How to Structure Your Facebook Ad Campaigns The RIGHT Way for E-Commerce Businesses in 2023 [Step-by-Step Guide]
Do you need help understanding how to structure your Facebook ad campaigns for an e-commerce business? You've come to the right place.
“Your ad needs three parts to run: a campaign, ad set and ad. All of these parts make up what's called the campaign structure. Knowing how they work together will help your ads run the way you want, and reach the right people.” - Facebook Business Help Center
Campaign Structure
Have you been thinking to yourself, “How should I structure my Facebook ad campaigns to get the best results possible?”
If you’re running Facebook ads for your own e-commerce business or a client’s e-commerce business using a direct-to-offer strategy (when you want someone to buy directly from your Facebook ad), this post is for you.
Through a step-by-step process, you’re about to learn exactly how to properly set up and structure your Facebook ad campaigns.
No matter your budget, the objective of this campaign structure is to drive the most purchases possible for you or your client’s business. Every business is different and, therefore, you may need to alter this structure depending on you or your client’s business offer and product.
Why Does Campaign Structure Matter?
When it comes to Facebook ads, it is all about getting your ads in front of the right eyeballs at the right time.
When you build out the structure for a campaign you’re essentially telling Facebook, “Hey Facebook, I want you to target these specific people with these specific ads with this specific budget. Get me as many results as you can.”
And Facebook is pretty darn good at doing just that. . .unless you handicap it’s machine learning process with a dysfunctional campaign structure.
Step-by-Step Guide
IMPORTANT: Be sure to only use one campaign per product category. Why? If you run multiple campaigns advertising products from the same category, they will compete with each other (which means you’re risking exhausting your audience and wasting your money). For example, if you sell shoes and shirts, run one campaign for shoes and another for shirts.
Step 1: Campaign Level
(Make sure you’re at the campaign level)
Create a new campaign in Facebook Ads Manager.
Photo by Jase Thorne on Facebook Ads Manager
Select “Sales” as the Campaign Objective. This is what we want Facebook to optimize for since you’ll be running ads with the intent to maximize purchases. If you were trying to generate something else besides purchases, for example: leads, you’d select leads.
Photo by Jase Thorne on Facebook Ads Manager Toggle “Advantage Campaign Budget” on and choose your daily budget. This allows Facebook to automatically allocate your budget across the various ad sets (instead of you choosing an individual budget for each ad set) within your campaign according to performance. In other words, the right amount of budget goes to each ad set so you don’t overspend on what’s not performing or underspend on what is performing. Often times, advertisers manually set the budget and over or under spend on certain ad sets. Want to learn more about Facebook Ad’s budget types and when to use each type? Check out this post: Campaign Level Budget vs. Ad Set Level Budget: Which Should You Use for Your Paid Facebook Ad Campaigns? [2023 Edition]
Step 2: Ad Set Level
(Make sure you’re at the ad set level)
Testing 4 cold audiences with 1 warm audience in a sales campaign (with Advantage Campaign Budget on) is optimal for Facebook’s machine learning process. In other words, you’re giving Facebook the right amount of variables to test- not too many and not too few.
Create 5 different ad sets within this campaign. You can do this by creating one ad set and then duplicating it to produce your desired amount of copies.
Photo by Jase Thorne on Facebook Ads Manager
Select cold targeting options for 4 of the ad sets. I like using 2 interest ad sets and 2 look-alike ad sets. Test one audience at a time per ad set whether it’s an interest, look-alike, or other targeting option. When it comes to cold targeting, if you test more than one variable at a time within a single ad set you won’t be able to identify which variable produced your results.
Select warm targeting options for the last ad set (site visitors, social engagers, etc). With warm targeting, you can test multiple audiences at a time per ad set. Why? These people have previously interacted with your business in some way, so you already know they have a higher likelihood of purchasing.
Photo by Jase Thorne on Facebook Ads Manager After 7-10 days, evaluate performance and replace underperforming ad sets with new ones to test against the ad sets that worked. Repeat this process until you’ve identified some stable audience targeting options that work well for your offer.
Step 3: Ad Level
(Make sure you’re at the ad level)
Testing 4-5 ads within each ad set is the sweet spot. This gives Facebook the right amount of options to test in its machine learning process giving you the best chance at maximizing purchases.
Create 4-5 different ads within a single ad set. Then, duplicate those exact ads into the remaining 4 ad sets. The reason for this is if you use different ads within each ad set, you won’t be able to identify if the ad performance is attributed to the audience targeting or the ad creative. I like using a mix of image and video ads.
You might be thinking, “The warm ad set will have the same ads as the cold ad sets. Is that how it’s supposed to be?” Yes. Trying to tailor ads to warm retargeting audiences with copy or creative that says something like, “Hey you visited my website” is considered creepy by the vast majority of people. Creepy ads will turn away your potential customers.
Photo by Jase Thorne on Facebook Ads Manager Once you’ve tested multiple different ad sets (running the same ads in each of them) and you’ve identified some stable audience targeting options that work well for your offer, you can then move on to testing different ads.
Test ads the same way you did ad sets. After 7-10 days, evaluate performance and replace underperforming ads with new ones to test against the ads that worked. Repeat this process until you’ve identified some stable ad creatives and copy that work well for your offer.
Conclusion
Now, remember there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to Facebook ads. But this is one very effective way to structure your Facebook ad campaigns for a direct-to-offer e-commerce business in 2023.
Additional Resources
Have additional questions? Or are you looking to customize a Facebook ads strategy to you or your client’s particular business? You can set up a 100% FREE consultation with me at jasethorne.com.
The Facebook Business Help Center is another great resource that can answer your questions and provide foundational knowledge on Facebook advertising.
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