How to use Facebook Ads to Deliver the Right Message to the Right People

I recently purchased some coffee pods from this company. 

Then I got this ad in my Facebook newsfeed:

This ad is encouraging me to purchase. There are 2 reasons why this is not great:

1. I just purchased, so this just seems like a waste of money.
2. They are offering a discount in their ad. If I just paid full price I’d be super annoyed.

When running ads of any kind, you want to match your messaging to where people are in their buying journey and what stage they are at in the eComm funnel.

What is the eComm Funnel?

This funnel is the journey your customers take to go from not knowing you exist, to purchasing from you. They start at the top and end up at the bottom, and there are many steps in between.

The eComm Funnel looks like this:

The messaging people receive at each phase of the funnel is super duper important. The messaging for a coffee pod company throughout the funnel may look like this:

1. Awareness – “we sell coffee pods”
2. Interest – “we sell nespresso compatible, biodegradable coffee pods”
3. Education – “our coffee pods are filled with coffee roasted by unicorns”
4. Decision – “the starter kit would be perfect for you as it includes a selection of our most popular coffees for you to try”
5. Action – “we have a money back guarantee”
6. Loyalty – “do you need more coffee?”
7. Advocacy – “do your friends like coffee?”

It’s essential that you deliver the right message at the right time.

• You don’t ask someone who is in the awareness phase “would you like to buy?”
• You don’t tell someone who is in the action phase “hey, we sell coffee”
• And you definitely don’t tell someone who has just purchased and paid full price “hey, we sell coffee, here’s a discount”

Facebook Ads are great because you can control what message people see, depending on where they are in the buying cycle.

So, what’s wrong with this ad? 

I would love to help this company with their Facebook ads as they have all the right ingredients for a very successful Facebook ads strategy:

• Great product
• Great website
• Great content

If I was running their ads I would:

• exclude people who’ve purchased from their sales based ads
• setup ad campaigns to deliver ads to people who have viewed the product, but haven’t added to cart yet
• setup an ad campaign to deliver ads to people who have added to cart, but haven’t purchased yet
• setup an ad campaign that only goes to people have purchased with a thank-you ad
• setup an ad campaign for 30 days post-purchase with a reminder to purchase again. Because coffee is a consumable.

How do you deliver ads with the right message, to the right people?

STEP 1 – Firstly, we need to identify where people are at in the funnel.

You need to have the Facebook pixel installed and setup correctly. The Facebook pixel is a free piece of code that allows you to create audiences based on your website visitors behaviour. If setup correctly, each time someone takes an action an event is triggered and Facebook puts that person into an audience.

The Facebook events for a coffee pod company throughout the funnel may look like this:

1. Awareness – someone visits the site and the “pageview” event is triggered
2. Interest – they check out a product and the “viewcontent” event is triggered
3. Education – they explore the product page and find out more. If this info is on your product page an event
4. Decision – they add a product to cart and the “addtocart” event is triggered
5. Action – they check out and the “purchase” event is triggered
6. Loyalty – they purchase more than once and the “purchase” event is triggered multiple times, over time
7. Advocacy – their friends’ become aware and start back at the beginning where the “pageview” event is triggered

You can install the free tool, Facebook Pixel Helper, to see which events are being triggered.

It will look like this:

Awareness

Someone visits the site and the “pageview” event is triggered. You can create an audience of all the people who’ve visited your website for up to 180 days.

Interest and Education

Someone checks out a product and the “viewcontent” event is triggered. 

Decision

They then add a product to cart and the “addtocart” event is triggered

Action

They check out and the “purchase” event is triggered. 

This looks the same for Loyalty as the “purchase” event is triggered again. 

Each time an event is triggered, Facebook puts that person into an audience.

We use the pixel events to setup audiences for each phase.

STEP 2 – Setup ad campaigns based on the audiences 

Once you have your audiences setup you can then create ad campaigns that include and exclude certain audiences based.

Identify what action you want people to take at each stage of the funnel: 

1. Awareness – visit the home page
2. Interest – visit a product page
3. Education – explore the product page, or other information based pages such as FAQ’s, shipping info, about us, etc.
4. Decision – add a product to cart
5. Action – visit the thank you for purchasing page
6. Loyalty – visit the thank you page again
7. Advocacy – their friends check out the website

Identify who you want to target at each stage of the funnel:

1. Awareness – who you think your customer is, excluding anyone who has been to your website before. You do this using Facebook’s extensive targeting options. 
2. Interest & Education – anyone who has been to your home page, but hasn’t visited a product page yet. So anyone who has visited your website excluding “ViewContent”
3. Decision – anyone who has visited a product page, but hasn’t added to cart yet. So “ViewContent” excluding “AddtoCart”
4. Action – anyone who has added to cart, but hasn’t checked out yet. So “AddtoCart” excluding “Purchase”
5. Loyalty – anyone who has purchased more than x days ago. So “Purchase” in the last 180 days excluding “Purchase” in the last 3o days, for example.
6. Advocacy – friends of those who’ve purchased.

STEP 3 – Setup ads for your campaigns

Once you’ve done this you setup different ads with different messages for each phase of the funnel.

So the ad I saw, after purchasing, would be great in the Awareness phase (minus the discount).

Here are some examples of ads that’d be relevant to each phase of the funnel from a a client I adore, Munchkin and Bear: 

Awareness: 

Interest & Education:

Decision:

Action: 

Want to learn more? 

• Join our free Facebook Group for lots of free trainings and more great info. 
• Want to deep dive into learning how to set these kinds of ads up for yourself? Check out our education program eComm Ignitor. 
• Or if you want someone to do it for you, get in touch. We provide a done-for-you service to our clients. 

PS – I love Pod Co’s values, website and customer service. If you’re from Pod Co, reach out, I’d love to chat about how we could slay your Facebook Ads. 

Written by Megan Winter

Megan is an award-winning marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping ethically-produced, heart-centred, soul-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact.