Most people think of digital marketing and eCommerce as a young person’s game. For advertisers specifically looking to target older shoppers, that can be immensely frustrating. After all, more than 44% of all online shoppers are above the age of 45, with nearly 30% coming in at 55+. 

And yet, nearly all online advertising trend articles and research reports are geared towards younger demographics. It brings up an undeniable conundrum: What do you do when your primary audience isn’t interested in TikTok or Instagram?

Members of Gen X and baby boomers love spending time and shopping online as much as their younger counterparts. They just might require a different strategy to reach, convince, and convert them to become loyal customers. Let’s dig into the eight most prominent digital ad trends for reaching older demographics to boost your online revenue.

1. Older Users Prefer YouTube and Facebook

At this point, saying that older demographics gravitate to Facebook and YouTube above other digital channels is old news. A closer look at the data, though, reveals just how pronounced the advantage of an active presence on these two channels can be.

In Gen X, Facebook has a 76% reach of all internet users, with YouTube coming in second at 70%. Instagram (47% reach) is a distant third, with channels like Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter rounding out the picture.

Among baby boomers, the difference is even more pronounced, with 70% regularly using YouTube and 68% using Facebook. Pinterest (27%0, LinkedIn (24%) and Instagram (23%) are far behind.

From an advertising perspective, that leads to a clear and simple truth: eCommerce merchants with the goal of reaching older demographics have to build an active presence on YouTube and Facebook.

Fortunately, many of the other trends designed in this guide a natural fits for these channels starting with the next one:

2. Video Ads Can Be Immensely Effective

A visual emphasis is important across demographics, but it seems to be especially pronounced among older viewers. Video, especially, has a major place in these users’ daily internet consumption.

Gen X doesn’t just occasionally log into YouTube. According to one recent study, this cohort is responsible for 1.5 billion video views every single day. They tend to watch DIY videos as well as videos that help them stay in the know about the world, making products and brands focusing on these topics an especially relevant fit.

Baby boomers, meanwhile, account for 24% of all YouTube views. And they don’t just look for organic content, either; according to one study, they’re three times more likely to be intrigued by an ad on Google than they would be by a traditional television commercial.

The same video preferences extend to Facebook, as well. In fact, video is the preferred content type for Gen X on Facebook, and the same is true for baby boomers as well. Video ads that can engage older demographics with the types of content they most look forward to can quickly raise awareness and build credibility.

3. In Ad Messaging, Value Matters More than Cost

Older generations naturally tend to have more discretionary income than their younger counterparts. That is especially true for baby boomers, who according to Nielsen hold 70% of the nation’s disposable income. That naturally translates into bigger online purchases, with baby boomers spending more than $203 per transaction – higher than any other generation.

It also means that for older demographics, price-based messaging tends to be less important. Instead, Gen X and baby boomers focus on finding the products that will be most likely to fulfill their value proposition. It’s also why, according to one study, 71% of consumers in this age bracket preferred product descriptions that clearly explained the practical day-to-day benefits of a product.

But of course, older online shoppers don’t just learn about a product’s value proposition from the brand or store from which they’re looking to buy it. In addition, they actively seek out the opinions of others, especially when well-argued, via online reviews and social proof.

In fact, 65% of Gen X online shoppers and 63% of baby boomers become more likely to purchase a product online if enough positive product reviews support the decision. And they’re even more likely to trust expert reviews; as Joe Beier, executive vice president of global market intelligence firm GfK, put it,

“Boomers have much more of an old-school view, ‘Ok, the experts are the ones that know what’s going on. And therefore they’re the ones I’m going to trust and look to help inform my decision.’ … If it’s just more of an anonymous pool of user reviews, there’s a certain skepticism about that”.

4. Baby Boomers Are Driven by Quality of Life Decisions

In messaging to any demographic, of course, the why deserves further investigation. Just what types of pain points can your ads address to make your audience more comfortable with a potential purchase?

Especially when reaching older demographics, it’s not just about value in general. It’s about addressing the same types of issues that drive them to research online in the first place. And, according to numerous studies, those decisions tend to be driven by a desire to maintain and improve their quality of life.

Healthy living, shopping, and travel take center stage. Ads that can drive home the health and quality of life aspect of the products they seek to promote, as a result, can be especially impactful in gaining the attention of baby boomers.

For the slightly younger Gen X, preferences vary slightly – but still move into the same general direction. In fact, the generation with the highest tendency towards brand loyalty places special value on products that can prove they actually improve their day-to-day life. A focus on tangible benefits, specifically as they relate to qualify of life, remains key to messaging success.

5. Almost All Product Research Starts with a Search Engine

A deep understanding of the user journey is a vital part of any successful eCommerce ad campaign. Among older demographics, mapping that user journey is impossible without considering Google – by far the most important research mechanism for Gen X and baby boomers.

Among baby boomers especially, Google is ubiquitous. In fact, 96% of internet users in this cohort use search engines, specifically to learn about brands they’re considering and research potential products they want to buy. The numbers for Gen X are similarly clear, with 4 in 10 users of this cohort using search engines for product research – more than any other digital or non-digital channel.

Seeking to understand the impact of different digital channels, one study examined the actions baby boomers and older demographics tend to take as a result of using a variety of channels. And, once again, search engines significantly outranked social media and even video in a number of important, eCommerce-related categories:

• 77.5% of baby boomers using a search engine followed that up by visiting a company website (compared to 58.3% of social media users and 34% of video viewers).
• 65% of baby boomers using search made an online purchase as a result (compared to 36.6% for social media and 27.9% for video).
• 63.1% of baby boomers using search physically visited a retailer or store as a result (compared to 41.7% for social media and 22.3% for video).
• 58.5% of baby boomers using search felt more comfortable and ready to buy the product they were researching (compared to 29.5% for social media and 24.1% for video).For advertisers, these numbers should have an immense impact.

An active presence on search results, both in terms of organic SEO and paid SEM, can be a major influencing factor for online purchasing decisions.

6. Social Commerce and Influencer Marketing Is Less Prevalent – and Less Trusted

Such a focus on online reviews, combined with this demographics’ prevalence on Facebook, which might be the most built-out eCommerce social media platform to date, might suggest that with this demographic social commerce is on the rise. Instead, the opposite is the case.
In fact, according to one Oracle study, just 8% of baby boomers trust social media ads when looking for recommendations when shopping online. Gen X comes in higher at 23%, but still far behind other generational cohorts like millennials and Gen Z.

One report squarely places the blame for that lack of ad credibility on the prevalence of influencer marketing, which does not hit with older users nearly as much as it does with their younger counterparts. And indeed, the same Oracle study found that 96% of baby boomers actively distrust influencers, which tend to be members of younger generations.

All of that ultimately translates into a demographic that is not particularly interested in social selling. Only 19% of baby boomers have made a purchase on Facebook, far less than other demographic cohorts. The right, expert and value-driven ads may work on a platform like Facebook, but chances are a Facebook store will not be nearly as effective.

7. Older Demographics Split on Desktop and Mobile Device Usage

For years, conventional wisdom for eCommerce merchants concerned with reaching older demographics was to focus on desktop usage above all. But, while desktop remains a preferred choice as users increase in age, mobile-optimized ads are increasingly important to gain their attention and engagement.

While a 2018 study found that only 4% of baby boomers prefer to shop on mobile devices, a 2019 follow-up began to report on changing preferences:

• 46% of online users above age 55 used a mobile retail app to look for more information about a product or service.
• 39% of online users age 55+ used a mobile retail app to buy a product or service.

Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the game. A 2020 study by the National Retail Federation found that 45% of baby boomers have increased their online shopping, with two-thirds of all respondents having tried a buy-online-pick-up-in-store experience using their smartphone or tablet.

And of course, Gen X is already native to mobile shopping, split almost evenly between desktop and mobile eCommerce. Advertisers need to be mindful of these split preferences, building their ads to accommodate both mobile shoppers and desktop shoppers rather than optimizing for one device type over the other.

8. Concerns About Retargeted Ads Increase With Age

Data privacy matters to older generations. In fact, one 2019 study found that concerns about data privacy rise in an almost perfect linear curve by generational cohort, with 63% of Gen X online users and 73% of baby boomers stating that they were either somewhat or very concerned about their private data leaking online or getting into the wrong hands.

As a result, they tend to see retargeted ads specifically tailored to their behavior as intrusive, not beneficial. Unlike younger generations, who actively seek that personalization, baby boomers only expect and desire it once they are an active customer. Seeing personalized product or service ads based only on their browsing data becomes suspicious, not relevant.

That, in turn, presents a conundrum for eCommerce merchants. Especially brands with longer sales cycles due to higher average order values tend to rely strongly on retargeting as part of the larger advertising ecosysetm. Finding a way to leverage retargeting without seeming intrusive or losing audience trust becomes vital.

One option to accomplish that feat is using retargeting in more subtle ways. Instead of showing ads with products your audience may have browsed for, leverage them to reinforce basic value propositions and establish general brand trust and credibility.

Building a Multi-Channel Advertising Strategy Tailored to Older Audiences

Add it all together, and a few key trends begin to emerge. As with other audiences, a multi-channel ad strategy is vital. However, the composition of these channels tends to change. Facebook, YouTube, and Google all play core roles in the larger buyer’s journey for Gen Z and baby boomers who shop online.

Messaging that focuses on value over cost and general quality of life, especially when delivered via video, tends to be successful. Ads need to be optimized for both mobile and desktop devices. And, while retargeting can still play a role in the larger strategy, it should be applied judiciously.

Of course, these trends are still generalized across broader age demographics. Your target audience may still exhibit unique preferences and features that are worth accounting and optimizing for. A close understanding of your core audience is crucial to building a successful ad strategy that ensures long-term, sustainable success.

Getting to that point, of course, is complex. Product page optimizations, promotions, free shipping thresholds, and other tactics can all help towards achieving that goal. At the same time, it’s vital to not lose track of one important component that can play a core role in the larger goal: payment options.

Gone are the days when eCommerce merchants could simply offer a credit card option and hope for the best. Today’s online shoppers expect convenience above all, with payment types and options tailored to their personal preferences.

In this guide, we’ll cover the many ways in which you accommodate this audience. Learn how you can repackage your on-page payment options, incentivizing higher cart levels and increasing your AOV in the process.

1. Tailor Your Payment Options to Your Audience

Across demographics, eCommerce audiences tend to be consistent in the types of payment options they prefer when shopping online:

• 30% of shoppers preferred paying via credit card
• 30% of shoppers preferred paying via digital or mobile wallet
• 21% of shoppers preferred paying via debit card
• 8% of shoppers preferred paying via charge or deferred debit card
• 6% of shoppers preferred paying via direct bank transfer
• 2% of shoppers preferred paying via a “buy now, pay later” installation system
• 1% of shoppers preferred paying via a cash-on-delivery system.

Other studies showed slight differences in the exact percentages, but otherwise found much of the same trend. Credit cards and mobile wallets lead the pack, with other payment systems close enough to at least be relevant to eCommerce shoppers.

The data gets interesting, though, once different demographics come into play. For example, while direct bank transfer accounted for just 8% of U.S. transactions, it was the preferred option (even above credit cards) for multiple European countries. The American equivalent, ACH or e-check, has also become popular among older demographics who favor it over digital and mobile wallet solutions.

Younger audiences, meanwhile, are gravitating to more agile payment options, including (but not limited to) cryptocurrency. Using digital and mobile wallet gateways, they are beginning to drag crypto into the mainstream, making it increasingly relevant for eCommerce merchants looking to attract millennials and members of Gen Z.

The lesson, then, is clear: to maximize and incentivize higher cart levels, offering payment options preferred by your audience is absolutely crucial. The more comfortable they feel with the options presented to them, the more likely they will become to spend a more significant amount on your store. Tailoring your options to your audience also avoids overwhelming your audience with so many options that they don’t know where to look first, which would introduce friction into the buying process.

Of course, that includes making these payment options as clearly visible as possible on your product and conversion pages. The earlier an older or European shopper knows that you accept direct bank transfers, or a millennial discovers that you accept payment gateways managing cryptocurrency, the more likely they will become to add that extra product to their cart.

2. Leverage Direct Payment Gateways Like PayPal

Alongside traditional payment methods, new direct payment gateways have emerged over the past decade to make online shopping, and financial transactions in general, more convenient for consumers. PayPal especially is a great example of how a fintech tool can ease the experience, reduce friction, and make that crucial click on the “add-to-cart” button more likely:

At its core, PayPal is a gateway instead of a payment method in its own right. Any user with an account can connect their preferred payment method on the backend, including credit or debit cards, direct bank transfers from checking or savings account, and even emerging options like cryptocurrency. For international shoppers, it also offers a more straightforward way to pay without expensive wire transfer or international credit card fees.

And of course, PayPal isn’t the only name in the direct payment tool game. Even though it holds a 76% marketshare in the digital wallet space, other options include Amazon Payments (24%), VisaCheckout (15%), Google Wallet (14%), Apple Pay (12%), and MasterCard PayPass (9%). Regionally, AliPay and WeChat dominate the market in Asia Pacific.

For the time being, PayPal remains the unquestioned market leader. Especially for demographics with a high propensity to use digital wallets, adding and promoting a PayPal payment option on your online store can thus make a significant impact. Active users can purchase products with just a few clicks, saving the trouble of typing in credit card or bank account numbers.
Especially for eCommerce merchants with older demographics, options like PayPal Guest Checkout can be beneficial. They allow shoppers to pay through the gateway without an account, requiring the manual entry of credit card information in the process.

This option, of course, introduces an extra step into the process and still requires manual credit card entry. As such, it’s best-used as an alternative for eCommerce merchants whose primary audience consists of younger shoppers with a secondary audience of older demographics, rather than those looking to focus exclusively or primarily focusing on audiences with a low likelihood of an active PayPal account.

3. Consider Mobile Commerce “Shortcuts”

It’s impossible to discuss any eCommerce trends without the rapid shift to mobile that is occurring across most audiences and industries. Mobile commerce now accounts for almost 45% of all eCommerce sales, and is still growing nearly 20% in the United States every year.

Audiences shopping on mobile devices have very different payment needs and expectations compared to their desktop counterparts. eCommerce has traditionally been built for a desktop-first experience, which explains why according to one report, conversion rates on large screens are more than double those coming from smartphones and tablets.

That, in turn, leads to a simple conclusion: if a significant portion of your audience shops on your online store via mobile device, their experience – and especially their payment experience – has to be optimized for mobile. That’s where mobile commerce “shortcuts” enter the equation.

The most obvious of these shortcuts, of course, is the mobile version of the digital wallet explained above: the mobile wallet. Apple, Google, Android, and PayPal have all built their own version of a solution in which users store payment information directly on their smartphone, accessible via a single app.

Online merchants, in turn, can leverage this trend towards the mobile wallet by making it an easy, one-click cart and purchase experience on their store. If users know that they can check out conveniently using their mobile wallet early in the shopping experience, they’ll become more likely to add items to their cart and increase their cart size in the process.

Of course, this is just one of multiple opportunities to build mobile shortcuts into the m-commerce experience. Mobile chatbots, for instance, offer automation possibilities to answer questions (including questions about payment options and safety) for users worried about complications in the check-out process. Meanwhile, features like Google Pay’s secure payment info storage can autofill credit card numbers based on user devices.

Another option for merchants to consider is a shortcut for shoppers to scan their credit card information using their phone’s camera instead of having to manually enter it. Thanks to AI, this technology is getting both more accurate and more secure and can further help to simplify the payment process for mobile users.

4. Reduce Friction Through Payment Installment Options

Naturally, the greatest friction point to a larger shopping cart, and ultimately a larger AOV, is available funds on behalf of their user. Internal thresholds for how much users want to spend differ based on industry, demographic, and more; but, once that threshold is reached, it’s difficult for a merchant to be persuasive about adding more items to the cart.

One recent trend is beginning to reduce that friction point: payment plans. These plans allow shoppers the option to either pay a small sum upfront and regular installment after that similar to a loan or credit card, or defer payment altogether in a “buy-now, pay later” system similar to layaway models in brick and mortar stores.

Especially for younger audiences, this option is undeniably intriguing. Studies show that 76% of Americans would like to reduce their credit card debt, a trend that has accelerated since personal budgets tightened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Paypal

Some experts even suggest raising the price of items purchased via an installment plan to increase AOV and profit margin for the order, while lowering the risk of missed or defaulted payments down the road. Of course, that might mitigate some of the enthusiasm that shoppers feel for payment plans, requiring testing to see if the benefits outweigh the costs of taking this extra step.

Regardless of the nuances involved, advertising the installment plan option on your store and product pages can make a significant difference for customers on the fence about product prices or order volumes. Services like Klarna and Affirm now offer these options, and even PayPal has entered the game with a 4-installment, no-interest option for any users with an active account.

5. Use Loyalty Points as Tangible Value

The final option in lowering friction for customers on the fence about large cart amounts is especially relevant for online stores with high percentages of return customers. It involves a more active promotion of loyalty points, turning them into a virtual currency for store visitors to always see just how much they can use once they’re checking out.

The stakes are already tilted towards merchants with active loyalty programs. In a 2019 study, nearly 60% of global internet users cited earning rewards or loyalty points as one of the most important pieces of the eCommerce shopping experience – second only to a quick and easy checkout. That makes intuitive sense, considering the fact that 75% of internet users favor companies with active loyalty programs.

Most loyalty programs kick in after the purchase, showing earned points to new customers once the transaction has processed. At best, an online brand’s mobile app might have a loyalty tab for shoppers to review their points balance and potential rewards while shopping.

This strategy takes that process even further. Loyalty points translate to a set monetary value that comes into play during the checkout process. That value, in turn, is actively displayed near the ‘shopping cart’ button as part of the browsing experience, showing customers just how much less they have to pay should they check out the cart they’re currently filling.

While this step almost naturally increases cart sizes, it doesn’t necessarily result in immediate AOV increases because the overages in the cart tend to be equal or smaller than the loyalty points balance used to pay for the larger cart. However, this step promotes broader participation in the loyalty program in general, which has proven to increase AOV by an average of 13% – and up to 75% for top performers. It’s a long-term win for any eCommerce merchants looking to make the investment.

Creating a Streamlined Payment Experience to Incentivize Higher Cart Levels

While a variety of factors play into increasing average shopping cart sizes, payment options play an undoubtedly important role. Given the wide range of possible options available today, it pays to tailor your options to your audience – and optimize your system for digital wallets that include multiple possibilities, like PayPal and Apple Pay.
At the same time, it also pays to be more innovative. Payment installment plans are on the rise, as are inventive uses of loyalty programs at strategic parts in the buyer’s journey.

Ultimately, the goal is to create a more streamlined experience for your audience, incentivizing your users to build bigger shopping carts through a more convenient, optimized line-up of payment options. Merchants who can build that experience, and properly promote it to their core users, can build a significant advantage over their competitors while at the same time raising their shopping cart size and AOV.

The ability to track real, measurable results from your Facebook Ads is essential. It ensures that your campaigns are profitable and can help you optimize them further.

It’s relatively easy to track online conversions that happen after users click through an ad to your site, but many businesses and marketers forget that they can measure and optimize for offline conversions, too.

In this post, we’re going to discuss how you can track and optimize for offline conversions like in-store visits by using Facebook’s offline conversions API.

What Is Facebook’s Offline Conversions API?

Facebook’s Offline Conversions API is an automated system that allows you to accurately track offline events like store visits or purchases that happen after a user sees or interacts with your ad. It’s a native tool, and it is separate from the standard Facebook Conversions API.

This is essential, because too many businesses are failing to adequately track any sort of offline conversions. If you aren’t tracking these conversions, you’re likely not optimizing for them either.

DespitetThe good news is that while offline conversion tracking has historically been more difficult, the Offline Conversions API makes it easier for you to track in-person actions. This helps with determining ad effectiveness, as well as further optimizing campaigns for additional conversions.

The Difference Between Facebook’s Conversions API and the Offline Conversions API

I mentioned above that the Offline Conversions API is different from the standard Conversions API.

You can see some of the most significant differences here:

As you can see above, the purpose of the two tools are slightly different. Facebook’s Conversions API relies on the pixel and other online activity to accurately assess online conversions and optimize your future campaigns accordingly.

The Offline Conversions API doesn’t rely on the pixel to track conversions, and you’ll need to upload data through direct integration or third-party tools.

When You Should Use the Offline Conversions API

There are two occasions when it’s vitally important to use the Offline Conversions API.

The first is when you want to simply measure actions happening offline, like in-person event registrations or store sales.

The second is when you want to measure sales that happen online but after a delayed time period. A great example of this would be if someone signs up for a free trial that ends after seven days; you would want to track the conversion rate of people who became paying customers after seven days as opposed to only tracking free signups.

How to Measure & Optimize Facebook Offline Conversions: A Case Study

Marketing theory is always better when backed up by real-life examples, right?

Let’s take a look at a case study that demonstrates how we leveraged Facebook’s Offline Conversions to better track and optimize for offline events.

The Challenge

We started working with a retailer who had a “keep what you love and send the rest back” subscription model. So they may have originally sent out a package with $100 in goods, but the customer only keeps $30 and sends back the rest.

Here’s how the subscription model works:

1.  After clicking on an ad, the customer will complete a style quiz and signs up for a trial. We would measure the signup through Facebook’s standard tracking pixel, as the action is taken online.

2.  The customer is sent a package of clothing based on their preferences and sizing information.

3.  The customer keeps the items they like, and sends back the rest. They are only charged for the items they keep.

Originally, none of the actual purchases were tracked by Facebook; only the initial trial signup was tracked. The offline conversions were key, however; without that information, Facebook can’t properly measure the true performance of the ads or optimize future campaigns by delivering them to your high-value audiences instead of those who just wanted a free trial.

The Solution

We knew that Facebook’s Offline Conversions API was the best option here. We set up the API, facilitating data to be shared based on the number of items kept/purchased and amount of revenue made for each new customer.

This information allowed us to effectively segment the most profitable and high-value customers to create lookalike audiences.

To put our theory to the test, we tested a lookalike audience of people that signed up for the trial (control) against a lookalike audience of high-value people who signed up for the trial and then kept/paid for items (test), using Facebook’s Offline Conversions API.

The results were clear. Despite a 6% increase in CPA, we saw a 43% increase in people who kept/purchased items, and a 31% higher AOV.

How to Get Started with Facebook’s Offline Conversions API

Ready to get started with Facebook’s Offline Conversions API?

There are a few options available to you:

– You can send offline events data directly to Facebook by following the steps laid out here

– There’s the option to send offline events data to Facebook using approved Partner Integrations 

– You can upload conversions data from the offline events page in the Events Manager if you’re unable to do either of the two options a bove, though this requires ongoing manual work

Final Thoughts

Offline events are just as important to measure as actions taken online, even though they’re decisively more difficult to track without the right tools in place. Fortunately, Facebook’s Offline Conversions API can help, allowing you to not only measure performance from your campaigns more accurately but also to assess high-LTV audiences and to optimize for them moving forward.

Mobile already makes up just over half of all internet traffic, and this isn’t likely to change any time soon. It’s expected that by 2025, mobile traffic will have increased by another 25%.

Despite the increase of mobile-responsive sites that are designed to offer full functionality cross-device, the reality is that mobile and desktop don’t truly yield equal experiences across the board.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at why the mobile site experience is so important and seven different often-forgotten mobile website considerations you need to keep in mind when designing your site.

Why the Mobile Site Experience Matters

Users are discovering, browsing on, and purchasing from brands on mobile sites at increasing rates, and your site needs to be ready. This includes everything from your landing page to your checkout process.

There’s plenty of data to back this up, including the following:

– Target found that 75% of customers are starting their journey on mobile, even if they later went into the store or made a purchase on a desktop site.

– According to Shopify, 69% of their 2019 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales were made on mobile devices; only 31% were on desktop.

– Conversions from smart phones had increased in 2020, partially thanks to increased online shopping from COVID but also likely thanks to easy pay options.

It doesn’t matter if you as the business owner or site designer created the site on desktop; it’s important to remember that your site will likely be mobile-first access for many customers. And since mobile has more limitations around functionality and ease-of-use, it’s essential to consider site design with that in mind.

The 7 Mobile Site Considerations That Often Go Ignored

There’s a lot that goes into creating a functional, high-converting website with a great user experience. It’s easy for brands to sometimes overlook a few key considerations, so let’s take a look at seven qualities you don’t want to forget when it comes to the mobile website experience.

1. Site Loading Speed

We know that site loading speed matters on desktop, but are you testing site loading speed for mobile, too?

Even more importantly, are you testing site speed on both mobile data and mobile wifi? That matters, too.

53% of mobile visits are abandoned if the site takes more than three seconds to load. Since mobile sites are likely to be a customer’s first touchpoint in many cases, this is a major consideration.

Sites that load quickly on desktop may not load fast on mobile; you need to double check. Sites like Pingdom and Google’s PageSpeed Insights allow you to check your desktop site and your mobile site separately so you can be sure that you’re falling under that three-second mark.

2. A Thumb-Friendly User Experience

Unsurprisingly, 75% of smartphone interactions come down to thumb scrolling on a touch screen. People don’t want to need both hands to navigate a site.

This means they need to be able to easily click on your CTAs, navigation menus, and search bars with a single tap. It cannot be a hassle to use your site, or people just won’t.

Think about those navigation bars that require you to hover over options in order to open (and keep open) additional menu options; this doesn’t work on mobile, when a user would need to take their thumb off the menu entirely to review other options and select something else. The site would quickly become too complicated to use.

Branding Brand has an outstanding template that allows you to consider what thumb-only navigation looks like on your site, which you can see here:

The basics of the strategy focus on knowing your “Thumb Zones,” which is where it’s most comfortable and likely for users to take action on a mobile device. You can see this in the diagram above, and includes the following:

– You should always place primary CTAs in the primary zone.

– Essential information and secondary CTAs (like “learn more” instead of “shop now”) should be placed in the secondary zone.

– Controls to change the mode or initiate different tasks (including search, privacy policies, and navigation menus) should be in the tertiary zone.

This reduces friction by establishing a hierarchy, keeping the subconscious engaged and it maximizes the “tappability” of your content.

It’s also a good idea to have CTAs that are wide enough to click, and easily visible.

You can use site mapping and behavior tracking tools like Hotjar to assess mobile behavior and flag potential issues that may need to be addressed.

3. Comprehensive, Simple Navigation

Complex menu systems that require drop-down menu after drop-down menu are difficult to navigate on mobile, especially when they’re not thumb-scrolling-friendly.

Simple and intuitive navigation is essential, and it’s important to consider the navigation experience on mobile just as you would on desktop.

Simple navigational menus, filtering capabilities, and an easy-to-access search bar are important. Customers may have trouble finding your return policy through drop-down bars, for example, but can easily find it with a quick search if you have this enabled on your site.

Make sure that you have someone test your mobile site to see if they can find everything they need, including information about both your brand and products. Sometimes they can help flag issues that you may have otherwise missed before it costs you customers.

4. Social Proof That’s Visible on Mobile

In some cases, mobile sites will choose to reduce site elements like visible reviews, UGC, press links or logos, or counters that show the number of customers served. They do this in attempt to speed up the mobile site and keep it “cleaner.”

These aren’t “afterthoughts” that are only added onto a desktop site to make it look great, however. They’re valuable, powerful driving forces that can directly impact sales, just as they are on desktop. And if customers don’t see them on mobile, they will likely assume that you just don’t have them at all.

This is not the area to make cuts. Instead, chose mobile-friendly tools for displaying social proof, like Stamped (pictured above), which is designed to be mobile-responsive and search-friendly.

5. Incorporating Live Chat

When you enter a storefront, you have a helpful salesperson who can step forward, greet you, and help you find the right product.

That isn’t readily and immediately available online, which is why live chat is so important on desktop and mobile. A quick greeting and an offer to answer questions can get users chatting with an AI and even a customer service or sales representative to answer questions and direct them towards the right products or services.

When you lack a live chat on your mobile site, you could miss a chance to capture buyer intent in real-time and close sales faster.

When it comes to live chat tools that are mobile-friendly, we recommend Gorgias. It’s easy to use and it integrates with most major eCommerce platforms, including Shopify.

6. Offering Mobile-Friendly Payment Integrations

Nobody is thrilled at the idea of needing to enter their billing information, shipping information, and credit card information from their mobile device. Offering mobile-friendly, instant-pay options are important to increasing mobile conversions.

These are secure and convenient, and well-trusted by customers. One study found that adding these payment options resulted in a 68% increase in mobile conversions and mobile purchases.

There are plenty of options available, including the following:

– PayPal

– Amazon Pay

– Shop Pay

– Google Pay 

– Klarna (which also lets customers divide up their payments)

These options all allow participating users to save their information (credit card info included!) so that they only need to enter their email and verify their identity to have the checkout process auto-completed.

Some platforms let you have multiple payment options enabled, making it even more accessible to as many customers as possible.

7. Prioritize Visuals

When mobile sites were first becoming a necessity, there was some advice online to cut visuals (including videos and images) left and right in order to speed up site loading times.

This is actually the last thing that you want to do. When possible, prioritize visuals over text, especially for eCommerce businesses. Visuals are easier to view quickly on mobile, and with better mobile technology, many users are able to handle images on their devices without a problem.

And when it comes to text on mobile, less is more. You want to give users enough information to feel confident in purchasing, but you don’t want to drown them out in blocks of text that are difficult to read on mobile. Skipping the long-form sales copy is the way to go.

When in doubt, split test your site design and the text and visuals you have on your page. You can use tools like Unbounce to A/B test different versions of your site to make it more mobile-friendly.

Final Thoughts

It’s not enough to simply have a mobile site anymore, like it was even five years ago; customers have higher expectations for mobile sites, meaning that you need to approach your entire sales funnel and your landing page itself as a mobile-first experience.

We’ve seen too many brands sabotaging not only great ad campaigns but great products by driving away customers with poor mobile website experiences. Check your site for the seven considerations we discussed in this post to strengthen the user mobile experience (and your chance at conversions) moving forward.

This article was originally featured on Social Media Examiner

The ability to deliver relevant ads at the right time can make or break your ad campaigns. Facebook’s dynamic product ads are a valuable tool that allow brands to show personalized ads to users, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

In this post, we’re going to discuss why dynamic product ads are so valuable and look at 10 different tactics you can use to boost results with them.

What Are Dynamic Product Ads & Why Are They Useful?

Facebook’s dynamic product ads allow advertisers to create and use templates that will be auto-filled with information and images from product data feeds to show users ads that are relevant to them.

It’s common, for example, for advertisers to have dynamic product ads tied to their tracking pixel. If a customer views a specific product page, the dynamic ad will show them that particular product in an ad.

Dynamic ads allow advertisers to generate ad campaigns at scale while still delivering the most relevant ads possible to their target audience based on factors like triggered events, pages viewed, and products purchased. Instead of needing to create separate ads for each individual product, they can run a single campaign that links to an entire product catalog or datafeed.

These ads allow Facebook to optimize your ads for you naturally, which can lead to better results as their algorithms are able to serve ads to users most likely to take certain actions.

While each business will need to run tests to determine which dynamic product ads work best for their audience, the following 10 tried-and-true strategies can potentially increase conversion rates at different stages of the sales funnel.

1. Add Offers to Increase the Ad’s Appeal

If your goal is to use dynamic product ads to reach high-intent audiences, adding an offer to your ad can be what pushes them over the edge to convert.

Offers can vary depending on your business, but can include any of the following:

– A percentage off a first purchase

– A dollar amount off a purchase

– Free shipping

– A free consultation or first class

– A free sample or gift with purchase

Promoting offers both in the ad copy and on the ad image can further incentivize users to make a purchase.

In the ad above, Cole Haan features an offer for 70% off select sales styles, plus an extra 20% off using code EXTRA. They mention this in the copy and reinforce it in the image, with a “Shop Now” as their CTA. 

2. Include Multiple Text & Visual Options for Dynamic Formats

When using dynamic formats, Users will see ad versions that they’re most likely to interact with based on their past on-platform activity, and will be taken to a relevant destination site. 

When you’re creating dynamic product ads, there are a few tricks you can use to repurpose assets like “brand name” or “price” to apply relevant product catalog information into the standard copy you’ve created for these ads. 

By clicking the “+” sign next to the text creation field’s you can add in dynamic information like brand, description, retailer ID, and price that will be pulled from your data feed for each individual product shown.

You can preview how this dynamic formatting will appear across multiple different placements to ensure that it works for your campaigns. 

Preview how dynamic formatting will look before running your ad campaigns.

3. Localize Language & Pricing for International Ads

When expanding your ad campaigns internationally, you may need to factor language and pricing into the equation. Someone in Germany will most likely be able to read an ad written in English, but if they see the US dollar sign instead of a euro, they may automatically assume the product isn’t for them.

Updating your ads language and pricing based on the location of the viewer is an important step to take when you’re scaling your campaign to new territories.

When creating your campaigns, you’ll see the option to add additional languages to your campaigns.

To add additional languages to your dynamic ads, select “Add Languages” in the creation process.

You can select “Add Languages,” and then can connect to different product feed files that have product titles and descriptions in different languages. You can also choose to upload a feed file for your products that contain local pricing, currency, and sizing for different countries if relevant. 

You can add language information that includes titles and descriptions in different languages for products, or country information that contains relevant local pricing, currency, and sizing for different countries.

While Facebook does have native translation features that users can rely on, it’s best to serve ads to users in their native language so that no intricacies are lost in auto-translation. It also shows customers that you’re intentional about serving their specific market and that they aren’t an afterthought, which can help you gain trust and credibility.

4. Customize Static Creatives with Frames & Pricing Overlays

It’s a common tactic to add product pricing not only to a carousel description but also to an ad’s image. It can draw the user’s attention to the price point quickly when they’re scrolling, which can in turn help increase conversions.

 Unfortunately, though, adding prices to static images can be challenging when you’re working at scale. Pricing often changes overtime due to sale prices, special promotions, or standard changes in the market. The last thing you want to do is need to go back and edit every single product image in your data feed.

You can add information like pricing to static images with native Facebook features.

You can use frames and price overlays on Facebook to turn static images into dynamic ones that feature up-to-date information in real time. 

You can currently include information about price and free shipping on your images when you’re running dynamic ads with the objectives of App Installs, Leads, or Catalog Sales. 

Once you do, you must select “Single Image or Video.” Then select “Edit Creative” under “Creative Tools.” You can either add catalog information or a frame.

Find “Creative Tools” under the “Ad Creative” section, which will open a drop-down menu that lets you add a frame or catalog info to static images.

In this example, we’re adding pricing information. You can change the shape, color, and font of the tag that shares this information, along with the font and position.

Go to “Catalog Info” to add updated information like price to your static images  on dynamic ads.

You can also upload frames to make evergreen content “seasonal,” like adding a Christmas garland frame surrounding your products before the holidays. 

5. Choose Your First Carousel Visual Wisely 

If you’re using dynamic ads or carousel ads, the first image is essential. It’s what users see first, and it can determine whether they interact with the ad or not.

The default option is to let the Facebook system automatically assign the product in the first card according to signals it has around what the person may be interested in.  Another way to approach this is to choose your own image or video and therefore show unique content that represents your brand, before then showcasing your products.

Our recommendation is to test both approaches and understand what’s best for you. Overall we’ve seen when choosing high-value visuals to present your carousel, your campaign’s conversion rates can increase quickly.  

6. Test Image Slideshows 

Facebook has a “slideshow” feature, which automatically pulls product images from your catalog to create a short video you can use in your ad’s creative. These can be used both in carousel ads and single video ads.

Slideshows give you a chance to showcase more products to customers all at once, and can give you a video of solid quality without the expense and time of creation falling into your team. They can also allow you to showcase more images of a single item, such as showing a skirt on a mannequin and on a model. 

You can enable slideshows under the creative section of the ad creation process. They’ll pull images automatically from your product set to show multiple images per item. 

You can find “slideshows” under “Creative Options” when creating your ad campaigns.

7. Translate High-Performing Standalone Ads into Product Catalogs 

Many brands test standalone ads and are able to see which products and creatives perform best long before they start testing dynamic product ads. You can use the information from early testing to take a single high-performing ad and turn it into a potential high-value product catalog.

If, for example, a cosmetic brand realized that images of women next to products that work well for their specific skin tone performed well, you can build entire catalogs of that group of relevant products. 

This ad showcases the same pair of shorts in different colors, giving the brand a chance to display different versions of high-value products to create a high-converting ad.

In the example above, Vuori displays different variants of their top-selling shorts, showing users more of a high-value product at one time. 

Again for a cosmetic brand, instead of promoting a single product at a time or running carousel ads that just show random products, grouping products by the skin tone of the wearer or the aesthetic they’re going for (like a “natural” look as opposed purple lipstick and blue eyeshadow) can increase product add-ons and average order values. 

8. Test Different Catalogs Using Different Styles of Images 

Choosing which types of images to use for your ad campaign can be difficult, and ultimately testing is the best way to determine what works best for your individual audience, product, and industry.

You may find that single product images on white backgrounds and plenty of negative space perform best. Some brands may realize that grouping products together in a single image works for them, while others may find that images showing the product in use works best.

Wren + Glory uses multiple different types of product images in a single carousel, including an image with a single product and an image with multiple products next to each other.

To determine what works best for you, set up split testing with types of images and videos while keeping the rest of your creatives the same. Facebook will optimize your ads automatically, and you can see which drives more interest. 

9. Test Collection Ads

Collection ads are a mobile ad format that allows you to feature a variety of products all at once like an extended carousel ad. When users click on the collection, they’ll see a shoppable gallery of products.

 Collection ads allow you to group like items in a mobile-friendly gallery that showcase multiple items in your inventory at once.  

Ecommerce brands with product galleries can benefit from this ad format, as it’s proven to have the potential for high conversion rates. 

A case study from TagsForHope that used collection ads, for example, saw a 22% increase in return on ad spend and 7,794 additional orders compared to other ad formats. 

Setting up collection ads is easy when using dynamic formats. You’ll choose your product catalog, your product set, and the image or video you want to show up as the large cover photo above the collection.

Once you choose your product catalog, you can choose a product set to create themed collection ads.

You can split test different cover visuals, but we recommend choosing an image or video that’s performed well for you in the past on other ads. 

10. Test Different Types of Product Sets

Testing is the name of the game when it comes to Facebook Ads, and while creating niche product catalogues can be good for creating  campaigns with high conversion and add-on rates, it shouldn’t be your only strategy.

We also strongly recommend testing different broad product categories that make sense, especially for early campaigns when customers aren’t familiar with you yet. 

A clothing company, for example, may create a product catalog for men’s clothing and one for women’s clothing. They may also have product catalogs for each season, or choose to break down products by price point and then place higher CPA bids for higher-value items. 

This ad, for example, showcased baby items exclusively even though they offer a wider range of products on their site:

The Simple Folk creates product sets based on age groups to increase potential add-on purchases.

Make sure that you have enough budget to get 50 conversions per ad set per week when testing to give Facebook time to assess performance and optimize your campaigns accordingly. This will give you a more accurate  look at campaign performance than if you rush to make a decision after a few days. 

Final Thoughts 

Facebook’s dynamic ads are an invaluable tool for marketers and business owners who are trying to create and manage ad campaigns at scale. They let Facebook take the reigns and do most of the hard work, leveraging your carefully-crafted creatives and offers to deliver the best ads to the right people at the right time. 

When you’re using the right strategies, these ads can increase your conversion rates significantly while taking some of the time and effort burden of creation off your shoulders. This gives you more time to manage your campaigns, generate new ideas, and find ways to accomplish your marketing goals.

When most advertisers and agencies are creating paid social ad campaigns, they often start with their targeting criteria first and then come up with creatives that match.

While this is the traditional approach, it isn’t always the best. In our experience, sometimes it’s best to let the creative lead the process of finding your customers, and therefore define what targeting falls in place for your campaigns after the fact. This is largely thanks to Facebook’s advanced machine learning capabilities, which can help you discover new audiences you may not have realized that you have.

In this post, we’re going to look at why your creatives impact your targeting, and how to use this strategy to expand your audience and drive more conversions.

Why Creative Will Impact Targeting

Traditionally, brands will set up an audience they think will be valuable and then try to build creatives that the audience would respond to.

In our experience, if you have a pixel with plenty of data coming in (50 plus purchases a week at the ad set level), Facebook is good enough at finding you conversions even without any targeting criteria from you. They’ll look at users who have browsed your site and taken actions like purchasing to analyze it for age, gender, and interests, and they’ll deliver the ad to more people who are similar.

If you’re familiar with lookalike audiences, it’s the same idea, only Facebook is honing in on the target audience without any help from you. The pixel data is your target audience.

When you change up your existing creatives, therefore, it makes sense that your ad campaigns will draw clicks from users in different audience niches. This shifts Facebook’s internal targeting optimization without any action on your part, and it ensures that you haven’t accidentally excluded any members of your target audience with targeting limitations.

When we were at Facebook, we A/B tested a framework of no targeting using optimal solutions, and this often outperformed most client targeting tactics by 2x-3x on average. This held true across multiple different industries, and we saw over and over again that micro-targeting, hypersegmentation, and stacked lookalikes never outperformed the simple act of letting Facebook take the reigns.

The pixel ultimately will handle targeting for you, so you need to point it in the right direction.

Let’s look at an example of how this works.

How Creatives Can Dictate Targeting

We recently worked with a retail client in the fashion industry whose initial creatives were largely attracting younger audiences, with a little under half of their conversions being 18-24 years old. This was largely due to the clothing featured, including crop-tops and shorts, and the fact that they’d given the system the full range of anyone 18+.

We discovered, however, that users ages 18-24 had the lowest lifetime value out of their existing customers. At the time, we didn’t know how much the creative dictated the targeting, so we thought we could just target the same crop top and shorts to users who were 25 years or older. We were wrong and our acquisition costs skyrocketed because this outfit choice just didn’t resonate with older audiences.

When we revised the creative strategy, the ads started to attract a higher-value audience that was aged 25+, at much lower acquisition costs. We showed more conservative outfits laid out flat, and this one simple change shifted which audience we were attracting. In fact, the 25+ age bracket ended up being over 80% of all subsequent conversions.

It’s important to keep in mind that sometimes we give Facebook a baseline audience to target when we’re adding our own meticulous, detailed targeting information. Intentionally breaking outside of those set criteria can help you test new audiences to see how they respond to your campaigns. If you don’t, Facebook’s algorithms will stay focused on who you were already focused on.

How to Make Creatives That Speak to Different Audience Niches 

When you’re working on your creatives and assessing what your overall audience may want to see, there are going to be two different ways to break down audience niches: demographics, and barriers or motivations. 

Demographics 

The demographics of your audience matters. 

If you’re selling cosmetics, for example, having creatives that show your makeup on different skin tones and on people of different ethnicities will help you attract customers in new demographics you may not have been reaching before. This is particularly true if most of your previous campaigns featured white models, as many cosmetic brands don’t have options for darker-skinned people.

Glossier is a great example of this, featuring people of all skin tones in their ad campaigns. This shows customers that the product is relevant to them, expanding the brand’s relevance to these users significantly.

To quantify the above, we tested using creators of different skin tone for a beauty client we work with.

The product was the same. The targeting was the same. The landing page was the same. The ad copy was the same. The structure of the video was the same. The only difference was the creator highlighted.

 The results:
– Legacy (White) Creators: Drove ~90% lighter tones
– Black creators: Drove 50%+ darker tones

It’s clear that highlighting diversity as a brand isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s good for business.

Different Barriers or Motivations

Motivations, barriers, and pain points can reach beyond demographics, but can still result in distinct audience niches.

UPRIGHT is a great example of this. They sell a posture training device that encourages users to sit and stand up straight in proper alignment.

Their product appeals to different audiences based on their unique pain points and motivations, which include the following:

– Addressing back pain from office workers who are sitting in low-quality chairs or are hunched over their computers.

– Improving posture for those who naturally slouch and who want to look more confident.

– Building a stronger back and core, which is important for those who are invested in fitness and strength training.

– Boosting back health for those who are health conscious or concerned, either due to genetic conditions or their doctor’s advice.

By creating ads that appealed to each of these pain points, they’re able to connect with more audience members that they may have otherwise missed. Facebook’s pixel can take over targeting from there, showing the right ad to the right users. 

Even if you’re marketing the same product in each ad campaign, understanding pain points, barriers, and motivations will always be essential in creating high-converting copy that appeals to different niches in your overall audience. 

Final Thoughts 

When running ad campaigns, it’s tempting to want to play it safe and to stick to the audiences we know, especially if they’re already converting. If you don’t break outside the box, however, you could end up missing out on large, highly-profitable segments of your target audience without realizing it.

By designing creatives that highlight different aspects of what your products can do and how they benefit users, you’ll be able to break out into new audience niches without relying on detailed targeting criteria that may not have entirely worked. Letting the creatives speak for themselves (with the help of Facebook’s machine learning targeting capabilities!) can be a winning strategy when you’re scaling and testing new campaigns.

Starting and growing a fledgling business is anything but easy, and once you’ve reached a strong foundation and are ready to grow, it only makes sense that you’d want to grow as quickly as you sustainably can.

We see this a great deal with our paid social clients who are ready to ramp up their ad spend quickly. They may be at a solid $1K-a-day ad spend, but are ready to take it up to $5K a day or more. And while it may seem like this should be as easy as a few clicks to adjust your budget within the Facebook Ads dashboard, that actually couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are certain steps you need to take when you want to scale to $5K a day in Facebook ad spend, and in this post, we’ll walk you through the process and flag some mistakes that you’ll want to avoid.

Why $1K Is a Safe Starting Point for Scaling Facebook Ad Spend

When you want to scale to $5K a day in Facebook ad spend, starting from a $1K a day ad spend is a safe starting point. This prevents you from running into common scaling issues that happen if you try to make enormous leaps too quickly.

If you’re going from $50 a day to $1,000, for example, you may see issues with key metrics deteriorating at a jarring level, which can include click-through rates, conversion rates, and higher ad costs.

It’s also worth pointing out that if you’re already at the $1K spending level, you’re likely to have funnel-focused campaigns already up and running at a strong level. You’ve tested, you know what works, and you have touch points for users at every stage of the buyer’s journey. All that testing data, too, will be helpful as you scale further moving forward.

How to Scale to $5K a Day in Ad Spend

Wondering how to scale your Facebook ad budget? These five tips will help you scale while improving your results instead of hindering them.

1. Base Leading Principles on the Facebook Power5

Facebook’s Power5 is a set of five different tactics that leverage on-platform, native automation and machine learning to significantly improve your results at a scalable level.

These five tactics include the following:

– Auto advanced matching, which allows you to send hashed customer information to use alongside your pixel for better attribution and improved reach for more conversions.

– Focusing on account simplification, which makes it significantly easier to manage campaigns at scale (we’ll look at how to use this in a minute).

– Campaign budget optimization, to have more ad spend going where it’s not only needed most, but where it’s also most likely to drive high ROI. Note that as a general rule of thumb, choose a daily budget with the following formula: CPA x 50 conversions / 7 days.

– Automatic placements, where Facebook chooses the optimal placements for your ads to keep your ad costs low while potentially maximizing results.

– Utilizing dynamic ads, which reduces the actual number of ads you run while still maximizing personalization for each ad viewer.

Most of our clients are familiar with these principles already, though we are still amazed with the number of ad accounts we audit that don’t have auto advanced matching turned on. We strongly recommend turning on advanced matching and overlaying it with manual matching, which involves adding additional snippets of code to your tracking pixel. You can learn what code is required here.

However, the newest and most robust tracking and measurement solution we recommend setting up is the Facebook Conversions API, which allows you to send web events like conversions or registrations from your servers straight to Facebook. You can see how to set it up here. 

Note that if you’re a Shopify client, they have an integration with Facebook for advanced matching and the conversions API, so the set up is even easier. You can learn more about this here. 

If auto advanced matching is like tracking 101, manual advanced tracking is 201, and the conversions API is 301. Take advantage of all three for the best results at scale. 

2. Simplify Your Account Structure 

When you’re at the point of being ready to scale up on Facebook Ads to a $5K a day budget, you need to make sure that your actual account structure is set up for success, too. Specifically, you’re going to want to simplify it as much as possible so that it’s easier to manage, monitor, and troubleshoot if necessary. 

This is the basic account structure we recommend going with when you scale to $5K:

– Having one campaign for prospecting at the top of the funnel

– Having one campaign for re-engagement at the middle of the funnel 

– Setting up one campaign for remarketing at the bottom of the funnel

– Running one campaign for DPA’s at the bottom of the funnel

Remember that a single campaign can contain multiple ad sets, which can contain multiple ads. Keeping it simple at the campaign level doesn’t prevent that, but it does increase organization significantly and allow for better optimization potential through Facebook. 

3. Consolidate Audiences Where Possible 

If you are spending a great deal of time running a large number of separate ads to test different audiences, now is the time to consolidate them wherever possible, taking the Power5 into account.

Are you able to consolidate a campaign that is retargeting to four different audiences into a single ad set by using dynamic ads to show users the right product, instead of running a separate ad for each individual landing page? We strongly recommend you do so.

 4. Test Into Bigger Lookalike Audiences & Consider Removing Targeting Entirely 

When you’re on a limited ad budget and creating lookalike audiences, it makes sense to focus on narrower audiences that are most similar to high-value customers. Once you’ve had your campaigns up and running, however, branching out into larger lookalike audiences is a smart way to scale.

Instead of utilizing smaller, higher qualified lookalike audiences, expand further to reach more people. At this point, Facebook’s machine learning is already familiar with who you’re looking for and who responds to your ads. You can afford to put the reigns in their hands. Not only will this increase your reach in numbers and cut back on frequency issues (if an audience is too small, after all, they’ll see your ad too many times and it will impact performance with ad fatigue), but this also lets the algorithm connect you with new audiences you might not have reached otherwise. 

We also recommend testing targeting based exclusively on demographics (like 18+), letting the machine learning determine for themselves who best to reach with your message. This can help break what’s essentially a feedback loop from lookalike audiences to show Facebook more segments of your target audience, which can increase your performance overall. 

If these campaigns don’t work, no big deal; go with what does, but you may be surprised by how effective they can be. 

5. Test A Variety of Video & Static Content 

When you increase your budget, you have more room to test additional ad campaigns. Test out a variety of both static and video creatives and see what your audience responds to.

It’s important to test constantly and consistently.

On average, advertisers who see heightened success with mobile video create 11x more creative assets (think 44 vs. 4), and contribute up to 3x more revenue growth. Research has also shown that campaigns using both static images and video campaigns saw a 17% higher conversion lift compared to static images alone.

You can see a list of Facebook’s best practices for direct response marketers here, but these are the basics:

– Have clear logos for strong brand association.

– Use product-focused creatives, where the product is the focal point of the copy and the image.

– Use the majority of the video to showcase the product or service being advertised.

– Make use of contrasting colors.

– In video, use quick movements and fast transitions to grab attention.

Facebook Ads Scaling Mistakes to Avoid

When scaling, knowing what to avoid doing wrong is just as important as knowing what to do right.

Avoid falling into these common pitfalls when scaling at any level:

– Don’t blend new and existing customers in a campaign. Split your account up using exclusions so there is a clear delineation between media and messaging targeting to new customers as opposed to those who have already purchased from you. These two groups have starkly different behavior patterns and offer very different value to your business.  You also need to make sure enough of your budget is allocated to attracting new customers.

– Don’t expect the same performance. Facebook’s biggest strength is it’s ability to scale, so consider lowering your acquisition goal for new customers to break even. Then take advantage of email, SMS, and other channels to remarket to existing customers at a lower marginal cost while using Facebook’s analytics to help you measure your customer’s LTV.

– Don’t ignore the end pixel outcome. If you want purchases, don’t optimize for video views, clicks, or traffic. Facebook takes your end goal into consideration when choosing who to show Ads to. You could end up giving the system false positives by targeting goals too far up the funnel, wasting ad spend.

– Don’t forget the learning phase. It takes Facebook time to learn how your audience is responding to your ads. If you go from $1K to $5K in a single day, that can actually destabilize the algorithms and undo some of the machine learning. We recommend increasing your budget by no more than 25% at a time, giving the algorithm time to scale with you.

Final Thoughts

When you’re considering how to scale your Facebook Ads budget, it’s crucial to remember that the ads themselves aren’t the only piece of the puzzle you need to look at. What happens after someone clicks your ad is just as important, because the ad is only there to garner interest; it’s your landing pages and site that ultimately make the sale.

It’s essential to continuously evaluate the buying process, so watch this carefully as you expand your ad campaigns. Examine the following closely:

– Are you getting interest on your site, but no conversions? It may not be mobile optimized or it may be too difficult to buy from.

– Are you building trust by showing social proof, reviews, and testimonials early on?

– Are you accepting common payment options like credit card, PayPal, and other instant-pay options?

Use tools like Hotjar to monitor consumer behavior on your site, and implement post-purchase surveys to identify potential objections or blockers to sales. This can give you exceptional insight into how you can improve the overall funnel, ensuring that your site is ready for scaled up traffic coming from the ads themselves.

Pixel-based measurement and optimization have been huge drivers of paid social conversions for the past decade, but that could be about to change in a drastic way.

Advertiser’s tracking of customer data has come under major fire amidst privacy concerns surrounding platforms like Facebook’s use of their data and other major transparency issues.

Users are justifiably distrusting of having their online activity tracked, and Apple has taken note. Their new iOS 14 update addresses unwanted data collection head-on, and it may permanently and significantly change the face of data collection

What is Apple’s iOS 14 Update?

Apple’s iOS 14 is the latest major update for the platform, and it rolled out at the end of September. 

Perhaps the most notable change iOS14 introduced was the new feature designed to give users more control over third-party data collection. 

Before iOS14 (and for those who don’t have it), users need to actively dive into Facebook’s settings to turn off data collection. This isn’t something that most people know how to do, and many don’t even realize that it’s an option. Users who are dead-set against tracking, therefore, have likely gone through the trouble of disabling it, but many users haven’t.

Now, though, users will proactively receive prompts from their updated apple devices that require that users give permission for data collection to happen. If no permission is given, Facebook and other publishers can’t track site and app activity through their pixels. Previously, the default option was automatic tracking; now, it’s an automatic shutdown of tracking if users take no action.

What iOS 14 Means for Paid Social Tracking & Optimization

The reality is that a large number of users didn’t care enough about data collection and tracking to go into each app to disable it, but that many are unlikely to grant permissions for tracking when given a clear option. It’s easier to say no.

This will eliminate a massive amount of tracking data, especially if the feature is popular and Android eventually adopts something similar for their users.

This is directly going to impact media buying strategies and our tracking abilities.

Here are the biggest impacts that advertisers will see:

– Reduced signals for lookalike audiences. If you aren’t capturing all of the relevant people in your seed audience, there’s a chance that you’ll see weaker pixel-based lookalike audiences than you’ve had in the past, which can impact the efficacy of your campaigns.

– Confusing or inaccurate attribution. If Facebook can’t track a customer’s activity seven days after they clicked on your ad and that’s when they convert, you may not get attribution allocated correctly. This can make it difficult to understand ROI and identify top-performing campaigns. Facebook has also even considered removing all attribution tracking for conversions that happen after the 7-day lookback window, so watch for this in 2021. Originally scheduled for Q4 2020, this change was delayed after advertiser complaints.

– Poor on-platform optimization. Facebook has algorithms to optimize your campaigns by showing them to the right people. If Facebook themselves are getting less data, their optimization models may not be as efficient.

How to Prepare for Paid Social Campaigns with iOS 14

The iOS 14 update is here, and it means that advertisers need to be aware of its potential impact– and how to mitigate it– right now.

Here are the steps that we’re taking with the campaigns that we’re running right now to prepare and adapt:

– Continuing to use the tracking pixel for retargeting, but monitoring it closely. As of right now, there’s still plenty of tracking data to take advantage of, especially since not all consumers are using iOS 14. You can keep these campaigns up and running, but watch them extremely closely for significant changes in performance.

– Creating campaigns using other types of custom audiences. You can still create custom audiences using your CRM data. You can also retarget people who have interacted with your business on Facebook and Instagram, so those that have engaged with social content (including ads), or watched a certain percentage of an on-platform video.

– Focusing on capturing lead information. Lead information can be used to create customer lists, which also bypasses the need for the tracking pixel from a retargeting perspective. This includes capturing site visitors’ emails and/or phone numbers so you can re-engage them later.

– Leveraging the Facebook conversions API to capture signals the pixel misses. Facebook’s conversions API allow advertisers to send web events like purchases from servers directly to Facebook. This data is linked to the pixel, but not reliant on it, so it will capture more information to fill in the gaps.

– Using CRM data to build lookalike audiences. Instead of focusing on custom audiences from web activity that are heavily pixel-reliant, create lookalike audiences from your own CRM data. This will give Facebook a more full-fledged view of your audience that the pixel may currently miss.

– Understanding how performance varies based on different lookback windows. You may see your performance change between 1-day, 7-day, and 28-day lookback windows both now and compared to what they were prior. Watch for shifts in trends here, and be ready to make adjustments to your goals accordingly.

Final Thoughts

Apple’s iOS14 update is already here, so your paid social strategy needs to evolve with this change. If you don’t adapt, your campaigns are likely to see a negative impact.

Watch your sales and metrics closely, evaluating your campaigns so that you can adapt quickly as needed. The last thing you want to do is put more ad spend into campaigns that are fueled by tracking pixels that can’t work on a majority of your target audience.

As you’re adjusting your campaigns, make sure to account for changes in your overall funnel so that every stage of the buyer’s journey is still considered.