Facebook Ads for eCommerce: 6 Strategies & Tips

For many eCommerce stores, keeping up with ad campaigns on Facebook is hard work. There are so many moving parts involved that businesses often forget to consider how and why they even want to run Facebook ads. Just like all advertising, Facebook ads for eCommerce should be tied to a strong sales-generating strategy. 

When it comes to Facebook ads for eCommerce, the goal is simple. You want to reach your target audience, pique their interest in your products or service, and convert them into paying customers. If you want to know what Facebook ads for eCommerce can do to boost your business, here are six strategies and tips to keep in mind. 

Acquire New Customers With Custom and Lookalike Audiences

Facebook ad campaigns come with a few not-so-secret weapons for success, one of which is Custom and Lookalike Audiences, which you can customize to strategically attract more shoppers. This helps you reach potential customers who are actively looking for what you are selling.

The eCommerce brand Dollar Shave Club is an example of how well this tip can work for you. By combining Custom Audiences with the visual storytelling of collection ads, the company reached 1.6 million people and saw a 150% increase in social media subscriptions. On top of that, they saw a 30% decrease in cost per subscription when compared to traditional link ads.

So why does it work? This refined strategy allows you to drill down your ads for a specific brand and market. Try out these three Custom Audience hacks when creating Facebook ads for eCommerce:

• If you’re using Custom Audiences or Lookalike Audiences that aren’t performing, remove them from campaigns to keep ROAS up.
• The valuable data you get from your best-performing Custom and Lookalike Audiences can be added to your Audience insights in Ads Manager to direct other PPC channel campaign strategies.
• Segment your audience as much as possible to have more control over brand awareness campaigns with Lookalike Audiences so your Facebook PPC campaigns are more personalized and more likely to convert. 

Capitalize on Customers’ Dissatisfaction With Competitors

Facebook ads for eCommerce businesses give you the ability to attract new customers from those who have already purchased from or engaged with your biggest competitors. Obviously, these potential customers have high buying intent and conversion potential since they have been looking for the kinds of products you sell, but they also are looking for and considering alternative brands.

To leverage this, use intent-based campaigns and create a custom audience where your competitor’s brand name is included as an “interest.” You may need to do some tweaking by using competitor-centric keywords and specific keywords to target shoppers if the domain name is not triggered.

Don’t just try to target the potential shoppers – make sure your strategies are aimed at converting them or moving them into your sales funnel. Test different ad elements and assets that showcase how your brand can fill a gap left by your competitors, but don’t use their brand name in your text. 

Ask Your Existing Customers for More Sales

Facebook ads for eCommerce can boost your retention and increase sales among your existing customers, and you can usually execute this tactic for a lower budget. Because your customers already know and trust you, they only need a little reminding rather than a full-scale campaign.

You’ll still need to strategically segment and target to drive Facebook PPC personalization. To do so, you should be targeting new customers; customers who have purchased once; regular existing customers; and your brand’s superfans. You can use personalized campaigns like new product alerts; exclusive deals; product or accessory up-sells; product top-up selections; reordering notifications; or birthday/event promo codes. 

Use a Conversion Pixel to Track and Retarget Cart Abandonment Activity

Facebook ads for eCommerce businesses can be a vehicle to retarget customers to boost conversion. You can use a conversion pixel that will follow potential customers with brand familiarity and high buying intent to revisit their cart and push the purchase over the finish line.

Cart abandonment Facebook campaigns are aimed toward three main segments:

• Users who visited product pages and clicked to cart but didn’t visit the cart
• Browsers who clicked cart page but didn’t go through checkout
• Potential shoppers who clicked to checkout pages but never got to a confirmation page

The best way to maximize conversions with cart abandonment campaigns is by tailoring the ad to the specific shopper and products they are interested in. You can do this by combining cart abandonment segments with dynamic Facebook ads.

Retarget Prior Visitors to Your Site

Once a potential customer has visited your site, retargeting is the next touchpoint in your sales funnel. You should create Custom Audiences based on very specific site behavior, then tailor your ads directly to that segment. At this point in the customer journey, the audience is already familiar with your brand and has likely engaged through brand awareness campaigns, but they might need more convincing. You can increase your Facebook conversion odds by personalizing the ads to the exact product pages the customer visited.

All Facebook ads for eCommerce campaign types can be used with retargeting, but the secret to better ROAS lies in keeping the audiences as segmented as possible. When one-time store visitors see and click your retargeting ad, they should either be moved to the next segment or convert.   

Use Automation to Boost Conversion Potential

All the strategies and tips we’ve discussed for Facebook ads for eCommerce are great ways to move your potential customers through the shopper journey, but automation is the key to tying it all together into one seamless strategy. You can use automation to ensure the right ads are shown to the right segment at the right time.

You can do this by using PPC management software to manage, run, and optimize your Facebook ads for peak performance. These tools use machine learning technology to take the guesswork out of your campaigns so your team can focus on other revenue-generating tasks. 

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