Facebook Ad Campaigns for High-Growth Ecommerce: Social Media Sanity through a Consolidated Account Structure

Fair warning … what you’re about to experience is the least sexy guide to Facebook ad campaigns ever produced.

Sure, there’ll be plenty of beautiful and high-performing ad examples later on but that’s not where we’ll start.

Instead, this guide will major on how to manage campaigns through a consolidated account structure designed for ecommerce growth.

Why?

Because when your account structure isn’t optimized:

• Your ads won’t exit the learning phase
• Your budgets won’t spend evenly
• Your ROAS won’t hit its target

Or, they will. And you’ll be plagued by manic swings in performance under the lash of relentless manual tinkering.

It’s time to hit the reset button.

You won’t get sizzle, pop, or flash. Instead, you’ll get something better. Step-by-step guidance on how to …

Apply this consolidated structure to grow your Facebook ads profitably and restore your paid-media sanity.

Organizing Your Facebook Ads Manager: Beyond Campaign Objectives & Ad Formats

There are three ways you can organize the consolidated account structure to plan and execute campaigns:

1. SKU
2. Offer
3. Audience

In case you’re wondering: yes, you can mix and match to make them fit your business (as long as you have the budget to do so).

1. SKU-Based Facebook Advertising Campaigns

Organizing your campaigns by SKU gives you a clear idea of what products are most profitable. It’s ideal for brands that have at least three or more primary SKUs.

If you have a lot of SKUs that vary in AOVs, you don’t have to organize campaigns by each and every product. Rather, it can be a collection or product grouping.

If you’re running with a limited budget, select your top-selling products that offer the optimal brand experience or work well in prospecting.

2. Offer-Based Facebook Advertising Campaigns

In the big picture, offer doesn’t mean discount. Nor does it simply mean promotion. Instead, offer refers to the sum total of your …

1. Product(s)
2. Price
3. Positioning

In your account structure, offer campaigns can separate special events, special sales, or special angles.

Say you’re selling a Collagen product with multiple benefits; it helps with your skin, hair, and joints.

Using the offer account structure you can run multiple campaigns, tailor the offer or angle to different audiences, and set up different landers to explain the specific benefits.

The same goes for running seasonal promotions like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Black Friday, Cyber Monday campaigns.

3. Audience-Based Facebook Advertising Campaigns

The audience account structure is ideal for brands with sales funnels or sites unique to geographic locations.

To be clear, this isn’t referring to Lookalike Audiences (LL) or targeting custom audiences around interests.

It’s based on targeting specific countries.

It moves away from splitting out a bunch of audience CBOs where you might have Interest CBO 1 with a variety of interests and pivoting towards stacks.

Instead, build LLs but have a funnel for each country you’re targeting.

Depending on your budget, you might want to start with a Tier 1 funnel that includes the main countries you’re targeting and then a catch-all worldwide funnel (if you sell globally) that excludes the Tier 1 countries you’ve set up.

Sorting Ad Sets by Target Audience

The consolidated ad structure looks at four different stacks:

1. Lookalike Audiences
2. Broad
3. Interest Stack
4. Remarketing

Lookalike Audiences

For ad sets, LLs shine when you’re running product funnels and offers. So, begin by using the following Facebook or email lists:

• Customers who bought that particular product
• Engagers who interacted with an ad for that product
• Website visitors who clicked through but didn’t buy from that PDP

Then you can build in your Broad and interest stacks later.

Broad

Going Broad works well for products with a big demographic and wide appeal. The Facebook Pixel will go find those people for you; it’s like a trained hunting dog.

Of course, if you haven’t trained it yet, it can’t go find the data you’re looking for. Wait until you reach 500-1000 purchases before using Broad.

Only in the rarest of instances should you set campaign objectives to brand awareness. Instead, you want your Facebook Pixel trained for purchases — even if you’re focused on brand awareness — so that it optimizes and learns for conversions.

Interest Stack

Stack all of your Interests together, rather than splitting them out for your prospecting campaigns.

Why? We don’t know how Facebook decides who goes into these audiences. So consolidate all your Interest audiences into one ad set and focus on the specific ad creatives instead.

Only separate Interests if your ads drive directly to custom landing pages built with specific Interests in mind.

Even then, you might just want to separate those two interests into two separate campaigns to monitor the LTV for these specific audiences.

Remarketing

Although it may sound counterintuitive, housing the bulk of your remarketing within full-funnel campaigns is crucial. Not only for better data but also for better reporting and spend allocation.

If you’re selling lotion, you want to ensure the remarketing for that lotion SKU is in that same campaign so you can look at the data as a whole.

The exception to this primarily surrounds special events and seasonal sales.

Running Limited Ads in Ad Sets

We can’t give you the magic number. As a best practice, stick with the 5-10 range.

The goal when using static ads is to build them out and trust Facebook to dictate where the budget is being spent, rather than making manual decisions on which ads to turn on and off.

Instead, rotate new ads into or remove old ads from existing campaigns.

If you’re getting spend on ads but you’re below performance, take a look at your cost caps. It’s rare to see bad spending when caps are set correctly.

Move away from trying to buy your way into performance.

Instead, think more about your creative, messaging, offers, landers, and angles — that’s where you’re going to win. 

Applying the Consolidated Ad Structure to Your Own Campaigns

As a final point of strategy, let’s think through …

• What funnel set-up to pick?
• How many creatives to put in each ad set?
• And what the starting budget would be based on CPA targets?

Although ecommerce businesses differ in all sorts of ways, there are really only two types when it comes to Facebook set-up.

Type 1: Limited SKUs

If your AOV doesn’t vary, lean on product-specific or angle-specific funnels. When you’re thinking about testing different messaging, split them out within the ad set.

If you’re looking to test the messaging with different landers, that’s when you’d split it out to another campaign. 

Type 2: Lots of SKUs

Dive into your account and see where you have good margin. It’s hard to push on products with bad margin.

Ask yourself:

• What gives people a good brand experience?
• What products do people like the most?
• What products are thumb stopping and easily translate into great creative?

Also think about where you are directing people and isolating these products into their own collection.

If you have a limited budget start with LL and remarketing ad sets. As you get more budget you can expand your ad sets to include a Broad and interest stack.

Five Real Examples of Facebook Ad Campaigns & Ad Placements

We’ve covered the tactical set-up — now we’re going to take you through five client examples of different campaign types, what creative they used, and a breakdown of why the ads performed so well.

The campaign types we’ll be looking at:

1. Full Funnel
2. Prospecting
3. Remarketing
4. Audience (Geographic)
5. Event

1. Full Funnel Campaign: Crown & Paw

It’s hard to go wrong when you’re using puppies in your creative. Then again, the Internet is flooded with all things cute.

Crown & Paw’s full-funnel campaign follows the consolidated ad structure — grouping prospecting and remarketing:

Given its high engagement rate in the mobile and desktop news feed, both of the creatives we’ll focus on use emotionally-charged video ads; namely, UGC showcasing happy customers receiving the portraits of their dogs.

In addition, they segue into footage of Humane Society International caring for dogs.

Within a few seconds, it’s clear how a prospect can make a difference in putting an end to dog cruelty.

For copy, prospecting leads with “We are Crown & Paw,” which is necessary when introducing the brand and what they do. Remarketing kicks off with “2000+ dogs saved since 2016” to further reinforce their mission.

Lastly, both ads drive traffic to the same landing page, which has a clear CTA to “Get Started.”

2. Prospecting Campaign: Alala

Using a combination of ad types — single-image ads, customer quotes, PR mentions, video ads, and more — Alala’s luxury athleisure prospecting centers on two audiences: Broad and a Lookalike (LL) Interest stack:

The two we’ll highlight feature a clear discount code that’s easy to remember and access, which is a quick win for making a good first impression.

For social proof, they leverage a quote from Business Insider in the creatives as well as the Facebook copy.

While the copy remains the same, they are testing a second ad creative with a sliding gif that showcases a number of the clothes.

The ad goes straight through to a landing page featuring their latest collection and new arrivals.

3. Remarketing Campaign: Fresh Clean Tees

To monitor and better control efficiency, Fresh Clean Tees separates its retargeting audiences by ad set: cart abandoners, social engagers, email users, and site visitors:

Here are three examples of those ads in action from the Facebook news feed …

Notice that while the ad creative varies, all three are more product-centric than the previous ads. The first and third feature videos, a customer testimonial, and a clear 15% promotion offer. 

The second uses a carousel ad to highlight a different USP in each photo and showcase each color of the tee on a model. As long as your catalog sales are set-up for ecommerce, Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) typically crush retargeting by automatically generating a slideshow of popular products.

4. International Campaign: Supply & Native

With more online retailers spreading their global wings, let’s examine two campaigns from two companies with one key difference: language.

Throughout last year, single-edge-razor brand Supply ramped up its global presence through a handful of campaigns by duplicating domestic ads, changing the targeting from US to worldwide, and setting language to English.

By the end of 2019, low costs and strong performance took international sales from nothing to 30% of Supply’s annual revenue — with $250k in Nov. alone:

Today, it continues to push cross-border sales through consolidated campaigns where creative testing takes place at the ad level:

The first two ads below show Supply’s international use of (1) video UGC and (2) a real customer review. The third is from its ‘Shark Tank’ Prospecting campaign, which is limited to US audiences only:

Going beyond language barriers is Native. While the majority of its ad account spends in English-speaking countries, it also separates campaigns by demographics (female versus male) as well as by language.

In this case, comparing ads from completely different campaigns — as well as completely different Facebook pages — brings the structure into focus:

5. Event Campaign: Western Rise

For the last campaign type, Black Friday, Cyber Monday rules the landscape. But because we’ve covered it extensively — particularly from the holiday offers and campaigns side — let’s close out our final example with a less obvious choice …

For Father’s Day this year, Western Rise ran one event-specific campaign for two time-sensitive bundles. Its ad sets were grouped by two Broad-match female audiences for gifting:

The first ad set leveraged heartfelt stills but (in the copy on both the ad and landing page) sold the sale. The second ad set leaned on an evergreen video highlighting the USP of the pants while iterating on playful copy:

Both of the ads take the prospect through to a specific Father’s Day bundle page which highlights what the deal is and clearly articulates the brands USPs.

You can have a re-engagement campaign but make sure they are excluded from your prospecting and remarketing so they don’t get lumped in with those.

A Better Way to Structure Ecommerce Facebook Campaigns in Business Manager

Hopefully, this guide lived up to its two-fold promise at the start.

First, the least sexy exploration of Facebook advertising campaigns ever produced. Second, tangible, tactical, and — above all — step-by-step guidance on how you can regain your paid-media stability … and sanity.

If you have any questions, please drop them into the comments below.

If you’d like more ecommerce training on growing your business, then check out ADmission — Common Thread Collective’s membership community where there’s even more how-to content on the consolidated ad account structure.

Or, if you want to simply off-load your ad buying to a trusted partner … then start a conversation here.

Lastly, make sure you don’t leave without grabbing the heart and soul of this guide:

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