Despite some claims that Meta (Meta) is a dying platform, it continues to hold its position as the third most visited website globally, just behind Google and YouTube. This fact alone highlights the immense potential and reach that Meta still offers. Additionally, Meta Ads remain a formidable part of the digital advertising ecosphere, utilized by millions of businesses worldwide to effectively tap into this extensive user base and drive sales.
For e-commerce stores, in particular, Meta advertising plays a crucial role in securing the majority of their revenue. Therefore, it becomes imperative for businesses to invest time and effort in mastering Meta Ads to unlock their full potential and maximize e-commerce profits.
Why Are Meta Ads Important for E-commerce?
Since e-commerce relies almost entirely on online channels to drive sales, Meta Ads become the lifeblood of the brand’s revenue. Here are some powerful features that position Meta Ads in this light as one of the best marketing channels:
- Massive User Base. Advertising on Meta has the potential to help you reach billions of users spread over Meta, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Most of them are frequent online shoppers who wouldn’t resist purchasing a product that interests them.
- Targeting and Retargeting. Meta allows you to target and retarget users who share the same interests and behaviors and reside in the same demographics as your ideal avatars.
- Multiple Ad Formats and Detailed Analytics. Not only does Meta support multiple ad formats, but it also provides you with detailed analytics on your advertising campaigns to help you decide which ad format brings the most results.
Meta allows you to place your ads in a variety of spaces, including Instagram, Facebook, the Meta Audience Network, and Messenger. However, to drive traffic to your store and maximize results, you’ll need to use the right strategies. Here are 12 suggestions.
12 Ad Hacks to Run the Best E-Commerce Campaigns
These techniques cover the most sensitive aspects of a successful ad, including copywriting, targeting, design, and rewarding users through giveaways or referral programs.
Craft an Irresistible Offer
With no enticing offer, you can’t expect to have a successful ad. Your offer needs to be so good that the potential customers feel like they’ve found the best bargain and it would be dumb not to take it. So how can you achieve that? Follow these points for a good offer:
- Unique Selling Points. Show your audience the particular elements that make your products different from what the competition is offering. These might include high-quality materials, rare customer service, or continual discounts.
- Infuse a Sense of Urgency. Push your audience to take action as soon as possible by adding timed discounts, countdowns, or a limit on the number of products.
- Personalize Your Offer. Meta allows you to segment your audience and run ads for more than one specific demographic. Build campaigns that target different segments of your audience and introduce them to different offers.
Now, since we’re talking about targeting different audiences, let’s see how you can accomplish this detailed targeting, which characterizes the best Meta campaign types.
Compile a Targeted Lookalike Audience
After you’ve run your first Meta campaign, you’ll have gathered enough data to target new audiences by using the lookalike audiences feature. Meta allows you to compile a list of potential buyers based on the current profiles of existing interested customers.
All you have to do is either upload a copy of a list of users found on your database, which can be email subscribers or simply interested leads, or you can build a custom audience from people who have used your app or visited your website. For the latter, you’ll need to have activated the Meta Pixel.
Retarget Users Who Didn’t Finalize Their Purchases
Retargeting is a smart way to convince your interested audience that your product will add value to their life. All those people who visited your website and selected products but didn’t finish their purchases can be targeted with Meta Ads. Chances are that they are highly interested buyers, so they’re worth pursuing.
The issue we are discussing is known as cart abandonment, and statistics show that a dreadful $18 billion is flushed down the toilet for e-commerce brands because of abandoned carts. By using Meta Ads, you can retarget these users with new discounts and better offers to convince them to finalize their purchases and maybe select more products.
Build and Promote a Referral Program
Referral programs are highly beneficial because they automate the marketing process for your brand, making it completely hands-off. Once you set up a referral program and the industry influencers start talking about your brand, the potential for your products to go viral is high.
Also, you’ll get UGC (User-Generated Content), which you can import into your marketing tools to post highly engaging organic posts as well as build converting paid campaigns. There are several benefits of having a referral program for your e-commerce business:
- You receive credible reviews and testimonials, which make your products appear trustworthy.
- Referred customers tend to be more valuable and loyal than those acquired via traditional ads.
Build a Custom Audience with Product Page Viewers
We spoke about lookalike audiences, which Meta finds and targets from an existing list of potential buyers that you upload. Now, what if you could directly target people on that uploaded list with your ads? Then, you’ll be using Custom Audiences.
Since you’re selling products on your e-commerce store, you can build a custom audience with those who viewed your products. Once you’ve implemented event tracking or the Meta Pixel on your website, you can retarget product viewers with dynamic ads (now Meta Advantage+ catalog ads) to reintroduce them to the products they saw or new similar ones.
Integrate Interesting Video Ads
Videos are much more engaging than text or image-based ads. They powerfully capture the audience’s attention and increase conversions since they appeal to multiple senses at once. In a Meta ad with video content, you combine several elements, including:
- A visual appearance of the product
- Guiding and compelling captions
- People using the product in real life
Produce a few videos with your products and use them in your ads. You’ll notice a measurable increase in sales and product views.
Compose Irresistible Copy
There are tons of articles on this topic, but if you’ve tried running ads by yourself without copywriting expertise, you’ve probably learned its importance the hard way. Compelling copy requires research and the use of proven tactics. But, in short, great ad copy should include:
- Attention-grabbing and metrics-driven headlines
- Body copy that emphasizes benefits over features
- Clear calls to action that drive readers to your store
If your copy holds these traits, it’s highly likely to attract buyers.
Link to Your Published Articles
Meta Ads can be used to drive more sales, but this doesn’t mean all of your ads should be used to showcase your products directly. Instead, you can build authority and establish yourself as an expert in the niche by publishing well-written articles, such as product reviews, and then driving your readers to your products from there.
This strategy works because you’re educating your users first and selling to them after. Once they see you as an expert, there won’t be any resistance between your products and their desire to buy. Blogging is a fantastic way to appear trustworthy and build credibility around your brand.
Use High-Quality Visuals
You can tell whether an e-comm store is professional or not just by looking at its website design and social media posts. For your visual assets to be captivating, have your designer collaborate with the copywriter on your team to produce visuals that include:
- Captivating headlines blended seamlessly with the visuals
- Appealing designs that touch on customers' pain points
- Visualizations of products’ use or their benefits
Steer away from stock photos and instead use real-life pictures to make your ads more authentic and trustworthy. Also, don’t forget to brand your visuals for a professional look.
Put Customer Testimonials to Work
Customer testimonials are fantastic to build trust and convince customers about the value of your product. When you share other people’s experiences through testimonials in their own words, you’re stimulating a word-of-mouth conversation that is highly convincing.
Social media tools make it easy for you to monitor your brand and find what customers are saying about you online. Find your most loyal customers and use their testimonials in the form of quotes, videos, or user-generated content to create better Meta ads.
Create a Meta Product Catalog
For e-commerce stores, it’s essential to have a product catalog. By building a product catalog, you put all of your products into a single catalog, which makes it easier to advertise these products on Instagram and Facebook.
Once you’ve uploaded your products with your descriptions, titles, and respective images, you can run Meta Advantage+ catalog ads (previously known as dynamic ads). The Meta Advantage+ catalog ads feature gathers data from your audience and shows them personalized ads based on the products they view on your website or app.
Plan an Exciting Giveaway
People won’t ever get tired of winning free stuff. Giveaways are one way of leveraging this desire to increase the performance of your Meta ads and get more sales. There are a dozen reasons why you shouldn’t skip using giveaways for your e-commerce store:
- By integrating lead generation tools into the participation process, you can turn giveaway participants into new email subscribers and potential customers.
- Giveaways encourage word-of-mouth sharing of your brand, which has no limits.
- You can increase engagement, reach, and sales at the same time while encouraging participants to like, comment, and share your brand.
Adopt email account management software to help you monitor new giveaway sign-ups, nurture relationships with your subscribers, and oversee other email activity with ease.
Final Thoughts
Creating exceptional ads is a matter of experimentation. However, by employing these battle-tested tactics, you can increase your conversions. Supercharge your ad copy, use compelling and high-quality visuals, and win the audience’s trust through testimonials and promotion of your blog content before driving them to your store.
Roman Shvydun is a guest contributor to Marin Software.
