The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging Facebook Ads for eCommerce Plus 20 Expert Tips for GUARANTEED Leads and Conversions
Facebook has been on top of the social media game since it became popular worldwide in 2009. Now, the social media platform remains at the top of the most used sites/apps in the online space.
In 2012, FB surpassed the 1 Billion user mark and expanded its online territory further by purchasing Instagram and integrating it into its system. Today, Facebook has over 2.7 Billion active users and is the gold mine of leads for any level of business.
Content creators to freelance workers, and entrepreneurs to corporations, leverage the social media platform to generate leads and convert them. Even regular users have access to Facebook’s live selling tool in buy and sell groups.
Also, you can now sell directly as an online store via a Facebook Page.
The data shared on Facebook measures a gigantic 2.5 billion pieces of content, with more than 500 terabytes exchanged daily. The social media magnate pulls 2.7 billion Like reactions, 300 million pictures every day, and about 105 terabytes of data per half hour.
While the massive user activity alone on Facebook attracts entities selling or offering commodities, luxury products, and services, the platform’s business tools are a powerful essential for marketing.
When using Facebook for business, you have the opportunity to track down who you are engaging to a personal level. The platform empowers marketers with its stalwart ads system and analytics.
Leverage the Power of Facebook Ads & Analytics.
Running an ad on FB is simple but powerful.
All you need to do is post a picture or video that contains your offering, and click Boost Post. You can also promote your page the same way or advertise your website directly to your audience.
Facebook Makes Advertising Convenient.
You can choose the audience you want to reach easily. When you run an ad on FB, you can pick how many people you like to get and who they are.
Finding your audience also is quite simple on the platform. With Facebook, you will be able to see who you are engaged in your posts – who among the billions of users like and share your content.
You can track the behaviour of your ad or post and see when it peaked and lost its interest value. You can see how many likes, hearts, smileys, angry faces, laughs, wows, or sad reactions your post garnered and when they were given.
Analytics will show you where your likers and sharers are from, what their age range is, their interests, and in which digital niche FB space they hang out. From these data and other vital information, you will be able to follow how your target audience’s purchasing power scales, and when your leads are most susceptible to convert.
The metrics that you can get from Facebook insights are vital to your marketing success in that they can positively inform your retargeting, value proposition, upselling, and how you can improve your social proof. If you have a business at any scale, the social media platform’s ads tool is something that you shouldn’t neglect.
Also, you can tap one of the essential breakthrough tools on Facebook – Facebook Dynamic Ads.
Facebook Dynamic Ads
This tool uses machine learning to scale your ads. The device is useful for businesses that have a large volume of products.
The ads automatically advertise relevant offerings to users depending on their interests, intents and behaviours. The tool removes the burden of having to create single ads for each item you are selling.
You no longer have to set up 1,000 ad sets manually, but instead, you can prepare a catalogue with all of your products and services and then create one campaign that drives conversions on your website or app.
The ad tool uses personalised, user-level suggestions for everything in your menu.
Every time a shopper shows interest in an item from your catalogue, Facebook will dynamically produce an ad for that user and deliver it automatically on mobile, tablet and desktop.
Facebook Dynamic ads serve third parties like BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce on Facebook, and Shopify.
If you maximise Facebook and its advertising and analytics tools, you open your business to exponential potential to convert endlessly. While using Facebook ads can be simple, there are tactics that you can use to go above and beyond what the expected results.
Here are TWENTY Expert Tips to Maximise Facebook Ads for eCommerce.
- Create a sound marketing strategy.
- Choose the right audience.
- Make your ad content about your audience.
- Gather positive social proof the smart way.
- Research Facebook Groups.
- Benchmark on your best competitors.
- Implement a PR campaign.
- Run A/B tests for your FB content.
- Apply CRO to your website.
- Apply CRO to your Facebook page.
- Use SEO principles on your FB posts.
- Leverage Instagram.
- Expand to other social media platforms.
- Provide quality products and services.
- Advertise with videos.
- Leverage social media influencers.
- Supplement online ads with physical ads.
- Create advocacy campaigns.
- Become a meme.
- Have a marketing team.
NO.1 Create a sound marketing strategy.
When you reach someone via your ads, what’s the next step?
See to it that you have thought the whole process of your marketing campaign before running an ad on Facebook. The platform’s advertising tools are powerful and will undoubtedly bring you leads, and you will lose your potential to convert them if you don’t have a page for them to land.
Make sure that you plan your entire lead to customer to loyal user funnel. You should know what you want to do to your potential customers when they reach you, how you can influence them to buy, and how you can leverage what they know about your product post user experience.
NO.2 Choose the right audience.
Almost everyone is on Facebook, and you will most likely find an audience on the platform, and it is hard to find your target with the platform’s tools.
There are groups for games, buy and sell or trading, religious niches, schools or classes, hobbies, sports, and any category imaginable. You can test your content with these interest groups and see which gives you a positive response.
You’ll find all generations on FB, from boomers to millennials and others. While most Gen Z do not actively post on the platform, preferring other social media, they still use FB for other purposes, like for game logins and purchasing.
Check the analytics and insights for your posts and find out the demographic of your reactors, and advertise to them.
NO.3 Make your ad content about your audience.
Do not advertise your brand, especially if you are a startup. Advertise the value of your offering.
People do not care who you are if you are not a corporate magnate. People only care about what they can get from you.
Show in your ads how your product or service can eliminate a person’s pain points, and what positive results can someone have from your offering.
NO.4 Gather positive social proof the smart way.
When you convert leads, please encourage them to post positive feedback on your products by incentivising them. Run contests and give away prizes for people sharing testimonials, or feature reactors on your published media.
People on Facebook like getting reactions, winning prizes, feeling important, and being shared. Leverage this vanity.
Run a campaign asking your make-up line’s users to take a clip of themselves talking about your brand and how it helps them feel like a strong woman, offering to feature them on a supercut women empowerment video. This scheme will drive traffic to your page and site from organic shares of people included in the final cut and those who believe in the advocacy.
Ask workout junkies to post a captioned picture of themselves with your energy drink for a contest, where the winner gets a one-year supply of the product. Here’s a cheat: choose the most influential user as the winner who will keep on advertising your product all year long.
Show your audience that people are using your product.
NO.5 Do research in Facebook Groups.
Facebook groups are dedicated to niches. The members of a group are there because of common interest.
If you are selling car accessories, you can go and test your content with people in car enthusiast groups, motor parts buy and sell groups and other related interests. If you are selling bikinis, you can go to beach-going groups, fitness groups, and fashion category groups.
While you can’t run ads directly on FB groups and many of the moderators do not allow brand promotions, you can use the members for research. Post images that you would use for ads and see which ones get the best reactions.
NO.6 Benchmark on your best competitors.
Find a brand that is similar to yours and study its ads, page content, interactions, messaging automation, and all of its elements that help influence people to patronise their offerings. Look into the things that your competition does well, and do them ten times better.
NO.7 Implement a PR campaign.
Appearing professional and streamlined on FB and your website is excellent enough to garner people’s trust in the integrity of your ads. However, you can go further by implementing a PR campaign.
Find your way to be featured on articles and other content by mainstream media companies like Forbes, Wallstreet Journal, BBC, and other networks. Getting excellent PR will make your audiences recognise you more and on a level of trust in quality that will influence more leads.
NO.8 Run A/B tests for your FB content.
Use your insights like A/B tests to see which posts you create are hitting the right target. When you post or run an ad, always check whether your target audience is the ones engaging the most.
If you are hitting the wrong target, run A/B tests on groups as stated in item NO.5 and prime your ad content.
NO.9 Apply CRO to your website.
When you run ads on Facebook, click-throughs must land on an excellent website. Use this 201-item CRO list to optimise your site. It doesn’t matter how good your ad is, if it doesn’t bring people to a professional website, they will bounce, and you will lose potential revenue.
NO.10 Apply CRO to your Facebook page.
When your Facebook ads bring your audience to your page, you must be ready to influence them to convert. Here are some elements you need to consider putting on your FB page.
- Trust-mongering elements like awards, accreditations, reviews, and verifications
- Simple to follow messaging automation
- Clear messaging on what your products are and what your brand is about
- Facebook’s in-page shopping cart
- Pain-point relief messaging on your posts
- Easy access to contact information and FAQs
- My Day posts that make people know you are always live
There are more things you can apply to make your FB page CRO-friendly. The critical principle is customer service – making things easy and secure for your leads.
NO.11 Use SEO principles on your FB posts.
Never post something less valuable than your competitor’s content. Always post or advertise something that will make you the authority for a topic or product.
Also, use the right keywords that people use to search for information that you can provide and products that you offer.
Remember that Facebook is not just a social media platform but also a search engine. Treat it like one.
NO.12 Leverage Instagram.
Facebook bought the app Instagram in 2012, and users have had integrated accounts on both platforms ever since. When you boost a post on FB, if you tick the qualifying amount and reach, your ad will automatically flow out into IG.
Strengthen your IG presence to supplement the power of your ads. If you do not micromanage IG, you might not earn enough followers to back your ads with reliability.
IG followers are semi-premium social proof. Make posts that your target audience find interesting and helpful and use hashtags that they follow.
Become a reliable aesthetic supplier in your niche.
NO.13 Expand to other social media platforms.
When you find who responds positively on your Facebook ads, you should chase them on other platforms. By appearing everywhere, your audience is, you are indoctrinating them with your offerings, making your ads all the more memorable and effective.
NO.14 Provide quality products and services.
No matter how excellent your marketing is, bringing leads to conversions, if the user experience with your product and service is lousy, you will lose all of your positive social proof, and eventually your ability to convince people to buy from you.
NO.15 Advertise with videos.
In a study on Facebook content, researchers found that videos are almost three times more likely to help users feel connected to each other. Video content is two times more likely to give audiences something worth discussing.
Leverage this by regularly using video format ads or appearing as a sponsor in entertainment videos and vlogs.
NO.16 Leverage social media influencers.
Facebook is where many social media influencers thrive. Appear in their sponsored videos or hire them for your product shoot.
People on the platform are highly into influencers. FBers, most significantly, and people in general love to compare themselves to each other and benchmark on successful people.
The way people are drawn to beautiful, rich, and influential people stem from the human instinct of finding security, comfort, and survival. Successful people are alive, comfortable, and happy – I must act like them to be the same.
Tap into this instinct by associating your products with famous people that your audience looks up to.
NO.17 Supplement online ads with physical ads.
Physical presence still trumps digital when it comes to trustworthiness. Show your FB audience that you are tangible by posting on billboards near them, appearing on magazines that they subscribe to, or paying space on public transport ads.
NO.18 Create advocacy campaigns.
As a general rule for ads, added value for humanitarian causes will always gain more interest. If you advertise products that send a portion of sales to a charity, many people will respond to it positively.
People on Facebook like being part of a cause, feeling like they are doing something important, and looking like they are taking part in a social movement. Leverage this vain but useful characteristic of FB users to get leads and conversions with your ads.
NO.19 Become a meme.
Facebook loves its memes. These viral vehicles to fame live long lives and can get you massive clout.
Increase your chance of going viral by always exploring how you can do something unexpected and explosive. Study meme culture and see how you can position your product or brand for virality.
You can increase your meme potential by advertising with meme creators or doing pattern interrupt marketing. It would also help if you continuously keep your products and your brand exciting and trendy.
Take the example of Wendys. In 2016, they started posting sarcastic and witty tweets that went viral, and until now, memes are being made out of the food giant’s roasts which serve as free ads.
Becoming a meme on Facebook is one of the best advertisements that you will have. Whether you explode on Youtube, TikTok, or Reddit, you will be shared on FB.
NO.20 Have a marketing team.
If you are an entrepreneur who is more specialised on a product rather than marketing, it would greatly help if you had expert assistance for your eCommerce. Ideally, there should be a person or a team focused on your company’s marketing so that you can keep the quality of all facets of your business.
Whether by hiring a third party marketing service or building an in-house team, you have to remove the nitty-gritty work of eCommerce from your hands as a business leader. You have to focus on the big picture of your company and leave the details to more specialised marketers.
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