are ready to create your multi-touch funnels.

3. Creating Multiple Touch Points 

Taking your customer through the journey that follows is what separates the winners from the losers. It creates brand awareness and educates your leads on your product offering.

First and foremost, for this to work efficiently, I recommend labeling all your campaigns by levels - a.k.a. Top of the Funnel, Luke Warm, Warm, Hot. 

Then, you begin by moving people through your funnels, as follows:

Luke Warm to Warm

Remember that your luke warm leads aren't deeply invested in your brand compared to other leads, so don't go for the right hook (sale) just yet. Your goal at this point should be to get them to become, at minimum, a warm lead. That means that all we care about at this stage is getting them to visit our landing page.

If you're selling a product, a practical how-to guide of the product in action is a great piece of content to use. If your selling a service, I've seen case studies work extremely well here too.

Make sure that, like at the top of the funnel, you are able to trace the ad and link you send people to.

Warm to Hot Leads

Up to now, your ads shouldn't be pushing you to take your desired action (sign up, purchase, download). This changes at this stage of the funnel, since your goal is to get them to the product page and have them start to buy.

Make sure that in addition to targeting the custom audience above, you also target people that watched the 2nd video from the luke warm campaign as well.

The Puff Cuff has executed this perfectly. After I watched the first video and visited their sizing test page, I was served this ad:

Notice how the copy in the ad encourages you to visit the product page and the Call To Action Button is now pushing sales.

Flixel, which allows users to easily create cinemagraphs, also executed this well after I first encountered their ad and visited their landing page:

Hot Leads to Purchasers

At this point, anyone who hasn't yet purchased your product or service is either unsure or not interested. These leads have spent time on your brand, so if they are likely to buy, turning them into purchasers requires simply reminding them of what you have to offer them.

The Cut Buddy

The Cut Buddy executes this brilliantly with a simple ad that outlines the cost savings of using their product. This ad was served to me because I added their product to the cart but didn't end up completing my purchase:

Radical Dreams

Another approach that can be taken at this point in time is discounting. Up to now, we haven't discussed it because we want people to go through the funnel, align with the value proposition and buy the product at full price. But sometimes, it pays to save your lead money in order to make them a customer.

Radical Dreams executes this well after I interacted with the brand for a while, visited certain pages but never purchased:

4. Covering All The Bases

This funnel strategy is pretty powerful on Facebook alone, but you can exponentially increase the ROI of your campaigns by spreading it across all of Facebook's available advertising avenues.

Instagram

I usually start of by testing campaigns solely on Facebook, but quickly introduce them to Instagram when I see that they're working.

Why? Because most of the time, audiences seem to be 2x to 5x+ bigger on Instagram than they are on Facebook. Introducing my funnels on Instagram ensures I get more views, and sometimes cheaper sales.

The only caveat is that any videos on the platform are limited to a minute, so make sure you plan accordingly.

Instagram Stories

The use of Instagram Stories keeps growing every month, so running ads on stories is a no brainer.

Because content is limited to 10 seconds, I've had more success converting warm/hot leads using stories than cold ones.