Facebook ads can be tricky, but they are also very effective. Before using it, you may ask -"Why to pay for Facebook ads?", "What more can it offer me?"
Any e-commerce business owner will think twice before spending money on ads. But the truth is all social media platforms are constantly changing their algorithm to personalize what users see.
So, the chances of the audience coming across your posts organically are very low. Using Facebook ads manager can change the game for you. If you want Facebook to boost your e-commerce sales, you should seriously run Facebook ads.
Many small businesses and brands think that signing up for Facebook ads will do it all. Just running an ad on Facebook is not going to cut it. It would be best if you had a solid plan. Why do you need a Facebook ad strategy for your e-commerce? Here is why.
Facebook is where we socialize, connect with friends and family, and sometimes get addicted. Facebook has over two billion monthly active users, who spend more time on Facebook than competing social networks.
That's a whole lot of audience you can reach and direct to your eCommerce store.
If you want to take full advantage of the Facebook Ads funnel, you need to have a strategy for each step in it.
For cold users, you need to make them interested; for interested users, you need to convince them to buy; and for buyers, you need to make them convert.
Most people don't convert the first time they see an ad from a brand.
They've never seen you before, they automatically distrust you for some reason, and haven't been convinced that they need your product.
However, after seeing your ad several times, including some user reviews mixed with different visuals, they might get convinced.
When you log onto Facebook, you are there to share exciting information with your friends. One way to do this is by uploading photos, new music you discovered, or stories.
Facebook profiles are long lists of interests, which advertisers can tap into by running targeted ads. Facebook's advertising tools make it easy for advertisers to match their product against a list of user interests.
Facebook ads not only drive Facebook users to your e-commerce website but ensure that you reach users at every stage of the digital sales funnel. Using ads on Facebook can be confusing for a beginner. So let's start with the basics.
The process of using Facebook advertising is threefold. First, you need to create a Facebook business manager account> Create a Facebook ad account> Create a Facebook ad campaign. So, let's go step by step.
Facebook Business Manager is a free tool for managing your Facebook assets: ad accounts, business pages, product catalogs, and Instagram accounts.
You can also use it to control access from team members.
You can grant two types of permissions:
To create a Facebook business manager account, you need to have an account on Facebook.
The job isn't done yet; you will still have to add your Facebook page to the Business account. Here is how you can do it.
We have set up the base. Now for the second big step - creating an ad account.
You need to decide the goal of your campaign. The available options are Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, Engagement, App Installs, Video Views, Lead Generation, Messages, Conversions, Catalog Sales, and Store Traffic.
They vary in what formats and bidding options they provide for you.
It's essential to give it a descriptive name to be easily tracked. If you plan on running multiple campaigns, it's best to have a naming system in place. You could include keywords, target audience, type of campaign, date range, etc.
The first is the "daily budget," which is how much Facebook will spend on your campaign on average every day. The second is the "lifetime budget," which is how much Facebook will spend on your campaign over the period you select.
Don't bother bidding manually unless you understand how Facebook's bidding system works. The default option is automatic, and it's best to go with that until you get the hang of your benchmarks.
Setting the perfect time to start an ad can be crucial. Facebook offers you the option of when your ad starts and finishes with their default system. However, if the time is not the right fit for you, you can change it.
You can use this technique to optimize when you run your ads by finding the best days and times. For example, after running an ad for a while, you might find that Tuesdays between 8 PM and midnight are the most profitable.
Then you can set up an automated rule that turns your ad sets on at 8 PM on Tuesdays, or vice versa.
You can manually pick them or let Facebook do it for you. They have an "Automatic Placements" option that automatically chooses the best placements for you. Facebook placements can happen in the Facebook news feed, marketplace, video feeds, in-stream videos, etc.
Your ads talk to your audience about your brand. So, you need to be very careful in choosing the audience if you want successful Facebook ads. Facebook has the power to target any audience with pinpoint accuracy.
The key is picking a group of people representing your best customer base. When beginning a new campaign, you can choose from one of your saved audiences or create a new one.
Facebook offers various targeting possibilities, such as interests, behaviors, demographics, locations, and even targeting your page fans.
NOTE: If you want to get ahead of the curve, then you can also make a custom audience using Facebook pixels
Most Facebook ad strategies that are effective use a custom audience. You can create a custom audience using Facebook Pixels. If you are planning to use Ecommerce Facebook ads, then setting up Facebook PIxels is a must. Here is how you can do it.
Facebook Pixel can give you many more ideas on creating ads and targeting them. It gives you information about customer activity on your website.
You can ask your developer to add the pixel to your website or install it yourself. If you have a Shopify online store, you can use this process -
If you are not using Shopify, you can install Pixels via HTML.
Facebook Pixels can help you get new customers with custom audiences or lookalike audiences. And one of the best ways Facebook Pixels does it is via Remarketing.
Remarketing your product to people who have viewed your ads can help retarget them with ads later. In creating new audiences, approach potential customers and leave out existing customers.
The Facebook Pixel collects data by following on-site activities on your website for 30 days. After the wait, you can use this information to create custom audiences on your website.
These are people who have visited your site, viewed products, added items to their carts, and made purchases. You can then target these audiences on Facebook or Instagram with hyper-relevant ads. Pixel gives you audience insights to create campaigns like no other.
The final stage of the process is ad creation. You have the option to use an existing Facebook post or to upload a new ad.
NOTE: Based on where you are placing the ad for your Facebook advertising, you can choose the ad format that goes with the placement like Carousel ads, Single Image or Facebook Video ads, etc.
Facebook is most effective for e-commerce businesses because it can target audiences throughout their journey. Each target audience needs a different kind of approach. You can't use the same ads for existing customers and browsers.
One of the most critical aspects of advertising is tailoring the ads to meet the needs of specific audiences. Certain types of ads are more likely to be effective with particular groups of people.
Each audience will need a different approach in the types of ads you target them with based on where they are in their buying cycle. Typically, advertisers break the buying cycle down into three levels:
The first level is Awareness. At this level, people are just becoming aware of your brand for the first time.
The second level is Consideration. When people are at this stage, they are actively considering your product or service as an option to purchase. The third level is Action, when they become buyers.
The top of the funnel (ToF) is filled with people unaware of your brand or who need your product. These audiences are called cold audiences. For this type of audience, you need to create brand awareness. The end goal doesn't necessarily mean making a sale.
If you use ads that target cold audiences, it is not your goal to convert directly to a sale. That happens rarely. Usually, the return on ad spend (ROAS) will be less for cold audiences than for the Bottom of the Funnel (BoF) the Middle of the Funnel (MoF) audiences.
That is why you should exhaust your BoF and MoF audiences before allocating any budget to ToF audiences. The goal of your top-of-the-funnel ads should be to get people interested in your brand. Once they are, you can market to them more aggressively.
This is done by clicking through to your website and getting them to become familiar with you while also tracking them for cheaper retargeting.
The audience in this phase knows about your brand and has seen the products, but they are not ready to buy. These types of audiences are called warm audiences. Warm audiences know a lot about you, your products, and your brand. Unlike cold audiences, they don't need to be told what you offer.
You can use Display Campaigns to remind them of your products, like short video ads showcasing your products.
The bottom of the funnel has the audience ready to buy your products. They are prepared to take action. The best ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) comes from people at the bottom of the funnel.
These people previously purchased, abandoned their shopping cart, or even viewed an item without buying it.
This means the best audiences to target are those who have already shown interest in your product — meaning these people will be most likely to buy.
Here are the Facebook ad types you should run at the bottom of the funnel-
Dynamic Product Ads
The most effortless form of Facebook advertising is dynamic ads. Essentially, these ads are automated and created by Facebook from your product catalog.
All you need to do is integrate your product feed with the Facebook Ads Manager, and it will create your products’ image, title, description, and price.
Most of the eCommerce platforms like Shopify offer product feed integration with Facebook. If that is not the case, you can always manually add the product feed by going to Catalogs in Facebook Business settings.
Once you integrate the product feed with Facebook ads, you can automatically create ads without hassle.
Using these ads at the bottom of the funnel will give you more remarkable results. Audiences will already be looking to purchase; show them these ads to finally buy from you.
Carousel ads
In 2021, carousel ads may be great to get people’s attention. You can customize a carousel-style ad to nail the messaging for a specific audience and product.
With a carousel ad, you have complete control over each image or video and all the copies. This lets you get creative to get people’s attention.
Moreover, you can show more than one product in your ads and give the audience more options.
Carousel ads have more than one image and video presentation in slides that you can swipe. Each image, video, or slide is called a card. You can have between 2 to 10 cards in one carousel ad.
You can add different products in each slide, which will lead to other landing pages, which increases the click-through rate.
Collection Ads
Collection ads look very similar to carousel ads because both have a multi-card format.
But collection ads are primarily used on Facebook for e-commerce and product discovery, while you can use carousel ads on Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook.
Collection ads are only mobile-specific, while carousel ads work on both desktop and mobile.
As shown above, the primary video is on top of four smaller product images in a collection ad.
But the reason why collection ad is better for your online store than carousel ad is that instead of driving potential customers back to your sales page, collection ads open up a store directly in the Facebook app.
Video Ads
Video ads are the best Facebook ads type you can use. Video ads are dominating the internet. Marketers are coming up with unique video ad ideas every second.
If you want your audience to make that purchase, you have to create video ads because it performs better. Video ads draw people in.
You can make your ads or hire a production team to do it. But even if you hire a team, you have to be part of the planning and ideation phase. There are a variety of ideas out there.
You just have to think. You can make compelling video ads, which means you tell the story of how your product solves a problem.
You can also use short tutorial videos to educate would-be buyers on using the product. You can create video ads based on customer testimonials to earn your audience’s trust.
If you are out of ideas but still want to make scroll-stopping video ads for Facebook, then you can use Offeo. It is a simple and easy-to-use platform to create high-quality professional video ads.
Use it to make short, impressive videos for Facebook ads. With Offeo, you don't even need to record a video; a good quality image is enough to make a video ad.
Are you running out of ideas for Facebook ads? Offeo has 2000+ designer templates to choose from! Better yet, Offeo can make ads within 3 minutes!
Think about your customers. They're using Facebook to interact with friends, not shop. So you need to put your product in front of the right people to get results.
If you're targeting the wrong audience, who are only mildly receptive to your product, it's going to be much harder to drive conversions. And if you're selling a niche product, experimenting with the "Interests" field is crucial.
The Interests field in the "Custom audience" section can help streamline your audience.
Do not choose a broad interest. Instead, try to narrow it down as much as possible, so your ads are visible to the relevant audience.
Many brands run Facebook ads, some use videos, some use images. But at this point in the funnel, whether it is a video ad or an image ad, the key is to get your audience interested.
How to do that? We are talking about people who don't know about you. So, make an excellent first impression.
Do you know Nike? It is associated with fitness experts and sportspeople. But this ad By Nike changed the game. It did something out of the box to target people outside their usual customer base.
Nike became a brand for everyone who wanted to give playing a shot in this ad. That's some innovative thinking. If you also want to target new audiences, you need to tell how your brand can change the viewer's life.
Take remarketing a step ahead and focus your ads on the people who abandoned products in the cart. Why bother with abandoners?
Retargeting campaigns can be a big step in generating sales because almost 70% of the visitors who add items to their carts abandon them before checking out.
Create an appealing ad that nudges them to buy the product. Start with "Did you forget something in your cart?", you can also offer discounts on items the visitors have been eyeing.
People love free stuff. While a giveaway may not be a standard Facebook ad, it can be part of the marketing strategy. Giveaways are fun because you can reach many people interested in your products.
Host a giveaway for your brand anniversary. Give out a carefully curated bunch of your products to lucky winners. You can ask your Facebook Fans to tag their friends and family. It is a great way to reach more people. Moreover, you can also offer discounts and offers directly to your Facebook fans.
Have you noticed that ads with good copy tend to generate more sales? A good copy can make your ad like a bad copy can break your ad.
Here are some tips you can follow.
If you want your Facebook marketing to work better, try creating a CBO campaign. A CBO campaign is very different than an old-fashioned Facebook campaign.
Instead of setting money aside ad set by ad set, it puts it at the campaign level. The algorithm is responsible for optimizing how much budget is allocated to each ad set in a campaign.
It automatically shares the best-performing ads and allocates budgets evenly among those. In this way, budget allocation is based on performance and budget per ad set.
Some people think that creating and running Facebook ads is a waste of money. However, if you know what you're doing, you can benefit massively from it.
If done correctly, Facebook ads can be highly profitable and efficient. Install the pixel, understand your target audiences, and make scroll-stopping ads for those people on Facebook, and bam! Your sales skyrocket.
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