Provided by Triple Whale
One of the most important aspects of serving your customers is meeting them where they are. For most of us, the place where we spend the most time online is Facebook.
Facebook remains one of the most popular social media platforms of all time, with 69% of American adults regularly active on the platform as of 2022 and the average Facebook user spending 33+ minutes per day onsite. Overall, the percentage of adults using Facebook is higher than most other social media sites, with the exception of YouTube. It easily dominates platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat.
This popularity makes developing a presence on Facebook a necessity for e-commerce store owners and marketers. Developing a better sense of Facebook e-commerce best practices and metrics is key to ensuring that online business owners can get in front of prospective customers and avoid letting critical acquisition opportunities slip by.
One of the reasons Facebook is so appealing is because it’s such a dynamic platform. It’s always evolving, so a set-it-and-forget-it approach for Facebook advertising simply won’t work.
In this article, we’ll explore the latest changes affecting Facebook advertising for online sellers, and illustrate a few metrics that can help you become more adept at harnessing the power of Facebook for your e-commerce venture.
There are many ways to leverage Facebook to boost traffic and sales for your e-commerce business. Up first: Facebook advertising.
Facebook ads are offered in many different formats and can target a specific group or a broad audience. Some popular formats include in-feed advertisements, in-stream video ads, Facebook Stories ads and “instant article” ads.
Because Facebook has a base of nearly three billion active users, and the customization of ads is so effortless, it’s easy to run advertising campaigns that target the individuals most likely to purchase from your brand.
Here are a few strategies we suggest when launching Facebook ads for your e-commerce business.
There’s more to a successful Facebook e-commerce strategy than simply running ads. If you’re serious about selling to customers on Facebook, you should set up a Facebook Shop.
A Facebook Shop is a feature retailers can use to display products they’re offering for sale directly on a Facebook e-commerce store. This provides a seamless, accessible and friction-free shopping experience. Instead of navigating off the platform, Facebook makes it easy for consumers to purchase directly while browsing.
Setting up your Facebook Shop is simple. All you’ll need is a Facebook Business Page and a Facebook for Business account. From there, you’ll set up your shop storefront, which can be done in minutes using a variety of customizable templates.
Once you have your storefront looking the way you want it, you’ll have to agree to Facebook’s merchant terms, including that items will be shipped within three days of purchase. Once you’ve set up payments by linking your bank or PayPal account, you can start adding items to your storefront and customers can start purchasing!
While the Facebook Shop feature is handy, Facebook ads remain the core advertising feature of the platform.
Creating effective Facebook ads requires business owners to continually stay on top of all new changes and feature additions to the Facebook advertising platform. Even the most minor updates to the platform can impact ad performance.
One of the most notable recent changes impacting Facebook advertising was caused by an update to Apple’s iOS operating system – the rollout of iOS 14. While this rollout occurred in 2021, Facebook has continued adjusting its advertising platform since. This iOS change was wildly impactful; it’s currently estimated that there are more than 1.5 billion active iPhone users worldwide, which doesn’t even include Mac/iPad users. When Apple released this rollout, Apple product users were given the chance to “opt in” or “opt out” of data tracking/collection done by Facebook. Prior to the rollout, data was automatically collected from all users. As of 2023, it is estimated that only 11% of Apple users chose to opt in to data tracking, which means that sales attribution and detailed advertising targeting has become extremely difficult for approximately 90% of Apple product users. Without this data, Facebook is unable to accurately report which advertisements are driving sales. They are also lacking the data necessary to target Facebook ads to the platform users most likely to purchase, as their profiles on each individual user have become significantly less robust.
These changes that occurred as a result of the iOS 14 update made it necessary for most Facebook advertisers to rethink how they view and analyze their reporting data, as well as how they develop their advertising copy and creative. Even the most successful brands must now regularly reoptimize their ads to ensure they’re targeting the right consumers, as well as supporting their on-platform data reporting with additional tracking sources to determine which Facebook ads are actually converting into sales.
Digging deeper, here are some of the most significant challenges Facebook advertisers are now facing post-iOS 14.
The information owners and advertisers receive from data, attribution and tracking on their Facebook ads is immeasurably valuable.
Every time an advertiser launches a Facebook ad, it’s similar to throwing a dart at a dartboard. Think of each user on Facebook as a microscopic dot on the dartboard. Throwing a dart doesn’t guarantee that you’ll hit a dot — or that the one you hit will be the one you were aiming for. However, the more robust your data is, the easier it is to hit the dots you’re aiming for.
With the access to clear attribution data and the understanding of the data collected, it is far easier to make sensible, data-driven decisions regarding your advertising strategy. Having this information gives you a better sense of which ads are performing well, which ads need to be optimized or shut off and where to best spend your advertising budget.
When you know what works, it’s easy to replicate your successes and move forward with ads that are more effective. If you cannot track these metrics or don’t know what to look for, you’re effectively stuck in a loop of trial and error, without room for data-driven optimization.
Finally, the customer information you can pull from Facebook’s attribution and tracking data is incredibly valuable to your business overall. Developing a better understanding of your ideal customer will enable you to launch ad campaigns, refine your website and even offer products that are most appealing, boosting customer satisfaction and revenue.