Step by Step Guide to Paid Ads Funnel - Set up, Stages and Examples

The appeal of paid ads is very easy to see. Set it up in a few steps. Get clicks and sales from the very next day.

We wish it was that simple! The reality is much more complex than that. In fact, we’ve seen more marketers lamenting about paid ads ‘not working as expected’ than awesome success stories.

But when we probed into all those success stories, we found they had one thing in common -  The brands linked their paid ads strategies to a well-designed funnel. As a result, they could create an intricate and multi-touch journey for potential customers across their campaigns.

So what exactly is a paid ads funnel? We will answer that in this post along with the steps to successfully set it up for your brand.

What is a paid ads funnel?

It is a structured pathway that uses paid advertising channels to guide your potential customers from the stage of being aware of your brand to the stage of becoming a customer.  There are 5 stages in a typical paid advertising funnel - Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action, and Re-engagement.

At each stage, different types of targeted ads are used to engage with users and encourage them to move to the next step. For instance, ads at the awareness stage may focus on introducing your brand, while ads at the conversion stage aim to prompt a purchase.

As a marketer, you need to align your ad strategies with different stages of the paid media funnel. This will help optimize your campaigns and serve tailored ads to your target audience. Ultimately, you will experience higher conversions and achieve a better ROAS.

What are the different stages in the paid ads funnel?

Let us now understand each stage of a paid ads funnel along with the ad type that is best suited for that stage - 

Awareness 

The main goal of this stage is to introduce your target audience to your brand, product, or service. The users in this stage are not actively seeking a solution to their problem or looking for a product to purchase. As a result, your ads must focus only on creating brand awareness and capturing the attention of these users.

The ads must not sound too salesy but should generate enough curiosity to keep your brand at the top of their minds. You could include educational content or brand storytelling to spark interest and encourage users to learn more.

The best type of ads that work in this stage: Display ads are your best bet for this stage, particularly when you include visually appealing and relevant images. Why? For starters, they are highly engaging and capture the attention of your users instantly. These characteristics are essential when your main goal is to improve brand awareness.

For instance, Yoga-Go, the popular weight loss and Yoga app, has been running a series of Google Display Ads that offer informative content on weight loss instead of promoting their app directly. They are essentially drawing attention to their brand, without sounding too salesy. The customers will keep this brand in mind and visit them next time a need arises.

Pro Tip: Not all ad creatives and messaging may resonate well with your audience. It is important to A/B test your ads so that you serve only the high-performing ones to maximize ROAS. Use Eacel.ai to create multiple variants of your ad creatives in an instant and A/B test them with ease.

Interest

This is the stage where your potential customers have already become aware of your brand. They are even showing active interest in your products. So, the ads you serve in this stage must nurture and deepen the potential customer's interest in your offerings. The most effective way to do this is by providing more detailed information about your product or service.  For instance, you could showcase your solution’s benefits and features in an engaging way.

The best type of ads that work in this stage: Video ads work best in this stage because they allow you to demonstrate product features, showcase use cases, and provide in-depth explanations in a visually engaging way. This helps your viewers understand the value proposition and utility of your products or services quickly.

Here is Wix, the renowned website builder, running a video ad on YouTube demonstrating how simple it is to build a website on their platform.

Desire

This is the stage where your potential customers are already aware of your brand and have shown interest in your offerings. They may have already engaged with your ads, visited your website, or interacted with your content in some way. They are actively evaluating different options and are more inclined towards making a purchase decision. So, the goal of your ads must be to further nurture these prospects and encourage them to choose your product or service over competitors.

The best type of ads that work in this stage: 

We recommend using paid social ads like Facebook or Instagram to highlight your USPs over competition or make a direct comparison of your product or service with your competitors. Through this strategy, you can highlight the advantages of choosing your offering and why it's the best choice for them.

Here is an example of how SketchWow, a flowchart creator, has used Facebook ads to compare their products with their competitors with a dash of humor.

Action

This is the penultimate stage of the funnel, where you need to push your potential customers into taking that one ultimate step of commitment. The goal of your ads in this stage is pretty straightforward - prompt the user to take a specific action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a trial, or contacting the business. So, the ads in this stage must feature clear calls to action that guide the audience on what steps to take next, coupled with compelling incentives or offers to encourage immediate action.

The best type of ads that work in this stage: 

Use Google remarketing ads to create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate action. Highlight limited-time offers, discounts, or promotions to users who have already added the product to the cart or signed up for a trial but have not made a purchase yet. Scarcity can prompt potential customers to act quickly to avoid missing out on a deal. Here’s a brand offering a coupon code through a remarketing ad for a user who has added the product to the cart.

Re-engagement

This is the final stage of the funnel where you reconnect with users who have previously interacted with your brand but have become dormant for quite some time now. So the ads in this stage must focus on nurturing these leads and guiding them towards making another purchase or taking other desired actions. The best way to do this is by showing them relevant products or services they had previously shown interest in, along with enticing offers or incentives to encourage them to complete their purchase.

The best type of ads that work in this stage: 

We recommend using Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) for this stage of the funnel. In this you create remarketing lists within Google Ads, which consist of users who have visited specific pages of your website or performed certain actions in the past. You can then target these remarketing lists when the users perform searches on Google. You can even adjust your bids, ad copies, and keywords based on the user's previous interactions with your ads.

Steps to set up paid ads funnel

Now that you are armed with all the knowledge about paid ad funnels, it is time to implement one in your organization. Here are 4 simple steps you need to follow for this-

Step 1: Select and set up the necessary platforms 

As we have seen in the previous section, every stage of the paid funnel might require a different ad type and channel for maximum effectiveness. This means you need to work with more than one ad platform to successfully manage a paid ads funnel. Your options include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and LinkedIn Ads, among others. So configure and set up these platforms for running your ads.

Also, set up analytics platforms like Google Analytics and SEMrush to track and analyze the performance of your paid ads campaigns. While Google Analytics provides valuable insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion tracking, tools like SEMrush offer functionalities like competitive analysis and keyword research.

Step 2: Integrate the platforms with your CRM

This step is important to tie your sales data with your ad spending so that you know which type of ads are most effective in pushing the lead to the next stage of the funnel. This way, you will be able to spend your advertising dollars where they count most. Utilize the native integration options to connect your advertising platforms with your CRM. Follow the integration instructions provided by both platforms to ensure a smooth setup process.

Define the data mapping rules to ensure that lead information captured from your ads is accurately transferred to your CRM. Map fields such as contact details, lead source, and campaign attribution for comprehensive lead tracking.

Step 3: Set up audience targeting

As your potential customers progress through the various stages of the sales funnel, their needs and behaviors change. It becomes important to tailor your campaigns to suit audiences in different stages so that the right action from the user is achieved. You also need to exclude those who have already interacted with your brand or are further down the funnel to avoid wasting ad spending on irrelevant impressions. For instance, you need not run an awareness campaign for those who are already in the action stage of the funnel. And that’s why you need to set up audience targeting. It helps in segmenting your target audience into different groups based on various criteria, including the funnel stage.

You can take advantage of the targeting options provided by the advertising platform you're already using, whether it's Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, or others. Create audience segments based on demographics, interests, and general behavior of the audience in different stages of the paid ads funnel.

Step 4: Create ad content

Next, create content that your potential customers want to see at different stages of the funnel. While we have already seen what type of content to create, here are some additional components that you need to focus on in your ad content:

• Have a compelling value proposition that resonates with your target audience.
• Include attention-grabbing headlines that capture the viewer's interest 
• Add a clear call-to-action that prompts users to take the desired action
• Use high-quality visuals that enhance your ad's appeal and communicate your message effectively.
• Ensure that the ad copy is concise and reinforces your value proposition

Step 5: Tracking and analyzing performance

Once you have published the ads, you need to constantly track the campaign performance. This step is essential for identifying areas of improvement and optimizing your ad funnel strategies. Monitor key metrics such as click-through rate, conversion rate, and return on ad spend to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns at different stages of the funnel. Analyze data regularly to identify trends and patterns in campaign performance.

Utilize UTM parameters for tracking ad performance. By including parameters such as source, medium, campaign, and content in your URLs, you can gain valuable insights into campaign performance within Google Analytics and other tracking tools.

Best practices in paid ads funnel

Here are some handy tips you can follow to ensure that your paid ads funnel is successful:

Set up campaigns simultaneously

At any point in time, not all your potential customers will be at the same stage of the funnel. If some are just getting to know about your brand, others are evaluating your offerings with your competition. So, set up and run the campaigns in all the ad platforms simultaneously to maximize your reach and engage with a broader audience.

Segment your keywords for different stages

Formulate an umbrella of targeted keywords for each stage of your paid ads funnel. Use them to maximize the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and improve your conversion rates. Say, at the Awareness stage, you can target broader keywords, while at the Desire stage, they could be more specific. For example, if you are an online fashion store, you could target keywords like fashion, clothes, apparel, and dresses in the Awareness stage. At the Interest or Desire stage, the keywords could be jeans, t-shirts, jumpsuits, etc. Similarly, at the Action stage, you could target keywords like coupons, promo codes, pricing, etc.

Pay attention to relevance

When you are creating ads, it doesn’t matter which stage of the funnel you are creating them for; they must be relevant to the target audience. Apart from a higher likelihood to capture attention and drive desired actions, relevant ads stand out amidst the noise and optimize your ROAS. Many ad platforms measure the relevance of your ad with a quantifiable metric. For instance, Facebook has a “Relevance Score,” and Google has a “Quality Score”. Keep track of these metrics and tweak your ad content because they can directly impact the cost and reach of your ads.

Eliminate funnel obstacles 

Pay special attention to the obstacles that are preventing your potential customers from moving down the funnel. The best way to do this is by using analytics tools to track sudden dips in performance or low engagement in certain stages of the funnel. In other words, find out where your leads are getting stuck in the paid ads funnel and solve those problems. For example, if your potential customer is unable to use the promo code you have published in your ad, they might not be able to move from the Desire stage to the Action stage. So thoroughly test your website or application for UX and fix the friction points wherever you see one.

Wrap Up

A well-designed funnel transforms your ad efforts into a purpose-driven process. In this era where customers are spoilt for choices, it is the brand’s responsibility to steer and support potential customers at each step of their journey. Helping you in this journey are platforms like Eacel that can automate the ad creatives generation process so that you can focus on fine-tuning your funnel strategies. Learn more about Eacel by signing up for an account.