As an eCommerce business owner, you’re probably great at selling online, but you may not know a lot about Facebook ads. Plus, you’re usually hard at work, running your business (or in some cases, businesses). You don’t have time to learn the ins and outs of Facebook ad campaigns.
Managing Facebook Ad Campaigns
Like most eCommerce business owners who are working with an agency to run digital advertising, you're probably eager to get your campaigns up and running. But there are a few things you need to do first. By the way, these things will also help your agency, if you go down that road.
Discuss Your Products and the Types of eCommerce Campaigns You Want to Run
More likely than not, your store carries several products, if not full product lines.
You’ll want to sit down with your agency and discuss which of your products are most popular. Also tell them which ones might make good “introduction” products for your company, (those can help build a loyal customer base as you continue to upsell or cross-sell your products). Finally, discuss which are the easiest to promote with coupons or special deals.
Identify Your Company’s Target Audience
Once you know which product you’re promoting, it’s time for you and your agency to figure out who you’re promoting it to. You should know some of this from your own advertising efforts, plus the types of products you’re selling.
You can talk with your agency about:
Who typically buys this product?
Who do you intend to serve with this product?
How does this product benefit the user?
This last question is especially important in targeting your audience, as well as in creating the images and copy for your ads. Once you know what the short and long-term benefits of your products are, your agency can do a better job of targeting the right audience and creating ads.
Target Your Company’s Audience in Facebook Ads Manager
For this blog post, I randomly chose a company that sells plus-size women’s clothing.
Your agency will need to customize any campaign to your audience and product type. We can give you a basic framework to follow here, but there is so much variation in eCommerce businesses, we can't create the "perfect template" for every situation.
For my plus-size women's clothing business, I started with the term "plus sizes" and used the suggestions feature to find similar interests to go along with this demographic. There are a lot of targeting opportunities in this particular niche.
You and your agency should discuss potential competitors, as well as similar interests that you can target for your product line.
Create Your Ads
You’ll want your agency to run 2 separate campaigns:
1 for prospecting of new potential customers.
1 for retargeting current customers and potential customers who have shown interest.
You should provide your agency with images of your products to use for your ads. I have chosen random images of plus-size models/clothing here for the purposes of this post.
Prospecting Campaign
This campaign’s sole purpose is to expose new audiences to your products and brand. The targeting audience we've discussed above is designed for a campaign like this. I chose “Reach” as my campaign goal. This option will let your agency deliver your ad to the maximum number of people for the minimum budget.
Your agency will use the Send Message button to create a Messenger ad campaign and drive potential customers to a Messenger sequence. This sequence will gather information and put these customers into the correct segment or “bucket” so you can continue to send promotions to them in Messenger. Your agency can also collect their email addresses so you can mail them directly.
For our example, let's say this is a $5.00 a day campaign. Its sole purpose is to generate interest and get new potential customers to click through to your website, so your agency can build a remarketing audience using the Facebook pixel.
( If you’re interested you can find out more about setting up a Facebook pixel here. Depending on the eCommerce platform you use, there may be additional instructions, which your agency will find in the platform’s help documents.)
Your ads for the prospecting campaign should show potential customers what your company offers, and the benefits of your products.
This is what I created for my fictional plus-size clothing company. You and your agency can use the basic framework here, but you'll need to use your company’s product images, etc.
I would use a single image ad for this campaign. Again, you’ll want your agency to test different images, ad types, and copy to see what resonates best with your target audience.
I'd offer a free fitting consultation for this ad, as a way to get potential clients to sign up for an email list. Your agency can segment potential customers into buckets, based on their responses to your survey. Again, you and your agency will have to discuss how to set this up, based on your product offering, niche, and target audience.
I would set my sequence up to capture a potential customer's email address using a Quick Reply as part of the sequence. You can have your agency export this list to your CRM or ESP.
Other ideas for your lead magnet include a digital download, a free trial of a product or service, a coupon for a discount, or a free class. You and your agency will want to choose one for your campaign based on your company’s niche and product offering.
Either way, the point of this campaign is to get people to engage with your products and brand, so you and your agency can build your audience base.
Remarketing Campaign
The easy place to start with a remarketing campaign is to have your agency upload your current email list to Facebook and create a custom audience. If you haven’t already done this, make sure this is your first step.
These customers are familiar with your company and your products. Ads that work well here include sales that get customers to buy new items or upsells to current products. What you promote will depend on your product line and how you promote to your current customers via email or Facebook ads.
Next, your agency can create a new remarketing audience based off of the information collected by the Facebook pixel they set up for the prospecting campaign. This audience will be created of people who have clicked on your prospecting ads, which means they’ve shown interest in your company’s products.
These are the ads where you want to sell your company’s products, not just make people aware of them. This is where you’ll offer the discount on certain items or a coupon code for 15% off a new customer’s first order.
For this ad, I'd chose a carousel-style ad, so it shows off numerous products in one place. Slideshow ads are also good for this type of campaign.
The Catalog Sales option in the Conversions section of the objectives works well for this type of campaign, as it’s designed for eCommerce campaigns and can hook in easily with the Facebook Shop on your company’s Facebook page. You must have a catalog set up for this objective to work.
I don't think I'd use a Facebook Messenger sequence for this ad. Once your audience is familiar with your company and products, you can have your agency show ads that take customers directly to a product page.
Your agency can also use the sequence above to take a prospective customer to specific product lines or product types. For instance, they could build a carousel ad like the one above, selling sweaters, and have a sequence that asks if the customer would like to see pullovers, cardigans, v-necks, sweater sets, etc.
A Note on Naming Your Ads
It is very important to have your agency name your ads consistently. This will help them keep track of your campaigns better in Facebook Ads Manager. Have your agency read this blog post for more information on campaign setup and architecture.
Have Your Agency Report on Campaign Results
Now that your agency has gotten your campaigns up and running, they should see plenty of information in their FunnelDash dashboards.
The easiest way for your agency to keep you up to date is to have them send a screenshot of their Weekly Client Report Dashboard once a week. Your agency should highlight changes in the KPIs and leave detailed notes on a notecard, which they can add to the dashboard.
Doing this will not only help your agency keep you informed of what’s going on in your campaign, it will show you that they are engaged with your campaign and are paying attention to it. (It also keeps phone calls and emails asking for progress reports to a minimum.)
Every month, you should sit down with your agency and go over your campaign with them, so they can show you how the campaign is doing and even drilling down further into the data offered in your agency’s FunnelDash dashboards, so you can make decisions about the current campaigns and plan for future ones.
Knowing how to partner with your agency to manage digital advertising is essential to creating successful campaigns and growing your business.
