Most webshop owners have tried some sort of advertising on Facebook.
A lot of times I’ve met with new clients who’ve said “I do a bit of Facebook ads”, but when I ask about it, it turns out they are promoting random organic posts on their Facebook page.
However, that is far from all the options you have on Facebook.
To really get into advertising on Facebook and sell more products, you will need a business manager account.
If you don’t have one yet, you’re probably not tracking conversions, or using remarketing, look-a-like audiences, or even ANY Facebook strategies to boost your online sales.
That’s why I want to share with you 5 expert ad types and strategies to use to boost your e-commerce sales on Facebook.
1. Dynamic Product Ads
Dynamic remarketing with product ads give you the opportunity to automatically track exactly which products a visitor in your shop views or purchases.
You can then show them an ad for that exact product, a similar product, or an up-sell add-on, after they leave your website. You can read more about Dynamic Product ads in my earlier article on marketing automation for webshops.
Example (see above image): a visitor looks at a few different products in your web shop, and then leaves without buying it. You can set up a dynamic product ad campaign which allows you to automatically show exactly those products, with a catching headline and even a great offer.
The product data and pricing are automatically inserted where you want them to show in the ad, which saves you loads of time.
Why is it effective?
Dynamic product ads normally have a higher click-through rate than a regular ad that someone sees for the first time. Why? Because it “reminds” the visitor of the product they already showed interest in by looking at it on your site.
We can’t directly know why the person didn’t buy the first time. They could have been distracted, or planned to come back to it later, (which usually doesn’t happen).
In a world where we are constantly being bombarded with various ads and offers online, a familiar product and brand will stand out from the other.
2. Lead Ads
Great before product or webshop launches and for lead-based businesses, because you can quickly collect contact information from interested people before your product is out/webshop goes live.
Lead ads are meant for collecting leads, not for direct sales. However, you can jump start your new web shop by collecting these warm leads first.
Based on the email addresses you can market to them via your e-mail newsletter and even better: make look-a-like audiences (more about these in point 3), and target these people with product-specific ads.
Why is it effective?
People already made contact with you before you launched, so they are very likely to remember you, and to want to be interested your product if they left their email address. They’re not 100% cold audiences anymore, especially if you nurture them before launching your product.
If you are unsure about which exact target audience interest and demographics to choose, start broad with these ads. You can then little by little narrow down the audience based on i.e. age, location, gender.
This way you end up with a lot of warm leads for very little cost, who you can then target again when your product is out/webshop is live.
3. Look-a-like Conversion ads
When you have a running webshop and you’ve managed to get around 50 or more purchases, you can try out a look-a-like conversion strategy on Facebook. The pixel needs to have some data to work properly.
A look-a-like audience is an automatically generated Facebook audience, that is based on actual customer data. Look-a-like really means what it sounds like, “looks like”, and basically means you automatically generate targeting for a group that looks a lot like your current customers.
Why are they effective?
The audience contains people similar to the people i.e. behind the email addresses you collected via your lead ad, or in an e-commerce case; people who are similar to your customers.
Facebook will find a group of people in a particular country that you select, and you can tell it to look for a specific 1% who most match the demographics and interests of your audience source; your customers.
4. Remarketing Ads with exclusions
You’ve probably already heard of remarketing, or tried it already. (Reminder: it’s those ads you keep seeing right after you’ve visited a website, and you know it’s no coincidence).
However, a lot of people don’t know that you can make these ads way more targeted and relevant, by excluding people who have visited specific web pages.
You should definitely look to exclude people who have already purchased the product. Because why throw ads at someone who already bought from you just a few hours or days ago? (unless you’re selling a consumer product such as toilet paper, then by all means target them too).
You may also want to exclude your Facebook profile-likers, as these people may already know you and your product very well and you may already have top-of-mind position with these people.
However, this is completely depending on what type of product you have, what branch you’re in and what your campaign goal is.
Why is it effective?
You’re basically weeding out the least relevant people from an already highly targeted remarketing audience, which makes this audience much more likely to buy.
You’re not wasting money on clicks with a very small chance of a sale.
5. Canvas Instant Experience Ads
With Canvas Ads (now Instant Experience Ads) you can create a mini website within Facebook, which opens when someone clicks your ad. In the Canvas environment you can show multiple products with links to several pages on your website, with great layout and flow.
Just look at this old Instant Experience ad example by L’OCCITANE. Ain’t it pretty?
Why is it effective?
Say you quickly need a fast loading landing page for your new product collection but don’t have time or money to get your developer working on it – think instant experience for a quick fix.
With a few high quality product images or even video, a nice font and strong USP’s you could be serving your audience a “glossy” digital product catalogue in no-time. These ads usually have a much higher click-through-rate than regular image ads. And because it opens within Facebook itself it loads super fast and offers a seemless shopping experience.
Make sure to use retargeting to get in front of the people who interacted with your instant experience ad as well, as few people will by straight away and need some more information before buying. Combining the above strategies in the right way will make for a very strong Facebook ad strategy.
Conclusion
There are so many Facebook ad features available at the moment, and counting. I love diving into new options and testing them out. The above ones are the classics that work time and time again IF you know how to combine them with eachother and target the right audiences.
I’ve seen returns of ad spends between 10-30 (meaning every euro resulted in 10-30e product revenue) when combining these the right way for your business.
So start testing with Facebook ads and let me know how it goes!
About the author
Lina Andersson is a the founder and strategist of FIRE HIVE Marketing as well as marketing coach to business owners and their marketing teams. Having worked deep in the trenches of online marketing for over 6 years, with international clients in different sectors, she has a sharp and creative mind when it comes to assembling the puzzle of marketing to fit your business and get you more revenue as quickly as possible. Her expertise lies in campaign management and strategy, staying on top of the newest features in Facebook, Instagram & Google ads.
Want to get in touch? Connect with Lina on Linkedin or learn more about what FIRE HIVE can do for you.
