eCommerce on Facebook: Setting Up Effective Facebook Purchase Campaigns
Facebook is one of the best advertising platforms for marketers and brands alike. With billions of users and extensive targeting options, it’s a great way to reach out to a specific market. What’s more, they have all sorts of ads. Whether you want to create a full video or appear in the Messenger app, Facebook seems to offer something for everybody.
Today, we want to help eCommerce services with the Facebook advertising process. After explaining the different types of ads available on Facebook, we’ll provide some advice that’ll allow you to excel!
Types of Facebook Ads
When learning how to set up an effective Facebook advertising campaign, one of the first things you’ll need to know is which kinds of ads are available. We’ve broken them down in detail.
Video Ads
Commonly used in either Stories or the News Feed, these ads allow brands to show a specific product; they can even show their team in a video demonstration. For longer videos, they can also appear as in-stream ads. While some record their own footage, others use animations or graphics similar to GIFs to capture the viewer’s attention.
Image Ads
The second of the most basic ads is image ads. All it takes is a few clicks and one simple image to get started. We know that the typical audience on social media is attracted to colors and visuals, which gives brands the opportunity to attract interest from users as they scroll through their feeds. As long as the image is complemented with a call to action and strong text, there’s no reason why this simple ad won’t reap rewards.
Slideshow Ads
Slideshows ads are essentially videos that use a collection of short clips, images, and text instead of an actual video. Fortunately, the Ads Manager has some images for those who don’t have their own. If you’re wondering why you might choose this over an actual video, it’s because these slideshows use five times less bandwidth. Even with a poor internet connection, your ad will be seen clearly.
Carousel Ads
Next up, you can advertise the different aspects of your service with a carousel ad. While some companies list a number of products, others show the benefits of a single product. If you want to get clever with carousel ads, you can even set up your pictures so it looks like a panorama image.
Video Poll Ads
One of the keys to success in marketing is getting people engaged, and you can do this effectively with video poll ads. Only available on mobile, these ads display a video and then invite participation in a poll. Although this method doesn’t have as much history, Facebook believes it’s generating more exposure and awareness than videos alone.
Instant Experience Ads
Previously known as Canvas, instant experience ads load 15 times faster than clicks away from Facebook. They cover the whole screen, and even the biggest brands are experimenting with this ad type (including American Express).
Collection Ads
Like video poll ads, these are only available on mobile and it allows companies to provide five products with an image and a ‘Shop Now’ button. These days, brands have found that combining instant experiences with collections allows customers to purchase products without even leaving the Facebook app (a problem that has prevented many sales in the past!)
Dynamic Ads
When it comes to advertising, it’s no good reaching out to those with no interest in the brand or niche. Fortunately, dynamic ads allow us to advertise to people likely to be interested in our products. Let’s say a customer adds a product to their online basket but then abandons it, you can give the sale a second go by advertising to them on Facebook.
Lead Ads
Available for mobile devices, the name tells the story here because these ads make it easier for prospective customers to provide their details. Rather than filling out long forms, customers can sign up to trials, subscribe to newsletters, and give their information in a more effective way.
Stories Ads
With seven in ten millennials refusing to rotate their phones for widescreen ads, vertical ads are very much at the forefront this year. With this, ads on Stories have been popular and continue to grow. In addition to the standard ad type, some brands are also venturing into augmented reality content.
Messenger Ads
Every month, it’s thought that over 1.3 billion people use the Facebook companion app, Messenger. Above or between the user’s own messages, they will see sponsored messages and ads from brands. So far, this technique has proven incredibly popular.
Playable Ads
Finally, how better to engage prospective customers than to allow them to play a game experience? As the customer interacts, they’re more likely to connect with the brand.
Setting Up a Campaign
Before providing some general tips, we want to first offer some advice for the setup process itself.
Step One — What’s Your Objective?
On Facebook, you will find a whole host of objectives depending on what you want to achieve. At this stage, we recommend you really consider your goals. Do you want to drive traffic to your website? Do you want to get exposure for your brand? Maybe you’re pushing for conversions? There are eleven different marketing objectives, so choose the one that matches your goals.
Step Two — Find Your Audience
Assuming you’ve named your campaign and have an account, the next step is to build your target audience. If you want a campaign to be successful, this stage is essential. Select the right location, gender, language, and age. As you adjust the parameters, you’ll see the size of the potential audience change. For your first campaign, we recommend really honing in on your niche. As you create more and more, you can widen the search.
Step Three — Ad Placements, Budget, and Schedule
From here, the only thing left to do is choose your placement, budget, and schedule. While beginners might choose the automatic placement option, those with experience can choose between platform, device, and more.
Top Tips for a Successful Campaign
As promised previously, we want to provide real help for those who need it with Facebook ad campaigns. Here’s some advice for getting yours right.
Use Great Visuals
Firstly, you have to remember that you’re competing with everything else in Facebook users’ feeds (as well as other ads). Rather than going with dull colors and risking the user scrolling past your ad completely, do everything you can to catch the eye.
Be Concise with Copy
With any online advertising, you need to know exactly what to say and what not to say. In our experience, all good copy has three components:
- An initial statement to capture attention
- A phrase to add value
- A call to action
Often, the first statement has the most value because the user might not read the second or third if it is poorly written.
Step Away from the Advertising Tone
After several years of companies shouting at consumers to choose their service, it’s fair to say that people are sick and tired of being advertised to. Therefore, we recommend trying not to sound like an ad. This sounds strange, but the best performing ads are natural and organic.
Instead of sounding like you’re only interested in selling, explain why your product benefits the prospective customer. Don’t tell people what to do and don’t overdo it; just simply explain the benefits of your service and what they will get from choosing you.
Take Advantage of Split Testing
Which creatives work and which don’t? This is exactly what you’ll find out after running some split tests. Over time, keep what generates results and lose the parts that don’t. Often, businesses fail to take this step when it can actually boost lead conversion and other metrics more effectively than making wide scale changes to a whole campaign.
Master the Landing Page
You could have the best ads in the world, but you won’t see results if your landing page is poor. The landing page should be an extension of the ad experience, not a completely different experience. You should use similar visuals and help the customer through the funnel; if the landing page doesn’t provide the right information or even conflicts the information in the ad, people will soon get confused and frustrated.
Other Tips
Thank you for reading our guide to effective Facebook purchase campaigns. To finish, we have some more quick-fire tips!
- Be willing to invest a healthy amount with your budget
- Always check your Facebook pixel for errors
- Always update product feeds so that no out-of-stock products are advertised
- Offer a large product set
- Don’t be afraid to experiment with audience targeting
- Always push for high quality content
- Test and track EVERYTHING
