How to Successfully Manage Upper Funnel Campaigns on Meta

At Taikun Digital, we’ve seen it time and again. A client’s Meta campaigns are running smoothly, but then… they hit a wall. Conversion rates flatten. CPAs creep up. Growth stalls.

That’s when it’s time to look beyond the bottom of the funnel.

Upper funnel campaigns can breathe new life into your Meta strategy, but they require a different approach than conversion-focused campaigns. Here’s our field-tested playbook for effectively managing upper funnel campaigns that actually deliver results.

Why Consider Upper Funnel Campaigns?

There are several tell-tale signs that it’s time to expand your Meta strategy beyond direct response:

Performance plateaus are your first warning sign. When your once-reliable purchase campaigns start showing diminishing returns, it’s often because you’ve saturated your most receptive audiences. I remember working with a footwear client who couldn’t understand why their ROAS had dropped despite having “the same winning strategy.” The audience wasn’t responding the same way because, frankly, we’d already converted the easy wins.

Rising costs can’t be ignored. When your CPMs and CPCs on purchase-focused campaigns steadily climb, it’s Meta’s way of telling you something needs to change. For one of our DTC clients, we watched their CPC double over six months while conversion rates dropped by 30%. That’s a clear signal to shift tactics.

Fatigue is real. If you’re targeting the same people with the same message, there’s a ceiling to what you can achieve. Upper funnel campaigns let you cast a wider net and create new pathways to conversion.

Breaking through growth ceilings requires feeding your funnel from the top. One e-commerce client couldn’t push beyond $250K in monthly revenue despite increasing ad spend. The solution wasn’t more conversion campaigns—it was introducing awareness campaigns that eventually helped them reach $400K monthly.

Competitive pressure often demands a more comprehensive approach. When competitors are dominating share-of-voice in your category, you need to compete at every stage of the customer journey.

The Pre-Launch Checklist

Before rushing to create upper funnel campaigns, lay the proper groundwork:

Establish your baseline with brand and conversion lift studies. This step is non-negotiable. Run a conversion lift test across your entire Meta account to understand your current incremental impact. Without this baseline, you won’t be able to properly measure the true impact of your upper funnel efforts.

Give each test adequate runtime. Two weeks is the absolute minimum for meaningful results. I prefer 3-4 weeks when possible to account for weekly fluctuations.

Document your current performance metrics thoroughly. Pay particular attention to:

• New customer acquisition cost
• Blended ROAS across campaigns
• New customer percentage of total sales
• Average order value

These metrics provide context for any changes you observe after introducing upper funnel tactics.

Start with proven creative assets. This might seem counterintuitive, but using your best-performing existing creative to launch upper funnel campaigns eliminates a critical variable. When we launched upper funnel campaigns for a skincare brand, we initially used their top-performing conversion ads but modified the messaging slightly for awareness. This approach helped us isolate the impact of the campaign structure rather than testing new creative simultaneously.

Choosing the Right Campaign Types

Not all upper funnel campaigns are created equal. Your choices include:

Awareness campaigns excel at reaching new audiences efficiently. These typically have the lowest CPMs and work well when your brand needs more visibility. The tradeoff is usually limited direct attribution.

Reach campaigns ensure you’re connecting with specific audiences at a controlled frequency. They’re particularly effective for local businesses or when you need to dominate a specific demographic.

Google referral (custom conversion) campaigns deserve their own blog post (coming soon!). This approach tracks users who search for your brand on Google after seeing your Meta ads—a powerful indicator of real brand lift.

Measuring Impact and Scaling Success

After launch, measurement becomes your most important task:

Run a conversion lift test specifically on your new upper funnel campaigns. This isolates their incremental impact. We did this for an apparel client and discovered their awareness campaigns were driving 22% more purchases than Meta’s attribution system showed.

Conduct another account-wide lift study. This comprehensive view will reveal how your upper and lower funnel campaigns interact. Sometimes 1+1=3 when your campaigns work together effectively.

Integrate new creative designed specifically for upper funnel objectives. Once you’ve established that your approach works, develop creative that’s purpose-built for awareness. Focus on emotional impact, brand storytelling, and educational content rather than direct response mechanics.

The magic happens when your campaigns work together, not in isolation. Your upper funnel efforts should amplify your conversion campaigns, not compete with them.

Final Thoughts

Upper funnel campaigns require patience. The impact isn’t always immediate, but when done right, they create sustainable growth that conversion-only strategies simply can’t achieve.

At Taikun Digital, we’ve seen clients double their customer base while maintaining profitability by successfully implementing this approach. The key is methodical implementation, rigorous testing, and respecting the different role that upper funnel plays in your overall strategy.

Ready to expand your Meta strategy beyond the bottom of the funnel? Let’s talk about how upper funnel campaigns might fit into your growth plans.