3 Must-Use Facebook Ads Strategies for Ecommerce Stores

I run a lot of ad account audits for e-commerce brands.

Almost every account that I audit is missing out on these 3 insanely profitable “low hanging fruit” strategies:

1. The “win back” Campaign
2. The Long-Tail Discount Ladder Campaign
3. The “Power 5” Recipe

In this article, I’m doing to dive deep into each of these so you can take this away and start crushing your Facebook ad campaigns.

The “Win Back” Campaign

The “win back” campaign targets users who’ve purchased from you in the last 180 days and shows them an offer that is relevant to where they are in their journey to repurchase.

I know what you’re thinking: “I want new customers, why would I pay Facebook to target existing customers?!” 

Don’t let this campaign be a blind spot!

Loyalty campaigns garner an extremely high return on spend.

The key here is to map out where your customer is in his or her journey to repurchase and then build a campaign around it.

The key here is to segment out audiences into different time groups:

1. Purchased in the last 14 days
2. Purchased in the last 30 days  (exclude audience 1)
3. Purchased in the last 60 days (exclude audience 2)
4. Purchased in the last 180 days (exclude audience 2)

This way, depending on your product lifecycle, you can create a different message depending on where you think your customer might be in his/her journey to repurchase.

For example:

Let’s say you sell beard oil.

And you know that it takes your customer around 60 days before they run out of oil and have to buy more.

In this case, you would create an ad set within your loyalty campaign targeting people who purchased 60 days with and show them an offer to buy a new bottle of beard oil or an entire beard grooming kit.

Map out the scenarios that might be playing out in your customer’s journey and create a unique message to make sure you’re bringing your rightful customers back to your site.

The Long-Tail Discount Ladder Campaign

You probably already know that retargeting campaigns can be extremely profitable, especially when targeting people who’ve recently visited your website.

But what if you’re going after people who haven’t visited your website in a while— 60 days ago, 90 days ago and even 180 days ago?

In this scenario, the return on ad spend tends to be much lower compared to people who’ve recently visited your site.

For example

Someone who visited your site yesterday is more likely to purchase compared to someone who visited 30 days ago.

Whereas someone who visited your website 30 days ago is more likely to purchase compared to someone who purchased 60 days ago.

(this all depends on your price point, of course)

Now that we are aware of this…

what can we do to win back the audiences that fall into those distant 60, 90 and 180 retargeting segments?

Roll out a long-tail discount ladder campaign!

A Facebook Ads discount ladder campaign is a campaign where you pull prospects back into your funnel by offering a higher discount percentage as time passes.

Here’s how we typically structure a discount ladder campaign:

Audience 1: added to cart in the last 14 days – 10% Discount
Audience 2: added to cart in the last 30 days –  15% Discount
Audience 3: added to cart in the last 60 days –  20% Discount
Audience 4: added to cart in the last 90 days –  25% Discount

Note: always exclude the preceding audience to avoid overlap. For example, in the above structure, we would exclude audience 1 from audience 2 to avoid overlap, audience 2 from audience 3 and so no.

Work WITH the Facebook Algorithm: The “Power 5”

We often hear people talking about “hacking the algorithm” but the e-commerce stores who are crushing it right now are working WITH the algorithm — not against it.

Introducing, the “power 5” approach.

The “Power 5” is a term coined by a Facebook employee and it stuck.

It’s all the hype right now.

Why?

Because Facebook Marketers are increasingly relying on Facebook’s algorithm out of the box automation features to (profitably) scale campaigns and by combining the 5 items that I am about to mention, you will end up with a recipe for Facebook ads success.

The 5 pillars of the “Power 5” approach

Campaign Budget Optimization: Facebook decides which audience to allocate budget to get the highest return.

Automatic Placements: Facebook decides which placement your ads will be seen on (Facebook, Instagram, Mobile, Desktop) to get the cheapest result

Advanced Matching: enables Facebook marketers to connect customer data — such as email addresses, phone numbers — to their Facebook campaigns.

Structure for scale: Setup your account and campaigns to match your customer’s journey. This means having a campaign dedicated to each step of the journey. I will post an article with more on this — stay tuned.

Broad Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs): With broad audience targeting, you can reach people who’ve expressed interest in your products (or products similar to yours), even if they haven’t visited your website or app yet.

If you aren’t harnessing the “power 5” approach in your Facebook ad campaigns then you are leaving money on the table. It works.

Conclusion

As an e-commerce brand, you don’t want to let the competition outperform you on Facebook — especially when you sincerely do have the better product.

Most ad accounts that I perform audits on aren’t employing any of the strategies and tactics from this post. Implementing any of the above recommendations will position you steps ahead of the competition.