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4 Clever Ways To Use Facebook & Instagram Ads For Your E-Commerce Store

Updated on August 19, 2018
Dmytro Spilka profile image

Dmytro is a Founder of Solvid and Pridicto. His work has been published in Nasdaq, Financial Express, Kiplinger and Entrepreneur.

If you run an e-commerce website, or have ever considered setting up an online store, then the chances are that you've already at the very least looked into dabbling in the art of fine-tuned social media advertising campaigns to get yourself recognised.

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With Facebook amassing a mind-boggling 2.2 billion monthly active users, as well Instagram's impressive 800 million active users despite its later conception, social media is clearly the place to be for store owners intent on widening their reach to new audiences.

But there's a big difference between having the ability to advertise to billions of users and actively engaging potential customers, and many of those who have jumped on the Facebook and Instagram Ads bandwagon have ended up empty-handed thanks to a lack of strategy or market naivety.

In this article, we explore some of the more cunning ways of utilising Facebook and Instagram Ads to effectively find your targets and save money in the process - so sit back and watch your conversion rates go through the ceiling.

1. Targeting

When it comes to launching advertising campaigns, the best results come from effectively identifying and homing in on your targets.

Sadly, there's no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to utilising Facebook Ads to find the right target, but you're presented with plenty of options to fine-tune your approach.

Through targeting you can target social media users who have a specific level of education, who are earning a specific amount of money per year, who live in a certain area, or by whether or not they're in a relationship and/or expecting children. The depth in which you can craft your campaign is huge, so the onus is on you to get thinking about your company and who will be most likely to make a purchase from you. Ensure to utilise retargeting (also known as remarketing) to ensure that you reach people who’ve already visited your website.

When tweaking your the of users that will be exposed to your campaigns, you're presented with a handy gauge that shows how refined your audience will be. It's important not to get too specific about the people who will be targeted because not everyone registered to a social network is an active user - so rather than saving money, you could find yourself preaching to an empty room if you're not careful.

Introspection goes a long way while calculating the sort of campaigns to run. For example, if you run an online shop that specialises in surfing equipment and goods, it's an idea to target accounts that have expressed an interest in the sport while situated near key surf hotspots. While if you're aiming to sell luxury watches, the most effective practice would be to advertise to users that are earning a high enough salary to justify extravagant purchases.

2. Scheduling

A very effective method of making sure your campaign reaches the right audience in an economically friendly manner is by scheduling your advertisements to spring into action at specific times of the day and week.

If your target audience is expected to be in full-time employment, you can schedule your advertisements to bypass a typical 9 to 5 working day and only display in the evening when users are more likely to be online and in possession of enough free time to go shopping. You can even fine-tune your ads to run at a time when many of your targets are expected to experience a payday towards the end of the month.

Scheduling works particularly well if you know your audience well enough to anticipate the hours that they'll be most receptive to adverts. If you're looking to engage new parents then the anti-social hours of 4 am to 11 am can be a treasure trove of cheap slots for adverts that will likely be seen by users that are caring for their newborns.

This nifty tactic can be customised when you select the Lifetime Budget in the Ad Set area of your Facebook Ads control panel, and a highly useful real-time calculator that estimates your 'daily reach' of users can provide a helpful overview for your activity.

Through scheduling your adverts, you're put in full control of your campaign, and by setting an overall timescale, you can really get to grips with who will be exposed to your ads and when. Once again, it's important to know when your customers are likely to be online - and insights into statistics that can help you make relevant decisions can be utilised through exploring your daily fluctuations in traffic and through the use of Facebook's Pixel analytics.

3. Call-to-action

Turning your ads into an eye-catching call-to-action is an excellent and under-appreciated way of adding an extra dimension to your campaign.

A call-to-action acts as a prompt that turns a typical advert into an unmissable invitation for targets to find out more about a product, to make a purchase, or to subscribe to a mailing list.

Topping your Ad off with a relevant call-to-action is a great way of holding a prospective customer's attention and nudging them into interacting with your advert more than they otherwise might have. A sure-fire way of increasing your click-through rate.

Setting up a call-to-action is a simple process. When constructing your advert, head to the 'text and links' section. There, you will be presented with a small range of options where you can craft your action to suit your ad. If your goal is to increase your conversion rate, a 'shop now' prompt could work wonders. If you're more intent on building subscribers for future campaigns, a 'sign up' button will guarantee that more users will be exposed to your products and services.

Another way of utilising personalised CTAs is to offer coupons and discounts for those who’ve visited a particular product on your store. Though part of smart retargeting, using an appropriate image combined with relevant offer and call-to-action can bring great results. This could be effective for several reasons:

1. People love discounts, especially when they’re on point. Moreover, over 2.5 billion coupons are redeemed each year:

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2. Granular targeting is often very effective as you will not be wasting your budget on those who aren’t familiar with your brand/website.

4. Shoppable Posts


A relatively new feature to the Instagram advertising-scape is 'shoppable posts' - an intricate tool that allows retailers to tag the products that are showcased in their images, giving shoppers the chance to click on the items they see to find out more and make a purchase with ease.

The aim of this innovation is to provide a 'seamless experience' for users who wish to learn more about the products they see in images throughout the platform, and the benefits this will bring to e-commerce websites that advertise through Instagram can't be ignored.

The interface that comes with shoppable posts is very smart too, with product tags only making themselves visible when a user taps on a shopping bag thumbnail in the corner of an image - helping to keep the beauty of a picture without the risk of unappealing clutter. Shoppable posts also don't have to be limited to advertisements, meaning that any image uploaded to Instagram can become a marketing opportunity.

Shoppable posts are available to all registered Instagram business accounts in the USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain at the time of writing - with further expansions anticipated in the coming months.

Instagram's Head of Business Development, Amy Cole, has reported that this new approach to advertising on the platform is already paying dividends for some businesses, with one company recording an 8% boost in revenue in the few months that shoppable posts have been available.

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