How Facebook dynamic ads can help you boost ecommerce sales

Facebook dynamic ads are one of the most successful ad formats available. Dynamic templates allow brands and retailers to advertise large amounts of products in seemingly endless combinations by drawing product data from entire product catalogs and automatically generating product ads based. Brands, retailers, and advertisers of any kind can dynamically create ads and target shoppers with relevant products based on their previous actions and performance data.
So how can you get started? Read on for your first steps, what to do, and how to target users throughout the funnel and successfully boost ecommerce sales.
Online advertising has come a long a way over the last few years:

• On the one hand, users are exposed to an increasing number of ads across the web, which has made it exponentially more difficult for advertisers to gain people's attention and keep them engaged.
• On the other hand, online retailers need to be more performance-driven than ever, looking to ensure they generate profitability and business growth.

With more than 2 billion active monthly social network users, Facebook provides a sophisticated advertising channel that seems to perfectly match today’s market needs.
For retailers, its most successful ad format is undoubtedly Facebook Catalog Sales, also known as “dynamic ads”(formerly "dynamic product ads").

What makes Facebook dynamic ads unique?

Facebook is far from the only place for online retailers to push dynamic ads. So why do we talk about it like it's the best thing since tabbed browsing? It’s because everything about Facebook dynamic ads is unique.
Facebook dynamic ads use data feeds to generate and serve up millions of unique ads. They funnel boring information like brand names and shipping information into interesting, gorgeous ads for Facebook users. These ads come in single-image, carousels, or collections.
More importantly, these ads can also be pushed to Instagram and Audience Network. In the past, advertisers were often forced to dance around numerous sites and networks, as only so many ads can be pushed on one site without completely infuriating its user base. The Facebook Audience Network is the result of grassroot efforts to grow mobile and native ad networks, making advertisers happy without completely overstuffing spaces like Facebook and Instagram.

How can dynamic product ads boost ecommerce sales?

You can promote every single product from your catalog

Instead of creating an ad for each individual product, Facebook dynamic ads are generated for your entire inventory based on a scalable, dynamic template.
This means you only create one ad. Facebook then automatically draws the relevant information (e.g. titles, prices, and availabilities) from your product data feed to dynamically serve ads to specific audiences.
Facebook is an evergreen “always-on” channel, which means that once your campaign is set up, it can work without much required maintenance - so your product information will automatically be kept up to date.

These product ads will be shown to users most likely to buy from you

Facebook’s advertising formats offer remarkably advanced targeting capabilities thanks to a rich pool of audience information, detailed tracking, and an intelligent algorithm that regulates ad delivery based on relevance for each user.
Dynamic ads carry this to the extreme: the adverts show the exact products the user has previously shown interest in. Thus, retailers can target with more precision than ever and are bound to see increases in conversion rates and revenue.

Retarget shop visitors at specific stages of the sales funnel

While traditional banner advertising tends to target random audiences, dynamic ads allow for increased flexibility. Apart from product interests, you can address users based on which stage of the sales funnel they are in. For example, after they view your product page, sign up for a newsletter, abandon their cart or complete a sale.
Hence, Facebook dynamic ads help you improve overall retail performance by enhancing every single step.

You can reach unique individuals across devices

One of Facebook’s many strengths is its ability to not only deliver perfectly tailored advertising on any device, but also to reach unique users across different devices. Basically, as long as a user is logged into Facebook, they can be reached with relevant ads, in the right format.

Campaign performance is all in your hands

Facebook offers a range of tools and features to monitor and optimize campaign performance, ad sets and ads. What’s more, they make it easy to understand your audiences both on Facebook and in your shop, to test which campaign settings work best and to find out how these settings impact your overall marketing and sales success.
Thanks to these options, marketers don’t have to sit and wait for their campaigns to work. They can actively make a positive impact on their campaigns’ outcome.

The importance of targeting

The most basic ad is generic and pushed to a wide, rather random audience. However, this “push it out there and cross your fingers” approach is becoming a thing of the past. Advertisers now have more tools than ever to locate and serve ads to the right audience. In fact, this is so commonly done that the basic, untargeted ad has become, in many ways, dead on arrival.
But where do you want to put your efforts? Perhaps sales is pushing for masterful product remarketing and results, but the marketing team needs fresh leads. Facebook offers an array of targeting tools, making it easy to target users at any stage of the funnel.

Find new leads

Facebook offers the basics, pushing ads to users based on demographics, interests, or behavior. You can even start with users of a certain age, then narrow your audience down to only those have made purchases or have visited a certain page or engaged in certain topics.
Sometimes you have to get creative. Finding a desirable audience isn’t always clear cut. In fact, it can seem almost impossible at times to completely isolate what qualities will make a user valuable. Is it their location, affiliation to a team or topic, none of the above, all of the above?
Facebook dynamic ads use tools like Lookalike Audiences to find new users in a somewhat more holistic way. By levering information about your best customers, Facebook can locate never-before-considered target groups that share similar attributes. It’s unclear whether this is science, art, or black magic, but it’s bringing new users to stale audience lists.

Nurture

Retargeting is perhaps Facebook’s most beloved usage among marketers. This is likely because most of past ecommerce customers are on Facebook and they visit the site regularly. That means you can deliver targeted ads as necessary to keep those past buyers engaged and remind them you’re always there, waiting with more fabulous products.
There are several different directions marketers can choose to take, but they’ll often go one of these routes to nurture and retarget:

• Cross-sell: This user just purchased a high-quality gaming headset? It’s time to send them information about related gear and promotions.
• Upsell: This user has already made a small purchase? Chances are, they’ll be curious to see some of your more exciting, higher margin products.
• Remind: This user added products to their cart but stopped short? Send them a reminder about that product before they forget.

Close

Existing customers are known to spend more than new customers each visit and keep coming back. In fact, 65% of a company’s business will come from existing customers. Facebook allows marketers to go straight for the sale by uploading a customer file or offline data. Don’t forget, social media isn’t just about finding fresh, new prospects or reminding warm prospects: it offers marketers access to users in every stage of the funnel.

Why social retargeting matters (especially on this channel)

It can now take some dozen touchpoints in order to make a sale. Omnichannel, multichannel, they all require businesses to interact more creatively, consistently, and diversely with their audience. Social retargeting is one of the most popular places for marketers to reach users in their native habitat. Social media users will spend an average of over 2 hours each day on these channels. That’s a lot of ad opportunity.
Facebook, in particular, offers the unique opportunity to reach 1.4 billion users each day. In short, Facebook is key to increasing the number of touchpoints and reaching your target audience with powerful targeting and advertising tools. Without social retargeting, brands and retailers miss out on huge opportunities.

This updated post was originally published on April 24, 2018.