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The success of every Shopify Facebook Ad campaign is measured by good preparation and advance planning. One of the more technical parts of this process involves configuring the ad sets and campaign settings in the Facebook Business Manager.
These settings tell Facebook which audiences we want to reach and how we want viewers to interact with our ad.
As a result, setting up Facebook ad sets ensures that ads have the maximum effect at the lowest possible budget. It may seem hard to follow at first, but this mission is simple if we tackle it one step at a time.
So without further ado, let’s take care of the Facebook ad sets configuration step-by-step.
What we are going to do first is create a campaign for our ad sets. After that, we’re going to create ad sets.
Don’t let this get too confusing, just follow the steps and it will all make sense.
To start, head over to your Facebook Business Manager and log in. Then, on the left side click on ‘More Tools’ followed by ‘Ads Manager.’
Now, Facebook takes us to our Ads Manager, where we’ll begin the configuration process.
Begin with clicking on the green button that says ‘Create’ at the top left.
A screen now appears asking you what the campaign objective is. Before choosing one, you need to understand exactly what your campaign goals are. Your advertising objective is what you want people to do when they see your ads.
While the categories are broadly Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion, each is divided into specific goals.
For example, if you choose ‘Reach’ as your goal, then Facebook will try to reach as many people as possible for the lowest possible price.
Another example is ‘Traffic.’ Here Facebook tries to get you an audience that likes clicking on website links inside of an Ad. So if you are looking for more visits to your Shopify store, this is a good way to get it done.
One of the most expensive goals is ‘Conversions.’ This is where Facebook finds you customers who typically like to respond to a call to action. For example, Facebook may show your ad to viewers who like to add the product to a cart or even purchase it.
From the many options available, your best bet is to go for the engagement goal. This means that Facebook looks for Audiences that typically like, share or comment on ads.
It might be tempting to start with a Conversion goal since you are looking for sales. However, if the product isn’t interesting, most viewers will leave your website as quickly as they came in.
An engagement campaign goal gives you a simple way to gauge whether your product is interesting. If you get lots of likes, comments and shares, and an overall positive reaction, you know you’re on track.
Additionally, the engagement goal is a super affordable way to test out a product. At $5-$10 a day, you’ll know whether it’s worth investing in more marketing and if the product is worth selling at all. Meanwhile, Facebook pixel gathers data for later use.
If the product gains interest, we can start running conversion ads to translate the interest into sales.
Once you pick a goal, it’s time to create the campaign.
Starting right, click ‘Engagement’ on the bottom and then, ‘Post Engagement.’ Next, choose a name for all three sections ‘campaign,’ ‘ad set,’ and ‘ad.’ Any name will do, as we only need it to keep track of things.
In this example, we’ll call all of them Doggy Dogg Club. When you’re done, click ‘Continue.’
On the following screen, Facebook lets us configure our campaign settings. Most of the settings don’t concern us except for Campaign Budget Optimization which balances the budget between our different ad campaigns.
We know what you must be wondering: Why should there be more than one ad in the first place?
The truth is that it’s always a good idea to run three ads for each product. It allows you to test different ads and see which one gets more engagement. Just because one ad didn’t work, doesn’t mean the product isn’t interesting; it often just comes down to presentation.
If you choose to go this route, you’ll need to turn on the Budget Optimization option. This is done by scrolling down and moving the dot to the on position next to ‘Campaign Budget Optimization.’
Now that it is enabled, Facebook is going to balance your budget between the different ad campaigns. When it sees one ad getting more engagement than others, Facebook will invest more of the funds into the winner and less into the unsuccessful ones.
Additionally, as soon as you enable this option, Facebook prompts you to set a campaign budget.
Before deciding on a budget, let’s consider our campaign goal of post-engagement.
We decided on this strategy for two reasons. First of all, because it’s cheap. Second, it is going to give us an indication if the product we’re trying to advertise is interesting for eCommerce.
Since we don’t know yet if there is audience interest, there is no point to invest heavily. Instead, our objective is to spend the least amount possible and get the information we need.
With that in mind, let’s configure our budget settings. From the options of ‘Lifetime’ or ‘Daily Budget,’ go with daily. Lifetime means that Facebook will advertise until you run out of funds, and we would not want a good campaign to end suddenly.
On your daily budget, you should spend between $5 – $10 and keep the ads running for 2-3 days. It takes at least this much time for Facebook to test the ads on different audiences until it finds interested people.
The amount you spend is proportional to Facebook’s efforts. Since we are going post-engagement, $10 a day for three days is ideal.
If you think about it, a relatively low investment of $30 total ($10/day) gives you valuable information that sets the stage for future marketing. Not only do the ads gather information about interest, but they also feed your Facebook Pixel with important audience insights.
In short, it’s a worthwhile investment.
Those with a lower budget can go with $5/day. Just remember that it may take Facebook more time to find audiences.
Now that we’re done with campaign settings, we can proceed to configure our Facebook ad set.
The first section asks you about the schedule of the ad. Choose a start date and time then leave the ‘Set an end date’ option unchecked. While it is true that we are running a test for two to three days, we would not want a good ad to suddenly end.
Instead, keep track of the ad by setting reminders for yourself.
Next, we’re going to configure the audience settings, which means we’re telling Facebook the type of audience that we want them to find for us.
Our approach here is to have Facebook target the worldwide audience instead of one country.
So first things first, under ‘Locations,’ click on ‘edit’ and clear whatever default country Facebook gives you.
Now, instead of one specific country, type ‘Worldwide’ into ‘Search Locations’ and select that as the location.
There are a couple of reasons why this is the best strategy.
For one, we are going for a post-engagement objective, so we want to keep an open mind as to what audiences find our product interesting.
By selecting a global audience we’re giving Facebook more places to look for potential engagement. This helps us understand where there is general interest for this product type.
Additionally, worldwide targeting allows Facebook to find interested audiences faster. Since we are paying for ads by the day, a faster search means we’ll spend less on this campaign goal.
Finally, with a much wider range of audiences, we are likely to get more engagement on our post. Later, we can use the existing social proof by placing conversion ads on the same post.
Next, we choose the age range of the audience who will see our ads. In this part, it’s best to use an educated guess as to what age groups are most interested in the product.
In our example of a dog product, we can estimate a wide age range of 20-60. Obviously, even people under 20 or over 60 own dogs, but we’re trying to cover the widest range of potential dog products without making it too wide. An age range that is too wide can prolong the process of finding our target audience.
For most products, some Google research can give you the insight to decide on an age range.
After selecting an age range, you’ll need to choose a gender. For example, if you’re selling fashion and beauty products, then women are more likely to be interested in your product. In our example of dog products, all genders own dogs, so we’re going to stick with ‘all.’
Click ‘Edit,’ then select the appropriate gender.
At this point, we will need to tell Facebook the kinds of interest our audiences likely have. Scroll down to the ‘Detailed Targeting’ section. Click ‘Edit’ and begin writing down as many audience interest demographics and behaviors that you think are relevant for the niche you are trying to sell.
Use Google or other resources at your disposal to research your audience. For example, we recommend using our audience research spreadsheet, which covers the key interests and places where your target audience might be.
The point is to come up with many audiences and later narrow it down to smaller, more specific target audiences.
In our example, we entered: dog breeding, dog food, Happy Pets, Modern Dog, and Petco. All in all, we have a potential reach of 110 million people. This is way too broad for what we’re trying to do. So, our next task is to narrow it down.
You can track your current potential reach at the top right of your screen.
For the goal of post-engagement, we want an audience of about ten million. That’s the “sweet spot.” It’s not too low where you miss potential audiences, and not too high where you waste money waiting for days until facebook reaches the right audiences for you.
Let’s start narrowing down this audience. First, hover over the different interest tabs with your mouse. This reveals the reach size of each interest. We will try to get rid of the categories that are too broad and have too big of a reach.
For example in our case ‘dog food’ has a reach of about 48 million! To delete an interest, click on the ‘X’ to the right.
Now that we’ve deleted this interest, our potential reach shows 34 million. This is a great improvement, but we still have work to do in order to get to 10 million.
However, we don’t want to delete too many audiences, as some of them contain our core prospects. Instead, we have the option to add audiences that have both an interest we listed plus an additional one from Facebook’s suggestions.
Click on ‘Narrow Audience’ and select an interest from Facebook’s suggestions.
For example, the dog lovers audience is massive at 36 million, but because it’s combined with other interests, it narrows our potential reach from 34 million to 8 million.
This is close to the number we want. You can always play around with the settings until you reach the desired reach.
If your reach is still too high, we recommend adding an audience behavior to the narrow audience list.
For example, we can choose to find audiences that engaged with a call to action button recently. They are called ‘Engaged Shoppers.’ This gives us an audience that has engaged with a call to action button at any time in the last week, in addition to having the interests we mentioned.
The final part of audience settings is language selection. Facebook uses this information to target people who can read and understand your ad.
Scroll down and click on the ‘Edit’ button under ‘languages.‘ Since we’re only looking for English speakers, click on the ‘English (all)’ option. This way it includes all English audiences who speak or read both the UK and US variety.
The hard part is over. All that’s left is to choose where the ad will appear.
In general, there are many places on Facebook where audiences see ads. It may be on a newsfeed, the video feed, or even on Instagram (since it’s a Facebook affiliate).
We don’t want Facebook to waste time looking for audiences in the wrong places. So, first, between Automatic and Manual placement, select ‘Manual,’ which allows you to customize the ad placement.
Then, under ‘Devices’ leave it on ‘All Devices’. This means Facebook targets both Mobile and Desktop audiences.
On the ‘Platforms’ uncheck everything except for Facebook. However, for products targeted towards younger audiences (under 18), keep ‘Instagram’ on.
Next, you’ll have the option to choose where on Facebook the ad should appear. For best results, uncheck everything except for ‘Facebook News Feed’ and ‘Facebook Video feed.’
The video feed is a great choice because many users like to scroll through multiple videos, increasing the chances they’ll see the ad.
At long last, the ad set configuration process is now complete.
Pat yourself on the back, you did it!
Configuring your Facebook ad sets is the most technical portion of Facebook Marketing. If you’ve managed to go through all these instructions, you’re on the road to a successful ad campaign.
For those of you who missed something, you can always go back and reread the parts you aren’t sure about. There is no shame in learning. This is your business and you should take all the necessary steps to make it a profitable one.
As you move forward with marketing your Shopify Store, never lose focus of the final aim to increase sales and profits. Take a multi-faceted approach with these tips and strategies:
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