The Ultimate Facebook Ads Strategy Playbook for E-commerce Brands

Facebook remains the biggest social media app for nearly one and half decades now, used by over 2.5 billion+ people monthly, reaching 59% in 2020. As of September 2021, Facebook has a 6% increase over the past year which reflects its global reach.

Facebook advertising must be the go-to platform for most e-commerce businesses. It remains a place where a significant amount of people socialize, get news, and spend their time, it can help you reach the right people online and yield revenue for your business. Hence developing a Facebook ads strategy for your brand becomes critically important

69% of U.S. adults use Facebook actively in a month, the biggest audience a brand can reach on a social media app and 88% of people access Facebook on a mobile device. It is the best platform to reach a global audience if you were to expand internationally, outside USA.

On Facebook, there are 3 ad types prominently – Carousel, Video and Image (Statics), each serves a purpose to reach a subset of a broader audience

This article does not cover anything about the technicalities, how to do it or setup of Facebook ads. It is a directional article on what needs to be done when creating strategy for Facebook ads

Why Facebook Ads Haven’t Peaked Yet?

Just next to Google, Facebook is the biggest ad platform where the smallest & the biggest brands spend, which establishes the scale of Facebook and its efficiency to deliver results.

The recent developments in the Facebook platform around commerce – Facebook Shops, promise a future where customers can discover, browse, and purchase products without leaving Facebook or Instagram, creating a seamless shopping experience. With big competition from China’s Facebook rival – TikTok shops then this is helping the advertisers most

Facebook has the best-in-class advertising product which accounts for a major share of its revenue. No other social media ad platform even comes close to delivering the results at scale and with good ROI as Meta’s ad algorithm

Get Started with Facebook Ads Strategy for E-commerce Brands

Setting Clear Objectives – First Step of Facebook Ads Strategy

Unit Economics

This provides per unit cost of product which factors in all costs associated from manufacturing to marketing to delivery. It helps understand the margin available for marketing and for-profit per unit. You can use our free unit economics calculator for e-commerce brands to calculate your breakeven targets

Recommended calculating unit economics at two levels, both at brand and per product/category level

Products to Advertise

Choosing the right product to advertise is more important than creating an ad. The priority is simple

Product > Audience > Ad Angle > Creative > Design > Copy

Couple of creatives

Here is a complete Facebook ads creative strategy guide. Don’t just start ads because an ad is created, build a repository of multiple ads for multiple products. At least 2 products with 4 to 5 creatives each. Assume your first 3 to 4 ads will fail and build a library of creatives to use if the ad fails. Now you can use ChatGPT to help you create ads

This way you don’t abandon the platform on the first sign of failure and have a backup to keep testing and iterating to crack the code. This platform is working for so many of your competitors so you are at fault not the algorithm or platform

Creative Pipeline

Build a workflow on developing creatives, because as you scale the operations and pipeline become more important than coming up with new ideas. Aim to build an assembly line that starts with idea and end with final creative

There are lot of brands that succeed even with mediocre ideas but great system to produce creatives, but not one brand I have come across with poor system and great ads made here and there

Budget Allocation

Don’t for god sake say to your marketing team “We can spend as long as we are profitable”, my usual response is then “Ok, we start with $100k per day” and immediately the leadership team does reveal their ballpark budget.

Even if a ballpark it helps the team understand the pacing, goals, and how to structure tests. Say it

Target Audience Identification in Facebook Ads

Here is a detailed article on Facebook ads targeting

As in the above priority list after the product the audience is most important, PAM framework – Product – Audience & Message match is critical for success with Facebook ads

There are two types of audiences to target on Facebook

Affinity Targeting

Here the targeting is around activities or things that your target audience might be interested in but not necessarily in the realm of your brand category. These buyers have a passion for category than just a need or requirement such as targeting travelers for a skincare product

The importance is given to various interests of customers outside of the target domain and to acquire them

In the image above, here we are targeting people passionate about skin-care, yes it does include some people who might not be as passionate but the majority is people who have shown interest in skincare (not any particular brand)

In-Market Targeting

This is a more direct targeting all focussed on direct interests, this helps target one-time or in-market buyers, and often though the size remains the same repeat rates are lower than affinity targeting. Here people are searching for one particular solution as per their problem, not caring about category such as targeting skin, or beauty for a skincare product, this audiences help in scaling the brand

In the above example of “Gift shop” targeting in Facebook ads this is in-market targeting as the people who are in-market looking for gifts keep changing

All the Facebook targeting options above are not an if-else case, they must be used in parallel as each serves a different purpose in the consumer journey and the ability to personalize the targeting and ads is the main benefit of Facebook ads and the reason they are so successful at delivering results for their advertisers. This is not an or case but “and” case to utilize all the targeting options by Facebook

Pre-requisites

Tracking

This is one of the common mistakes in Facebook ads. Before starting any Facebook ads set tracking on the website to monitor the actions of visitors and send the data back to Facebook to optimize the campaign and improve performance.

You can go through the setup docs here

For Shopify, there is a native integration available in the Shopify App Marketplace

Catalog

If you use Shopify, then this step is just a breeze, just 3 clicks and all your inventory and catalog details from Shopify are synced with Facebook in a few hours

Always maintain a physical Excel sheet that isn’t real-time but mentions details of the product with price and other common details

Conversion events

Part of the tracking but to track specific and valuable actions on your e-commerce store like Purchase, add to cart…

UGC Development

The highest converting ads of 2020 and 2021 in the ZIRP area were UGC – Use generated content. Well, not user-generated, it was more of influencer as brands paid influencers to shoot videos. This worked for a long time as it was more authentic than big-time celebrities appearing on TV and just promoting a product they never used

But now customers can look through those snarky marketing tactics and are smart enough to know the backdoor agreements made between

It works because it’s authentic and people want to see other people who are similar to them in status and economic conditions use this product and show them proof it works

UGC is not dead though, for most brands below $1M in ad spend you should not be doing UGC in-house instead hire an agency and then work out a cost-per-video structure that will save a lot of things for you

Use Influencer marketing agencies or UGC-specific agencies who have direct contact with a list of influencers and can offer better rates than you directly going to these influencers all because of economies of scale power with the agency

Funnel Development

The most difficult code to crack in marketing is to convert a brand-unaware person to a brand-aware and then a brand customer. Here are the need-to-know things

• Top of the FunneL
  These are people who are unaware of the brand or the problem you solve
• Middle of the Funnel
  These are people who are aware of the brand
• Bottom of the Funnel
  These are the people who are aware of brand and ordered your product as a customer

Facebook ads strategy for each of these audiences requires a different approach as the context and information available to them are unequal. There are multiple definitions of these funnel but this is largely accepted version for Facebook ads

Here is a quick summary of creatives and audiences for e-commerce brands

TOF – Top of the Funnel Audience
​Audience – Interest-based, Broad, and Lookalike audience
​
Messaging
– Education about the pain your product solves
– What problems can be avoided with the product
– Cost of neglecting the problem for long
​
Creative
– Image calling out the pain
– UGC ads with unique storytelling from pain to solution
– Carousel explaining key

MOF – Middle of the Funnel Audience​
Audience – Social audience
​
Messaging
– Differentiation from existing solutions in the market
– How does buying this product reduce future risk?
– Big expensive reason to solve the problem now
​
Creative
– Review ads compilation
– Carousel explaining key benefits of the product against the competition
​
BOF – Bottom of the Funnel Audience​
Audience – Website visitors and existing customers
​
Messaging
– What is the larger mission of the brand? (away from finances)
– Unique value prop with product not offered by other brands
​
Creative
– Image with good offer
– Unboxing videos

Here is a good breakdown of the funnel structure – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mastering-facebook-ads-ecommerce-comprehensive-guide-karim-sherra

On Testing

The day you stop testing on Facebook is the day you stop growing on it. Testing is the tax you pay to Facebook to learn more about your audience

Now, from the leadership team, a testing and experimental culture must be pushed as it helps you go for big swings which 9/10 times fail but the one time it provides 100x returns for ad investment

What to test and prioritize for each is where most e-commerce brands miss and hence feel like they are always just failing in the tests.

Here is the priority list

Ad angle > Audience > Creative > Design > Copy, follow it

Scaling

Sure, throwing more money at Facebook Ads is like pouring fuel on a fire – things get intense fast. But true scaling is more like a well-orchestrated symphony, where every element plays its part in harmony. (You can hire an agency to help you with scaling your e-commerce brand)

Creative Variety is King: Don’t let ad fatigue rain on your parade! Keep things fresh with a mix of images, videos, carousels, Stories, and Collections. A/B testing helps you identify the winning combos.

Landing Pages that Convert: Imagine clicking on an ad, and then getting whisked away to a confusing website. Not cool, right? Make sure your landing pages are like friendly guides, leading visitors smoothly to that sweet “Buy Now” button.

Stock Up for Success: Scaling means more customers, hopefully! Be prepared with enough of your hottest products to avoid disappointing anyone. And if something runs out, let folks know – transparency is key.

Customer Support: Think of your support team as the backstage crew, ensuring everything runs smoothly. As things scale, be ready to answer questions with a smile (even virtually!). Chatbots, FAQs, and readily available humans are your support stars.

Measuring the Success of Your Facebook Ads Strategy

Forget vanity metrics and endless data reports. As a profit-first e-commerce brand, you need a laser focus on metrics that directly impact your bottom line.

1. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): This is the king metric for profit-first brands.

2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This metric reveals how much it costs you to acquire a new customer.

3. Average Order Value (AOV): The average order per customer

4. Contribution margin: The amount left after deducting all fixed expenses (Cost of Delivery and marketing cost) from the revenue

Conclusion

Fb ads are not working in silos you have to still do other activities. The potential of Facebook Ads for your e-commerce brand is truly limitless. It’s a platform that allows you to connect with millions of potential customers, showcase your unique products, and build a community around your brand.

Don’t be afraid to experiment, track your results, and refine your approach.

Remember, even the most successful marketers started somewhere. So take that first step, embrace the journey, and watch your business flourish on the power of Facebook Ads!

Author Bio:

Kanish Jain is the Founder of Bharat Mavens – Performance Marketing Agency for Ecommerce Brands. Over 4+ Years of Experience across 10+ niches in Ecommerce and worked with multiple top brands in their category. In free time he is reading fiction books