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Strategies to Create Effective Facebook & Instagram Shopping Ads

How to increase footfall in-stores, drive website traffic, and increase sales with festive ads.

The festive period is a great time to not only spread joy and connect with your customers, it is also a great time to promote your brand and increase sales.

In fact, 62% of shoppers feel that the festive season is the perfect time to find the best deals they can get. 68% of these shoppers actively look for more deals during this period and around 65% of them have also bought something at a mega festive sales event.

If you’re in sales or marketing, you know that these are excellent numbers.

In this post, we tell you how you can get similar, if not better numbers, to be successful with your Instagram and Facebook online Shopping Ads this festive season.

Festive ads are a great way to create an emotional bond with your customers

Facebook Catalogue Ads Table of Contents

Promoting your brand on Facebook and Instagram Marketplace
Benefits of festive season ads on Facebook and Instagram Marketplace
What is a Facebook Catalogue Ad / Product Ad
Benefits of Using Facebook’s Product Ads
How to create Facebook Catalogue ads
Running Instagram Shopping Ads
Benefits of Instagram Shopping Ads
Steps to create an Instagram Shopping Ad Using Ad Manager
Making the most of Instagram and Facebook Shopping Ads this festive season
What people expect to see in festive Instagram and Facebook online Shopping Ads
Factors that affect shopping decisions during the festive season
What to do with your Instagram and Facebook Shopping Ads in the post-festive period.

Promoting your brand on Facebook and Instagram Marketplace

The Facebook and Instagram Marketplace offers a great place for people to discover products and services, communities, businesses, and ultimately great deals. Millions of these interactions occur there everyday and the number of interactions increases exponentially during the festive period, as is indicated by the aforementioned numbers.

How can you make the most of the Facebook and Instagram Marketplace for your business?

Benefits of festive season ads on Facebook and Instagram Marketplace

Simply listing a product on Facebook and Instagram Marketplace isn’t the same as running a paid ad.

By running ads on Facebook and Instagram Marketplace, you get the added advantages of:

Reaching your customers when they’re shopping for similar products and services
Reaching more customers by placing festive season ads in multiple touch points on Facebook ad network (this includes the Facebook and Instagram News Feed, Messenger, etc)
Getting more conversions (up to 8x, according to Facebook’s IQ Study)
Using the Ads Manager to design and create your ads for both platforms
Setting your own budget
Using automatic placements to optimize your targeting
Using Pixel and/or SDK to measure actions taken on your website or app
Using Marketplace reporting to optimize ad performance

What is a Facebook Catalogue Ad / Product Ad

If you sell more than one product, Facebook’s Product Ads helps you promote all of them with greater ease and efficiency.
Product Ads allow you to upload your entire catalogue on to Facebook so that you don’t miss out on highlighting the importance of any of your offerings.
Product ads allow you to target specific audiences for each of your products.
You can display your products in single- or multi-product ads.

Facebook’s Product Ads are dynamic and efficient

Benefits of Using Facebook’s Product Ads

Product ads can be customized for various stages of the customer journey: right from awareness to purchase
You can retarget customers using enhanced custom audience features or specifically target customers using locations, interests, etc
You can curate ads according to what’s trending or sells more
You can highlight different benefits of any product using the multi-product format
Finally, Product Ads allow you to dish out a better overall ad experience for your customers because it gives you greater control over ad delivery; you can automatically stop ads that are out of stock, for instance
Product ads are dynamic and allow you to increase sales

How to create Facebook Catalogue ads

You can create Facebook Catalogue ads by following the steps below:

Create a Catalogue

Inside Facebook Business Manager, go to Business Settings.
Under Data, Sources, click Catalogues, create a new catalogue.
Choose a category and give it a name.
Now, on the top-right corner, click on Commerce Manager.

Upload products in the catalogue:

Select the catalogue you created.
Add/Manage items through your preferred way.

If Data Feed is selected, upload a file via the options below. If you don’t know the template to present the product data, download it and create your file according to its labels.

Set Google Sheets - if your inventory changes regularly (you can add your google sheet URL)
Schedule updates.
Name your data source (filename) and set the currency.
Click Upload.
Once the file is uploaded, under Settings, click on Request Update Now (which means, after upload, you need to also update products to use in your ad campaign).

The update takes some time. After which, click on Items, and you will find all your added products in the list.

Create a Catalogue Sales Campaign

Now, go to Ads Manager, select Catalogue Sales objective (under Conversion) and follow the rest of the ad building process as usual (selecting audience, catalogue, location, budget, placement, etc.)
Connect Facebook pixel to your website . This lets you remarket to your website visitors for various scenarios like showing them ads of a product they saw on your website but left without buying. Make sure the product details such as the link in the catalogue is perfect. So, when people click on your ad, they will be directed to that same product page on your website.
If you are directing customers to your e-commerce store, you can optimize ad delivery for link clicks (which means you pay only when someone clicks on your ad).
Select lowest cost bidding if you are new to Facebook ads.
Your ad creatives/headlines will be automatically fetched from your catalogue.

Instagram Shopping Ads appear in the News Feed and can increase checkouts

Running Instagram Shopping Ads

Roughly 84% of people would love to discover new products via Instagram.
To create an Instagram Shopping campaign, you need to first set up Instagram Shopping.
Once you do that, you can easily set up your Instagram online Shopping Ads using your Facebook Ad Manager.

Benefits of Instagram Shopping Ads

You can use Instagram Shopping Ads to tag products so that they turn into shoppable posts
Product tags help you easily share details about your products and drive purchases with express checkouts (when possible)
You can use can use existing single image posts as Instagram Shopping campaigns to promote your products
You can choose to exclusively place your Instagram Shopping campaigns in the News Feed only
You can choose from a variety of formats: from single image ads to carousel and video
You can retarget customers who’ve taken a particular action like viewed or saved a product or initiated a checkout
You can increase the reach of your ads with lookalike audiences

Steps to create an Instagram Shopping Ad Using Ad Manager

Choose an objective that aligns with your business goals
Choose budget, schedule and placement
Select the audience most likely to engage with your business
Select the Shopping post you want to turn into an ad
Track results with customized metrics

Making the most of Instagram and Facebook Shopping Ads this festive season

To make the most of Instagram and Facebook Shopping Ads this festive season, start early.
You should already have a plan in place to create brand awareness and increase the demand for your products by September-October.
Ensure your Pixel and SDK are set up with the right events so you have the tools in place for prospecting and marketing.
Update your content with a festive look.

Provide a seamless user experience, especially online. Make it easy for your customers to find information and make purchases when they’re ready.
Curate festive offers and promote them using festive ads.
Stay on the top of your existing customers’ minds.
Plan and review your ad formats, bid and budget strategy, and audience targeting.
Optimize for mobile.

What people expect to see in festive Instagram and Facebook online Shopping Ads

Updates on sales, discounts, offers
Informative content
Real and authentic content
Creative content
Fun and entertaining content

Factors that affect shopping decisions during the festive season

Price
Discount offers
Free shipping/delivery
Price match
Product variety

Stress on these factors in your Instagram and Facebook Shopping ads to persuade your customers to buy from you.

What to do with your Instagram and Facebook Shopping Ads in the post-festive period

The biggest mistake advertisers make is to end their campaigns with the festive period because the post-festive period usually offers lower CPAs.
It’s usually a great time to follow-up with your customers and strengthen your relationship with them.
Remember, brand building is a never-ending process.
December-January is a great period to build loyalty and to cross-sell.
It’s a great time to run remarketing campaigns because while the frenzy of the festive period may be over, the window of opportunity for you to increase your sales may still be open.

Offer more value by giving free gifts and discounts to increase sales in the post-festive period and your customers will appreciate you for it. Use the post-festive period to build on the success of your marketing and brand building efforts in the previous months. We wish you and your business great success this festive season.

Running festive ads using Mediaqart

If you’d like a personalized Facebook, Instagram and/or Google Shopping campaigns plan for the festive season, get in touch with us. We'll be happy to help you achieve your business goals and make the most of the months that are important for any business.