Mastering Facebook Advertising Campaigns for E-commerce Brands
As an e-commerce enthusiast, I've always been on the lookout for effective ways to reach my target audience. One of the most powerful tools I've discovered in recent years is Facebook advertising. In this blog post, I will share my personal experience and insights on how I set up successful Facebook advertising campaigns for e-commerce brands. Let's dive in!
Step 1:
Installing the Facebook Pixel. The first thing I do is install the Facebook Pixel on the e-commerce site. If you're using Shopify, make sure you're the owner of the Facebook Business account and an admin of the page. Shopify will then set everything up for you using the Facebook API, creating a highly accurate dataset. This pixel, or dataset, tracks visitors on your site and their actions, such as page views, adding products to the basket, and sales conversions.
Step 2:
Assessing Website Traffic. If the e-commerce site already has traffic, I usually start with a retargeting campaign. But if it's a new site, I focus on driving traffic first. Here are a few methods I use to generate traffic for new websites:
Content marketing: Creating valuable and shareable content to engage visitors and boost organic search rankings.
Paid ads - Google PPC, Facebook landing page or reach ads, Bing, all of these work well at driving traffic to your site quickly (if you have the budget!)
Search engine optimisation (SEO): Optimising the site for keywords relevant to the brand and products to improve search engine visibility.
Social media promotion: Sharing and promoting content on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest to attract potential customers.
Influencer marketing: Collaborating with influencers in the niche to promote the brand and its products.
Once you have a good amount of traffic hitting your site, hopefully, you will have generated some sales. When you have over 1000 - 3000 visitors, then it is time to start retargeting. This is what will allow you to get the most value out of the traffic you have driven to your site.
Step 3:
Creating a Retargeting Campaign. Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a powerful online advertising strategy that allows you to show ads to people who have previously visited your website or engaged with your content. The main purpose of retargeting is to remind these potential customers of your brand and products, and encourage them to return to your website and complete a purchase.
Retargeting is particularly effective for e-commerce sites for several reasons:
Increased conversion rates: Many visitors to an e-commerce site may leave without making a purchase, perhaps due to distractions or the need for more time to consider their options. Retargeting campaigns help bring these visitors back to your site when they're ready to buy, resulting in higher conversion rates.
Personalised ad experiences: Retargeting allows you to segment your audience based on their browsing behaviour, enabling you to create personalised ads that cater to their interests. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of a positive response to your ads.
Brand recall: Retargeting helps keep your brand top-of-mind for potential customers. By showing them relevant ads after they've left your site, you reinforce your brand image and increase the chances of them returning to make a purchase.
Cost-effective advertising: Since retargeting focuses on users who have already shown an interest in your products or services, it tends to be more cost-effective than other forms of advertising, offering a higher return on investment.
To create a retargeting campaign, I first make an audience in the Facebook Ads Manager using the pixel or dataset. I usually start by targeting all visitors who have been on the site in the last 3 to 7 days but haven't made a purchase. This timeframe allows me to capture recent visitors who are still likely to remember the brand and may need just a little nudge to complete their purchase.
Once the audience is set up and populated (which can take 24 to 48 hours) you will need to set up a new Facebook campaign in Ads Manager, with the objective of “Conversion” and the selection of the “Purchase” event for tracking purposes. In the Ad set, select the retargeting audience that you set up earlier. In the ad section, create a carousel advert. Carousel adverts are great for featuring multiple products, or multiple features of a single product. Make sure all of the copy and links are correct, and then publish your advert. This will now serve to all people within the time frame you set in the audience (last 7 or 3 days) who did not purchase anything on your site. Depending on how you set up the advert, this will be shown on Facebook and Instagram.
Depending on your website traffic, I would recommend a daily budget of between £5 and £20 per day to start with. To check that your budget is correct, check the “frequency” column in Ads Manager for the campaign. If it exceeds 7 then you know that your budget can be reduced slightly. Frequency equals the number of times a single person in your audience sees the advert, greater than 7 means that you might end up annoying the audience.
Over the next few days, track the results of the campaign. Hopefully, you will generate some sales. Pay close attention to the ROAS and purchase value. You are looking for a ROAS (return on ad spend) of at least £5 per £1 spent on ads.
If you do not generate any sales over a 2 to 3 day period, it is worth reviewing things and checking that you have enough quality traffic coming into your site to retarget. It might also be worth a review of your website in terms of conversion rate optimisation.
Step 4:
Exploring Other Facebook Campaign Types. In addition to retargeting campaigns, I also explore other Facebook campaign types like Landing Page Views and Reach campaigns:
Landing Page Views: This campaign type optimises ad delivery to people who are more likely to click on the ad and load the landing page. It's useful for driving traffic to a specific product page or promotional offer. Best of all, you know they have definitely spent some time on your website, as opposed to clicks where people can go through to the site but then leave again very quickly. In my experience, when targeting for clicks, Facebook tracks all sorts of clicks that might not mean they have actually visited your site.
Reach: Reach campaigns aim to show your ad to the maximum number of people within your target audience. This type of campaign is great for increasing brand awareness and reaching potential customers who may not have visited your site before. This is a great place to start with a sales funnel, leading into a landing page views campaign and then retargeting, e.g. Raise awareness > get landing page views > retarget for the purchase.
Top tip:
Once you have got some sales, you can create a “lookalike” audience of all the people who have purchased on your site. Once you have over 100 conversions, that is the time to do this. It will give you a Facebook audience of the top 1% of the UK that most look like people who have purchased on your site. This can be great for prospecting and serving landing page adverts to get potential customers on your site, ready to purchase or retarget.
Setting up a successful Facebook advertising campaign for an e-commerce brand may seem daunting at first, but with the right approach, it can be incredibly rewarding and simple. Once you have got the basics right, you can make your campaigns more advanced by playing with the audiences you want to prospect and retarget. By installing the Facebook pixel, assessing website traffic, creating retargeting campaigns, and exploring other campaign types, you can elevate your e-commerce brand's visibility and supercharge your sales!
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