To customize what people see in their feeds, social media companies frequently alter their algorithms. The likelihood that your target audience will see the organic material you post on social media is lower than it has ever been for businesses. Paying to play is becoming a more and more important practice.
Therefore, you should think about Facebook Ads if you want to utilize Facebook to increase your e-commerce sales. That entails paying for advertisements. However, I don’t want to spend money on advertisements that won’t result in sales. You must not, either, I bet.
Facebook ads are useful for many things than just driving relevant visitors to a website. Facebook ads may be used by e-commerce companies at any point in the sales funnel.
I’ll share with you 20 essential, straightforward tips that you can easily implement to drive more sales.
I’m not talking about the basics. I’m talking about how to really make your ads the best that they can be.
1. Use stunning images
Always utilize high-quality photographs in your advertisements. Choose pictures that adhere to the following rules:
- The images should be vivid, colorful, and arresting.
- Images that are the same blue and white as Facebook should be avoided since they may blend in and go unnoticed by users.
- Try to include pictures of joyful individuals. If they are really shown utilizing your goods, that is much better.
- Photographs of women typically perform better than pictures of males.
- Make sure the image you pick is the appropriate size for the type of advertisement you have chosen.
2. Get Facebook Pixel
Install Facebook Pixel so you can see Facebook customer actions on your website.
Types of events you can choose to track are:
3. Use The Interests Field to Target Your Die-hard Fans
People generally use Facebook to socialize, not to shop. This means it’s important to put your product in front of a laser-targeted audience for it to get results. If you target the wrong audience, who are only mildly receptive to your product, it’s going to be much harder to consistently drive conversions. If you’re selling a niche product, experimenting with the “Interests” field is crucial.
After typing in an interest, you’ll see categories and pages that are relevant to this audience. If you pick too broad of an interest, the categories and pages that show up won’t tie closely to your target audience. Try to select a more narrow interest, until you find the results are all closely related to your interest.
For example, “women’s running magazine” is much more specific, and will have more consistent results than just “running.”
4. Create a custom audience for repeat customers
Very few people will purchase your product the first time they arrive on your site. Data suggests that 98% of visitors to your website won’t purchase during their first visit. Even if you create a highly persuasive Facebook Ad and target the perfect audience, there can be a million reasons why people won’t purchase on their first visit.
That’s OK.
As long as someone has checked out your product page, you know they have some interest in your product. Creating a custom audience just for people who have viewed your product page can help turn these visitors into buyers.
5. Target Cart Abandonment
To take remarketing one step further, you can target people who not only visited your product page but who also added the product to their cart, only to abandon checkout before completion.
Why bother targeting cart abandonment?
Almost 70% of visitors who get as far as adding an item to their cart will abandon it before checking out. That’s a huge pool of potential sales! You already know these people were considering buying your product. People who abandon their carts may only need a small nudge to complete their orders. You can easily create an ad asking them if they’ve forgotten to buy your item. Make sure you design the ad to include a picture of the item and link it to the product so they can finish the order easily.
You’ll notice in this Red Balloon ad that they take it even further by including a discount offer.
6. Upsell to Your Recent Customers
Many businesses segment their emails to try and sell additional products to their existing customers. But did you know that the same principle works for Facebook advertising? Upselling is an easy way to increase your sales by targeting people you already know have an interest in your product. Someone who has purchased from you already is more likely to trust you and your brand. This is an easier sell than a new customer.
After all, 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers. You can boost sales and get a great return on your ad spend by upselling ads.
7. Build Referral Programs
Now you know Facebook Ads can encourage customers to make repeat purchases. They can also encourage customers to convert their friends into customers.
How?
You use Facebook Ads to promote referral programs. People are more likely to pay attention to an attractive pop-up in their Facebook news feed than an email about a referral program. You can offer your existing customers a discount in exchange for a referral or a video review of your product.
8. Promote Your Content
When done well, content marketing and Facebook Ads can be a powerful combination.
You should create content for every stage in your sales funnel. Then you can promote it to the right audiences (based on where they’re at in your funnel) using Facebook Ads.
Whether you base your strategy on a traditional sales funnel or a conversion funnel, you should have different types of content targeting people at each stage.
9. Create and Target a Lookalike Audience
If you already have a customer list of at least several hundred people you can build a lookalike audience on Facebook. This is a group of people who resemble your current or previous buyers. The larger and more detailed your customer list is, the more accurate your lookalike audience will be. If you have repeat customers and brand advocates already, make sure you include them in the list you use to build your lookalike audience.
Why is a lookalike audience valuable?
This audience is a group of people Facebook believes are similar to your customers. This means that the chances are good that they’ll also like your brand and product. You can get a lot of great leads from a lookalike audience.
10. Host a Contest
Contests on Facebook are a great way to drive sales. People love winning stuff. Whizzbangs is a great example of this. Within minutes its contest had 50+ likes!
Notice that instead of saying “Get a free lunch,” they tell you they are giving away “$30 in Free Food.” Putting a dollar amount on the prize can make it seem more valuable. It may also encourage customers to spend more when they come in. Since it’s more than just a free lunch for one, the chances are good that they’ll bring a friend or two with them. If you see this and you don’t win the contest, the image may have still been enough to make you crave a burger.
And if you live near Whizzbangs, you’ll probably go there to get it. What if you’re purely e-commerce, without a physical location?
Contests can still work great.
After all, it’s even easier and more immediate for a winner to redeem their prize when they don’t have to go somewhere to pick it up. Just make sure that you follow Facebook’s rules for contests or you could get banned from future opportunities.