Grow Your Traffic With Noetic Marketer’s Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads for E-Commerce

All e-commerce stores need quality traffic for online success. The increased traffic can boost global brand recognition, online sales, brand loyalty, and, most importantly, profitability.

But how do you grow the amount of high-quality traffic to your online store?

Say hello to Facebook Ads—a platform that advertises on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp and many third-party apps and websites. 

Why Should Your E-Commerce Use Facebook Ads? 

It’s all in the numbers.

More than two billion people around the world use Facebook as a way to communicate with others. Likewise, over one billion people use Instagram to connect with their community, influencers and favourite brands.

With many users on these platforms, displaying ads can get people aware of your offerings and interested in your e-commerces' benefits. The more familiar, interested and engaged people are in your company, the more sales your e-commerce will achieve. 

If you follow this guide, you will discover the six steps to effectively using Facebook ads for your e-commerce. 

Step 1: Set Up Facebook Ads Manager for Your E-Commerce 

Does your e-commerce already have Facebook Ads Manager? If so, scroll down to the next step.

Before we begin, boosting a post on Facebook is NOT the same as running Facebook ads. A boosted post is not customizable other than showing it to a broader audience.

On Facebook Ads Manager, you can control all the ads you want to show on Facebook's platforms—together in one place.

Select your advertisement objectives, optimize for a specific conversion and choose where your ads are displayed.

If you aim to increase store orders or website conversions, Facebook Ads can help. You can select advanced targeting options, multiple creative design options, and more within the ads manager.

Learn how to set up your Facebook Ads Manager account here. 

Below is a Facebook Ads campaign display screen.

Step 2: Ensure your Facebook Pixel is Properly Installed 

Tracking how many people visited your website or purchased a product in response to seeing an ad is essential for an e-commerce store.

You need to set up a Facebook pixel on your e-commerce website to obtain these vital analytics. The pixel will ensure your ads are showing to the right people while simultaneously measuring results. 

If you do not have a Facebook pixel, learn how to install it here.

Here’s how you can see if your Facebook pixel is appropriately set up:

1. Install the Facebook pixel helper Chrome extension.

2. Open your website’s home page.

3. Click on the Facebook pixel helper to see if it’s tracking page views.

4. Click on a product page and view content on the Facebook pixel helper. Ensure it shows the correct product cost with the valid currency under “view content.”

5. Add a product to your cart and begin checkout. Make sure the Facebook pixel helper is showing initiate checkout under page view.

6. View your purchase page (or thank you page) to make sure the value shown is purchase. Use this data to track your return on ad spend.

Step 3: Determine Your Facebook Ad Objective 

Facebook has three main categories of objectives: awareness, consideration and conversion. 

Each category covers a different step within the user journey or funnel. There are more specific goals or objectives within each category that you can select based on your e-commerce needs. 

When creating a Facebook ad for your e-commerce website, focus on traffic, engagement, video views, catalogue sales and conversions for your objectives.

By selecting the right objective, the Facebook Ads algorithm will show your ads to those most likely to take your desired action. 

Let’s take a look at some objectives in further detail.

Traffic

A traffic campaign focuses on sending people from a Facebook advertisement to a specific page on your website. The Facebook pixel you have installed will give you the number of people who visited a particular page on your website.

Engagement

Engagement campaigns are useful when you want people to engage with your page or content. You can create campaigns to increase post engagement, page likes, event responses and offer claims. 

A quick way to increase your engagement is to create an Instagram contest. It will increase your follower’s engagement and lead to new followers. 

Video Views

The video views objective is designed to get the most plays out of your video ads. Your e-commerce can optimize video views for two continuous seconds of video or longer than 15 seconds. 

Catalogue Sales

A Facebook catalogue is a space that contains information about items listed on your e-commerce store. Not all companies will have a catalogue, so this objective is helpful if you have one set up to generate more sales. Your Facebook catalogue can update as sales are made on your site—maintaining inventory accuracy.  

Conversions

A conversion ad means getting people to take a specific action on your website. An action could include adding an item to their cart or making a purchase. Conversions are one of the most effective Facebook ad objectives among all these options. 

Step 4: Choose your Facebook Ad Audience

Your e-commerce has two options for choosing a Facebook ad audience. You can either target a new audience or retarget an existing audience. 

Most people don’t convert on their first encounter with an e-commerce site, so retargeting is a valuable tool to transform visitors into paid clients.

Determining which audience to start with depends on how much information and data you have on them. 

Read below to learn which audience is right for you:

1. Target a New Audience 

You can target a new audience if you don’t have enough data. The more data you have on your customers and accumulated on your Facebook pixel, the more targeted your Facebook advertisements can be. Make sure to get as specific as possible here by researching your target audience extensively.

Create a new audience using the following criteria:

• Location: Target an audience based on country, province (or state), city, postal code, zip code or region.

• Age: Target ads to those within a specific age group.

• Gender: Determine which gender(s) should see your ads.

• Languages: Target ads to those who speak a particular language. 

• Device: Launch ads for people that use a specific device such as mobile, tablet or desktop.

• Platform: Target people who use specific platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Facebook’s Audience network. 

• Detailed targeting: Create ads that target people with specific demographics, interests and behaviours. When creating a new audience, precise targeting is the most valuable option. Your audience will be too broad without detailed targeting, leading to a higher monetary investment with low results.

2. Retarget an Audience

Once your target audience has engaged with your content, you can create a customized or lookalike audience. An audience interaction could be a website visit, a product purchase or a video watched. 

Engaged audiences are more valuable to your business as they are cheaper to retarget. It is easier to convert someone who has already come into contact with your e-commerce than someone who has never heard of your company.  

At Noetic Marketer, we recommend spending a substantial portion of your marketing efforts on nurturing and re-engaging your customers. Especially to those who have already engaged with your brand, these efforts will result in a higher return on investment. 

3. Custom audiences

There are many ways to retarget your audience through custom audiences. The following audiences are extremely useful when promoting your business.

• Video: Create an audience based on the videos they’ve watched and how much of the video they’ve seen. It is possible to create an audience for all levels of video engagement. For example, you can target someone who has watched 3 seconds of your video or someone who has watched 75% of your video. 

• Customer List: Put a customer list together from your customer database. This list can be composed of people who have signed up for your email newsletter or phone numbers of people who have contacted your company. An important note is that you have to update the customer list manually—so update it regularly. 

• Website Traffic: Develop this audience based on people who have visited your website or have completed a specific action on your website. Possible actions include abandoning a cart, completing a purchase, or spending extended time on your website. This audience automatically updates as the Facebook pixel on the page updates in real time, making it more efficient than a customer list. As this audience only updates when a Facebook pixel is installed, you must set up a Facebook pixel before launching any Facebook ads. 

• Facebook Page Engagement: Build this audience from people who have engaged with your Facebook page. This could be engagement with a post or an ad. Be sure to have over 1,000 audience members for the advertisement to run correctly. 

• Instagram Engagement: Create an audience of people engaged with a post or an ad from your Instagram account.

• Event Response: Generate an audience that has selected “going” or “interested” on your Facebook event.

• App Activity: Target people that have used your app in the past. 

4. Lookalike audiences

The most valuable Facebook audience to attract new clients is a lookalike audience. A lookalike audience is created by choosing one of your custom audiences and then targeting people that behave similarly to your audience while having similar demographics and psychographics. 

Create your best-performing lookalike audience with your most valuable custom audiences. This includes people who have purchased the most, recently bought your product, engaged with your social media, and more. These audiences will lead to new customers who behave like your favourite customers.

The source audience you select must have more than 100 people from a specific country for Facebook to accept as the basis of a lookalike audience. The lookalike audience will then only target people from that chosen country. We recommend having at least 1000 people in your audience to create your lookalike, if possible. This way, your sample size is large enough. 

It is up to you to choose how similar you want your lookalike audience to compare to your custom audience. Choose the percentage of similarity that works for you. A 0% difference between the custom audience and the lookalike represents no difference between the two groups. It is best to keep the similarity between 1% and 3% to ensure the lookalike audience remains similar to the custom audience. 

Step 5: Select Your Facebook Ad Type

We recommend using any of the following ad types to develop a solid Facebook strategy. Read below to understand the various ads that will work for your e-commerce. 

1. Offer Ads: Encourage a broad audience to shop on your e-commerce website by sharing discounts on your customer’s news feed. Your customer can like, comment or save the offer on their profile. If your audience saves the offer, Facebook will remind them about it up to three times. 

2. Testimonial Ads: Displaying ads featuring a testimonial or review demonstrate to your audience how others use your product and how it can benefit them. People trust others more than a company, so testimonial ads are valuable for your e-commerce success. These are especially good for retargeting as the person is already aware of your product and is now further convinced to purchase. Testimonials can be in an image or video format, depending on your organization’s needs. 

3. Abandoned Cart Ads: This is where setting up a Facebook pixel comes in handy. If someone has been on your website and has put a product in their cart, you can use abandoned cart ads to retarget them. If the person has not yet checked out, you can retarget them with the product still in their cart. 

4. Video Ads: Video ads appear in videos on Facebook. For this type of ad, use the video views objective to help you build an audience of people who have successfully watched your video. You can also share them on your audience’s news feed and their stories.

5. Carousel Ads: Show more than one product by using carousel ads. This interactive ad type allows you to tell your audience more about your brand and display more products. You can show up to ten images or videos within one carousel ad.

6. Lead Ads: Generate more leads by using Facebook Lead Ads. When someone clicks on your ad, a pre-populated form will appear with their Facebook information. Your audience can get the information you have promised in the ad, and you can get a qualified lead - with very few taps. Lead ads are the best way to increase your email list, as the person needs to give you their email before they get the piece of valuable content. 

7. Reminder Ads: Remind your audience about product offers they can use. You can also remind them based on the location they are in. For example, if your audience is near your competitor’s store, you can send them an advertisement with your store. This can help them purchase from your company instead of your competitors.

Step 6: Define the Placement of your Facebook Ad

There are multiple placements that your e-commerce can choose to display its Facebook ads. However, the placements' availability depends on your ads' dimensions. 

For example, a square ad will not appear correctly on a story layout as stories are rectangular. To have your choice of ad placement, have several dimensions prepared in advance. 

Even if your ads can appear in all areas, you can deselect the areas that are not beneficial to your company. At Noetic Marketer, we recommend letting Facebook Ads automate the placements and optimize for the best places to display as the ad gets results. Below you will find all the areas where you can feature your advertisements. 

Feeds 

• Facebook newsfeed

• Instagram feed

• Facebook Marketplace

• Facebook video feeds

• Messenger inbox

Stories

• Facebook stories

• Instagram stories

• Messenger stories 

In-stream

• Facebook in-stream messages

Search

• Facebook search results

Messages

• Messenger sponsored messages

In-Article

• Facebook instant articles

Apps

• Audience network

Step 7: Report and Optimize

The final step in our Facebook advertising guide is to measure your campaign’s success. Monitoring your performance can be done by consistently reviewing your Facebook ad reports. Studying the data allows you to optimize your campaigns at all times. 

At Noetic Marketer, we suggest measuring your data daily to ensure your ads perform their best. Since clicks don’t equal conversions, we recommend tracking your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), which is essentially the same as tracking your ROI. 

Your return on ad spend helps your e-commerce business determine whether your advertising efforts are creating positive results or are simply using up your marketing budget. To calculate your ROAS, divide your total revenue generated by your Facebook ads by your ad spend. You can also view your ROAS on your Facebook ads manager under the performance and clicks dashboard.  

View purchase ROAS and website purchase ROAS under Facebook Ads Manager - Campaigns.

Conclusion

Congratulations on making it this far! Now that you have covered the basics of Facebook advertising, you are set to begin your next Facebook ads campaign. If you have any questions, please get in touch with the team at Noetic Marketer. Our advertising experts are ready to help you optimize your next campaign.

If you prefer to focus on your e-commerce while we take care of your Facebook ads, you can also contact our team. At Noetic Marketer, we carefully execute Facebook ad campaigns that align with your organization's goals, budget, offerings, and more. 

Our team will analyze your e-commerce's past advertising and audience data to develop a comprehensive strategy for your Facebook advertising campaigns. Through daily monitoring, our ads specialists will optimize your Facebook ads and provide weekly reporting of your e-commerce performance.

Who We Are

Noetic Marketer is a full-service digital marketing agency with roots in Ottawa and the GTA. We specialize in creating and optimizing digital marketing campaigns for the higher education, e-commerce, professional services, and contractors industries.

As digital marketers, we strive to find solutions to every company’s lead generation challenges, creating personalized marketing strategies that suit the specific needs of our clients.

PS - Facebooks Ads and PPC Ads pair well together. You can visit our Pay-Per-Click Advertising Services page to learn more.

PPS - SEO is a potent tool for e-commerce. Read our Guide to SEO for E-commerce to learn everything you need to know.