In today’s competitive DTC marketing landscape, your Meta ads need to be strategic, tactical, performance-driven, and focused on revenue.
Effective Meta advertising is reliant on some critical components. Whilst we won’t delve into media buying-focused bidding strategies or placement optimisation here, we have a detailed guide: High performance ads blueprint that you can download to steal the strategies that help us scale 7 and 8 figure e-commerce brands.
Here, we focus on the four main pillars of Meta advertising:
- Audience targeting
- Creative strategy
- Creative testing/iteration and
- Landing page optimisation
By getting a hold of these four elements, consumer-focused brands can optimise their ad spend and achieve higher conversion rates.
Three fundamental truths we’ve learnt about paid advertising over the years
1. Direct response advertising is akin to blowing up a balloon. As you inflate it (expand your paid media), the surface stretches, and the material can thin out, becoming more fragile. However, if the balloon is of high quality (strong brand equity), it can handle more air (media stretch) without losing its integrity or bursting. Similarly, with solid branding, your advertising can be more impactful and maintain clarity even as you scale your efforts.
2. Customer journeys are unpredictable and can follow various paths.
In no particular order, your customers might
- See your ad in the wild
- Google your brand
- Google your product
- Compare prices on Amazon
- Visit your website
- Check your socials… then get distracted
- See your ad… AGAIN, with a lot more interest this time
- Visit your website again and add to the cart
- May or may not abandon the cart
- See your ad yet again
- Revisit the website and cart
- Finally, convert
Therefore, it is important to note that customers typically interact with more than one ad across platforms before finally converting.
3. This is precisely why your ads must be native to the platform. Just as we can’t use a Snapchat story on a billboard, we cannot expect TV commercials to perform as Meta ads.
E-commerce businesses can at times assume that launching Meta ads will magically drive revenue. Whilst it is statistically the most successful ad platform for DTC brands, top-of-funnel brand awareness campaigns are equally crucial.
A lot like preparing for a job interview—brands need to showcase their best qualities, dress appropriately, and be well-prepared to impress the interviewer. Similarly, ads need to be meticulously crafted to capture the attention of your potential customers. Many businesses fail on Meta because they rely on outdated strategies like not putting in enough work into optimising their landing pages and directing traffic to a generic homepage.
When crafting a paid social campaign, focus on audience targeting, creative optimisation, and landing page experience. Let’s get into these in detail.
Audience targeting
To maximise the effectiveness of your ads, precise targeting is essential.
Ask yourself, who is your audience, who are you going after, but more importantly, why? What relevance does this group have to your product or its consumption? Also, how did you conclude this is the right customer for your brand? Did you choose them because that’s who you think your brand will sell to, or have you looked at data and strategically identified them.
There are many ways to identify your potential customers when setting up ad targeting, but the important question before zeroing in on your demographic is WHY. The answer to this ‘why’ is the reason for that group to buy the product. This answer will make great angles for your ads.
You can also utilise the platform’s robust targeting options to reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviours that align with your product or service. Leverage data from your customer base, website traffic, and Meta’s Custom Audiences to refine your targeting. Regularly review and adjust your parameters to ensure your ads are reaching the most relevant users at relevant times.
- Custom audiences: These allow you to go after people who have already interacted with your brand, such as previous customers or website visitors. This can help you re-engage potential customers who are already familiar with your product or service.
- Lookalike audiences: Create audiences that resemble your existing customers. This can help you reach new users who are likely to be interested in your products based on similarities with your current customer base.
- Interest and behavioural targeting: Use the platform’s extensive data to target users based on their interests and behaviours. This can include everything from their hobbies and favourite brands to their online activities and purchase behaviours.
If you are a brand just starting out and are unsure of your key demographic, start by testing gradually. Conversely, if your brand has grown organically and you’re unsure of your demographic, consider using broad targeting. Meta’s machine learning can help identify potential customers. As long as you’ve had a Facebook pixel on your website, it has been learning about your audience and can use this information to target broadly, allowing its algorithms to optimise your ad targeting and reach.
Example: If you are marketing fitness equipment, target users interested in health, wellness, exercise and not just fitness. Use data from previous purchasers and website visitors who viewed fitness-related content to create a lookalike audience, enhancing the likelihood of conversions.
Lastly, if you’ve done all of the above, find similar brands and cross-share your lookalike audiences. This used to be complicated previously, but today, Co-op Commerce (now rebranded as Disco) does this as a feature of the platform. You can now easily request to swap audiences with a brand like your own.
Creative strategy
Developing a robust creative strategy is essential for long-term success in Meta advertising. This involves a continuous cycle of brainstorming ad concepts and angles, testing, and refining ad creatives to keep your campaigns relevant, engaging, and performance-driven. When applied effectively, these ad strategies can significantly enhance your campaign’s performance, improve engagement rates, and drive conversions.
User-generated content (UGC)
Incorporate customer testimonials, reviews, and photos into your ads. UGC adds authenticity and encourages potential customers to trust your brand, which can boost click-through rates and conversions. For example, a fitness brand could showcase UGC in their ads to highlight how real customers have achieved their goals using the products.
Strategic application:
- Create carousel ads featuring multiple (diverse) customer photos and testimonials
- Use video ads that compile customer success stories with interesting edits
- Implement dynamic ads that match UGC with relevant products based on user interests
- Utilise Instagram story ads to share authentic, behind-the-scenes content from satisfied customers
Seasonal themes
Align your ads with seasonal events and holidays. This makes your ads timely and relevant, increasing engagement. A retailer, for instance, might create holiday-themed ads with festive visuals and limited-time festive promotions to capture the seasonal shopper’s interest.
Strategic application:
- Design custom audiences based on seasonal interests or behaviours
- Use Meta’s dynamic creative feature to automatically optimise seasonal ad elements
- Create time-specific offers using Meta’s special ad category for limited-time deals
- Leverage location targeting to tailor seasonal promotions to specific regions
Influencer collaborations
Partnering with influencers can amplify your ad campaigns by reaching broader audiences and adding credibility. For example, a skincare brand can work with beauty influencers across a specific niche and/or geography to broaden their reach and create ads that feature their products, driving brand awareness and sales.
Strategic application:
- Use Meta’s Brand collabs manager to find and partner with relevant influencers
- Create lookalike audiences based on influencers’ followers to expand reach
- Implement Meta’s collaborative ads feature to co-create ads with influencer partners
- Utilise the split testing feature to compare performance of different influencer collaborations
Additional creative strategies
Format variety: Experiment with multiple ad formats such as image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and instant experience ads. Each format offers unique opportunities to showcase your products or services.
Personalisation: Leverage the platform’s advanced targeting capabilities to create personalised ad experiences. Use custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and dynamic ads to show the most relevant content to each user.
A/B testing: Utilise the platform’s built-in A/B testing tools to continuously refine your ad creatives, headlines, and calls-to-action. This data-driven approach ensures ongoing optimisation of your campaigns.
Interactive elements: Incorporate polls, quizzes, or other interactive elements into your ads to boost engagement and gather valuable customer insights.
By implementing these strategies and leveraging Meta’s unique advertising features, you can create more effective, engaging, and conversion-driven ad campaigns. Remember to regularly analyse your ad performance and adjust your creative strategy accordingly to maintain optimal results.
Creative iteration
Your ad creative (visual and textual) elements significantly impact their performance. Testing different formats such as static images, videos, and carousel ads, and different iterations of winning ads, can help identify what resonates best with your customers and what time.
Pay attention to ad copy, headlines, and call-to-action (CTA) buttons, ensuring they are compelling, clear and resonate with your audience. With creatives, you want to test any and every element. That UGC selfie style review? Test it. The podcast-style ad campaign? Test it.
There is no lack of ideas, concepts and angles you can test. Also, you can test different ad types for different brands
Static images: Simple and quick to create, static images are a staple in Meta advertising. The images should be high-quality and relevant to your campaign and brand message.
Example: A brand should use an eye-catching images of their best-selling products with a clear CTAs and ad copy making a bold claim to attract attention and drive clicks.
Video ads and VSLs:
Video ads can capture more attention and convey more information than static ads. Use video ads and VSLs to tell a story, demonstrate a product, show expertise or share customer testimonials.
Example: A skincare brand Miami MD uses video ads and VSLs to share the story of how their products were created, its application highlighting its features and benefits.
Carousel ads:
These allow multiple images or videos within a single ad, perfect for showcasing a product range or different features of a single product.
Example: An e-commerce brand Gymshark uses carousel ads to display different items from their new athleisure collection, each linking to the respective product page.
Slideshows: Slideshows are a lightweight alternative to videos, created using a series of static images. They are effective for telling a visual short story without the need for video production.
Example: A travel agency could use a slideshow to highlight various destinations and vacation packages.
Collection ads: Ideal for mobile users, these ads feature a cover image or video followed by several product images. They offer a quick and immersive browsing experience.
Example: A fashion retailer might use a collection ad to showcase their new collection for the season, encouraging prospects to browse and shop directly from the ad.
Landing page optimisation
The landing page where prospects arrive after clicking your ad must be optimised to facilitate conversions. This may seem obvious but it is an important step to ensure your ads convert.
Your landing page, whether an advertorial, quiz, or product page, should be tailored to the ad content, offering a seamless and relevant user experience. Avoid directing traffic to your basic homepage; create dedicated landing pages that match the ad’s messaging and visual style.
Example: Sun Basket runs ads that direct its users to an optimised landing page which detail their meal box menu, offers, prep time and shipping information, including benefits, testimonials, and straightforward CTA buttons. This targeted approach can significantly improve conversion rates.
Mastering audience targeting, creative strategy and iteration and landing page optimisation is important for effective advertising. By continually refining these elements, brands can lower their CPA and achieve significant results from their ad campaigns. Keep testing, iterating, analysing data, and adapting your approach to stay ahead in the competitive landscape of e-commerce advertising.
