Do you run a subscription business and struggle with your Facebook ads?
In this article, you’re going to discover five Facebook ad funnels every subscription business must have.
1. Brand story video
Every Facebook funnel needs a video. For subscription businesses, this will be the most important piece of content you produce.
Your profitability heavily relies on two things:
1. How many new customers you can acquire
2. How long you can keep them subscribed
Your brand video will play a huge part in both.
Brand videos have never been more important as part of a Facebook ad funnel than now. Consumers spend their money with companies they believe in or can relate to.
Blue Apron, Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox, and Graze are all lifestyle subscription brands and their content reflects that. Take this video from the Dollar Shave Club which I’ll be using as an example throughout this article:
Your brand story video is going to be your most important piece of content, so place it at the top of your funnel to build awareness and drive people to your website.
The quality of this video will make or break the rest of your funnel, so make sure it’s great.
2. Content ads
Once you acquire a customer, you don’t need to remind them to order each month as they will be billed automatically.
Other than a few cross-sells, which I’ll discuss later, you won’t need to serve too much direct response content.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create customer Facebook ads; you should, but keep it content based.
Customers sign up to a subscription service because receiving a box of goodies bi-weekly or monthly is exciting and fun – kind of like celebrating Christmas every month.
You want to serve content ads with the goal of building a stronger community with your customers, keeping them subscribed, and making them loyal to your brand.
Dollar Shave Club has an entire blog section on their website and continuously posts content and lifestyle images that their audience can relate too.
Make sure to have a content funnel set up to increase customer loyalty and stay relevant.
3. Reactivate lost customers
No matter what you try, your customers will eventually unsubscribe from your service.
There’s nothing you can do to stop that from happening, but you can try to win them back by using Facebook ads.
Customers who unsubscribe can be pixeled into an audience and shown win-back ads (assuming they have not opted out of your email list).
Show this audience content on what they are missing out on, and perhaps offer some sort of coupon for them to re-subscribe to your service.
This audience is also ideal for surveying on why they left. This will help you refine your service to increase your customer lifetime value.
4. Cross-sells and up-sells
If your subscription business has many pricing levels or product categories, or if you also sell individual products, cross-selling and up-selling through the use of DPA ads is a must.
You may want to include long-form content or videos showing the benefits of upgrading or purchasing a specific product.
A great way to increase the amount of conversions is to use time-based deals. For example, if customers just signed up to your cheapest subscription service, show them ads where if they upgrade to the next pricing plan, they get 50% off their first delivery.
5. Gift audiences/refer a friend
Every subscription business must have gift and refer a friend funnels.
It is super easy to pixel all paying customers. Using the reach objective, you can serve them ads to refer a friend or gift a membership.
Dollar Shave Club’s branding video is on point. Their brand is so powerful that their customers are proud to be part of The Club.
They want their friends to know they are part of the Dollar Shave Club, and they’ll do that by recommending DSC to their friends or even gifting them a membership for a festive holiday or birthday.
Your customer’s friend will be your ideal customer, and for that reason alone you must have gifting and refer a friend campaigns in place.
Your turn
Once set up, each of these funnels can be put on autopilot and tweaked when needed.
The main thing to be aware of with any Facebook ad funnel for subscription businesses is how often you serve ads to customers.
If by the third viewing they did not upgrade their subscription, they are probably not going to just yet. In that case, you should wait until they have received a few deliveries before you try again.
Create retention windows based on how long they have been subscribed, and through testing, figure out the right times to apply cross-sell or up-sell ads, refer a friend campaigns, and content ads.
You should use a value-heavy content strategy and email marketing to keep customers subscribed to your business, and put your Facebook video at the top of your funnel to keep new customers coming in.
Every subscription business needs to focus on acquisition just as much as customer retention. The five funnels listed above will help you achieve both.