In our Free Strategy Sessions, we speak to a lot of eCommerce store owners who are either running ads themselves, or have hired someone to help them out. And one of the biggest issues we see are poorly set up ad accounts.
Sometimes it’s a lack of knowledge, sometimes it’s an agency or freelancer taking you for a ride. So I’m going to walk you through the basics of what your ad account should look like.
Cold Audience Campaign.
Firstly, you need to reach new people. This is what Facebook excels at… just ask anyone who’s had their ad account shut down. This is where you really notice how powerful Facebook is at introducing your brand to new people.
At this level, you want an ABSOLUTE minimum of 3 audiences, 4 is preferred – more is how you scale. We like to start with:
- One broad audience (so no targeting, maybe just age, location and gender, but keep it broad)
- One lookalike audience (usually purchase, but engagement or web traffic if you’re still new)
- Two interest based audiences, narrowed by engaged shoppers.
What this does, is allow you to get a really good insight into the types of people who might be interested in buying your product. For instance if one of your interests does really well, you can craft more audiences that are similar. If the lookalike does well, you can make more lookalikes.
Each audience must have at least 3-4 ads. You can check out our testing blog post – The ultimate guide to testing with Facebook Ads – for more insight into how to come up with the ads and how to test and what to do once those ads have some data.
Warm Audience Campaign.
Once you’ve started reaching new people, you need to nurture your warm audiences. Depending on the scale of your business and how long you’ve been running there are a few ways to do this. But the simple idea is that people don’t buy the first time they see an ad, so how can you keep reminding them you exist in a non-spammy way.
We like to run the following, but you can combine and edit these as you see fit.
- Recently engaged – these are people who’ve seen your ad but maybe haven’t been to your site yet. They likely need more information or more reasons to buy from you.
- Web traffic – these people are more interested, but haven’t committed to a purchase yet. Reviews and ‘how to’s’ tend to do really well here
- Past purchases – depending on your buying cycle this is a great one. Work out how often someone likely buys from you and set up ads to remind them to come back. Whether it’s a new drop of stock, or they are likely to be running out of your product, it’s a great way to get those repeat purchases.
Retargeting Campaign.
Finally, we have your retargeting. This is set up using your catalogue sales goal on Facebook and is simply there to get those who have added to cart recently to come back and complete their purchase. Promoting any free shipping, different payment methods, highlighting excellent reviews, or even ‘how to wear’ or ‘how to use’ content can work brilliantly.
Ads
Within each of these campaigns, you’ll want a minimum of 2-4 ads. This ensures you are showcasing a wide range of options and you always have data to work off. Make sure your ad is relevant to the part of the buying cycle that customer may be in. For instance don’t send an ad to your past customers speaking like they’ve never purchased from you before, but also don’t be creepy about it.
This method ensures you are covering all of your bases, are filling the top of the funnel, and nurturing prospective customers along the way.
Need a hand setting this up, or not sure if what you’ve got set up is correct? Book in a Free Strategy Session and we can run through it with you!
