INTRODUCTION
Discover the power of a Facebook ads ecommerce strategy that transformed an eCom business. In just 30 days, this approach led to a staggering $800,000 in revenue with a 7x ROAS. Learn how the right Facebook ads ecommerce strategy can make a significant difference.
CLIENT BACKGROUND
The client is a US-based company with good branding, a loyal following, and all the production in the US. It is not a drop shipping business; its products are unique in being 100% natural. The client is in the pet niche. When I started working with this client, they spent around $4,000 monthly in advertising and had a ROAS of about 10x. I worked with this client for over 12 months, and this company was acquired by a much bigger brand this year. I still get many referrals from this company’s previous owner.
REVENUE
The screenshot at the top shows the revenue from Facebook and Instagram Advertising. The total sales figure is much higher as they have distributions/resellers in many countries and are also selling on Amazon. Although the ROAS dropped a little when I scaled it to $800k+/month in revenue, it happens when you increase the budget, and the numbers remain outstanding. I will only discuss Facebook and Instagram Advertising in this post, as this is where I specialize.
1- MORE COUNTRIES
The first significant change I made to their Facebook Ads was to include more countries in their advertising. We started targeting Northern Europe (Germany, France, Spain, the UK, and Ireland); the response was excellent but had a few issues due to high delivery costs. These issues were resolved by offering distributions and resellers access to our products. European countries always amaze me; I usually get very good ROAS from these countries. Before this, they were only targeting the US.
2- INFLUENCERS SHOUT-OUTS
A key component of our Facebook ads e-commerce strategy was leveraging Instagram Influencers. To get more targeted traffic to our website, we made a detailed plan to take shout-outs from Instagram Influencers with 2-3 shout-outs daily. Of course, it would cost us a lot, but the returns were very high. The highest we paid an influencer was $500 for each post. If you plan to buy shout-outs, make sure to check the real engagement of the influencer. Many people on Instagram have a fake following, so read the comments on their posts to see if they are real. The most important is to have your tracking in place to know which influencer is getting you the most sales, and you can pay them accordingly. Every influencer will perform differently over time, so keep checking your numbers.
3- BEST PERFORMING INTERESTS
When scaling, you need to test everything: look-alikes, interests, custom audiences, retargeting, and not all are the same. In this case, targeting competitor brands consistently outperformed any other targeting option. When you target your competitor brands, you must have a competitive advantage over them because snatching a customer from your competitor takes work. We had 100% natural products, 60 days refund, testimonials videos, free expert advice, a lot of engagement on our Ads, free delivery in the US, and more.
4- LOOK-ALIKE AUDIENCES
While many focus on purchase-based look-alikes, our Facebook ads e-commerce strategy also explored other avenues. We used look-alikes from video views, add-to-carts, Instagram engagement, and the top 25% of web visitors. I have seen look-alike audiences made from Instagram Engagement and Add To Cart work more effectively than purchases most of the time. Which look-alike audience has more chances of performing for you? To understand this, you must know how look-alikes work. The effectiveness of a look-alike audience depends on the strength of a custom audience. If you have a small number of ‘purchase’ events but a much higher number of ‘Ad to Carts,’ the custom audience of ‘Add to Cart’ provides a more solid foundation to build a look-alike audience.
Many people ask me why I create LAA from ATC rather than Purchases. The answer is simple: you need to test both. LAA from ATC sometimes works better because it has a bigger custom audience size than purchases.
5- RETARGETING
Retargeting is a cornerstone of any Facebook ads ecommerce strategy. More than 50% of sales come through retargeting. I won’t go into detail as everyone has read much about it. If not, try retargeting like this. Have different Adsets for these custom audiences
ATC 3 Days
ATC 7 Days
ATC 21 Days
ATC 30 Days
The same goes for website visitors and initiate checkout retargeting. If you have low traffic to your website, you can reduce the number of retargeting Adsets.
For eCommerce stores with many products, dynamic retargeting is very important. Play with upsells, cross-sells, ATC, and the number of days option when setting up dynamic retargeting. Those options are there for a reason.
6- CREATIVES
Visuals play a significant role in a successful Facebook ads ecommerce strategy. The answer to creatives differs for every industry, but let me explain as much as possible. Let’s discuss the creatives of this case study first; one of the videos generated around $1 million for us. How much can you believe we paid for that video? Just $200, and yes, I am not missing any 0’s here.
Now the question is, how did we get this video? When I started scaling, I soon realized we needed more creatives. I discussed it with the client, and he provided me with pictures and a few good videos, but I needed more. We created a contest, posted it on Instagram, and boosted it to all our existing followers on FB. We asked our followers to create a video applying our products, and the video with the highest engagement will win a bundle with three months of supply. We got over 100 entries; some videos were below average, some were average, but a few were fabulous. We started using those videos and found this video.
-We asked all our influencers to make videos for us and gave them credit on Facebook, Instagram posts, and paid advertisements. After that, we always had enough content as people needed followers, which they were getting from mentions, and we required videos, which we were getting from them.
— Let’s discuss creatives in further detail. I am working with a University to get them qualified leads for $30-$40. This CPL sounds expensive, but these leads are highly qualified. I got an offer from another university offering different courses. Both universities do virtual and in-campus classes, so their CPL should be more or less the same, right? But this was not the case. The first university created a 1 minute 13 seconds video showing their facility, lecture rooms, degree awarding ceremony, and quick shots of their professors. The second university gave me a budget of $15,000 on Advertising, but they needed more time to invest even $1k on their video. I ended the contract after the first month as I could not generate any results for them. All they were asking me to use were Shutterstock images, and they never convert. In online advertising, it’s 60% about the visuals and the remaining 40% about other things unless you are a known brand.
7- COPY
I never write the copy myself. Find a good copywriter working in your niche that will benefit you more than you think. Your Ad copy should speak the language of your audience. We had 10-15 Ad copies, and the owner wrote all of them. I loved her copies and wished I could paste some here, but that would be unethical. If you cannot write well, find someone who knows your industry.
8- OFFERS
We did a lot of offers; our BOGO offer kept running for months, and in the screenshot, the best numbers you see are from the BOGO Offer. The same goes for Christmas, Black Friday, and the 4th of July; we kept everything ready for these days in advance. All these offers for National Holidays would start one week before the date and then continue running for at least 3-4 weeks. We spent 10-20 times more on these days than on the regular days of the year. Don’t run these offers all the time; otherwise, they will lose their charm. You can keep changing the discount percentages offers to give them a fresh look. Also, taking shout-outs from the top influencers with content customized for these days brings a lot of sales.
9- UP-SELLS, CROSS-SELLS, AND BUNDLES
When working with low-price point products, generating positive ROI is challenging as FB Ads are getting expensive every day. You must increase your AOV(Average order value) to stay profitable and get a decent ROI. Our Facebook ads ecommerce strategy included incorporating upsells, cross-sells, and bundle offers (free shipping above $50) on the website. Also, we did a lot of dynamic Ads to upsell and cross-sell to our existing customers. It’s easier to convince an existing customer to buy more products from you than to get a new customer.
10- ENGAGEMENT
Have you ever seen a lot of people recommending the product in comments on some of the Ads? How do we get those comments ethically?
Everyone will tell you to exclude the ‘Purchases’ custom audiences from your Ads. I also do the same thing as it’s a waste of money unless your product is a regular-use item. What we do is whenever we create a new Ad, we start an engagement campaign with that Ad and target all our existing customers. We know they don’t need the product at that time, but they have already used our product. When existing customers see a new Ad, they will naturally leave a positive comment like “Hey, I have been using this product for just ten days and can already see so much improvement; thank you very much!”. People leave comments because it’s human psychology that when you know something, you want to tell everyone you know about it. This strategy will only work if your customers are satisfied, and if they are not, don’t even think about doing this 😀
11- CRO
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is another part of the puzzle. We have increased the sales of eCommerce website by up to 400% using simple CRO hacks. If you want to read more about CRO, you can read here on how we increased conversion rate of an eCommerce website by 400% using simple hacks.
