In a time where ads are at every turn, consumers are switching off.
Did you know that ad blocking software usage has quadrupled in the past year?
Or that the average banner ad click-through rate is 2%?
When it comes to targeted ads – it’s becoming more difficult than ever to get results.
The thing is – you can’t beat the system by simply pumping out more ads. But you can beat the system by putting out good ads. What makes a good ad? Well, it’s always good to start with relevant and targeted content.
So, how do you do it? Meet – Facebook Dynamic Product Ads. You might not have heard of them before, but if you spend time on Facebook, or are a regular internet shopper, you’ve definitely seen them. Let’s take a look into how Facebook Dynamic Ads could help you.
“Dynamic [Product] ads help us connect our large product catalog to each unique shopper with relevant and timely product ads. We’re seeing strong results, including a 34% increase in click through rate and a 38% reduction in cost per purchase.”
– Rachel Kwan, Online Marketing Manager at The Honest Company and Zach Greenberger, CEO of adMixt
What are Facebook Dynamic Ads?
Facebook dynamic ads are a magic marketing tool that automatically promotes your products to people who have actively expressed interest in your website, app or anywhere else on the internet. If you’re a frequent online shopper, you’ve probably seen plenty of these ads before. They pop up in your news feed, showing you the exact products you were so close to purchasing yesterday.
Yesterday you were strong, you chose to keep your money in the bank and got out of there. But today, maybe not so much… Here lies the beauty in dynamic ads. They scoop up the window shoppers, the almost buyers, and those that are extremely interested, and pull them through the final stages before purchase. They’re also great for boosting repeat purchases from your most loyal shoppers.
Image Credit: Facebook Business
Set up is simple and once you’re done it will continue to spread your ads to the right people for as long as you like. They look just like any standard image or carousel ad but instead of creating heaps of individual ads you simply create a template that pulls details from your catalogue and Facebook pixel to create ads relevant to each person.
Carousel ads look like this:
Image Credit: AdvertiseMint
And Single Image ads look like this:
Image Credit: AdEspresso
Dynamic Ad Requirements
They’re quite simple to set up, but there are some requirements. In order to create a dynamic ad you’ll need:
- A Facebook Page
- A Business Manager account
- An ad account or access to an ad account
- An online product catalogue. This can be an existing catalogue that you use for other online shopping tools. (The catalogue must have a product ID, name, landing page URL, image URL, description, availability amongst other requirements)
- The Facebook Pixel, which is a piece of JavaScript code that pinpoints your customer’s webpage destination. If a user clicks on your About page, Contact page or Checkout page, Facebook Pixel will let you know. The Pixel is crucial for the success of Dynamic Ads as it helps you to advertise the right products to the right people.
- The Pixel Helper Chrome Extension – to allow you to check your pixel.
For a step by step guide of how to set your Dynamic Ad up – check out Facebook’s official guide here.
Different ways to target audiences
There are two ways to target audiences through Dynamic Ads. You can either choose to target people who have visited or taken action on your site – which is called retargeting. Or, you can take your chances and target ads at people that haven’t visited your site with broad audience targeting.
Retargeting
Retargeting anyone that’s visited or taken action on your site will allow you to granularly target people with highly relevant ads at all stages of the sales funnel. Some tips for using retargeting –
- Exclude recent purchasers – chances are that if someone has just made a purchase, they’re not going to jump straight back online and buy something again. Focus on gaining new customers, or re-engaging customers who haven’t made a purchase for a while.
- Use longer retention windows – the longer your campaign runs for, the better chance it has of being effective. Try running it for 60-90 days to see good results.
- Time is important – visitors who came to your site one or two days ago may be more valuable than someone who visited over two weeks ago. You can segment your audiences by the time since their last visit, helping you to target recent visitors.
- Cross-selling and upselling – get the attention of people who made recent purchases through cross-selling, or tempt existing shoppers with complimentary product sets/higher value items through upselling. Learn more about this here.
Broad audience targeting
With broad audience targeting, you can try to reach people who’ve expressed interest in your products (or products similar to yours), even if they haven’t visited your website or app yet. Some tips for using broad audience targeting –
- Identify a target audience – although you don’t know exactly who they are you, you should identify an audience through geography and demographics for best results when using broad audience targeting. Facebook suggest you not to use Lookalike Audiences, Customer Audiences or Behavioural / Interest Targeting in conjunction with broad audiences.
- Use large product catalogues – if you use a product set that has at least 1,000 products, your overall ad performance will likely improve.
- Make your ads attractive to new visitors – use copy and creative that is enticing to first time visitors or new customers.
Although broad audience targeting can be effective for some companies, retargeting is likely to produce better results.
Who should be using Facebook Dynamic Ads?
Traditionally, Facebook Dynamic Ads were reserved for e-commerce stores. So, basically, if you were selling a product like clothing, jewellery or cosmetics, then Dynamic Ads were for you. But in recent months, Dynamic Ads possibilities have grown. For example to industries such as –
Travel – you can now target people through Dynamic Ads who are likely to be taking a trip soon. “If someone was browsing hotels but didn’t make a reservation (or if they were looking at flights but didn’t book one), dynamic ads for travel allow you to target them with relevant ads based on their specific dates, destinations and other trip details.”
Image Credit: Rui Martins Blog
Real Estate – realtors can upload housing listings, with prices, dates and photos straight to people’s feeds. They can use tracking tools to factor in details like neighbourhoods that an individual was looking at or a price range they had set for their search to promote similar listings that someone may have missed.
Car Sales – automotive makers and sellers can upload vehicle catalogues with details such as make, model and year. It’ll then drive potential customers straight to their product, maybe through linking straight to the manufacturer’s website, lead submission forms and other valuable places.
Image credit: Move Your Metal
With one of Facebook Ads largest downfalls compared to AdWords being the lack of purchase intent, it makes sense for Facebook to continue to expand dynamic ads and targeting options. Improvements here will allow advertisers to reach buyers ready to buy – whether they’ve been on their site or not (as seen in Travel, Real Estate, and Car Sales so far).
For now, though, retargeting and dynamic ads still presents massive opportunities for any business selling online. If you’re looking for ways to sell more online, speak to us about how you can get started with dynamic ads.