By Graeme Caldwell
As an e-commerce entrepreneur, you’re constantly looking for ways to increase profit margins. A favorite saying among business owners is “Work smarter, not harder.” One of the best and easiest ways to work smarter when it comes to marketing your e-commerce shop is to utilize Facebook ads.
Facebook has evolved from a place for friends and family to virtually socialize to a place where businesses can form deep engagements and relationships with current and potential customers. It’s a rich playground of potential sales for smart entrepreneurs who know how to use the tools correctly.
There are currently 6 million active Facebook advertisers, so businesses are seeing value from this marketing solution. Considering that there are over a billion monthly active users spending an average of 20 minutes per day on the site, it’s an appealing ecosystem in which to advertise your goods.
Facebook ads are on target
Facebook enables some pretty specific targeting. You can target users based on their interests, behavior, demographics, location, age, and more. This can be extremely helpful if, for example, you’re selling jewelry online. If you sell women’s fashion jewelry with limited shipping options, you can hone down your audience by gender and location to keep your audience relevant. Alternatively, if you sell men’s watches and can ship globally, you’ll want to target your ads slightly differently.
Facebook also allows you to create Custom Audiences by uploading data collected from your website (with permission), which can be used to target and retarget customers. You can also use website traffic as a foundation for showing your ads to people who have viewed specific pages of your website or who have visited at a particular time.
Funnel your way to financial freedom
Returning to the jewelry example, depending on the price point of the jewelry you’re selling in your e-commerce shop, you may want to consider building funnels to drive people through the buyer’s journey up to the point of purchase. If you are selling lower-priced items, like fashion rings or bracelets that fall in the under $50 bucket, you may be able to get by with direct Facebook ads that encourage people to buy by clicking through. For higher-priced items, you’ll want to set up a sales funnel.
Let’s say you sell high priced vintage jewelry that costs anywhere from $500 per piece to over $1,000 per piece. Your audience may range from people who buy jewelry to wear as a fashion piece to collectors who purchase jewelry to hold and display or possibly resell. You may want to invest some time and resources into content marketing that can attract visitors that fall within these two personas.
If we look at the collector persona, you could start with a blog post that highlights the history of several pieces of jewelry you offer on your site. It may talk about the materials used, how these pieces traveled through various hands to arrive at your storefront, and the potential value increase of the items over time. By using Facebook’s intricate targeting tools, you can promote that blog to your audience, driving relevant traffic back to your site. That is part one of the funnel.
Part two is retargeting those visitors by gathering information about them from your website. Perhaps you ask for an email address to subscribe to your blog or to receive a special discount or promotion. Once you have accumulated a list of people, you can create a Custom Audience in Facebook with that data and retarget those people with sales ads that are more likely to convert because these people are warmer leads.
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The future of commerce via Facebook
It doesn’t stop at Facebook ads for e-commerce entrepreneurs. The pace of technology is increasing and new tools and solutions to sell to customers are emerging daily. Conversational commerce is the next frontier for social selling and allows e-commerce shops to engage with customers and potential customers via Facebook Messenger. Not only can this be used as a customer service tool, but business owners can actually use chatbots to help sell to customers in a very personalized way. As technology continues to automate things and facilitate greater personalization, e-commerce entrepreneurs can invest in solutions that result in greater conversions and happier customers.
Whether you’re a seasoned Facebook advertiser or a newbie, there are plenty of tricks that can help you achieve your sales goals. This is an especially appealing tool for e-commerce shops that sell items that consumers want to see before they order. Start with your end goals in mind and build a strategic road map backwards from there. With a little time and energy, you can fine tune your Facebook ads into a well-oiled, sales-generating machine.
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