Facebook Marketing: Give your Shop a Face!

It happened last August, for the first time in history. The average American Internet user (we’ll call him Joe) spent more time on Facebook than on the pages of Google’s network (including YouTube and Gmail).

Facebook alone not only has the same reach as Google, but also (according to its own numbers) more users. They say more than 500 million active users. What does “active” mean? Half of Facebook users log in every day!

These numbers are impressive and prove that it’s becoming more and more important for e-shops to be present on Facebook. Some of our Shop Partners have already had some great success (e.g. 11:11, Wordboner, Jerkass Clothing and Amorphia Apparel).

Why advertise on Facebook?

We’ve already written a little bit about how you can set up a presence on Facebook. Today we are going to take a look at how to spread the word about your shop with Facebook ads. Facebook is certainly there to give your current fan base a place to interact and learn about your products. But it is also a great way to get new customers with paid advertisements. The biggest advantage here is that you can target very specific audiences, which can lead to a much higher conversion rate.

Getting Started

It’s easy, actually. Click on Advertising in Facebook’s footer, enter your credit card info and create an ad. You’ll next have to figure out where you are going to send people when they click on your ad. Directly to your shop or to your Facebook page? Both have advantages and disadvantages. Long term, it’s better to get people to your shop via your Facebook page (given the page is up-to-date, with a few posts on the wall and a shop tab in the navigation).

Setting up your ad

If you decided to send people to your Facebook page, click on “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook” and select your page. Next, you’ll have to think up a good headline, find a nice image and write a little text. As always with online marketing, you should test out different types of ads at the same time to learn which is clicked the most. You should also change ads that work well every so often (e.g. use a new image) because the small target groups will lose interest in an ad very quickly.

The last step is to define a target group. Do you want to target men or women? Married or single? And very important: what are these people interested in? The costs for a click on Facebook are extremely influenced by your ad’s click rate. Which means: the more people that see your ad and also click on it, the less you will pay per click. Relevance is the biggest success factor. On the other hand, it doesn’t really make sense to put together a very detailed group with 50 people. Find a compromise here. I think that a target group shouldn’t be smaller than 500-1000 people. An example:

Review your results

The best is saved for last. Check your results. What is your click rate? A rate above 0.1% can actually be a good number. How many clicks and fans have you received? And of course, how many customers came to your shop from Facebook (Google Analytics) and has that affected sales?

One more tip: repeat and improve successful campaigns, analyze campaigns that didn’t work or throw them out.

I hope this was a little helpful. Let me know if you have any questions!
Good luck!
Torge