Show Notes
There are two main ways to increase revenue from ecommerce. One is to grow your audience. The other option is to maximize conversions. Facebook is ideal for both. In this episode we’ll cover both of these ways along with different strategies you can use right now.
1. Video Ads When you’re starting out, the first thing you want to do is figure out your minimum viable funnel, which in short, means the least amount of steps to get a sale. A great way to get eyeballs on your product cheaply is with video. However, don’t run this as a video views campaign, optimize for viewing products or adding to cart. If you’re a smaller, or family run business, you need to create a video that tells your story. Potential customers are a lot more likely to buy when they understand your why.
2. Lookalike audiences When you start out or as you grow, you’re going to want to reach new audiences, but starting with cold traffic is tough. Facebook has the ability for you to create a new audience with similar characteristics of your already existing audience. Think about past purchasers, your email list, website traffic, etc. All of those could be turned into a lookalike audience and marketed to. This takes them from a cold audience to a warm-ish audience, which should be much cheaper for you.
3. Facebook Messenger One thing is for certain, Facebook is pushing new ways to reach audiences because they are running out of ad space, hence the reason they have moved to pushing messenger. It may also be because 1-2B people are on it. Whatever the reason, you should use it because it’s cheap and has a much higher open rate than messenger. Create a campaign or strategy around talking to your audience through messenger and offering discounts or links to go and purchase. We created a VIP list from messenger and whenever we want to offer them a special deal we can message them. Open rates are 80+% compared to 15-30% on email.
Remarketing The fortune, as they say, is in the follow-up. This is true in marketing as well. Imagine running an ad back to the person who added to their cart but didn’t purchase, that would probably be a good person to go after. To give context, 95+% of people don’t buy the first time, so you either need to send a TON of traffic to make it work, or get 20-30% of those people to come back to your site cheaply with an effective remarketing campaign.
What do you think about this episode? We’d love to hear from you! Share us your suggestions, comments or questions. And we’d love to include that on our next show.
Connect with us:
Hope y'all enjoyed this episode! We'll see you guys next week for another episode of The Marketing Natives!
Transcript
Christian [00:00:00] Facebook for e-commerce strategies you can use right now, there are two main ways to increase revenue for your e-commerce store. One is to grow your audience and the other option is to maximize your conversions. And Facebook is just ideal for both. So in this episode, we're gonna cover both of these ways into four different strategies. And yeah, it's gonna be good. Check it out.
Aaron [00:00:42] All right. All right. All righty.
Aaron [00:00:44] So video ads and let's preface this by saying that, yes, we do talk about video a lot and I think the video is a great way to use it to grow your e-commerce or however, not to be confused for people who are trying to start with Facebook or not as familiar. You want to use a video, but your objective for that should be like add to cart to purchase. Like whatever it is you want them to do.
Aaron [00:01:11] You want them to. You want to optimize for that. So if for a video, we don't just want you to do video use, which is good. But there's people who watch your videos. It just never buy your product. So. That being said, optimized for add to carts. And it will build an audience and you can showcase your products.
Aaron [00:01:28] However, I think that at least my personal opinion, depending on if you like the business as a family or it's local or whatever, and even if you're not, I guess it doesn't matter as much. But it does matter is kind of like your story. And like how you started a business, why you started the business. If you do have a good story, which you hopefully most people do and showcase in that video, not usually in the I guess the very beginning, like they should see the product or whatever, but then warming them up by saying like, hey, you know, we're around this business is, you know, helping our family grow or this helps support our local community or whatever, something to get behind that. And if you have that type of video, I think that would be very helpful. We do that for one of our clients right now and have urged another one to try to do that as well. Just because it's I think you'll be very effective to warm people up from. OK. They know the product and now they know more about the business and why they would buy from them.
Christian [00:02:27] Right. So understanding the why why they started, why are they doing this? Who are they're actually selling those type products will definitely get people behind you, especially against younger demographics, which they do care more about. You know that and also the environment, sustainability and all that kind of stuff, right?
Aaron [00:02:48] Yeah. I think it's just I mean, it's just smart business practice. So you can use the video however you'd like, showcase your product, showcase whatever. But at least one little tip or one little thing that I would say is don't overlook the video about the why.
Christian [00:03:01] And then with video ads showcasing the product, we've done videos where? You showcase the product on the actual video. But then right underneath there is the actual yep. Tiles of products with the pictures. And links directly to the Website. Closing videos. Yeah. So those videos are just absolutely killer. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever you're doing that.
Aaron [00:03:25] Yeah. So for example, if you can imagine Christian selling water bottles. It's him there for thirty forty five seconds talking about the water bottle saying how sustainable it is and good for the environment, whatever, whatever his selling points are. And then he's like and it's indestructible. So then he drops it off of a roof, then he does something else and he says Oh it's also two hundred and fifty ounces. So this is all the water you need throughout like three days or something. And then right below that is a button for you to go in by the water bottle. So it's just like super convenient. Super easy. You can check out real quickly.
Christian [00:03:58] Number two, look like audiences.
Christian [00:04:03] This is especially helpful if you have maybe a maybe smaller audience on on your Facebook or, you know, smaller traffic that's gone to your Website and you want to expand. This is absolutely great. Starting out would just, I guess, doing code traffic. It's extremely hard. So look like local audiences help you out a lot because it just takes characteristics, demographics of your current people. Right. So people who were actually liking your page already. Well, like I said, maybe you have a lookalike audience of people who are already visiting your Web site. Or you could even have a e-mail list. Maybe you've collected e-mail addresses from your in-store customers and you're selling now online. You can create lookalike audiences of that email list strictly on Facebook. And it turns out great. I mean, Facebook does a really good job of matching that criteria in those characteristics in order to build new audiences effortlessly.
Aaron [00:05:12] Yeah, I think that one of the cool things about it is that, I mean, like Christian said, starting out with cold audiences just probably a lot harder.
Aaron [00:05:20] And you're taking some guesses this way. It kind of takes the guesswork out of it. And you could just literally create the lookalike audience and then run ads to those people. And more than likely, if, you know, if you're doing ecommerce, your audience could be the whole U.S.. So you're going to have a big audience. It's going to be the right type of people for the most part. And that really comes down to you making sure that if you do a lookalike audience, it's already a good audience of people who you're creating a look like audience for. So if you're website traffic isn't good or you don't like to be, we'll go to your website because they never purchase is probably not a good audience to do your lookalike from. But if you use it smart, it could be really effective for your business long term and a lot cheaper. And guess we never really talked about that, but it's a lot cheaper to reach people for a look like audience than it is to just go cold.
Christian [00:06:08] Most of the time. Yeah. And I mean, if you look at Facebook ads, you will see, you know, what type of companies are using look like audiences because companies that you've never heard of before. But there may be the competition of a company that you do follow and you're loyal. So this is kind of funny to sometimes see some of those things and know what's going on in the back end. But you absolutely look like audiences definitely to use those.
Aaron [00:06:39] All right, so I want to tell you guys about our website calculator. This episode will go out sometime in the middle of December.
Aaron [00:06:49] I don't remember exactly the exact date, but the point is it's towards the end of the year. It's the end of Q4. And depending on when you listen to this could be the beginning of Q1 for 2020. And one thing that people are starting to figure out in 2020 is trying to do in 2020 is either, A, lose weight, b, figure out their finances or three, grow their business. And we kind of fall into number three right there. But if you do grow your business, you probably will lose weight, too. I don't know if that's true or not. But, you know, what is it? Results may vary anyway. We created a calculator for you to figure out very easily. I think, you know, if you really take a ton of time, it would take you five minutes to figure out. Five minutes to do. But we created a calculator for you to figure out how much it's going to cost for me to get a Web site in 2020. Maybe you procrastinate a little bit. Maybe you spend too much time trying to talk to that neighbor down the street and you're like you don't trust him to build your Website and you still don't know how much a Website it's going to cost. We created a free no obligation calculator. It will literally give you a number at the end of the quiz. And from what I've done online, it's probably one of the most accurate, at least for our prices. And it's pretty in-depth. So I'll give you some really good questions and give you an accurate answer. So if you want that, you can either go over to Facebook and see it as a message and just ask for the calculator. Instagram a GM and asked a calculator or go to a calculator. That bit branding does SEO. And now we'll take you to the quiz as well or to the calculator as well. We'll look for you guys to taking the quiz. If you have questions about it, let us know. And really just want to get some feedback, too.
Aaron [00:08:26] This is new as in the last cup, like the last month or so or when you listen to the last couple of months. So also just want some feedback and hopefully it's helpful for you.
Christian [00:08:37] Boom, we're back. Number three, Facebook Messenger and.
Christian [00:08:43] Yeah. One thing is for certain. What does that.
Christian [00:08:46] Facebook is running at ad space. Yeah. I was like, what do you mean? One thing is true. Yes.
Aaron [00:08:53] No. They are for sure. There's no place. I mean, there's ads everywhere. I feel like a lot of my posts are ads.
Aaron / Christian [00:09:00] But they're also saying on the on your on a news feed, you're saying, yeah, there's a lot of competition on the news feed. So Facebook is looking for other avenues to put ads. So Messenger was something that they just pay this is the best that they can put. Yeah.
Aaron [00:09:16] Do you see a bunch of ads from like other agencies?
Christian [00:09:21] My ads kind of rotate. But I think the one I'm not looking at something online or whatever. Yes. Normally I do get a few. A lot of agencies or apps for agencies. H.R. type stuff. Yeah. You know, social media buffer things like that. Related like that. But when I'm looking for something specific, maybe I just Google, you know, maybe a gift that I'm looking for for Megan, then I will get bombarded for like other gifts. This is round thing. Oh, yeah.
Aaron / Christian [00:09:58] A gift basket. Yeah. But yeah, it's kind of weird.
Christian [00:10:03] Like I feel like my my normal ads are. Yep. A lot of agency marketing related, business related. But what I'm looking for something specific, I'll get bombarded with those very specific ads for a little bit and then they just fizzle out.
Aaron [00:10:16] Right. And I guess our point for all of that is that. Yeah. Facebook need a place to go and run their ads. So using messenger is a viable place one. There's not as much competition because a lot of people are going for that news feed and there's just only so much space for the news feed and it gets expensive. So I go into the messenger. There's a ton of people on messenger. I don't remember exact numbers, but between one to two billion people, which is, you know, just a few people.
Aaron [00:10:42] And the open rates are insane. So you're looking at like an 80 plus person open rate for people and you could offer them something amazing. So, hey, if you're interested in this, you know, whatever it is, we're so encouraged. And the water bottle, if you're interested in this water bottle, you know, message just now to get 30 percent off or 25 percent off for Black Friday or anything like that. And it's just almost an instant response from that. You can get into some cool things with mini chat and do some automated responses. But even if you don't, you can just run ads to messenger. And it's super inexpensive anywhere between like as of 20, 19, December, 20, 19. It could be five cents to 30 or 40 cents to send a very targeted user a message on messenger, which is I mean, if I told you, you could talk to your audience for 30 cents and there there's a 25 to 30 percent chance that they're going to buy, you'd be like, OK, that's stealing at that point.
Christian [00:11:42] Yeah. Like Facebook Messenger especially doing that VIP list strategy is just a new email list. You know, this is a different way of reaching your customers and it's working very, very well. What does open rates compared to traditional e-mail open, right?
Aaron [00:12:00] Yeah. In one strategy that some people do is they'll go through messenger first and then say like, hey, if you want to be added to our email as we do exclusive offers only on our e-mail list. So they use messenger, get them on the messenger list and then the Add them the e-mail. So it's like, oh, we're gonna send you a message on messenger and on email. Then we're going to run Facebook ads. So it's like you get this omni presence approaching you. They feel like you're literally everywhere, which is if you're doing good advertising, it is you don't want to just be only in one place, which is why we have multiple things for you on e-commerce. But you use messenger to help stand out and, you know, lower your cost to get in front of people.
Christian [00:12:39] Right. So our last strategy is remarketing and remarketing is super important, especially if you want to make that sale. You know, we talked about, you know, growing your audiences and reaching out to more people. But remarketing and improving your conversions is absolutely crucial in order to grow your e-commerce business. So Facebook allows you to do that. You know, that allows you to if someone has, you know, look for this particular product, you have the ability to show that particular product to that particular person at the right time. A lot of people window shop, you know, when they're looking for things. And if it is that they need that extra push to to make that purchase, then that's how you do it. You know, you have to market to them, get in front of them again in order to complete that conversion and complete that purchase. Like that window shop, and at times they might be doing something, they get a notification, they jump out of that and then they forget where they were in the first place. They just end up going back to Facebook and they're scrolling. And then, oh yeah, I forgot I was looking at this product. Let me go back to this. So a lot of people attention deficit, is this a real thing? So every marketing is just a great way to just pull them back to complete that purchase.
Aaron [00:14:04] Right. And if you're a e-commerce business owner killing it, you're converting it on your Websites like 5 percent. And let's just look at the flipside. That's ninety five percent of people that just don't ever come back to your site, never come back and purchase and just remarketing, even if you could get, you know, 20 or 30 or percent of those people back and they do purchase, it's well worth it. It's way cheaper than to try to just say, all right, we're gonna get 100000 people to the Web site and, you know, we'll just take it at 5 percent because that'll be good enough. Like it's going to be so much harder to do that than it is to just get 10000 people to your Web site and re market. So you don't miss out on that. So many people don't have the Facebook pixel setup. If you don't, just Google it. Go to our YouTube channel. We have the pixel remarked back to these people.
Aaron [00:14:52] It's crucial. Absolutely.
Aaron [00:14:55] All right. So that is the end of the episode. Facebook for e-commerce strategy you can use right now. And if you are a first time listener, please make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss out on any episode. And if you are a longtime subscriber, a longtime listener, never a first time caller, because we don't take calls. But you have been listening for a while. Please make sure that you go over to I iTunes or Apple podcasts as they are called now and leave us an on his rating and review. If you leave us to review and leave a comment, we will shout you out on the podcast. Tha'll be kind of cool and it takes you probably one or two minutes and it really helps us grow the podcast. So we would truly appreciate that. And if you guys have any questions or any topics or anything like that, we're always open to talk about that kind of stuff and on the podcast. Make sure you go over to Instagram. D.M. Over at BitBranding that T bar and design G bit branding. She doesn't mention say, hey, can you guys talk about this? We're happy to do an episode on it for you.
Aaron [00:15:57] We create this podcast for you guys, the listeners, depending on when you listen to this. Like I said, I think this is well recorded on the seven. So roughly around Christmas time. So if this is around Christmas week, we Christmas I'll do it comes out or around there either way. Well, hope you guys had an awesome Christmas and time with your family. That's it? Yes.
Christian / Aaron [00:16:24] Bye Merry Christmas, bye the Marketing Native's podcast is a production of BitBranding.
