7 Must-Use Facebook Ads Strategies for Ecommerce Marketers

As someone actively promoting an online store, I bet you’ll agree:

Whatever marketing channels you use, it’s never enough.

You constantly need:

• More conversions to meet sales targets.
• Highly relevant traffic instead of accidental visitors.
• And a way to increase repeat sales from past customers.

And yet you’re unsure about trying Facebook Ads.

Why?

With 1.39 billion monthly active users, the largest number of ecommerce orders from social media and a typical ROI from Facebook ads at 152%, not advertising on the platform is a missed opportunity.

If you’re unsure how to get started with Facebook Advertising though, read on.

Here are some of the strategies I use to help online retailers increase traffic and conversions.

1. Use Dynamic Product Ads

Dynamic product ads might be the highest ROI strategy ecommerce sites can use – a chance to bring back hesitant customers by showing them tailored ads based on their activity on your site.

You’ve probably seen large sites like Amazon.com retarget you on Facebook with offers for the exact products that you recently visited.

But did you know that you could remarket on Facebook just like Amazon?

With Dynamic Product Ads‘ templates you don’t have to create ads for each product in your catalog. Instead, templates will pull images, product names, pricing and other information from your product catalog, based on the product details you upload to Facebook. So if you have hundreds or thousands of products, this could be a great solution for you.

With dynamic ads you can display single or multi product ads to customers who have visited your site based on products they viewed, added to the cart or even purchased.

To get started with Dynamic Product Ads:

• Upload your product catalog to Facebook Business Manager. Include all products you want to promote with information to display for each product (name, price, image,).
• Add a custom audience pixel to your site. Modify it to report on customers’ buying behavior.
• Create a dynamic template. Facebook will automatically populate it with the right products and associated info. Give your ads a title, specify keywords to pull in images, product names from the product catalog.
• Set up Display Product Ads in the Power Editor. Specify if you want to advertise products from your entire catalog or just certain categories and …. run your ads.

 

2. Use Multi-Product Ads

Facebook Multi-product ads give you the ability to show multiple products in a single ad.

• Multi-Product Ads can give your customers more options to choose from.
• They can help you increase conversions. The more relevant products a customer sees the greater the chance of them buying.
• You can also use them to show different benefits of a single product.

But do they work?

Adobe discovered that their customers experienced:

• A 50% to 300% increase in click-through-rate (CTR).
• Up to 35% reduction in cost per click as a result of higher engagement.
• More efficient cost per acquisition.

Multi-product ads can easily be set up in the Power Editor and can also be used as part of a dynamic product ad campaign or as a stand alone ad.

3. Install Conversion Tracking Pixel

A conversion-tracking pixel is a small snippet of code that tracks your customers’ behavior on the site. But it does so much more than that.

In addition to tracking customer behavior and conversions, Facebook can use the data from conversion pixels to optimize your campaigns and to build a lookalike audience to target your ads.

By placing a conversion-tracking pixel on your checkout page, you’ll be able to track actions (like sales, etc) people take after clicking on your ad and measure your ROI.

But to achieve the best results, I recommend installing the pixel long before you run your first campaign.

This way you’ll give Facebook time to learn the types of people who are converting into customers on your site even when they come from other marketing channels. If Facebook hasn’t tracked any conversion on your site yet, they’re going to have trouble optimizing your campaign for conversions.

4. Run General Retargeting Campaigns

72% of online shoppers on average abandon their carts without completing a purchase.

Without retargeting, only 8% of them will come back to buy.

With retargeting however the average site can bring back 26% of abandoners to complete a purchase

According to Wishpond, the source of the data above, 70% of web visitors who are retargeted with display ads are more likely to convert on your site.

And the average CTR of retargeted ads is 10x higher than standard display ads.

It goes without saying then – not retargeting your visitors costs you conversions and sales.

You can run retargeting campaigns via the Power Editor and target your visitors with general offers, coupons, single and multi-product ads and more.

5. Find New Customers with Lookalike Audiences

Facebook can help you to find new customers based on your past customers characteristics.

Lookalike Audiences help you advertise to people who are similar to your existing customers and likely to be interested in your products as well.

I’ve found that Lookalike audiences are usually one of the highest performing target groups for most of my clients.

To create a Lookalike Audience you need a Custom Audience to base it on. Alternatively, you could also build it from your Facebook Fans or data from the conversion-tracking pixel.

Lookalike Audiences will utilize Facebook’s algorithms to to find people with similar demographic characteristics and interests to your customers.

Of course you can also use Facebook’s other interest and demographic targeting options to find relevant new customers.

6. Use Ads to Communicate Your Brand Story

Regardless of its commercial appeal, Facebook is first and foremost a social platform. Most people are there to connect rather than to shop.

This gives you an opportunity to connect and build relationship with prospects and future customers.

And you can do it by using ads to communicate your brand’s story.

As this study by Facebook and Adaptly showed, creating a sequence of ads conveying your key brand message instead of selling improves overall conversion rates. In one study example, the difference in conversions between standard and sequence of ads was a staggering 87%.

Similarly, you can use a video to tell your brand’s story.

Take a look at this video ad I created for AHAlife to give a flavor of the company and its products.

Unique Creations for Stylish Men.
http://bit.ly/1w23oIs

Posted by AHAlife on Monday, February 23, 2015

 

The video worked well mainly because:

• It was short,
• Fast moving and
• The message/value was easy to understand (even with auto-play without sound).

7. Strengthen Existing Customer Relationships with Custom Audiences

Custom Audiences are a powerful tool that let’s you create a unique list of people you want to target with ads based on a list of your customers’ emails, Facebook IDs or phone numbers.

Custom Audiences are a great way to strengthen customer relationships:

Get Existing Customers to Become Facebook Fans

Custom Audiences allow you to reach out to existing customers and try to convert them into Facebook fans.

Simply upload your customer list into the Custom Audience Tool and target them with relevant Page Like ads. (Be sure to exclude current fans from your campaigns.)

Target Your Top Customers with Relevant Offers, Promotions

Another idea is to create a custom audience of past customers and newsletter subscribers and target them with relevant offers or discounts to reward their loyalty.

Reward Your Store Evangelists

Every brand has people devoted to it. They share news about it, recommend it to others and proactively spread the word about it.

Identify them and reward them with exclusive offers or a chance to be the first to purchase items from a new line.

Over to You

What do you think of Facebook Ads for Ecommerce? Do you have any previous experience using the platform? What other strategies have worked best for you?