Facebook Ads for eCommerce: 16 Strategies, Examples & Tips

So, what Facebook ad strategies yield the best results, and which Facebook campaigns should you be prioritizing? We’ve got you covered! 

This post will highlight how you can successfully run Facebook ads for eCommerce, the best campaigns to use for each Facebook ad objective, and high-performing examples of the best Facebook ads for eCommerce. You can jump ahead in the post here:

1. 7 Must-Use Expert Tips for Successful Facebook Ads for eCommerce 
2. 8 Best Facebook Ad Types to Include in Your eCommerce Facebook Strategy [+ Examples]
3. Bonus eCommerce Facebook Strategy Case Study

Grab that coffee, and let’s jump in!

 

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 7 Must-Use Expert Tips for Successful Facebook Ads for eCommerce That Convert

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If you are looking for ways for your Facebook ads to not only stand out from your biggest competitors but perform well enough to reach your eCommerce marketing goals, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve put together these top seven expert tips a successful marketer needs to run epic Facebook ads for eCommerce to help boost ROAS, conversions, and sales.

1.  Acquire new customers with custom and lookalike audiences
2. Target potential shoppers who are dissatisfied with your competitors
3. Ask existing customers to buy more from you
4. Use a conversion pixel to track and retarget cart abandonment activity
5. Retarget potential customers who visited your store once
6. Use automation to ensure the right ads are shown to the right segment at the right time to increase conversion potential
7. Combine awareness campaigns and Facebook live events to send users to your Facebook shop

Let’s dig deeper into each.  

eCommerce Facebook Strategy #1: Acquire New Customers with Custom and Lookalike Audiences

The first weapon in your bag of tricks in terms of Facebook campaigns is optimizing custom and lookalike audiences to strategically attract more shoppers. 

Facebook custom and lookalike audiences are vital in ensuring your eCommerce Facebook advertising strategies are performing well and reaching targeted new potential customer segments.  

Optimizing these audiences will ensure you can better attract more potential shoppers who are actively looking for what you are selling. 

An example of an eCommerce brand who has mastered this is the superstar Dollar Shave Club. By combining the visual storytelling of collection ads with custom audiences, they reached 1.6 million people.

The results? 1.5X increase in social media subscriptions and a 30% decrease in cost per subscription compared to traditional link ads.

The secret? Implementing expert strategies that enable you to fine-tune ads for your specific brand and market. Here are three main expert custom audience hacks you should be testing when creating Facebook ads for your eCommerce business:

• If you have specific custom audiences or lookalike audiences that are not performing, remove them from campaigns to keep ROAS up.
• Use your best-performing custom and lookalike audiences and the valuable data they add to your Audience Insights (which you can find in your Facebook Ads Manager) to direct other PPC channel campaign strategies.
• To have more control over your brand awareness campaigns (with lookalike audiences), you should segment your audiences as much as possible. This ensures Facebook PPC campaigns are more personalized and, therefore, more likely to convert. 

Bonus Content: Full Intermediate Guide to eCommerce Personalization

You can read more about optimizing custom audiences and hacks to improve your lookalike audiences here.

eCommerce Facebook Strategy #2: Target Potential Shoppers Who Are Dissatisfied with Competitors [Intent-Based Targeting]

Another essential piece in your overall Facebook marketing strategy to attract new customers is reaching potential shoppers who have already bought from or engaged with your biggest competitors. 

Not only do these potential customers have high buying intent and conversion potential (as they are quite literally shopping for the kinds of products you sell), but they are also looking for alternative brands to shop from. 

So how do you target your Facebook campaigns to potential customers who are dissatisfied with your closest competitors? With intent-based Facebook campaign targeting that harnesses the power of Facebook’s interest targeting. 

In other words, you can create a custom audience where your competitor’s brand name is included as an “interest.” This is done at ad set level. 

However, this will take some tweaking on your part. When creating this specific custom audience segment, you will need to: 

• Insert competitor-centric keywords into the detailed targeting section. The idea here is to trigger Facebook to populate the relevant domain, brand name, or Facebook page. 
• If the domain name is not triggered, you will need to use very specific keywords to target those shoppers. 

Note: If the brand name or desired keywords are not populated as an option, it is likely that Facebook cannot target that “interest” at that time.

It’s not enough to just target these potential shoppers; your strategies should be aimed at converting them or moving them into your sales funnel. You should test a variety of ad elements and assets — including images, headlines, and Facebook CTAs — that show how your brand answers a potential customer’s pain better than your competitor does, without using their brand name in your text. 

To get into these potential customers’ mindsets and get your messaging just right, you will need to do some research. Visit our How to Spy on Your Competitors on Facebook post for tips on how to do just that. 

eCommerce Facebook Strategy #3: Ask Existing Customers to Buy More from You

Next in your eCommerce Facebook campaign bag of tricks is retention. Targeting existing customers not only helps boost sales, but does so for lower spend. Why? Because your customers already know and trust you. Now, it is just a matter of reminding them. 

To set yourself up for success, this part of your Facebook ad strategy for eCommerce will also require strategic segmentation and targeting to drive Facebook PPC personalization. This means using a variety of ads at different stages. You should be targeting: 

• Brand new customers
• Customers who have only bought once
• Customers who have bought more than once but not for X amount of time 
• Regular existing customers
• Your brand’s superfans 

Use a variety of personalized campaigns, including: 

• New product alerts 
• Exclusive deals 
• Product or accessory upsells
• Product top-up selections 
• Reordering notifications 
• Birthday/event promo codes and coupons 

An example of a brand that has turned existing customer retargeting into an art (and science) is West Coast Kids. Using dynamic ads, they target previous customers with carousel ads, showing a variety of highly personalized products their customers would be specifically interested in, based on their previous shopping behavior. 

The results? 15X ROAS with a 28-day click-through window and an 80% increase in revenue month over month.

Commerce Facebook Strategy #4: Use a Conversion Pixel to Track and Retarget Cart Abandonment Activity

Creating a Facebook campaign to target cart abandonment can be a very powerful conversion booster. Not only is this segment already very familiar with your brand (trust), but they also have high buying intent. With the right Facebook retargeting campaign, you can get them over the finish line. 

There are three main segments that your cart abandonment Facebook campaigns are aimed toward: 

1. Users who visited product pages, clicked to cart, but didn’t visit the cart 
2. Browsers who clicked to cart pages, but didn’t go through checkout 
3. Potential shoppers who clicked to checkout pages but never got to the thank you page 

However, it’s not enough. To truly convert with your cart abandonment Facebook campaigns, you need to tailor each ad to the specific shopper and the products they are interested in. An effective way to do this is by combining cart abandonment segments with dynamic Facebook ads.

eCommerce Facebook Strategy #5: Retarget Potential Customers Who Visited Your Store Once

The next touchpoint on your sales funnel is retargeting potential customers who engaged with your site once. This means creating custom audiences based on very specific site behavior, and then tailoring your ads directly to this segment. 

At this shopping or brand-engagement stage, the audience is already familiar with your brand, having engaged through awareness campaigns, but they need more convincing. By personalizing your ads to the exact product pages they visited, you increase your Facebook conversion chances. 

As Facebook explains it, Facebook Pixel is “an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.” To find out how to create and install a Facebook Pixel linking traffic behavior to your Facebook Ads Manager, you can head over to the Facebook Pixel help page for step-by-step instructions. 

You can also use apps such as Facebook Pixel Helper. 

Facebook Pixel Helper is a Chrome app designed to help users quickly troubleshoot or validate their Facebook Pixel implementation. You can check it out here.

As we know, all eCommerce Facebook campaign types can be used in conjunction with retargeting audiences. However, the secret to better ROAS is keeping the audience as segmented as possible. This means once one-time-only store visitors see and click your retargeting ad, they should be moved to the next segment — unless, of course, they convert. 

Here’s a winning eCommerce Facebook campaign example from Philosophy that generated over 9,000 leads. Its objective? To strengthen Philosophy’s position against competitors and drive sales of its skincare products by implementing a two-phase Facebook ad campaign. Philosophy ran lead ads using custom audiences and link ads to retarget ads promoting the same products from the sampling phase.

When running multiple Facebook campaigns to target and then retarget shoppers, make sure you fine-tune campaigns to ensure the same people aren’t seeing the same ads, despite moving up the funnel. The simplest way to manage this is using Facebook’s “exclude” feature to tweak targeting. 

This ensures that the right person is always seeing the most relevant Facebook ad at the right time for conversion.

eCommerce Facebook Strategy #6. Automatically Ensure You Are Triggering the Right Ads, to the Right Audience, at the Right Time, to Increase Conversion Potential

We have outlined how to use Facebook custom and lookalike audiences to better convert, and touched on the types of campaigns you should be using for these different touchpoints on your shoppers’ journey. 

As we mentioned in the intro, running ads on Facebook for your eCommerce business is hard work. If you want to truly bring all your Facebook campaigns into one seamless strategy that is optimized for peak performance, it is all about PPC management and automation. 

This means automating your: 

• Structure 
• Targeting
• Ad creative 
• Campaign optimization 

The only way to do that is by using PPC management software like Traffic Booster to manage, run, and optimize your Facebook ads for eCommerce for peak performance. 

And it’s not just Facebook; here are just some of the campaigns, including Google Ads for eCommerce, that Traffic Booster’s marketing team and powerful machine learning technology (AKA, eCommerce marketing automation) manages for you:

1. Facebook dynamic retargeting ads
2. Instagram dynamic retargeting ads
3. Facebook acquisition ads
4. Instagram acquisition ads
5. Smart display campaigns 
6. YouTube Shopping 
7. YouTube action ads
8. Google Search ads 
9. Google Dynamic Search Ads 
10. Google Shopping & Smart Shopping ads
11. Pinterest Ads for eCommerce [Enterprise]
12. TikTok Ads for eCommerce [Enterprise]

In short, it takes the guesswork out of your Facebook campaigns so you and your marketing team can focus on other tasks to boost reach and sales. You can find out more about Traffic Booster here. 

eCommerce Facebook Strategy #7: Combine Awareness Campaigns and Facebook Live Events to Send Users to Your Facebook Shop

While we know that social proof, live shopping, and in-app marketplaces can each help drive conversions — combine these three strategies and you have the potential to boost your sales in a huge way. The next Facebook eCommerce strategy highlights how to do just that.  

By boosting online sales with Facebook Shops and live shopping (with a little help from brand awareness Facebook ads), you can increase your sales and your AOVs substantially. Here’s an example of this strategy in practice from boutique retailer PinkTag Boutique. 

Looking to create a more tailored shopping experience to drive conversions, PinkTag Boutique set out to find more meaningful ways for their shoppers to discover, engage with, and buy their products all from one place — Facebook Shop. Therefore, they tweaked their social commerce strategy, eliminating the need for shoppers to have to go to their website to finish a purchase. 

Here are the steps they took to flesh out their strategy. They: 

1. Set up their Facebook Shop with checkout in Meta’s Commerce Manager 
2. Opted for collection format photo ads to categorize products
3. Tagged their products in all their content creation, including posts, stories, and ads (using a variety of ad formats) 
4. Promoted an upcoming live shopping event using sneak peek photos and other details
5. Used their Facebook live shopping event to launch new products available on their Facebook Shop 

And the results? Over a period of four months, PinkTag Boutique saw: 

• $44,448 in incremental sales from Facebook Shops
• 804 incremental orders from Facebook Shops
• 66% greater AOVs from buyers on Facebook Shops compared to those who bought from the website  

Now let’s look at the best Facebook ads for eCommerce. 

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8 Best Facebook Ads for eCommerce and Winning Campaign Examples

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Now let’s look at the best Facebook ads for eCommerce. These campaigns will help ensure you are able to reach every potential shopper or existing customer at every touchpoint on their buying journey.  

1. Dynamic ads
2. Collection ads
3. Video ads
4. Domain ads
5. Messenger ads
6. Instant Experience ads
7. Lead ads
8. Carousel ads

But before we jump into these high-performers, let’s quickly talk about Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. 

1. Facebook Dynamic Ads

If you haven’t included Facebook dynamic ads in your Facebook advertising strategy, you’re missing out on a golden retargeting campaign opportunity. Dynamic ads are targeted at potential shoppers, explicitly based on their behavior history on your eCommerce store. They can be hugely successful.

The trick to turning this eCommerce Facebook campaign into a money-maker (i.e., generating cost-effective conversions) lies in optimization. For example:

• Focusing on your most profitable products and eliminating the duds
• Monitoring product availability
• Planning and controlling frequency
• Optimizing copy and tweaking headlines to keep them fresh
• Testing and tweaking bid strategies

You can find out more in our 8 Tips for Quick Facebook Dynamic Product Ad Optimization post.

2. Facebook Collection Ads

When it comes to Facebook ads for eCommerce, Facebook collection ads are essential. They are so useful that we have an entire post dedicated to just how must-have they are. 

Remember the Dollar Shave Facebook campaign strategy we highlighted earlier? It is just one example of how powerful collection ads can be when used in conjunction with lookalike audiences and Facebook retargeting.

There’s no denying that collection ads can have effective results, primarily if you use them to remarket to previous traffic and/or shoppers. To ensure your collection ads are boosting eCommerce sales like they did for Dollar Shave Club, you’ll want to:

• Create cohesive designs that maintain the authenticity of your brand.
• A/B test collection ad variations to find the winning formula for your specific target audience, and optimize your main image or video for more clicks.

3. Facebook Video Ads

There is no doubt that Facebook video ads can be highly effective. Last year, HubSpot tested Facebook video vs. image campaigns and found that their video got 20% more clicks than the image. In fact, AdEspresso states that when it comes to video content, Facebook’s user engagement is highest and that Facebook video content drives more organic traffic.

The key to creating good video campaigns to add to your Facebook ads for eCommerce list is creating video content that both appeals to your target audience and has a social element. This doesn’t mean you need to hire professionals for every video you create; there are low-budget smartphone videos that are generating millions of views on social media.

What is more important here is optimizing and scaling a Facebook video campaign to bring in more sales. Here’s a how-to guide from Facebook expert Ben Malol to get you started:

4. Facebook Domain Ads

Domain ads, sometimes called Facebook page post link ads, are ads that send Facebook users directly to your website from social media campaigns. They can be used to attract new shoppers, or to remarket site traffic or engaged users by pointing them back to a page, your brand, or a specific product landing page.

Like with any Facebook ad, you need to tweak, test, and optimize domain ads to make sure they’re effective. You have very little space (and time) to get your message across and attract your target audiences’ (potential customers’) attention, so your Facebook ad copy and image are crucial.

Here’s an excellent example from personalized gift experts Wonderbly.

There is one case study in particular that proves just how effective Messenger ads can be for businesses. It showed how MobileMonkey achieved their lead generation goal with the help of clever copy, CTAs, and engagement. On clicking the ad, their target audience were sent to MobileMonkey’s Facebook Messenger chatbot, which ultimately resulted in the brand being able to reduce their cost per lead by 30X.

6. Facebook Instant Experience Ads

Another must-have on your eCommerce Facebook ads list are Instant Experience ads. Formerly known as Canvas Ads, Facebook’s Instant Experiences allow advertisers to create a beautiful, full-screen destination for your ads. These ads are especially effective if you are trying to create a story with your products or need to relay a lot of product info.

Here are some stats from brands who added Instant Experience ads:

• Jeep enjoyed a 37-point lift in ad recall
• Montana Tourism experienced a 7.5X higher CTR
• Tilting Point was able to reach 1.3 million potential customers
• Sephora was able to get a 32% higher return on ad spend

7. Facebook Lead Ads

If you want to use Facebook to grow your eCommerce mailing list, test a new product, download a manual or guide, sign up for a subscription service, or run a contest, a Facebook lead ad campaign can be a very effective tool to add to your Facebook advertising portfolio.

8. Facebook Carousel Ads

Carousel ads are a great way to highlight a collection of products in one Facebook ad. They have a lot of benefits and a good performance track record when compared to other Facebook ads for eCommerce. Here are some carousel ad examples which show the kind of success big brands are having with this campaign type when including it in their Facebook ad strategy for eCommerce.

Carousel Ad Examples

The Black Tux’s carousel ad example had an average increase in purchases, week over week, of 51%.

GameStop’s carousel ad example saw an increase in incremental return on ad spend.

Apparel brand Christoff reported a 10x return on ad investment from their carousel ad campaigns.

Ultimately, carousel ads enable you to showcase up to eight products for the price of one. However, your products need to be visually appealing and grab your potential shopper’s attention quickly.

Final Thoughts: Building the Best Facebook Marketing Strategy in 2024 

Want to avoid top marketing mistakes? You need a varied and well-optimized Facebook ads for eCommerce strategy that targets every touchpoint on a shopper’s journey. This means using multiple Facebook campaign types to build a converting sales funnel that tackles attraction and remarketing.

Not only do you need to test different Facebook ad types for different objectives — including lookalike targeting to reach new shoppers and retargeting campaigns to convert — but you should also be testing ad elements within each campaign.

Like this: 

When it comes to building the ultimate PPC strategy, you need to test a variety of eCommerce Facebook ads — and Google Ads for eCommerce — to fine-tune the best performers for your brand. 

All your PPC marketing channels should be working in harmony to feed every touchpoint on the buying journey if you want to truly scale your online retail store. This includes ads that attract new potential shoppers and remarketing campaigns for previous traffic — as well as existing customers.  

Got Facebook advertising questions? Post them in the comments below and our PPC gurus will be happy to help.

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