It’s no mystery that most people connect to Facebook through the mobile app. What’s still a puzzle, however—at least for certain advertisers—is how to tailor ad messaging and strategy to suit mobile devices.
Shopping advertisers often adjust campaign structures and overall approaches according to a brand’s products and business model. Additionally, there are several things they should do to rock their paid social mobile e-commerce initiatives.
Start with tracking
Show of hands—who wants to lose track of the conversions on your mobile web page or app? Nobody? Indeed, the very first thing you should consider is the tracking system you’re going to use. If you’re going to promote content on your mobile app, you’ll need one.
If your campaigns will redirect to the mobile version of your website through a mobile browser like Google Chrome or Safari, be sure to set up your Facebook Pixel correctly. Facebook provides its own mobile SDK, which is an excellent tool for advertisers who don’t want to invest in a third-party mobile tracking system.
The Facebook SDK allows you to track many different in-app events, including Add to Cart, Add of Payment Info and, of course, Purchase. This will not only enable you to track purchase conversions on your campaigns, but will also provide great visibility of your customers’ in-app decision journey.
Pick a format—or two
When choosing the right mobile shopping ad format, there’s no right or wrong one. Ideally, you should always explore all the creative possibilities that Facebook offers—from static images to videos to carousels.
Although there’s no single answer to which creative format you should use, here are some things to consider:
- If you can’t afford to shoot a video, consider slideshow ads. These are quick and inexpensive to create. All you need is a set of images to be used as animated slides.
- Collection ads are an amazing format for e-commerce. They show your targeted audience not only the main product you want to promote, but also a whole set of items you sell on your website. This ad format looks great on mobile, and it can redirect to either a website or an app.
- As always on Facebook, you should test different formats and variations of the same ad. An A/B split test could be a great ally in your quest to find the perfect creative solution for your campaigns.
Establish a bidding strategy
One of the key features of a successful campaign is a strong bidding strategy.
Always make sure you’re bidding not only with the right value, but also with the right optimization type. On conversion campaigns—the most likely campaign type for your mobile shopping efforts—the best bidding strategy is to optimize on conversions.
But what if you get poor delivery?
Especially right after the launch of a new campaign, you might consider optimizing on a less precise conversion type, which could help improve delivery on your ads, before switching back to a conversion-focused bidding strategy.
A great way to do this, particularly on mobile, is with the “Landing Page Views” optimization.
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Facebook Ads Manager[/caption]
Why use this bidding optimization on mobile shopping campaigns, which redirects to a website? Because on mobile, link clicks can sometimes lead to a high bounce rate. This is due to a variety of reasons, such as a long page load time due to poor mobile connection. With “Landing Page Views” optimization you can gain more actual website page views, rather than generic link clicks.
What if you’re redirecting to your e-commerce app? In this case, you can send customers to a specific landing page inside the app through a deep link. Thanks to the SDK you’ve set up, you can redirect them to a specific product, or a certain section of your app, and track their actions.
