Did you know that Facebook has around 2.8 billion active users? Or that there is over 10 million business actively advertising on Facebook? These are the numbers you can’t simply ignore.
However, with every Facebook algorithm update the organic Facebook page growth slowly decreases and competition for the eyeballs becomes harder and harder.
Thus more and more brands are continuously increasing their advertising budget to grow business via Facebook ads. It can help you to grow your website traffic, generate leads, more sales and be an additional traffic source for your retargeting campaigns.
Especially if you’re running an eCommerce store, advertising on Facebook should be your top priority. Because it still remains one of the top dogs within global advertising platforms. On the other hand, to make more money online, you have to spend more of them to advertising, which can be scary at sometimes.
As the result, you might be asking what are the best strategies for advertising on Facebook? Well, there’s no single answer that works for everyone, and that highly depends on the products and markets you’re selling.
However, we can agree that there are some general tactics that work well for eCommerce brands and in today’s article we’ll share the best Facebook ads strategies for eCommerce brands advertising on Facebook. In addition, we’ll share the best practices for testing your ads.
And in our bonus part, you’ll learn the top places to keep yourself updated with the latest platform announcements and changes. So stay tuned!
Best Strategies for Running eCommerce Facebook Ads
1. Dynamic Product Ads
Dynamic product ads are probably one of the most important Facebook ad strategies for successfully running your eCommerce business online. In short, they’re personalized ad types that allow you to retarget customers that have already interacted with your brand online in one or another way.
If the customer checked your product online but didn’t buy it, then with the help of dynamic product ads you can show the same products he was looking at a minute earlier.
That’s a very powerful advertising technique and has one of the highest conversion rates to switch your visitors into buyers because they are only one step away from purchasing from you.
To set up dynamic Facebook ads you’ll need to create a products catalog, a custom audience that has visited your site but didn’t convert, and create a dynamic ads template.
(Facebook Dynamic Product ads example)
2. Facebook Carousel Ads
These ads are a great way to highlight a collection of products you’re selling and it’s especially great for eCommerce brands.
Upload up to eight products with the carousel ads and advertise them for the price of one. Make sure that your images are visually appealing and immediately grab the attention of potential shoppers.
Lastly, carousel ads are one of the most interactive ad types, because customers have to use their energy to see more of your products. This way they have lots of benefits and have a good performance track record compared to other eCommerce Facebook ad strategies.
(Facebook Carousel ads example)
3. Facebook Video Ads
Facebook video ads can be a highly effective way to sell your products and no you don’t need a professional setup and actors to shoot some great clips. These days everything can be done with the help of your smartphone and a few friends. In fact, more people will be engaged with your brand, once it has been created naturally, rather than within a professional setup.
Another interesting thing is that during the research HubSpot find out that video content generates 20% more clicks than images. On the other hand, AdEspresso find out that Facebook users are more likely to engage with brands that share video content online rather than images and drive more traffic to the site.
Lastly, if you wish to reach wider audience with Facebook video ads make sure to optimize them for mobile, and create vertical formats. It has been measured that brands get a 27% higher brand recognition when the video ads are horizontal.
(Facebook Video ads example)
4. Facebook Messenger Ads
Facebook Messenger ads can be an effective tool for eCommerce brands. Use different Facebook advertising tactics to reach your potential customers via the Messenger inbox, stories, Click-to-Messenger ads, and sponsored ads. As the result, reach them during the most active times while they’re actively engaging on social media.
For example, the four-week PepsiCo campaign targeted at the Vietnamese people living in Ho Chi Minh city saw huge success and a 1.6X return on ad spend. The campaign run Facebook ads focused on selling non-alcoholic beverages online, especially during the period of the lockdown. The advertising campaigns have been created to target Messenger, using ad types such as click to message, click to Messenger, and carousel ads. The campaign was a great success.
(Facebook Messenger ads example)
5. Facebook Lead Ads
If you’re running a local newsletter or just opened a course academy that shares weekly marketing tips, you most likely want to grow your email list as quickly as possible. However, it doesn’t happen over a night, and growing an email list takes time.
Nevertheless, you could use some special Facebook ad formats to speed up the process. Facebook lead ads do exactly that and can help you to grow your email list, test new products, run a contest or sign up people for an upcoming webinar.
Create customizable instant forms within your ads, and collect information about people participating in your organized events. What’s so great about that is that it easily integrates with other CRM software packages such as Mailchimp.
(Facebook Lead ads example)
6. Facebook Instant Experience Ads
Another must-have ad format for eCommerce brands is Instant Experience ads. These ad types allow advertisers to create beautiful, full-screen experiences to enjoy your product at its best. They are the most effective if you want to create a longer product story and a single image ad is not enough. It also helps to sell more expensive products, because within a single screen you can share more product benefits and the reasons why people should get it.
(Facebook Instant Experience ads example)
7. Create Custom Audiences
Create custom audiences on Facebook that have already interacted with your brand online. Connect with people that have begun the checkout process, but didn’t buy yet. Reach people that made a purchase, added to a cart, spent x amount of time on your website, or simply viewed your product.
Having custom audiences allows you to easily retarget the same people that have interacted with your brand earlier.
(How to create custom audience in Facebook Ads)
8. Use Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike audiences are one of our favorite strategies when creating Facebook ads for eCommerce. Initially Facebook algorithm takes the samples of custom audiences you’ve created earlier and looks for similar audiences based on the percentage you’ve set. Create lookalike audiences 1-10% similar to your just created custom audiences. If your custom audience is Facebook page followers and you create a lookalike audience, then Facebook will try to connect to similar people that follow your page.
For creating lookalike audiences you’ll need some data already collected. And if you’ve just created your Facebook page, you’ll have to wait until you’ll get around 500 interactions with your page or website.
One of our favorite lookalike audience is creating people that are similar to our previous buyers. Thus, if it’s set up correctly Facebook will try to find similar people to the ones that have already purchased on your site. Isn’t that cool?
(How to create a lookalike audience in Facebook Ads)
Best Tips for Running Succesful eCommerce Facebook Ads
While Facebook ads best advertising strategies for eCommerce is an ever-changing and evolving field, you always need to keep yourself updated with the latest news. In addition, you can’t simply leave your ads running forever, without checking them. And if you want to maximize your performance, you need continuously refine them, try new formats, images, copies, and etc. These are some of the best practices for running Facebook ads for eCommerce.
1. Use Ad Scheduling
If you’re running a brick-and-mortar clothes store that operates only within a fixed time, it wouldn’t make sense to waste ad money when you’re closed. Make use of ad scheduling and set that ads would be running during the days and times when you’re at the store.
Another example could be selling your products to different countries that have different timezones. As the result, within Facebook ads scheduling you can simply adjust your timezones when your ads show and reach your target audience at the best times.
2. A/B Testing Ads
A/B testing is an essential part of most marketing activities, same applies to Facebook ads. Do you want to know if a single model posing with your newly launched T-shirts performs better than 2 models? Or which colors generate more conversions, more saturated or pale?
A/B testing will help you to find the answers. After you create your first Facebook ad, duplicate it and slightly change something. Try different images, CTA buttons, headlines, text descriptions, and more. And the limit is only your creativity.
But be careful and test only one thing at a time.
On the other hand, if you’re testing multiple scenarios within a single ad, you won’t be sure which change brought you desired results.
3. Ads Structure
From our experience running Facebook ads for eCommerce brands, we’ve noticed one thing in common. Many of them fail to structure their ads hierarchy. Usually, the ads have been created randomly without any clear logic. And that’s a big issue if you’re planning to scale your campaigns in the future or want to A/B test different setups.
Thus, ensure that your Facebook ads account is well structured and the basic structure could be defined something like this:
- For the campaign, level think of its main goal. Is it to drive more traffic? Is it to generate more leads, or maybe sales?
- Use ad set groups to differentiate your target audience. Maybe ad group number 1 you want to target only males, whereas 2nd ad group would be only women.
- Lastly at the single ad level, test out different ad images, CTA buttons, headlines, and descriptions.
Bonus Point
Tips On Staying Updated About Facebook Ads Strategies for eCommerce
As we’ve already mentioned earlier, digital advertising industry is an ever-changing field, sometimes it can be that you come back from short holiday stay in Hawaii and suddenly all Facebook Ads Manager UI is completely revamped, or even worse, your targeting settings have been changed.
As the result, you must continuously update your knowledge about the platform. But the question is, how to do that most effectively?
1. Follow Facebook Business News
The first and foremost place to hear the most up-to-date, valid upcoming platform changes is at the platform itself. Thus always keep a close eye on Facebook Business News and get the best updates on the upcoming changes, announcements, and other important information that will affect advertising on Facebook.
2. Join Facebook Groups
Next, think of joining Facebook groups that specialize in advertising on Facebook. There are many different levels of Facebook advertising groups from beginners, to average and advanced. And don’t worry, because everyone will find their place there, and if you just started with advertising on Facebook, you won’t be overwhelmed.
Network with people from Facebook ad groups, share ideas, tips, and strategies.
3. Attend Webinars and Conferences
Stay up to date with the latest advertising industry trends, techniques, and learn tips and tricks from the best at their craft by attending various webinars and conferences.
Talking about conferences, think of getting a ticket to Ad Week, GrowthHackers, Outbound, or MediaPost conferences.
Conclusion
To summarize, if you’re running an eCommerce business, you should consider running ads on Facebook. Because it’s one of the most popular social media platforms with the highest number of active monthly users.
Advertising on Facebook without a clear goal is like burning your money without thinking. Thus, it’s important to think of your end goal. Do you want more brand awareness? Leads? Or maybe more sales?
Once you set a clear goal think about the strategies you’ll use to reach them. Consider trying any of these Facebook ads strategies for eCommerce:
- Run dynamic product ads
- Launch Facebook carousel ads
- Facebook video ads
- Create Messenger ads
- Think about Facebook lead ads
- Don’t forget about Facebook instant experience ads
- Use custom audiences
- And try lookalike audiences
Next, it’s important to continuously refine and polish your ads to find the best strategies that generated most outcome. And you do this through A/B testing. Test different images, headlines, descriptions, or CTA’s. To save ad money think of running ads on the schedule. And most importantly take a serious look that your ad campaigns levels, and ensure that they’re well structured.
Lastly, always keep up to date with the latest platform features, trends, and announcements. For this constantly read Facebook Business News site, join different Facebook advertising groups on the platform, attend professional webinars and conferences.
