Free Plus Shipping Facebook Ad Types

[Belial92]

Hey everyone,
I have been running a Shopify store for about 2 weeks now and am offering a free plus shipping item. I have run about 50 bucks in Facebook ads trying to get sales. First I ran a simple PPE ad with a picture of the product, some free plus shipping copy and a shortened link to the product to my targeted audience and had a ton of likes, and shares but only 4 link clicks. I then ran a traffic ad optimized for link clicks and I get charged when the link is clicked instead of impressions using the same ad post but in the carousel format. I let it run for a bit and got 564 reach, .52% link CTR, 3 link clicks at .77 per link click. From everyone's experience what type of ads perform best for the free plus shipping model? Regular picture page posts, dark posts, carousel, WC, PPE, PPC? Thank you for your time.

 

[silverleafy]

good question , how much your product cost , i mean the shipping ,it is around 10$ ?

 

[Belial92]

good question , how much your product cost , i mean the shipping ,it is around 10$ ?

Hi, thank you for replying. Yes, shipping is set at 8.99 for the free product.

 

[Stiletto]

You'll need a lot of testing I'm afraid. With just $50, you won't get anywhere. You'll need more, maybe $50 per each ad. Make 5-6 different ads, do split testing. What works for someone else and one niche, doesn't mean it will work for you and your niche... Testing is a must.

 

[silverleafy]

You'll need a lot of testing I'm afraid. With just $50, you won't get anywhere. You'll need more, maybe $50 per each ad. Make 5-6 different ads, do split testing. What works for someone else and one niche, doesn't mean it will work for you and your niche... Testing is a must.

i did once some ads for a guy , that had lots of clicks for his links , he had a cpa link ,he used only 10 $ each day , the thing is that he used only some 3 rd countries like united arab emirates and such , had had an amazing cpc , seems like the testing is your only option

 

[davain]

You'll need a lot of testing I'm afraid. With just $50, you won't get anywhere. You'll need more, maybe $50 per each ad. Make 5-6 different ads, do split testing. What works for someone else and one niche, doesn't mean it will work for you and your niche... Testing is a must.

I advise against this.

You don't need $50 per ad if you're testing so many ads for a single free + shipping product.

If you're new and on a budget I don't recommend blowing more than $50 total on a new product without seeing any decent results (a few sales is good enough to continue trying to optimize to become profitable)

However I do recommend doing several ads per product you are testing. Split test your audience demographics (gender, age) and get your interests right unless you are 100% sure exactly who your audience is.

OP are you intersecting your interests "flex targeting"?

 

[Stiletto]

I advise against this.

You don't need $50 per ad if you're testing so many ads for a single free + shipping product.

If you're new and on a budget I don't recommend blowing more than $50 total on a new product without seeing any decent results (a few sales is good enough to continue trying to optimize to become profitable)

However I do recommend doing several ads per product you are testing. Split test your audience demographics (gender, age) and get your interests right unless you are 100% sure exactly who your audience is.

OP are you intersecting your interests "flex targeting"?

So you think he can get enough split testing with just $50? I wouldn't say so, but I would be glad if you could explain us in details or provide a guide, effective one, about it.

 

[Belial92]

I advise against this.

You don't need $50 per ad if you're testing so many ads for a single free + shipping product.

If you're new and on a budget I don't recommend blowing more than $50 total on a new product without seeing any decent results (a few sales is good enough to continue trying to optimize to become profitable)

However I do recommend doing several ads per product you are testing. Split test your audience demographics (gender, age) and get your interests right unless you are 100% sure exactly who your audience is.

OP are you intersecting your interests "flex targeting"?

I have run an ad narrowed by age, shopping behavior, income and the niche interest. The first ad was just this and split into male it was a PPE ad and got a lot of attention likes, shares and an ad relevance score of 9 but only 4 link clicks. I then changed it to female with the same previous narrowing but changed it to a carousel traffic ad optimized for link clicks in a PPC ad and received the stats I mentioned earlier.

 

[Belial92]

I understand the need of split testing and trying different copy, pictures, placements all that. I guess what Im asking is what ad type should I be focusing on for a free plus shipping Shopify model. Should I run WC, PPE, PPC, should I set my payment up to per impression or per click. Do carousel type ads work better for this type of tripwire or single picture posts. My FB pixel is still gathering data as well because this pixel is only a couple of weeks old.

 

[Setox]

First of all don't mix between Initial test of products & split-testing different ad copies , you'll go nowhere with split testing a bad product , first try your best banner , text-ad & angles on the initial test , if you got a conversion then split the hell out of it ! make more copies more banners different text ..etc .
For E-commerce products , just go directly with Cost per purchase campaign , If you got no clicks , & dozens of share & likes (engagement) then that's mean that your audience liked the image you shared but they are not interested in what you offer , try working more on your targeting , & how you are representing your link . Remember that the only purpose of running PPE ads before CPA ads which is done by almost any shopify marketers is to study how audience react to your offer which I assume you already got .

Good luck .

 

[davain]

So you think he can get enough split testing with just $50? I wouldn't say so, but I would be glad if you could explain us in details or provide a guide, effective one, about it.

My post is a quick way to see if there is any viability in a product or niche since I mentioned to look for progress and not profit.

I don't test ads with as small of a budget as I recommended but I am putting myself in OP's shoes. When i was new, I couldn't afford to spend so much on testing a single product because a lot of my first products turned out to be garbage even though they seemed great to me.

I don't know too many new people who can spend a few hundred dollars testing to see if a single $2 aliexpress product can sell well before they move on to the next product.

 

[davain]

Back to some of your original questions OP, I will share things that I do but I do a lot of things differently so take it with a grain of salt.

1. I personally like doing PPE then WC but that's mostly because I love seeing high numbers (engagement) on anything I'm working on. (Also I think social proof is a strong thing, just not so important in this case). It has worked for me so I stuck with it.

1b. I tend to start off with posts and then turn them into ads when I'm testing things but again, it's mostly for the engagement to be concentrated into one post (for the high numbers) and then make that into a mega post that I have ads running for weeks or more.

2. Carousel posts I only do as retargeting ads.

2b. FOCUS! a carousel ad featuring several different products is not an efficient way to spend ad money as I have never seen a crazy high CTR or conversion from those types of ads. The more choices you give someone, the more likely that they will choose none. Pick 1 product (I always choose only 1 variation as well for the ad but of course test different variations if they have a different appearance).

2c. Taking this a step further, I use funnels on 2 of my successful stores. It was a pain to set up perfectly but I determined the exact path all my customers will take and more than 60% of customers to my best store buy 2 or more products on their first order! I brought them in on F+S but made them buy another full priced item by offering several perfectly matching upsells and downsells. Shopify apps can do upsells well enough so throw one of those on for now.

3. Instagram ads. It is crazy cheap to buy instagram "ads" from popular pages in your niche. I often use it as a quick way to test products I'm not sure about. For $20 I can potentially get over 100K impressions on instagram. Way lower CTR than facebook for me but you can see the value in testing things quickly.

4. Easy product research: Even if you don't buy sponsored posts on Instagram still follow pages in your niche to see if they advertise any products at all. I have found 1 product that was one of my best products this way.

I tried to answer a question or 2 I saw in this thread and threw in some random info that may or may not help.

 

[Belial92]

Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and advice. I am currently running a new single picture post PPE ad for a new product to test out the target audience. The daily budget is set at $10 and is getting a really good response so I am going to kill it here soon and switch to a WC ad optimized for add to cart or purchase. I have also been running ads on published posts have only run an ad on one dark post and it fizzled out.

Back to some of your original questions OP, I will share things that I do but I do a lot of things differently so take it with a grain of salt.

1. I personally like doing PPE then WC but that's mostly because I love seeing high numbers (engagement) on anything I'm working on. (Also I think social proof is a strong thing, just not so important in this case). It has worked for me so I stuck with it.

1b. I tend to start off with posts and then turn them into ads when I'm testing things but again, it's mostly for the engagement to be concentrated into one post (for the high numbers) and then make that into a mega post that I have ads running for weeks or more.

2. Carousel posts I only do as retargeting ads.

2b. FOCUS! a carousel ad featuring several different products is not an efficient way to spend ad money as I have never seen a crazy high CTR or conversion from those types of ads. The more choices you give someone, the more likely that they will choose none. Pick 1 product (I always choose only 1 variation as well for the ad but of course test different variations if they have a different appearance).

2c. Taking this a step further, I use funnels on 2 of my successful stores. It was a pain to set up perfectly but I determined the exact path all my customers will take and more than 60% of customers to my best store buy 2 or more products on their first order! I brought them in on F+S but made them buy another full priced item by offering several perfectly matching upsells and downsells. Shopify apps can do upsells well enough so throw one of those on for now.

3. Instagram ads. It is crazy cheap to buy instagram "ads" from popular pages in your niche. I often use it as a quick way to test products I'm not sure about. For $20 I can potentially get over 100K impressions on instagram. Way lower CTR than facebook for me but you can see the value in testing things quickly.

4. Easy product research: Even if you don't buy sponsored posts on Instagram still follow pages in your niche to see if they advertise any products at all. I have found 1 product that was one of my best products this way.

I tried to answer a question or 2 I saw in this thread and threw in some random info that may or may not help.

Thank you for this information, that sales funnel is performing crazy for you congrats!

 

[davain]

Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and advice. I am currently running a new single picture post PPE ad for a new product to test out the target audience. The daily budget is set at $10 and is getting a really good response so I am going to kill it here soon and switch to a WC ad optimized for add to cart or purchase. I have also been running ads on published posts have only run an ad on one dark post and it fizzled out.

Glad to hear you were seeing some good results on that new PPE ad, any update?

 

[Belial92]

Glad to hear you were seeing some good results on that new PPE ad, any update?

Thank you, yes I received so nice attention on the latest PPE ad just no conversions. I have put this venture on hiatus for right now until I have a bit more spare cash to really try out some ads.