Best practices: Finding New Customers to your E-commerce with Facebook Ads
0 likes63 views
The document provides a comprehensive guide for e-commerce advertisers on optimal prospecting strategies using Facebook ads. It covers audience strategies, campaign structure, bidding and budgeting, and ad creative strategies, emphasizing the creation of custom and lookalike audiences, campaign organization, and effective ad creatives. Key recommendations include maintaining proper audience sizes, testing multiple ad formats, and using Facebook's tools to optimize campaign performance.
Best practices: Finding New Customers to your E-commerce with Facebook Ads
- 1. OPTIMAL PROSPECTING FOR E-COMMERCE ADVERTISERS BY ZALSTER.COM v 1.0 - released 11/7-2017
- 2. CONTENT: 1. AUDIENCE STRATEGIES 2. CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE 3. BIDDING & BUDGETING 4. AD CREATIVE STRATEGIES Before you start, make sure you have: 1. A Facebook Business Manager 2. Implemented the Facebook Pixel
- 4. CREATING THE FOUNDATION: CUSTOM AUDIENCES There are a lot of ways to find new customers through Facebook Ads. The quality on the various strategies depends on the size of your customer database and how your Facebook Pixel populations looks. Our goal is to create a number of Custom Audiences that we can use in order to create a number of potent Lookalike Audiences - which are great for prospecting. If you need help with this, see this help article.
- 5. CREATING THE FOUNDATION: CUSTOM AUDIENCES A Custom Audience can be created based on: Customer data Example: A list of all emails in your system. Website traffic Example: Everyone who’ve visited your website. App activity Example: People using your app (if you have one). Engagement on Facebook and Instagram Example: People engaging in your posts and Ads. If you need help with this, see this help article.
- 6. CREATING THE FOUNDATION: CUSTOM AUDIENCES Let’s start with setting up a Custom Audience based on the data you already have. If you have a list of your customers, export it from your E-commerce system along with as much information as possible, most importantly the email address. If you’re also able to add LTV per customer, which is a qualitative metric - that’s great. Then, upload this list as a Custom Audience in the section called Audiences in the Business Manager. If you need help with this, see this help article.
- 7. CREATING THE FOUNDATION: CUSTOM AUDIENCES If you have the Facebook Pixel implemented, along with a couple of events (i.e. View Content, Add To Basket, Initiate Checkout, Purchase) - you’ll be able to create very powerful Custom Audiences. The reason to why you want to create Custom Audiences based on the events on your website is because they can help you use relevant user data in order to create Lookalike Audiences. Example will follow on the next page. If you need help with this, see this help article.
- 8. CREATING THE FOUNDATION: CUSTOM AUDIENCES Now we want to create a qualitative Custom Audience based on the people who’ve made purchases. 1. Visit Audiences 2. Click Create Audience (Custom Audience) 3. Click Website Traffic 4. Set the settings as the screenshot below. If you need help with this, see this help article.
- 9. CREATING THE FOUNDATION: CUSTOM AUDIENCES Let’s create a quantitative Custom Audience, based on the people who added products to their cart. 1. Visit Audiences 2. Click Create Audience (Custom Audience) 3. Click Website Traffic 4. Set the settings as the screenshot below. With a quantitative Custom Audience, we can give Facebook much more (but less qualitative) data on what people are interest in the products in your shop. If you need help with this, see this help article.
- 10. CREATING THE FOUNDATION: CUSTOM AUDIENCES If you need help with this, see this help article. Since the reason with this Custom Audience is to utilize qualitative and quantitative data in order to find new prospects, we want to maximize the amount of data we base our audiences on. This is why we’ve set the data window to 180 days. As you see in the screenshots on the previous pages, you can also utilize more detailed parameters to filter out your more valuable customers or other user specific data. This demands that you’re sending more parameters through your Facebook Pixel. 180 DAYS
- 11. CREATING LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES If you need help with this, see this help article. Now that we’ve created some highly relevant Custom Audiences, consisting of your existing customers or visitors - we want to utilize them to find as relevant prospects as possible. This is when we want to create a Lookalike Audience. 1. Visit Audiences 2. Click Create Audience (Lookalike Audience) 3. Pick a Custom Audience that you’ve created. 4. Choose what country you want to prospect in. 5. Choose an Audience Size, varying from 1 to 10 % of the total Facebook population in the country you’ve chosen. If you want to keep it as relevant as possible, you should pick just 1 % (which is pre- defined). 6. Hit ’Create Audience’ and let it populate. Then add it to a new Ad Set.
- 12. REMINDERS ABOUT LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES If you need help with this, see this help article. A couple of reminders on how Lookalike Audiences works and what to expect from it. • The Lookalike Audience you create will only consist of people living in the country/region you choose. • A great way to find relevant prospects for a new market is utilizing a Custom Audience in a market where you have a lot of data. • In a single Ad Set, you can choose several Lookalike Audiences to be used. Although, if they’re big - it’s often a good idea to split them up in different Ad Sets. • You must have at least 100 - 1000 people in a Custom Audience to be able to create a Lookalike Audience based upon it.
- 13. If you need help with this, see this help article. Use the Exclude Audience feature to avoid overlap in Audiences you’ve created. When you’re using the Custom and Lookalike Audiences you’ve created, it’s very important that you exclude them from the various Ad Sets they’re in. RULE OF THUMB In the Ad Set above, we’re using a Lookalike Audience for Germany. Since it’s probably some overlap in the Lookalike Audiences used in different active Ad Sets, we want to exclude the one we’re using in the other Ad Set.
- 15. OPTIMAL STRUCTURE FOR PROSPECTING If you need help with this, see this help article. There are of course a lot of ways to structure your Campaigns and Ad Sets in Facebook Ads Manager. What we’ve discovered is that many advertisers have sub-optimal structures. At Zalster, we’ve done research on what the most optimal structure is - in order to maximize algorithm efficiency.
- 16. CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE FOR PROSPECTING If you need help with this, see this help article. If your goal is to maximize ROI on your prospecting, regardless what country or audience the purchases are coming from - use only one Campaign for each final optimization goal (i.e. Purchases). This is because we want to collect as much data as possible in every Campaign, in order to maximize it - but also to keep the account clean and not cluttered with a myriad of Campaigns. Example Campaign structure: • Building Awareness • Prospecting Purchasers • Prospecting Lead Registrations • Retargeting Purchasers
- 17. AD SET STRUCTURE FOR PROSPECTING If you need help with this, see this help article. A Campaign for prospecting could have the following Ad Sets and Settings. (This is just an example). Campaign name: Prospecting Purchasers Final optimization goal: Purchase • Ad Set: Lookalikes 1% - Germany Optimization Goal: Add to Cart Audience: Customer List Lookalikes - 1% - Germany • Ad Set: Lookalike 5% - United Kingdom Optimization Goal: Purchase Audience: Customer List Lookalikes - 5% - United Kingdom • Ad Set: Interest based - France, Germany, Italy Optimization Goal: Purchase Audience: Various Interest and Demographic Settings
- 18. If you need help with this, see this help article. • Double-check for audience overlaps Active Ad Sets in your Account should not have overlapping audiences. Use the Facebook tool Delivery Insights to see if you have overlapping audiences, alternatively check manually. RULE OF THUMB WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE WHEN VISITING DELIVERY INSIGHTS
- 19. If you need help with this, see this help article. • Keep proper audiences sizes in your Ad Sets To broad or too narrow audiences can greatly hurt volume, delivery and cost-efficiency. It’s difficult to set a standard recommendation on audience sizes, since the conditions are varied depending on industry, country and advertiser. But - when prospecting and having Purchases as a final goal, you should in the most cases try to keep your Ad Set audience above 20 000 people. If you have more than 15% of a market’s population in your Ad Set audience, you should probably narrow it to be a little more relevant. But again, this is very individual. • Keep DPA/Retargeting in it’s own Campaign You can find more about retargeting best practices for E- commerce in one of our other white papers. RULE OF THUMB
- 21. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BIDDING & BUDGETING Setting an optimal bid and budget in Facebook is a task you have to face every day. This is why it’s important to know what you’re doing - and why you’re doing it. The bid selection you can make in Facebook Ads are currently: Auto bid, Maximum Manual Bid or Average Manual Bid. The budget selections you can make are: Daily Budget or Lifetime Budget.
- 22. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BIDDING & BUDGETING When setting up new Ad Sets in a Campaign for prospecting, we recommend that you set a daily budget where you can afford at least 15 conversions per day - given the bid you’ve set. This is because you want Facebook’s algorithms to have sufficient volume to make a qualitative optimization upon. A low-hanging fruit: Increase the conversion window to satisfy the statistical volume that Facebook needs to do a proper optimization. See the image below for recommended settings. >15 DAILY CONVERSIONS
- 23. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BIDDING & BUDGETING If you (for various reasons) are having issues creating or maintain an Ad Set with a satisfying volume, you can use Facebook’s feature multi point conversion which allows you to let Facebook worry about what to optimize for (in terms of optimization goal). See the screenshot below for how you could set up your settings in order to optimize towards your qualitative event (Purchase) as much as possible, with link clicks or a quantitive event as fallback.
- 24. Bid your true value Facebook auction algorithms are built upon an auction model which is optimal when everyone’s bidding their true value of a conversion. Therefore, start out bidding your true value of a conversion and then change it thereafter - depending on the current situation. Split Test bids Since it’s almost impossible to know what bid is the most optimal, a good idea would be to split test a couple of bids to see what gives you the best results in terms of delivery and CPA/ROI. RULES OF THUMB FOR BIDDING
- 25. Don’t change bids too often Every time a bid is changed, re-calculations are made by Facebook algorithms. If you don’t really have to, keep it unchanged until you really have to change due to delivery or performance. Don’t bid too low You will probably get a lot less delivery if you’re lowballing the bid. Once again: experiment with split tests. Don’t bid on clicks or impressions If you’re optimizing towards clicks - you’ll get clicks (and not as qualitative clicks as if you were optimizing towards a real goal, such as purchases.) On the same topic, don’t look at CPC or CTR when evaluating your performance. Look at the actual CPA/ROI. RULES OF THUMB FOR BIDDING
- 26. Don’t change budget too often Every time your daily budget is changed, some re- calculations are made by Facebook algorithms. If you don’t really have to, keep it unchanged until you really have to change. Re-allocate daily budgets between Ad Sets Be sure that you allocate daily budgets between your Ad Sets in order to maximize the performance of your total Campaign budget. Consolidate placements Don’t split Facebook and Instagram (or Mobile and Desktop) into different Ad Sets with their own budgets. The average CPA will be lower if you keep them in the same Ad Set and let Facebook algorithms optimize. RULES OF THUMB FOR BUDGETING
- 28. By using the ad format Collection Ads, you can highlight your Product Catalogue in a more immersive way, along with a hero image to give the user a more branded experience. Try it out! COLLECTION ADS If you need help with this, see this help article.
- 29. The biggest mistake advertisers are doing is having bad Ad Creatives. And even worse, they’re not doing anything about it. The solution to this is to be really creative with the Ad Creatives. Don’t just use plain product images - use images where the products are in a context. Or use image overlays to make the image pop. Even better, use video to showcase your product - instead of just having a static image. BE CREATIVE! BORING ALLURING
- 30. There are a lot of tools that can help you innovate your current Video Creatives. One of these tools are Cinemagraph by Flixel (not affiliated with Zalster). Browse their gallery to see what kind of screen-popping ”images” you can create. You could also try adding overlays or ribbons to your Ad Images, to see how that affects your Ad Engagement, CPA and Relevance Score. BE CREATIVE!
- 31. Test a lot of creatives There’s no idea being satisfied with a level of performance. Always try to iterate and find better performing Ads. This will also help you decrease banner blindness, which can occur if you’re having the same Ad Creatives in an Ad Set for a long time (relative to audience size and delivery). Have a proper setup of feeds and pixels Both for prospecting and retargeting, it’s important to have a proper installation of your Pixel and your Product Feed and Product Catalogue. This will help you create and maintain healthy audiences and product specific Ads. Monitor Relevance Score & Negative Feedback By analyzing the metrics Relevance Score and Negative Feedback, which can be found in Ads Manager (on Ad level), you can monitor the development in order to make better decisions on what kind of Ads to run. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AD CREATIVES
- 32. AUTOMATE & OPTIMIZE FACEBOOK ADS TRY 14 DAYS FOR FREE AT ZALSTER.COM v 1.0 - released 11/7-2017