How to Run Facebook Ads to Grow Your POD Store

Facebook is a monster. But it is a very friendly, money-making, business-booster kind of monster. We like Facebook! Especially their most successful marketing tool, Ads. 

Nowadays, including Facebook Ads is a must on every digital strategy, and that is why the Fuel team has designed this step-by-step guide to help you launch your first campaign on the platform. 

Are you ready to see your ecommerce grow? Let’s do this 😎

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Why Running Ads

Facebook positions as the biggest global social network with 2.89 billion users, of which 1.93 billion are active daily. Its growth has been uninterrupted since the last decade, and it promises to continue like this in the future. 

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A broad audience like this one helps you get high exposure and micro-target your audiences for a better engagement. Plus, it has one of the highest ROI for any platform! Facebook Ads can be highly profitable, very fast when planned out correctly. 

We know you’re getting excited just by reading this, so here’s how you can get started: 

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Setting up your Business Manager

First thing’s first: You must have a Business Manager to run ads. This tool helps you organize and manage your company on the platform. You need a Facebook profile to create it since you use your account to sign in and verify your identity. 

Creating a Business Manager is simple:

1. Go to Facebook’s Business Manager. 
2. Click on Create Account at the top right corner.
3. Type your business name, your name, and your work email address.
4. Click on Next.
5. Enter your business details and click Submit.
   

You can only have two Business Manager accounts, so if you need more, you’ll need to ask someone from your team to create an additional one. ‍

💡Fuel Tip: Connect your Facebook Pixel to your store and get more in-depth insights on events!

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Defining Your Goals

Once you’re done with the technical job, let’s get our marketing hats on! Think about the strategy you’ve planned for your business, then align your marketing goals with your store’s goals, and decide on which campaigns you need to work on first to achieve them.

Facebook Ads objectives are divided into three major categories, which branch into specific ones:

Awareness

• Brand Awareness – This objective helps you get your business known. People can start to identify your products and logo!
• Reach – Shows your ad to as many people as possible in the audience you select. 

Consideration

• Traffic – Send people from Facebook to a desired destination, like your store’s website, a landing page, a phone call, a blog post, etc.
• Engagement – Reach and engage with an audience by getting likes, comments, and shares on your posts.
• App Installs – Redirects people to the store to download a business's app.
• Video Views – Share your business’ videos with users on Facebook most likely to watch it.
• Lead Generation – Collect leads for your business. Create ads that gather info from people interested in your print-on-demand products, such as sign-ups for newsletters.
• Messages – Get in touch with potential or existing customers to encourage interest in your store via Messenger, Instagram Direct, or WhatsApp. 

Conversion

• Conversions – Encourage people to take a specific action on your ecommerce: Adding items to their cart, registering for your site, or making a purchase.
• Catalog Sales – Display products from your store's catalog to boost your sales.
• Store Traffic – Don’t get confused! This goal helps promote brick-and-mortar store locations to people nearby.
  

💡Fuel Tip: Avoid mixing your goals and desired results! You can’t expect to get purchases if you select an engagement goal. Instead, create several campaigns for each objective, and work with them simultaneously. 

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Targeting the Right Niche

This step is very tied to the previous one. It is crucial to keep in mind what you want to achieve to create an audience that will get you the results you’re looking for. Facebook offers three different kinds of audiences to help you work effectively: 

Core Audiences

Drive traffic to your store by creating an audience based on the following criteria: 

• Location – The communities, cities, or countries where you want to sell.
• Demographics – This is a breakdown of your buyer persona’s age, gender, education, and more aspects. 
• Interests – Including hobbies and interests your niche is into will make your ads more relevant to them (i.e., yoga, pets, exercise).
• Behavior – Reach customers based on previous purchases or device usage. 
• Connections – Decide to include or exclude people connected to your business’ page or event. 

Custom Audiences

Target customers that already know your company and have shown interest in buying your products, like recurrent customers or people who have navigated your store:

• Contact lists – Upload your contacts’ info from your email list or CRM (Customer Relationship Management). 
• Site visitors – Use the Facebook pixel to create a Custom Audience of users who have visited your store or taken specific actions in it. 
• App users – Developers can install the Facebook SDK to design relevant ads to drive people into taking in-app actions.

Lookalike Audiences

This is an effective way to generate brand awareness and reach potential customers who are likely to buy your products. Once you create a source audience of your best customers, your ads will get to users with similar characteristics. ‍

💡Fuel Tip: Don’t be afraid to play around with several audiences and keep a close eye on your results. Once ads start running, the platform will show you how the audience reacts to your ads. Take notes for future campaigns!

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Defining Your Budget

We often hear that the budget “depends” on the business and objective you set. But, actually, how much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?

According to WebFx, these are the average costs:

• Cost-per-click (CPC) = $0.97 USD
• Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) = $7.19 USD
• Cost-per-like (CPL) = $1.07
  

However, there is no minimum spend on the platform, plus you can choose and control your budget and make it as low or high as you need.

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Choosing Your Ad Format

We’ve reached the most exciting part of the process: The creative materials. Users on social media are constantly bombed with several ads an hour, even a minute. So, you want to make sure that your ad catches their eye and makes them want to know more about your store.

There are four types of assets you can work with:

💡Fuel Tip: Check on the Facebook Ads Guide to make sure your marketing materials fulfill all specs and technical requirements. 

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Creating an Ad Campaign

The time has come for you to create your first campaign! Campaigns are divided into ad sets, a group of individual ads. As you can see below, each sub-division has its own elements and features. 

We’ve broken them down through this article to better understand each and make campaign creation easier. Now that you have a clear idea of what these terms mean, it’s time to start working that magic.

After setting up your Business Manager and connecting your Pixel, you can design your first campaign. First, go to Ads Manager, and click on Create. Then:

1. Select your objective – This depends on what you want to achieve. We’ll talk about them later on on this blog, so keep reading!
2. Name your campaign and ad sets – We recommend including the objective + audience + date to identify and track it better.
3. Define your budget and schedule – Control your costs and the timeframe you’ll be running your campaign. 
4. Select the audience you’ll be targeting – Choose from an existing audience or create a new one. 
5. Decide whether to enable the Budget Optimization – Set a daily or total budget, and it will be distributed across ad sets. Check here if this feature works for your store. 
   

6. Set up your Ad – Decide if you’re using a single image or video, a carousel, or a collection, and upload your creative. Type your primary text, headline, and description.
7. Pick your placements – Select where your ads will be displayed: Feeds, Stories, Reels, In-stream, Search, Messages, In-article, Apps, and sites. 
8. Choose where you’re driving traffic to – Select one of Facebook’s network of products or your website, choose a CTA (Call-To-Action), and the destination for this button.
9. Track events – Use your Facebook Pixel to track event datasets your ad motivates. 
   

Note: This example is for a Reach campaign. Some of the adjustments may vary depending on the chosen goal. 

Remember, this is a trial and test process! We highly recommend you take your time to explore every aspect of the Ads Manager dashboard and plan your ad strategy to make the most out of all its features. 

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Optimizing Your Campaigns

The work isn’t done after setting up your campaigns, you have to monitor their performance and optimize them over time if needed. 

You might feel tempted to shut down an ad or change your target if you don’t see sales after day one, but you have to be patient. Ads need time to be optimized so the algorithm can learn who is most interested in what you’re selling. 

‍💡Fuel Tip: Check your ads at least once a day! We advise waiting until they get at least 1,000 impressions before making adjustments, investing more, or turning them off to try something new. 

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Bonus Facebook Advertising Tips

• Share images of people using your products – Use creatives that show your customers or models wearing your products! This creates a more natural approach and a sense of trust in your brand. 
• Mix & match your ads – Combine ad types to test which resonate more with your audience. For example, videos are great for telling your brand story, while images help you show your product designs and printing quality. Play around with these two, then raise the budget into what’s working best. 
• Check on other advertisers – Do you feel a bit blocked creatively? Get inspired with Facebook’s Ad Library, a tool that shows all ads running on Facebook apps and services, including Instagram. Search by brand names or keywords and see how other companies promote their products.

And just like that, you’re ready to start using ads to fuel your business! Facebook’s advertising platform is designed especially for those with little to no experience in digital marketing. So, if you take your time to learn the basics, you’ll start seeing effective results in no time. 

Ready to jump to the next step of this journey? Let’s learn how to build customer loyalty!