Solved: Advertising Funnel Structure for Baby Clothing

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look over your situation. It's a really common spot to be in, actually. You've found something that works (dynamic sales ads) but you have that nagging feeling you're leaving money on the table and can't quite figure out how to scale without things breaking. The whole "funnel" concept can seem overly complicated, especially when agencies throw jargon around without explaining it.

Happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of a framework. It's probably simpler than you think. It's not about some complex secret strategy, it's just about talking to different people in different ways depending on how familiar they are with your brand.

We'll need to look at your audience, not just your ads...

Right now, by running only sales ads with a dynamic catalogue, you're doing one thing really well: targeting the Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu). These are people who have likely already visited your website, maybe even added a product to their cart. You're showing them the exact product they looked at to remind them to buy. This is called retargeting, and it almost always has the best Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). It's the lowest hanging fruit.

The problem, as you've probably noticed, is that this audience is small. It's made up only of people who somehow found your website on their own. To grow, you need a system to consistently find *new* people, show them your lovely baby clothes, and turn them into website visitors that your BoFu ads can then convert. This is where the rest of the funnel comes in.

Think of it like a real shop. Your current ads are just talking to people already inside, looking at the clothes. You're completely ignoring the people walking past outside who might be interested if they just knew you existed.

So, we need to build two more layers:

-> Top of Funnel (ToFu): This is your "window shopping" stage. These are cold audiences – people who have never heard of your brand before but who fit the profile of your ideal customer (e.g., new parents, people interested in competitor brands, etc.). The goal here isn't to make a sale immediately. The goal is to introduce your brand and get them to click through to your site for the first time.

-> Middle of Funnel (MoFu): These are people who are aware of you but not quite ready to buy. They've visited your site from a ToFu ad, or maybe they've watched one of your videos or engaged with your Instagram page. They need a bit more convincing. The goal here is to build trust and show them more of your range.

Your existing ads are your BoFu. So you're already 1/3 of the way there. We just need to build the ToFu and MoFu layers to constantly feed new customers into your BoFu campaigns.

I'd say you need to build out your ToFu campaigns first...

This is where you'll find your scale. You need to dedicate a portion of your budget to finding new customers. A common mistake I see is businesses running "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns for this. Don't do it. Those objectives tell Facebook's algorithm to find the cheapest people to show ads to, who are often the least likely to ever buy anything. You are essentially paying the platform to find you the worst possible audience for your product. It's a false economy.

Instead, you should still run a campaign with a "Sales" objective, optimising for conversions (like "Purchase" or "Add to Cart"), but you target it at a *cold audience*. The algorithm is still looking for buyers, but within a group of people who don't know you yet. Your cost per purchase will be higher here than in your BoFu retargeting, and that's perfectly fine. You're paying a premium to acquire a new customer and feed your funnel.

So, who do you target?

For a baby clothing brand, I'd start by testing seperate ad sets for these audiences:

-> Detailed Targeting (Interests): This is your bread and butter to start with. Group similar interests into themes. For you, these could be:

• New Parent Interests: Target users with interests like "New parents (0-12 months)", "Pampers", "Huggies", "Baby shower", "Parenting blogs".
• Competitor Interests: Target people who like pages of similar, perhaps larger, baby clothing brands. E.g., "JoJo Maman Bébé", "Boden", "Next".
• Product-Related Interests: Interests like "Baby clothes", "Organic products", "Children's clothing". These are a bit broader so watch them carefully.

-> Lookalike Audiences: Once you have enough data (you need at least 100 purchases, but ideally 1,000+), these can be incredibly powerful. You give Facebook a list of your past customers, and it finds millions of new people who share similar characteristics. I would definately prioritise them like this:

1. Lookalike of your highest value customers (e.g., top 25% by spend).
2. Lookalike of all your past customers.
3. Lookalike of people who have added to cart.
4. Lookalike of all your website visitors.

Start with a 1% lookalike in your primary country, then expand to 1-3%, 3-5% etc. if it's working well.

Your creative for these ToFu ads shouldn't be a hard sell. You're introducing yourself. Use your best lifestyle images and videos. Show happy babies and parents with your products. Tell a bit of your brand story. User-generated content (photos from happy customers) works wonders here. The goal is to stop their scroll and make them think "Oh, that's adorable, who is this brand?".

You probably should structure your retargeting more carefully...

This is your MoFu and BoFu stage. You're already doing BoFu, but we can make it more structured and add a MoFu layer to catch people who aren't quite ready for the hard sell. The key is to segment your audiences based on how close they are to buying and exclude audiences from later stages.

Here’s a typical structure I'd use for an eCommerce client. We'd have one campaign for MoFu and one for BoFu.

MoFu Campaign (Consideration):

The goal here is to get people who've shown some interest back to the site to browse more. Your audience would be a combination of:

• All website visitors in the last 30 days (but you MUST exclude anyone who Added to Cart or Purchased).
• People who have engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page in the last 90 days (again, exclude purchasers).
• People who have watched 50% or more of your video ads in the last 30 days (exclude purchasers).

The creative for MoFu can be a bit more direct. Show off different collections with a carousel ad. Highlight what makes your clothes special – the organic cotton, the unique designs, the durability. Social proof is huge here: use ads that feature customer reviews or testimonials.

BoFu Campaign (Conversion):

This is what you're doing now, but let's refine it. This campaign is for people who are *very* close to buying. The audience should be tight:

• Added to Cart in the last 14 days (exclude purchasers).
• Initiated Checkout in the last 14 days (exclude purchasers).

You can combine these into one ad set if your traffic is moderate. For this audience, your dynamic product ads are perfect. You're showing them exactly what they left behind. You can also test adding a small incentive in the copy, like "Complete your order and get free shipping" to give them that final nudge. You need to be careful with discounts as it can devalue your brand, but free shipping is often a safe bet.

You'll need to think about your numbers...

One of the main reasons people are scared to spend on ToFu is that the immediate ROAS looks lower. To get comfortable with this, you need to stop thinking about a single transaction and start thinking about the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer. How much is a new customer actually worth to you over, say, a year or two?

For a baby clothing brand, people might buy from you multiple times as their baby grows. That's your LTV. Let's do some rough maths. You need to know three things:

1. Average Order Value (AOV): What's the average amount someone spends in one purchase? 2. Purchase Frequency (F): How many times does an average customer buy from you in a year? 3. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on each sale?

The calculation for a one-year LTV is: LTV = (AOV * F) * Gross Margin %

So if your AOV is £50, customers buy 3 times a year on average, and your gross margin is 60%, your LTV is (£50 * 3) * 0.60 = £90. This means that, on average, each new customer you acquire will generate £90 in profit for you over their first year. Suddenly, paying £20 or even £30 to acquire them in a ToFu campaign looks like a fantastic investment, doesn't it?

This is the math that unlocks growth. It frees you from only chasing the immediate, easy sales and allows you to build a sustainable system for customer acquisition.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Getting this structure in place will stop you from feeling like you're just throwing money at ads and hoping for the best. It provides a clear framework for testing and scaling. Instead of just one type of ad, you now have a system with different jobs for different campaigns.

I know you've had poor experiences with agencies, and that's understandable. The industry is full of people who promise the world but don't deliver a clear strategy. The right partner shouldn't just take your money; they should educate you and build a transparent system like the one above, tailored to your specific business, and then manage and optimise it for you day-to-day. It takes a lot of work to manage this kind of structure properly, with constant testing of new audiences and creatives.

This is obviously just a high-level overview. The real sucess comes from the details of implementation – picking the *exact* right interests, writing compelling ad copy, and producing creatives that resonate. But hopefully, this gives you a much clearer map to follow than what you've had before.

If you'd like to go through your ad account together and see how this framework could be specifically applied to your brand, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could have a look at what you're currently running and identify the quickest wins.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh