Facebook Ads for eCommerce: How to Drive Sales with Dynamic Ads

You browse an online furniture store, close the window, log into Facebook for a few minutes of aimless scrolling and snooping and, bam, you see an ad for the same furniture you were looking at a moment ago!

Magic? No, Dumbledore, just dynamic ads.

The social network and its sibling Instagram are like heaven on earth for digital marketers because of the vast advertising opportunities that both platforms offer.

We've already talked about how you can use Facebook to advertise your local business or if you're a B2B company.

⭐️ Today we're going to turn our focus to e-commerce and how dynamic Facebook advertising is fundamentally changing the rules of the game and putting a truly powerful sales weapon in the hands of businesses. If they can get it right, of course, but there's always someone to help with that too. ;)

🪄 At ADvantage, we're real wizards when it comes to protecting your business from the frustration of ineffective ads. We take every campaign strategizing, crafting and setup as a true challenge that inspires us to conquer heights together.

Now, let's take a look behind the scenes of Facebook Dynamic Ads and how they can drive sales for your online store.

💡 What are dynamic ads?

These are next generation campaigns, now better known as Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads. With them, you can advertise your entire product catalogue on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network without creating separate ads.

With dynamic campaigns, users see the products they are interested in based on their interests and/or behavioral signals on your website/app.

If we take the above example of the online furniture store, it could go something like this: you look at sofa model A and sofa model B, but you don't buy them, and then you see them in your feed because of the interest in the respective products.

After the initial settings, which will be discussed later, Meta's algorithm decides what to show to whom according to the rules it has set and the information it has been given in the form of product catalog and conversion events.

All this happens automatically, and each user sees a unique combination of products according to their interests.

Long live artificial intelligence, which in this case is a valuable assistant to online stores because of its ability to decipher consumer behaviour and preferences with enviable precision.

Dynamic or Advantage+ ads look like the others and can be used for purposes such as Sales, App Promotion, Engagement, Leads or Traffic.

💡How do Advantage+ ads work?

Elements

We've mentioned so-called conversion events - these are signals based on specific actions that a user takes on your website, such as browsing a product, adding it to their cart or, god forbid, completing an order and paying.

The meta algorithm keeps track of all this thanks to a code that is added to all pages of your website and returns information to your advertising account about the reported signals (conversion events).

This code is called Facebook Pixel (or Facebook SDK for mobile apps). It can report actions such as:

• ViewContent - a preview of pages on your website such as homepages or product pages;
• AddToWishlist - add to Favorites
• AddToCart - add to cart;
• Purchase - completing an order;

And many others. In addition to the standard conversion events, you can also set up custom alerts relevant to your business to differentiate users in detail, for example by categories viewed or other criteria.

In addition to the pixel and associated actions performed, you should have a product catalog that contains names, pictures, prices, and the unique IDs of your products. You can also add additional columns such as product category or type to further personalize the ad.

All this is possible only if you have an advertising account in Meta Ads Manager, where you can upload the catalog and set up the desired conversion events.

Artificial intelligence in action

Thanks to the information received from the pixel, the advertising algorithm shows each user in your audience the products from your catalogue that match their interests and intentions.

Like any machine learning system, the Meta algorithm gets better with time, meaning the longer your dynamic campaign is active, the better optimized and efficient it will become.

Finally, of course, you need to take care of the creative part (text) and choose how to segment your audience - for example, users who viewed certain products but didn't buy them or added them to the cart but didn't complete the order are common choices.

👉 Types of dynamic ads according to their purpose

Dynamic ads are of two main types according to the audience they are targeted to and the end goal: retargeting or broad targeting.

Retargeting

Experts advise starting with retargeting first, in case you have a large enough audience to target your ads to. The minimum for your campaign to be successful is 1,000 people.

With dynamic retargeting ads, you can reach consumers who are interested in your products. This way, you will prompt them to complete the desired action as mentioned above.

It's a good idea to think about some subtleties in these cases:

• If the goal is order completion, exclude customers who have recently placed an order. You know what time frame is relevant for your online store and the products you offer.

• Consider time ranges and segment your audience accordingly. For example, those who abandoned the products in their cart yesterday are more likely to complete their order than someone who abandoned their cart a month ago.

With retargeting campaigns, you can achieve other goals besides saving abandoned carts and converting new customers.

Techniques like cross-sell and upsell also work very well.

Show customers who have already ordered products similar to the ones they bought. This will increase basket value, average order value and customer lifetime value.

However, if your online store is now launched and there is little traffic, which is not enough for retargeting, try broad targeting first.

Wide audience (broad)

This type of targeting allows you to reach audiences that don't know you. They haven't visited your site, but have shown interest in similar types of products or services.

It's a great way to find new customers by showing them your bestselling adverts, for example.

In these cases, targeting by geography and demographics instead of Lookalike, Custom Audiences, or by interests and behaviors is recommended for best results.

Another tip is to use large product catalogs that contain at least 1,000 products for better presentation and more assortment.

✔️ What are the advantages and disadvantages of dynamic ads?

Advantages

• Personalised: dynamic ads are relevant to users' interests.
• Continuous: they optimize themselves over time and become more efficient thanks to the algorithm.
• Perfect for retargeting: give your users the final nudge they need to complete their actions.
• But also to find new customers: easily expand your audience and bring new traffic to your site. The algorithm will find the right people for your business.

Disadvantages

• Setting up takes time. Dynamic ads are easy to maintain. In the beginning, however, you need to spend a little more time and effort to set everything up (pixel, events, catalog).
• Technical knowledge is needed. Don't let that stop you! That's where we, the digital guides at ADvantage, come in.

👌 Advantage+ Facebook Ads Optimization Best Practices

Make sure your campaigns are working well with our effective optimization tips!

Technically

• Do a detailed check of the entire setup.
• Organize the catalog into product sets. This will help you control the products recommended in a campaign and the amount to advertise a particular category.
• Update your catalogue frequently - ideally automatically every hour to keep everything up to date with stock and prices.
• Make sure each product has its own ID.

Creative

• Use high quality images - 600 x 600 pixels minimum, but 1080 x 1080 is best.
• Get users to click with the right calls to action, video images, and/or additional elements like pricing and discount rates.
• Make sure the ad and its message matches the platform it's going out on - Facebook or Instagram.

Dynamic ads are a vast territory waiting for you to conquer and bring growth to your online store.

If this all sounds like a foreign language to you, that's okay. We're here to make you an ecommerce winner. Contact ADvantage Digital Agency for a consultation.