A few years ago, marketers could get away with looking at social media channels as simply a play for brand awareness or engagement, operating the assumption that ads were underperforming based on last-touch attribution models.
But in today’s digital landscape, looking solely at the last touchpoint a customer makes before making a purchase is no longer viable. You must look at the full, cross-channel journey for a comprehensive understanding – and ultimately, to be profitable.
Let’s explore the full buyer’s journey as it relates to the 4 Meta advertising platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.
Understanding the Meta Advertising Funnel
With the birth of Facebook Shops and Instagram Shopping, social commerce is here to stay. According to our annual State of Digital Marketing Survey, social commerce is top-of-mind for more than 1 in every 3 (36.2%) digital marketers.
By 2025, social shopping is expected to become a $1.2 trillion channel!
Before you pitch a product on social, you need to focus on the top of the funnel: awareness. In today’s digital landscape, many shoppers need to trust your brand before they make a purchase.
Looking for insights to build brand trust through your Meta campaigns? Claim your copy of our Meta Full-Funnel Report, packed with data and strategies to help you not only grow revenue but also accurately attribute revenue through the 4 Meta platforms.
It’s only after a consumer knows and trusts your brand that they can feel confident moving further down the funnel toward a purchase. In fact, 46% of consumers say they’ll pay more for brands they trust.
This is precisely why you need to develop a sales funnel specifically for Meta advertising platforms, while also ensuring it aligns with touchpoints on all other marketing channels. Choosing the right attribution model is integral to profitable cross-channel scaling.
What Is Your Meta Advertising Profitability Goal?
To see the future success of your brand, you first need a (strategic) vision.
Before tackling the latest social media trends and opportunities, it’s essential to identify what your goal is. A goal requires you to think big picture about what you want to get out of your advertising, and what your focus area is.
Focusing too granularly is a recipe for failure. The best goals are broad, centering on distinct areas of the funnel as opposed to a specific ad spend metrics that can often be very misleading.
Understanding Seasonality
Customers are primed to buy at certain times of the year. Your brand’s strategy needs to align with peak opportunities. It’s important to understand the impact that seasonality has on metrics like conversion rate (CVR), CTR (click-through rate), and CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
CPM is especially important because your top-of-funnel campaigns are all about building brand awareness and nurturing shoppers. Most ecommerce brands see CPMs rise as Q4 holiday seasonality gets closer and competition becomes more fierce.
CPM & Conversion Rate by Campaign Objective
CPMs vary widely based on your objective. To maximize your budget, different campaign objectives make sense for different goals.
For example, to reach more users and grow awareness of your brand, you should focus more on upper-funnel numbers than conversion-focused objectives. To increase sales, you should balance your upper-funnel and conversion-focused investments.
It’s important to recognize that Facebook’s default attribution model only gives credit to the last Facebook click from an ad. It’s highly unlikely for that click to be the only touchpoint the consumer made. They probably interacted with ads from multiple campaign objectives across multiple channels, but only that last click is attributed for the sale.
This once again points to the fallacy of only looking at last-touch when determining the effectiveness of various marketing campaigns.
A balanced approach to top-of-funnel awareness is essential to get the traffic that will convert through bottom-of-funnel campaigns.
The 4 Meta Platforms
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
When people think of Meta, they often neglect the fact that the internet giant is actually composed of four distinct platforms that you can advertise on through your Meta advertising account:
- Messenger
- Audience Network
Typically, advertisers see the best returns by running ads across all four networks.
Meta optimizes ad spend for the platform and placement with the best result, which ensures more efficient ad spend.
Facebook has evolved a lot over the years, keeping advertisers on their toes. It’s still a major pillar to social media advertising – of all social media platforms, users spend the most time per day on Facebook!
Facebook placements include:
- Feed
- Marketplaces
- Video feeds
- Right column
- Groups feeds
- Business Explore
- Stories
- Reels
- In-stream videos
- Search results
- Instant Articles
Instagram has also become a tremendously successful platform for advertisers. In 2023, Instagram’s ad revenue is projected to reach $39.7 billion – over 3x what it was in 2019!
Instagram placements include:
- Feed
- Explore
- Shop
- Stories
- Reels
Facebook Messenger
With more than 2.9 billion monthly users, Facebook Messenger offers unique advertising opportunities.
Messenger Sponsored Messages are a great way to engage with a large audience. They offer a unique use case – when clicked, they trigger a Facebook Messenger conversation where you can curate a unique, one-on-one customer experience in-app. This is especially valuable in a post-iOS 14.5 world where third-party data is hard to come by.
Facebook Audience Network
Similar to the Google Display Network or Amazon DSP, the Facebook Audience Network allows brands to serve ads to millions of global websites while still leveraging Facebook’s laser-focused audience targeting tools.
Audience Network placements include:
- Native, banner, and interstitial
- Rewarded videos
- In-stream videos
Connecting the Marketing Funnel With Meta Advertising
There are so many channels now that it can be challenging to determine where to spend your marketing budget. What channels do you leverage? What types of ads do you run? How do you reach your target audience?
It’s overwhelming!
But the truth is, if you want to be successful and grow your brand, you need to do it all. Whether you’re advertising on one of the Meta platforms or an emerging social media platform like TikTok, there’s one piece of advice that all brands need to leverage across platforms: Think full-funnel.
In today’s social media landscape, you can no longer can you rely on a simple last-click attribution model and dump all of your budget into what you see at the bottom of the funnel. You are losing out on a massive amount of potential customers if you do that!
For Meta platforms specifically, leverage different advertising formats at every stage of your specific buyer’s journey, from awareness to consideration to conversion.
- Use top-of-funnel ad campaigns with a brand awareness objective through Facebook to cast a wide net.
- Use informative ads to reach buyers in research and discovery mode.
- Use Lookalike Audiences to enhance your reach to high-consideration consumers who don’t fall into the remarketing bucket.
- Use remarketing campaigns to help reengage with shoppers you’ve lost along the way.
Looking for more strategies to grow profitably through Facebook and Instagram? In our Meta Full-Funnel Report, you’ll uncover insider expertise based on over $12 million in annual ad spend managed for ROI clients, proven best practices to realign your brand’s goals around full-funnel profitability, and more. Claim your copy for the insights you need to thrive on Meta platforms!
Meta Is Just One Piece of the Puzzle
At ROI Revolution, our proven digital marketing experts with over 20 years of online advertising experience are ready to accelerate your brand’s social media growth. Whether you’re looking for attribution solutions, strategies for profitable growth on Meta or other emerging social channels, or any other type of expertise to drive more social media revenue for your business, we’re here to help you exceed your goals.
Get in touch with one of our experts today to get an insightful analysis of how we can help your brand grow beyond your expectations.
Sources
- Meta. Shops on Facebook and Instagram.
- Bloomberg US. Shopping on Social Media Seen Hitting $1.2 Trillion by 2025.
- Oberlo. 10 Branding Statistics You Need to Know in 2022 .
- Insider Intelligence. Average Time per Day by US Users on Social Media Platforms, 2017-2022.
- Insider Intelligence. Facebook advertising revenue statistics, forecast, and trends in 2022—amid iOS changes.
- Statista. Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 2nd quarter 2022.
