Ecom Business Hacks w/ Rod

Hey everyone, welcome to the

Facebook Ad Hacks podcast.

I'm your host, Rod Bland,

and in this podcast, I talk

about how to get better

results from your Facebook and

Instagram digital marketing,

and the many lessons that

I've learned from being in

the business of e-commerce

for the last 20 years.

Enjoy today's episode.

If you own an e-commerce

store and you've got a large

number of products, which

you'd like to advertise on

Facebook, but you don't want

to have to go create loads

and loads of ads, or you're

not sure which products you

should use in your advertising

because you've got a limited

budget, then you should

definitely have a look at

creating a campaign with

the catalog sales objective.

Not many people talk

about this particular kind

of campaign, but I find

this is always a really

good mainstay if you've

got an e-commerce store.

So that's what today's video

is going to be all about.

Now, because I recorded

this as a video with screen

capture, you might want

to see the actual video

itself, and I'll put a link

to that in the show notes.

Let's jump into it.

Hey I'm Rod.

I'm the owner of

Rod Bland Agency.

I'm a former e-commerce

business owner.

I ran my own e-commerce

business for 16 years,

sold it to my competitor

a couple of years ago.

And now through my agency, we

help people set up optimize,

maintain, and generally do

a lot better with Facebook

and Instagram advertising.

So in today's video, I'm going

to talk about campaigns with

the catalog sales objective.

This particular kind of

campaign is one that's very

handy where you've got a lot

of products in an e-commerce

store and you want to be able

to set up an ad that will

automatically show people

products that they might be

interested in from your store

without having to constantly

update your creative,

create new ads all the time.

It's a very handy campaign

type and I don't see many

people using it and I

really don't know why.

So I'm going to show you

how you set up a campaign

with the catalogue sales

objective, some of the

prerequisites, things that

you need to have in place,

and also talk about some of

the pitfalls that you want to

avoid so you can get the best

performance from your ads.

So let's jump on the computer.

I'm here in my demonstration

ad account and just

a couple of caveats.

To be able to create a

campaign with the catalog

sales objective you

have to have a catalog

set up in Facebook.

I'm not going to cover how you

do that in today's tutorial,

but the way that you go about

setting up a catalog is going

to vary depending on which

e-commerce platform you use.

Shopify or Woocommerce

or Magento, they all have

built-in ways for you to

set up a catalog that will

automatically synchronize the

products that you've got on

your website with a catalogue

that is set up in Facebook.

You want to make sure

that you've got good

quality product photos.

You've got up-to-date

pricing, you've got

up-to-date stock levels.

They're the main things

that you're going to need

to be successful with

your dynamic product ads.

So to get started, we

just click on create, and

we choose catalog sales.

Next we choose a catalog.

Now this is in my

demonstration account so

it's not actually connected

to a pixel, but you want

to make sure that yours

is connected to a pixel.

Then we're going

to give it a name.

I like to use my initials,

DPA standing for dynamic

product ad and then the

objective, which is catalogue

sales, and the date.

In the ad set, we're

promoting view added

to cart 180 days.

I'll be able to explain

that a little better once

we get into the ads manager.

For the name of the ad itself,

we're going to give it DPA

carousel catalog sales.

Then we click the

continue button.

This takes us into the

campaign set up screen.

So I'm going to turn on

campaign budget optimization

because I may have more

than one ad inside so

I'm going to want to

take advantage of that.

I'm just going to set the

budget to $10, just depends

on the volume of sales that

normally would go through

your website as to what sort

of budget you would use.

So now we're at the ad set

level and this is where

we choose what products

we want to promote.

So by default, if you've

just created a catalog,

it'll have one product set

inside it, but you can create

additional product sets

that contain a subset of the

products within your catalog.

The budget and schedule, we're

going to leave that as is.

In the audience section, this

is where we want to decide

who we want to show ads to.

Now by default, this is

set to find prospective

customers even if they haven't

interacted with your business.

What I find is really useful

is to re target ads to people

who've interacted with your

products on and off Facebook.

And here, the default option

is to promote products from

the All Products product set,

which is selected up here

to people who have viewed

or added those products to

cart in the last 14 days.

It also includes people who

haven't purchased, so it's

a very specific retargeting

type of setup, and you can

change this up to 180 days.

You've got all these

other options too.

You can choose to promote

products to people who

have added to cart,

but not purchased.

You can upsell to people

who have added products to

their cart, and there's no

distinction as to whether

they've purchased or not.

You can also cross sell

products to people who have

actually purchased from

a specific product set,

and you can also have any

combination that you want.

Now, because we are

essentially creating a

custom audience through our

option here, we don't need

to include any additional

audiences down here.

In the placements, I'm

going to leave that as

automatic placements.

In optimization for ad

delivery that always

defaults to link clicks for

campaigns when you set them

up from scratch with the

catalogue sales objective.

If you've got an e-commerce

store, you're going

to want to change that

to conversion events.

And this is where you would

choose your conversion event.

Mine isn't connected, but

you would typically have

purchase as the event type

that you want to optimize for.

Then down here, the

attribution setting

defaults to seven days

after click and you get

charged by the impression.

Then we click on next,

and this is where

we create our ad.

So if you've got an

Instagram account, you

want to connect that too.

By default, the ad set up is

dynamic formats, creative,

and it's entirely up to

you as to whether that's

something that you use.

I would experiment with

this feature on and off,

but I'm just going to leave

this on for the moment.

You may find that initially

if you've just created

your catalogue, that it

doesn't feed into the ad.

I find if you just turn

off the dynamic formats

and creative, and then

turn it back on again,

then you'll get some of

your products showing up.

In the ad preview by default,

it will contain the first

product in your catalog, but

will show products that people

have looked at, or that it

thinks that they might want to

know based on their behavior.

So no one person is

going to see the same

product every time.

So let's go down to

our primary text.

So there's a little fish

emoji, everything a fish

keeping hobbyist needs

for their aquarium,

all in one place.

In the headline, this is

where we can include data

from your catalog feed.

So by default, that would

contain the product name.

In the description, that's by

default empty, but you might

want to put in the price, if

your price data is up to date.

The website URL obviously

points to your URL.

If you leave all these as the

default, each of the cards

in the carousel will have a

link that links directly to

that product page on your

website, which is very handy.

And the tracking you want

to make sure that you've got

website events turned on and

you've got your pixel chosen.

Mine is showing up with an

error here because it's not

connected, but yours won't be.

Let's see how it will look

on the different placements.

So that's how it looks

in the mobile news feed.

Let's have a look at

your Instagram stories.

That's how it looks

on Instagram stories.

Once you are ready to go,

you can then click on publish

.
So that's how easy it is to

create a campaign with the

catalog sales objective.

Now, some of the pitfalls

with this that you want

to watch out for, I've

got some notes here.

One is ad fatigue.

If you don't generate very

many sales from your website

and you're using that option

that I showed you, which

is people who have viewed

or added to cart, but not

purchased over the last

14 days, there's probably

not going to be very many

people in that audience.

So you might want to make that

period of time larger or just

have a very low budget and

keep an eye on the frequency

of your ads to make sure that

ad fatigue isn't setting in.

People aren't seeing

the ads too often.

Especially with a warm

audience, I find anywhere

around 10 to 20 frequency

is fine, and they might

be people who have added

something to the cart and

they've just forgotten about

it, and they won't mind

getting a reminder a few

times during the day before

they complete their purchase.

And just to reiterate, it's

really important that you have

good product images and good

product data, so good product

names and pricing as well,

if you want to be able to use

that data within your ads,

like I showed in this example.

Thank you so much

for listening.

If you found this episode

useful, here's two ways

I can help you grow

your business for free.

Firstly, subscribe to my

YouTube channel at rodsyt.com.

Secondly, join my free group

at rodsgroup.com, and finally

leave me a five star review so

that I can reach more people

and I can get the attention

of some amazing guests that

I can bring on the show.

I'll catch you in

the next episode.