Social Media brings a huge change in the business world. Presently, having a strong online presence becomes necessary for every business or brand.
However, a website is not sufficient for this. Your prospective customers don’t know about your business, so creating brand awareness should be your priority. And for this, you can target directly the individuals who are on social media platforms.
You must have a strong brand presence on all social media platforms to make sure that you always stay in front of the eyes of your potential customers.
We know as an e-commerce entrepreneur, you are probably looking for the best ways to maximize your profit from social media platforms. And one of the preeminent and easiest ways to do this is by utilizing Facebook Ads to promote your e-commerce store.
With more than 2 billion active users Facebook Ads have become the most valuable marketing platform for e-commerce business owners. According to the report by statista, Facebook Ads provide more “foot traffic” as compared to any country across the globe.
The platform is very much appealing and provides an easy way for targeting a specific set of customers and draws them back to your e-commerce website/store.
However, with the rising number of users, the competition between e-commerce giants has also increased. And gaining user’s attention and converting it into sales is getting tougher day by day.
The key to achieving success in Facebook Ads for your e-commerce store is by ensuring that you set up them accurately and spend less time on optimization.
This article will explain the key strategies to boost your e-commerce sales through Facebook ads. And some tricks and tips that you can utilize to squeeze more value out of them. You will get more clicks, more customers, and more sales.
So, let’s get started…
Boost eCommerce Sales Through Facebook Ads
Increase CTR with Buyer Personas
As the use of Facebook Ads is popularizing, the retail Facebook Ads click-through rate is also growing every year which currently accounts at around 0.20%.
If we compare with AdWords, the CTR is approximately 5%. Why such a difference? Where the retailers are going wrong?
The problem is that the Facebook Ads they create are too generic and not relevant to anyone. The market they are targeting is not well selected which ultimately is not helping them to attract as many people as possible.
To overcome this, all they need to do is to identify buyer’s personas and create ads accordingly that touch their basic requirements, problems, or needs.
Having the right buyer persona not only helps you to create buyer’s focussed campaigns but also resonate with your target audience and achieve a higher relevance score.
Just try to be in your buyer’s shoes and think about what they need. It will help you to modify and create ads accordingly.
It’s necessary to understand your buyer’s interest and requirements to create Facebook Ads. You should remember it is important and act as the backbone of your Facebook marketing campaign. It’s better to keep the focus on the customer’s interests, needs, requirements, and segments of people with a specific shared interest.
Pre-Qualify & Pre-Identify Your Leads
There is one rule followed by every marketer while creating the online campaigns – “To Reduce the Unnecessary Cost, One Should Eliminate the Curiosity Clicks.”
What are these Curiosity Clicks?
These clicks come from the people or visitors:
- who doesn’t look for your solution?
- have no money to pay for your product or services
- are simply driven by curiosity.
They are clicks, no wonder, but these clicks would increase your CTR and hence, would cost you MONEY.
What can you do to avoid this?
Filter them out by Pre-Qualifying Your Campaign Leads. Here are a few ways to achieve it.
Make Sure You Display Product’s Price
Listing or displaying the price of the product will help you to filter out the people who are not willing or interested to pay for that amount of the product.
Also, it will prevent unnecessary clicks on your ad because our brain quickly reacts to such information.
List Your Identified Target Market
You know your target market. Accept it openly and say it loudly while creating your ad copy like a professional marketer. There is no harm in openly targeting your audience.
Don’t Forget to Mention Shipping Destination or Any Important Conditions of Purchase
Let’s keep in mind that if you have any specific conditions for purchasing the product, you should mention them in your ad copy. It prevents unnecessary attention to your ad and limits those who could buy from you only.
Offer an Incentive to Click on Your Ad
Presently, every e-commerce store is leveraging Facebook to promote its products, and it becomes a challenging task to grab user attention in such a huge competition.
One of the best ways to conquer this is by offering an incentive or bonus to users for clicking on your ads.
Here are a few key points that you should consider while designing your Facebook Ads:
Employ Sense of Urgency:
Customers usually become lazy about taking action. Even if you are presenting a great bonus or offers to them, they will still wait for the next deals.
So, you need to create a sense of urgency to encourage users to take action. You need to push them by showing them the consequences of not taking action immediately.
Here are a few ways to create a sense of urgency:
Reveal the stock availability: Notify your users that the product might go out of stock and they should take action now.
Offer limited or special edition: Everybody loves great deals. And people will love to buy the products with a limited period.
Make use of Urgency Evoking word: Here are a few of the most trendy ones:
- limited Offer,
- only,
- hurry,
- last chance,
- today only,
- clearance,
- offer expires,
List Trigger Words & Add Them To The Campaign
Customers respond to words that directly denote them or give them a trigger to stay for a second. For example, using “You”, gives an impression that you are directly talking to them or pitching your product only to them.
Or using “New” as it triggers them to get to know more about the product which is new in the market. Everyone wants to be updated with new trends after all.
AdWords and famous SEO tool, SEMrush states that trigger words immediately inspire users to take action on designated ads. Trigger words like Free, Cheap, or New are quite popular among them.
Offer A Deal
Customers, especially Indians look for irresistible deals, especially for shopping. You must have noticed various major brands keep on sending lucrative deals that encourage customers to buy the products without any control.
Also, the study says that if you are regularly sending deals to your customers, it helps to create brand loyalty. then these customers hardly even think to switch to another brand, except if your competitor is giving them more happening offers.
Use of Quality Images
Images give the first impression of your product, brand, and campaign. It’s like a first look at the product. It is highly recommended to use high-quality images to promote your products especially if you are an e-commerce brand.
Product Images gives a great impact on the buyer’s behavior
A high-quality image attracts genuine customers’ clicks and increases ROI. A poor quality image gives an impression that the product is not worthy enough to buy which will, in turn, deter users from clicking on your ad.
Feature Image Predict CTR
In simple words, the quality of images guaranteed to increase or decrease CTR.
What you should keep in mind while using pictures in your ads:
- make sure you add the brand’s logo in the images. whether you are a small or big brand, it helps customers to identify you in the crowd.
- Add feature images that should be taken from a distance, obstructing product details.
- don’t use generic pics from stock photography. Do your photoshoot. it will help you to avoid copyright issues as well.
You can take an example of famous e-commerce companies that have listed best practices for designing Facebook Ads:
Avoid Cluttered images. Instead, completely focus on the product and use a clear image with only a few elements.
Showing emotions help to gain attention and improve CTR 2 times. Images without emotions that are hard to decipher can reduce a CTR by 2 times. Don’t be emotionless then.
Use both the close-up and far images. This helps customers to identify how your product will look from far as well as near. This habit can improve CTR by 3 times.
Use the AIDA Model to Improve Ad Copy
No wonder, Images play a big role in your ad success, but it’s the ad copy that converts a viewer into a customer.
It’s not easy to mention everything in 90 characters word limit on Facebook Ads. This means you need to advertise, gain attention and convert your customer into a buyer in just these 90 characters.
In such a scenario, one should use the AIDA model for writing ad copies.
How AIDA can help in creating Facebook Ads?
AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
- Attention: Your headline grabs real attention. Use trigger words in your headlines to gain smashing attention towards your ad copy.
- Interest: Here, the interest will be your buyer’s interest, i.e. the benefits of the products.
- Desire: Desire will denote the reason why the viewer clicks your ad. Give them a sure reason like an offer that they can’t say no to.
- Action: Close your ad with the perfect Call to Action button. Your viewers should be able to know how or where to buy your product. With the right Call to Action, land your customers on the right page. Eg. “Shop Now”, “Buy Now”, etc.
How does the AIDA model work?
- This model is designed by keeping the psychology of human buyers. it helps your brand to gain the desired attention
- interest or motivates them to know more about your product
- directs them to take the desired action.
Connect with Influencers & Create Your Brand Advocates
If you want to increase your sales and get popular at the same time, then Influencer marketing is the best way to attract online customers. It’s like an online version of mouth-to-mouth marketing.
There are millions of people who follow their ideals or admire thousands in their dressing sense. And, they believe if they showcase their favorite collection or brand they love. These influencers have access to people of all the niches, globally, where they can help you to promote your product in exchange for money.
Major brands are using influencer marketing to get noticed and admired by the millions. Recently, Levis Jeans made a video stating “Shape My World” targeting all the women out there to be themselves and used famous Women Influencers and personalities.
This kind of strategy works. When a brand collaborates with influencers, the brand’s image becomes famous and powerful. Followers take their reviews seriously, rely on the product, and buy the product which will help to improve conversions as well as revenues.
Reduce Abandoned Carts
There are many times when a customer adds products to their carts but don’t buy them. Almost 70% of customers add products to the cart and abandon them before checking them out. Out of the 23% make their purchase once they get a reminder to complete the process.
Though intention could be anything, these customers are a huge pool of sales. And, to convert them, you can target them through remarketing Facebook Ads.
The best part is that you already know these people who are considering buying your product but have abandoned the cart due to XYZ’s reason.
You can easily target them by saying, “Your cart is waiting!.” But for the same, you need to design the ad that includes the picture of the product and link to remind them and recall to finish their order quickly.
You need to understand that someone who has abandoned the card yesterday is more prone to get converted than anyone who abandoned their cart several weeks ago.
You can lure them to buy products along with offers or discounts.
Run Remarketing Campaigns
Remarketing campaigns act as a reminder to customers who have abandoned their carts without completing a purchase.
Like shared in the previous point, 72% of online customers abandon their carts without purchasing the product. Without remarketing Facebook Ads, only 8% come back to the same cart to make the purchase.
Therefore, e-commerce brands are advised to make use of Remarketing Facebook Ads to remind their potential customers to make the purchase. With this, 26% of abandoners will come back to the cart to complete the purchase.
Also, the average CTR increases to 10 times that of standard display ads.
Upsell To Existing Customers
Once you start creating campaigns, you will start maintaining the email list of your loyal customers or those who have an interest in your brand or product.
Businesses should segment their campaigns to sell additional products to these existing customers. Upselling is the way to increase your sales by targeting the people who already are your customers or have an interest in your products.
This type of selling is much easier than acquiring new customers. Stats say 65% of the company’s revenue comes from the existing loyal customers only.
Some Useful Features Of Facebook
Build Lookalike (Resemble) Audiences
Facebook allows e-commerce brands to create lookalike audiences. here you can utilize your customer lists to increase your e-commerce sales.
More the data you have of your customers, the more accurately you will be able to create lookalike FB ad campaigns.
Though a smaller lookalike has more probability to resemble your existing customers than larger look-alike which will create more variations.
A Multi-Product Carousel
This is the best feature offered by Facebook these days. it allows you to create multi-product products in a single carousel ad.
Multi-product Carousel ads give you:
- more options for customers to view multiple products and buy them.
- more products customers can see, more purchase, which leads to more sales
- you can also state various benefits of the single product through carousel ads.
Start Using Video Advertisement
Another best option Facebook can provide is Live Videos.
Live videos give a realistic impression to your viewers. Facebook Live Videos is the easiest way to record and share the video with your audience in real-time.
Facebook sends notifications to their followers as well as viewers who watch your video before you start recording it.
Once you finish the video, it becomes the post so that those who haven’t joined the live video can view the whole video later. Also, if you have a brand’s YouTube channel, then it allows you to upload and share new videos with your audience.
Use Facebook Events
If you have just started your business and are looking for platforms or forums where you can discuss your brands or products, then Facebook is the best place for you.
You can host events related to e-commerce business or get connected to groups where you can discuss your brand. This will bring awareness to the brand.
Or instead of hosting the event, you can join the events where discussion regarding e-commerce business is happening. it will help you to create a wider reach for your brand and you will also gain knowledge by meeting experts.
Conclusion-
The ideal Facebook marketing plan varies from company, customer, and business goal. though e-commerce companies fight for the same old story – how to increase their sales & ROI.
If you follow the strategies mentioned in the post, you will never lose out on your customers and gain more sales.
Remember:
– Before creating a Facebook Ad, you should understand the buyer’s persona. What are their interests? What are their requirements? etc.
– offer them tempting deals or discounts. Our Indian market loves discounts.
– Use quality images to create the ad. Write personalized ad copy directly denoting to your clients.
– Understand how AIDA works and incorporate the model in your sales and marketing strategies.
– join hands with influencers and take help from them to promote your products to their followers.
– Target abandoned the cart with remarketing and convinced them to buy the product waiting in the cart.
– Never forget your existing customers. They are a real gem who has always shown interest in buying your products. Sell them new products through targeting.
– Use Live videos to promote your products as it gives them satisfaction and builds trust.
– encourage your customers to fill the form and start building your email list.
Always keep the focus on incorporating new and trendy but personalized things to gain more sales and generate leads.
