Best Ways To Optimize Your Facebook Ads For Ecommerce

As you scroll through Facebook, you’ve likely seen many ads there for products that are new to you from brands that are unfamiliar. With no brand recognition, what about such ads made you stop and take a closer look? What about such ads really stood out to you?

Today’s marketplace is vast with new products released and promoted every day on Facebook. To be successful today in business, you have to try and form an emotional connection with your audience. How do you forge such a relationship through ads on a thirdy-party site? What can you do to use Facebook ads to drive targeted traffic to your site?

There are many ways to optimize Facebook ads to give your business a boost.

7 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Ads for Ecommerce Results

1. Use Amazing Images in Your Ads

A picture is worth a thousand words. Truly. Using eye-catching, high-quality images in your ads, is one of the most important things you can do. Your images should meet the following criteria:

• Know your dimensions and use photographs that are the correct size for your ad.
• Any people in your images should appear to be happy and excited about your products or services.
• Images should be bright, colorful, and have enough visual appeal to make the viewer stop what they’re doing to take a closer look.
• Pictures of women usually perform better than photos of men.
• Stay away from Facebook common colors. Images with that particular shade of blue and white will blend in with Facebook itself and go unnoticed.

Remember while Facebook does allow you to include text, you don’t get much space for such. Being able to include impact statements or powerful messages on your images will help a lot.

The important thing is to select images that establish an emotional connection with your reader. Think about your target audience. If you’re marketing to men, featuring a happy, attractive woman in your image will have some potential male consumers stopping. If you’re a novelist writing romance books, featuring an image of an attractive man will have many women stopping.

Since Facebook has us all accustomed to real photos of family and friends in our feeds each day, stock images don’t tend to get as much traffic.

2. Utilize Interests to Target Your Intended Audience

Do you use Facebook to shop normally? Most people don’t and it’s a good idea to keep this in mind when planning your ad campaign on Facebook. For best results, you’ll want your ad in front of people with very specific interests.

The “interests” field on Facebook’s ad setup form is important here. You’ll want to be careful in selecting what you enter there, monitor it carefully, and make adjustments as needed. When you enter an interest, you’ll be given categories and pages to choose from that are relevant to the audience.

Broad interests won’t result in categories or page options that are specific enough. In selecting a more narrow interest, you’ll get category and page options that are better matched to the subject. “Organic lip balm” would be a far better choice than “lip products”, for example. If you can combine multiple narrow interests, you give your business the chance of building the right target audience for your products.

3. Facebook Pixel

If you’re using ads on Facebook, you should give Facebook pixel a try. You can use it to track conversions from Facebook ads and optimize your ads based on the data received. It helps build an audience for future ads.

Create a pixel by logging into Facebook and going to “Events Manager” and then the “Pixels” tab. Select “Create a pixel” and then add the code to your website.

Facebook pixel is a great way to reach new customers on not just Facebook but Instagram and their Audience Network as well. It helps you craft your ads for people who have more reason to buy once they’ve arrived at your website. It also provides valuable metrics about any revenue or sales that resulted from your ads.

4. Focus on Cart Abandoment

If you stay on top of your results, you know there’s a portion of your audience who have not only visited your website, they’ve gone so far as to place products in their cart — only to abandon it without completing the transaction. Yes, it’s common. Why should time be spent addressing this?

Nearly 70% of all visitors who go so far as to add items to their cart will abandon it. That’s a large number of almostsales. These visitors are giving a lot of consideration to your products or services. What would it take to get them to complete the final step and completing the purchase?

Create an ad prompting them to action. You might ask if they’ve forgotten to purchase the items. You could also offer a discount or some other incentive. Including images of the products is a great idea as are links to the products so they can finish the transaction. When to do this? The sooner the better. If you wait several weeks to remind someone of their incomplete order, you’ll need to offer bigger incentives.

5. Custom Audiences for Repeat Visitors

As many as 98% of all visitors aren’t likely to buy anything on their first visit. While you didn’t get the sale yet, at least they are interested in your product. And if you can identify those who have at least been to your product page, you can create a custom audience just for them.

Why do that? To try and convert your visitors into paying customers.

You’ll want to exclude your existing customers and target only those who have viewed your product but didn’t buy. From there, you create a custom ad just for them. The goal is getting them to take the final step from interested to sold. You might offer a discount for a limited time or some other incentive. Be creative. Think about who this potential consumer might be and consider what would make you decide to buy the particular product if you were on the fence about it.

6. Run a Contest

Contests are often a great way to drive sales and the method works on Facebook too. Who doesn’t love winning something?

Knowing the Facebook rules for Contests is a great place to start.

What else you want to keep in mind? Giving your prize a dollar amount will give more value in the audience’s mind. Use an enticing image because even if they don’t win, the image alone may entice them to come and shop anyway. Depending on how you set up the promotion, they may be encouraged to spend more money on purchases or invite friends to look at the offer.

If you don’t have a physical location, you can still hold an effective online contest. It can often be more convenient with the prize being sent electronically or mailed to the winner so they don’t have to go anywhere to claim their prize.

7. Create a Special Offer

Another great way to boost your conversion rate using Facebook is through Facebook Offers. These promotions aren’t free but they are an effective way to offer limited-time deals or discounts to your customers.

The promotion requires that the customer go to your ecommerce site to redeem the offer. If they visit your website, there’s a better chance of them buying your products.

The offer can also be run directly from your page’s publisher where you customarily see status updates. Simply click on “Offer, Event+” next to where you’d post text or photos and videos. A dialogue box will open to give you options and you select “facebook offer”. A preview of the offer is on the left side with the options on the right. Use an intriguing headline, a good photograph, and beginning and ending dates.

If there are any terms or conditions on your offer, be sure to include them and double check this before you finish. When everything is as it should be, click “Create Offer.” If you’re wondering if you can target an audience, yes, you can. You must choose to promote the offer before you are given options to select a target audience.

In Summary

Craft ads that will appeal to the unique audience you hope to attract. By using these tips, you can boost your sales and conversion rate and drive more traffic to your ecommerce site. It’s important to be patient and flexible. Measure the results of your ads on Facebook carefully and make adjustments as you see patterns or trends. Most really great marketing campaigns are works-in-progress as opposed to final, static entities.

Always be on the lookout for new ways to boost your sales. Use the tactics that boost your sales most and plan your marketing strategies on Facebook around them.