Meta Ad Funnels for Small Businesses: Why Your Ad Creatives Should be Tailored to Each Stage of the Buyer Journey

The buyer’s journey funnel can also be called the “awareness, consideration, conversion” funnel. It maps how your customers go from discovering your brand to buying from it.

Broken down, the different stages of it look like this: 

• Awareness - When a consumer becomes aware of your brand as an option.

• Consideration - When the consumer evaluates options.

• Conversion - When the consumer decides to make a purchase from the options.

Tailored ads are among the top marketing tools for pushing people down this funnel. 

Why not generic ones? That’s what we’ll explain today, along with how to tailor your own ads.

Why Tailor Meta/Facebook Ads by Stage

Generic ads are rarely as effective as tailored ones for a simple reason. They lead to a mismatch between the buyer’s mindset and what you’re offering.

But there are other reasons to tailor Meta ads. Let’s go over them in brief:

1. Audience Mindset Differs by Stage

Let’s say you have a customer who’s in the awareness stage. Let’s say you offer a discount to him.

That discount will likely be ignored because the consumer has just discovered you and isn’t even considering a purchase yet. You’re sending a message he’s not ready for yet, so it’ll fall on deaf ears.

2. Better Results at Better Cost

Engagement is the name of the game in ads, and when you align your ads to the right funnel stage, you generally get higher engagement at a lower cost per click or CPC. 

At the same time, you avoid wasted impressions by tailoring your messaging to be delivered at the right time for each buyer. This improves your return on ad spend and ad efficacy.

3. Objective Alignment

It’s easier to align your Meta objectives with your customers’ funnel stages with a tailored ad approach. Here are the ones that typically match each stage:

• Awareness or TOF (top of funnel): Reach and Awareness

• Consideration or MOF (middle of funnel): Engagement and Lead Generation

• Conversion or BOF (bottom of funnel): Conversions or Catalogue Sales

Real-World Ad Creative Examples by Stage

If you want to see what sorts of ad creatives would be crafted for each part of the funnel, here are some examples:

• Awareness/TOF: For a tech start-up, a short video explaining a common challenge like software complexity that the company can solve, calling out the problem.

  

• Consideration/MOF: Try a carousel ad that shows testimonials from satisfied customers who used the company’s products, with a link to case studies if possible.

  

• Conversion/BOF: For a retail business, a dynamic retargeting ad offering limited-time discounts to site visitors who abandoned their carts before purchase.

  

Practical Tips on How to Tailor Meta/Facebook Ad Creatives

There are several things you can do for Facebook ads on how to target the right audience and tailor your ads appropriately to their buyer journey stages. Here are some of the most effective ones you can try.

Tip 1: Use Video or Carousel Ads for Awareness

Like short videos or carousels for your ad creatives? Try to use them to target broad or lookalike audiences that are still at the awareness stage. 

The idea here is to focus on their pain points in a way that they recognise. Set your campaign objectives to Brand Awareness or Reach.

Tip 2: Create Educational Consideration Ads

For the middle funnel, use lead-form ads or traffic ads pointing to educational content you own. These could be blogs, case studies, maybe even guides or handbooks. 

The idea is to offer guidance to your audience on the solutions for their problem – solutions that involve your product or service. 

And remember, don’t try to sell yet! That will fall flat because your audience isn’t ready to make a purchase. For now, just offer them something practical and useful that indicates you can help.

Tip 3: Use Retargeting for Conversion

Dynamic and special offer ads are great for this. Specifically, try to retarget people who have already engaged with or visited your website before. 

Retarget them with clear calls to action and discounts or exclusive offers. We already know these people have come close to buying from you before. Now you just need to give them an added reason to do so.

Tip 4: Rotate and Refresh Creatives

Audience fatigue exists. After your creatives have been out for a while, people get accustomed enough to them to start ignoring them on sight. 

So, update them every few weeks. Swap the visuals and copy every now and then. You can also use A/B testing to check which creatives work best for each funnel stage. This will help you sustain the efficacy of your ads over time.

Tip 5: Try to Localise Assets

This can be surprisingly effective for a lot of ads. Showing local imagery, referencing local events, or using local testimonials can help you make your ads seem more relatable.

It always depends on the audience and industry, so test this to see if you can find something that resonates with people in each funnel stage.

Tailor Your Ad Creatives for Best Results

Tailoring creatives is ultimately one of the levers you can pull on to improve your business's marketing performance. It’s an effective way to guide prospects more efficiently from each stage of your funnel to the end goal. 

If you need help building or refining your strategies here, reach out to us at ROMI. We’ve supported many small businesses in Singapore with their Meta ad strategies, and can guide you through each part of the process to get to what your business needs.