An Overview of Facebook Ads for Ecommerce

Whether you’re just starting out with a new online business or need to improve sales, Facebook ads for ecommerce can play a crucial role in upping your company’s visibility. Millions of eyes are on Facebook every day, which is why it’s such an ideal space to advertise on. According to data from Statista, over a billion people are active on the site each month. Imagine the chance to expose your products or services to such a varied, active user base!

An incredible perk is that anyone with or without a Facebook account can post ads. You won’t have to jump through hoops to get started. However, having a separate Facebook page for your business is your best bet, because it will give you the most flexibility when it comes to what type of ad you’d like to create. It’s also crucial that you have a fully functional, mobile-friendly website prior to starting your ad campaign. There’s no point in placing an enticing ad if it doesn’t lead your customers to an optimal landing page.

Facebook Ads for Ecommerce: Will They Really Help Your Business?

While it’s clear that Facebook ads help expose your business to many potential customers, you might be wondering whether such exposure actually results in more sales. Many business owners convince themselves that advertising on social media is too much hassle, too expensive, or simply ineffective. This is a mistake you don’t want to make.

The fact is that Facebook ads for ecommerce sites work. Many online businesses are thriving as a result of taking a chance on Facebook. Bestowed, a company that offers healthy food delivery services, demonstrated a 500 percent return on ad investment and increased overall traffic to their website by 30 percent. It has been estimated that up to 70 percent of the current customer base on some ecommerce sites found the business through an ad on Facebook. Some have seen as much as a 700 percent return on what they spent on their ads. One of the main reasons for this is that Facebook allows you to target your ads directly towards your preferred audience.

Targeted Advertising: Your Look Into the Future

It goes without saying that Facebook users share a lot with the world. Facebook collects that data and makes it available to those who want to do targeted advertising. For example, if you sell jewelry, you can find and target Facebook users who have posted about, joined groups, or otherwise demonstrated an interest in the type of jewelry you have to offer. This can be extremely beneficial. Why waste time and money advertising your beautiful earrings to people who don’t even have pierced ears?

You can customize your targeted Facebook ads for ecommerce in whatever way you’d like. Along with targeting your audience based on interests, you can narrow them down by:

  • Age, gender, language, and ethnicity
  • Location
  • Relationship status
  • Career and education level
  • Political alignment
  • Connections

These options allow you to create a custom target audience that are almost guaranteed to have an interest in what your business has to offer. If you run an ecommerce site that sells modern wedding décor, you might want to choose a target audience of younger, more liberal people who are currently single or engaged.

If your business already has a strong following, you can use your mailing list to create a custom audience. This will allow you to expose new items, services, or special deals to your most cherished customers. For more information about who you can target on Facebook and how, check out this page.

Experts believe that Facebook ads for ecommerce will continue to become more targeted, not to mention more effective, in the future. This benefits consumers as well as business owners. Most of us don’t like feeling bombarded by ads, but if they’re letting us know about something we might take interest in, we regard them as useful.

Knowing Your Goals: Making the Most of Targeted Facebook Ads for Ecommerce

Before you begin figuring out who to target, you should think about the specific goals you have for your ad campaign. Advertising is about a lot more than simply hoping for sales. That’s the end goal, of course, but it’s possible that only one aspect of your business’s online world needs work. Perhaps you’d like to gather more likes for your Facebook page or more signups for your mailing list. Facebook has targeted ad options for each of these goals.

When you choose a goal for your ad, Facebook will then optimize it to help reach an audience that is most likely to complete your desired action. The following list is an example of some of the goals you can choose for your ads:

  • Page likes
  • Clicks to website
  • Page post engagement
  • App installs and engagement
  • Offer claims
  • Local awareness
  • Video views
  • Website conversions
  • Event responses
  • Dynamic product ads

According to data from Kissmetrics, Facebook ads for ecommerce that have a goal of low-friction conversion tend to perform best. An example of a low-friction conversion would be getting a user to like a page or sign up for a mailing list. The reason for this should be obvious: People are much more likely to take action if it doesn’t require an investment of time or money. You won’t get an immediate return if potential customers like your page, but you will get their attention over a longer span of time. This gives you the chance to increase their interest in your products or services.

Choosing Your Ad Type: The Many Options on Facebook

One of the hardest parts of utilizing Facebook ads for ecommerce is choosing what type of ad campaign you’d like to run. The many options can be overwhelming to business owners, but they also allow for a fully customizable experience. The options listed here are not all that’s available, however, they are likely to be the most beneficial to your business because they work with both desktop and mobile feeds.

  1. Video Ads

Video Facebook ads for ecommerce show up on the feed and remain muted until an interested Facebook user clicks on them. This helps the ads remain unobtrusive yet available to those who are enticed by the content. As evidenced by the massive success of YouTube, Vine, and other media websites, people love to watch videos, so choosing a thoughtful or funny video advertisement for your business is often a very rewarding option.

  1. Page Post Ads

Page posts are a simple way to use Facebook ads for ecommerce. They resemble a status update, but usually contain a photograph and link to your chosen product or service page.

  1. Multi-product Carousel Ads

If you run an ecommerce site with a lot of great products for sale, you will most benefit from carousel ads, which feature more than one product in one post. You can use these to show off a number of similar products or show a wide range of what your business has to offer.

Your Ad’s Location: Where on Facebook Will it Appear?

Once you determine the types of ads you’d like to utilize, you need to decide where on Facebook they will show up. You can choose to advertise to mobile users, desktop users, or both. Your ad can show up in the sidebar, the newsfeed, or in an app. Although some choices have been shown to produce better results than others, you should make the decision based on your individual needs and goals for your business. This graphic demonstrates how mobile and desktop ads appear in the sidebar and newsfeed:

facebook ads locations

  1. Newsfeed Ads

Statistics have shown that Facebook ads for ecommerce that appear in the newsfeed, which are available to both mobile and desktop users, tend to generate higher clickthrough rates. Data from Qwaya demonstrated a 300 percent improvement in clickthrough rates on mobile newsfeed ads.

  1. Sidebar Ads

Sidebar ads are not as engaging as newsfeed ads, mostly because people tend to assume what’s in the sidebar is an advertisement, whereas they see newsfeed ads as a post. However, if you don’t have a Facebook but would still like to utilize it for advertising, sidebar ads are your only option. You should be aware that the options for targeting your sidebar ads are much more limited.

  1. App Ads

Mobile apps are also a great place to put your ads. There’s an app for just about everything these days, and many of them are found on Facebook. This graphic shows some of the choices for the way your app Facebook ads for ecommerce might appear. You can choose a full-page ad, a half page, or a small advertisement on top:

facebook app ads

All About Pricing: You Set the Budget for Your Facebook Ads for Ecommerce

Since Facebook has so many varied options for ads, the price you’ll pay will be completely dependent on what you choose. However, there is an option available within your decided budget. For every ad you create, you’ll be able to choose how much you want to spend on targeting your audience, the cost per click, or the cost per 1000 impressions. You can set a max bid to ensure you stay within budget.

Reports by Statista show that the average ecommerce business owner pays about 49 cents a click, but you can begin experimenting with Facebook ads for as little as a dollar a day. This will allow you some wiggle room within your budget to try out various options and see what works best before funnelling the bulk of your advertising budget into one type of ad.

Creating Facebook Ads for Ecommerce: What You Need to Know

Each ad that you place on Facebook is divided into three subgroups: ad sets, ads, and campaigns. Ad sets contain multiple ads. Within every group, you can customize various parts of your overall campaign. For example, changing the goal of your campaign will affect all of the ads in that campaign. If you change the goal of your ad set, it will only affect the ads in that group. The following graphic demonstrates the different aspects you can control within each group.

At this point, you are probably wondering how you create the actual ad. Most users do this using the Ad Manager. You can also do it directly from your Facebook page or using the Power Editor.

  1. Ad Manager

This is the easiest way to create Facebook ads for ecommerce. It features a straightforward process that’s great for beginners.

  1. Facebook Page

If you create ads directly from your page, you’ll be able to boost your posts to help them reach more users and encourage more likes from your potential customers.

  1. The Power Editor

Although the complexities of the Power Editor can sometimes scare of rookie users, many experts consider it the best bet for those who want to get serious about their Facebook advertising. The Power Editor offers more advanced features and can better help you with managing your ads in the future, especially as your business grows. You can run split test ads, ads for different audiences, and ads for a variety of budgets. You’ll also get first access to the newest features for ad placement and management.

When deciding on the actual content for your ads, consider matching their appearance to your landing page. Statistics show that conversions were increased by 115 percent when a click through brought the user to a page that closely matched what they saw in the ad.

Facebook Ads for Ecommerce: You Should Consider the Following

Now that you know the basics of how the Facebook ad program works, it’s crucial to examine the guidelines. All ads posted on Facebook must first be approved. Facebook is generally good about approving ads quickly. It usually happens within a few minutes to a few hours, so if you find that it’s taking much longer than that, you might want to consider whether your ad broke any of the rules.

To get your Facebook ads for ecommerce approved, they must not:

  • Contain more than 20 percent text
  • Promote weapons, ammunition, recreational drugs, tobacco, or paraphernalia
  • Feature nudity, sexual activity, or promote adult products or services
  • Include imagery or text that depicts excessively violent, graphic, or disturbing situations
  • Make false claims or promote deceptive ideas in any way

These are just a few of Facebook’s rules and regulations for ads. For a complete overview of what’s required for approval on ads, check out Facebook’s guidelines. If you need help determining whether your ad contains more than 20 percent text, Facebook has a grid tool that you can utilize.

Monitoring Your Progress: How to Keep Track of Your Ads and Their Results

Once you choose the details for your ad, get it approved, and let it run, the next important step is to carefully monitor your results. Facebook ads for ecommerce won’t do you any good if you follow up on their progress. Luckily, Facebook makes this easy by providing an ad managing page complete with detailed performance reports. These reports are available for all current and past ads of all varieties. You can also edit, pause, or delete your ads from this page.

When examining the progress of your ads, be sure to look at:

Click-through Rates: This is the number of users who actually click on your ad versus simply looking at it and moving on. If this figure is high, it means your ads are working for you! If they are low, you might want to consider reworking your content to make it more engaging to your target audience or choosing a new location or style for your ads.

Reach: This figure shows how many users have seen your Facebook ads for ecommerce, but it doesn’t speak of how engaging the ad actually was.

Frequency: This shows the average amount of times that your ad was displayed for users.

Conversions: This is another very important number. It shows how many users completed your desired action. In most cases, the desired action is simply a click through. However, it may also be liking your page or something else.

Cost: Of course, what you’re spending on your ads can’t be ignored. It’s important to devote some of your budget to advertising. If you’re spending more than you’re getting back, you’ll need to rethink your campaign.

This graphic shows an example of what your ad report might look like:

facebook ads report

Your New Favorite Way to Advertise: Begin Facebook Ads for Ecommerce Today

Don’t miss out on your chance to make the most of advertising opportunities with Facebook because you’re not sure how to take care of all this yourself. The team at Coalition Technologies has the experience and knowledge required to take your social media campaign to the top. We understand that you may be on a limited budget, which is why we offer services you can afford. Let us know your budget and we will explain how we can maximize it to create the greatest return on your investment.

If you have any questions about our Facebook ad campaigns, social media marketing plans, or you’d like to receive a quote for services, please contact us today. Our clients experience remarkable growth both in ranking and ecommerce revenue thanks to the hard work of our experts. We can’t wait to help improve your business!

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