Facebook Marketing/Shopify Platform Query

culchie07

Hey Everyone,

First time poster here and long time lurker.

Working in a relatively new food company and in charge of the digital marketing/ecommerce side of things. Have really good creatives that brought great results in January with quite a bit of budget >400 per day however it burnt out after 4/5 days as it went into February and the competitiveness rose by 45% - Cost per add to basket rose from almost 8 euro to 40 euro.

Thought this was the creative reaching enough people with FB algorithm so used a new ad copy and same thing happened - cost per add to basket is through the roof! Wondering is there anything I am missing? Is it just that the advertising space is significantly more competitve in Ireland? Will it drop down after Valentines day? Didn't have these ridiculous costs in November and December when you would imagine advertising space would be even more competitive with festive season!

Any input/ resources is welcome. relatively young and inexperienced so apologies if this is a ridiculous question.

Cheers!

mneylon

Your post title is very misleading - it's an online advertising question not anything to do with platforms

It sounds like you're advertising on Facebook only?

Is it sending the ads to other platforms ? eg. instagram

Where are you sending users?

Why are you spending so much on Facebook?

Without knowing what you're selling, the margin etc., it's impossible to know what kind of cost per sale you might reasonably expect.

There's a lot of other questions that I'd be asking ..

culchie07

mneylon wrote: »

Your post title is very misleading - it's an online advertising question not anything to do with platforms

It sounds like you're advertising on Facebook only?

Is it sending the ads to other platforms ? eg. instagram

Where are you sending users?

Why are you spending so much on Facebook?

Without knowing what you're selling, the margin etc., it's impossible to know what kind of cost per sale you might reasonably expect.

There's a lot of other questions that I'd be asking ..

Apologies, theres been issues with facebooks integration with shopify and tracking lately though, thought it may have affected our retargeting audience size.

Currently we are advertising on Facebook only yes, but that is only after trial and error of advertising on Facebook and Instagram and learning our target market is primarily on Facebook as they are an older demographic with spending capacity. To add to that, also realised the engagement and conversions on Facebook were significantly higher than on Instagram and assume it's because Instagram is built primarily with the scroll and double tap function almost built in subsconciously to people.

Sending all the users to the homepage, which has a pop-up that displays after certain period of time giving a discount for sign up to newsletter.

Spending so much on Facebook as it is a young brand, our SEO is relatively good. The PPC for Google would be too high at the moment for us to compete.

The product can be described as FMCG, and we are direct to consumer from source. Irish based. We normally make a loss during onboarding the customers but make it back in repeat sales (and our email marketing is on point). But right now the advertising is so expensive and wondering is it because of Valentines day advertisers saturating the market and hence the cost per acquisition has skyrocketed.

Linkedin advertising for B2B has also worked well for us and are running that at the moment but getting to the new consumer customers is the issue.

mneylon

I sincerely doubt that Google PPC would be more expensive than FB - if it's done right. Don't try to beat your direct competitors' ads - you need to expand on the longtail and the retargeting can work very well.

Content and other channels might make more sense

culchie07

mneylon wrote: »

I sincerely doubt that Google PPC would be more expensive than FB - if it's done right. Don't try to beat your direct competitors' ads - you need to expand on the longtail and the retargeting can work very well.

Content and other channels might make more sense

Hmmm, will take this advice and try get permission to implement this campaign. The other reasoning for the social was that because it’s a relatively new company and a niche competitive category in a sun section of food that the daily/monthly searches would not be enough to fill the funnel quick enough.

Our content is great, the bounce rates and conversion rates are better than industry benchmarks but it’s the limited budget to get the new customers to the site that is the issue.

Would you think that Facebook is saturated with competition because of holiday sales and companies going online with covid-19? Cheers for the advice, appreciate it.

Mrs OBumble

culchie07 wrote: »

....it’s the limited budget to get the new customers to the site that is the issue.

Would you think that Facebook is saturated with competition because of holiday sales and companies going online with covid-19? Cheers for the advice, appreciate it.

Do you have a realistic measure of how much of your target market you have already?

In big markets like the USA, you can often behave as though the target market is infinite. But that doesn't work in smaller markets.




I don't have any solutions for you (I'm just a website owner who runs ads) but can confirm that my revenue from advertising has been perhaps 50% higher than the same time last year since November, with only small increases in the number of website visits. This tells me that advertisers are spending more per click than they were. In previous years, I saw a similar trend (though smaller %-age increase) in Nov and early December, but it feel sharply in January. This year, it didn't fall.

culchie07

I honestly think we've only reached the tip of the iceberg in terms of the target market here in Ireland as we are "new". Naturally don't want to elaborate too much to give away who or what the company is. Whatever we do here in Irish market can definitely be replicated in the U.K once the whole logistics side of things with Brexit settles.

Spoke on the phone with Facebook marketing consultant today and discussed in detail with him about the market and he agreed that in the run up to holiday events that cost per acquisition or for conversion events would be more costly. To what extent is a different story. Currently bid caps in place on social, going to start a new campaign from 15th without bid cap and see how this fairs out with my theory as January was impressive for traffic numbers and people signing up to mailing list. Will also look into some Google PPC and focusing more on the SEO and let everyone know how this goes!

Also was informed that the ios 14 updates will change the ability to retarget people from Ads Manager. So heads up this will make your retargeting audience size probably 60% smaller than the original size! You need to configure the conversionevents on events manager.

mneylon

culchie07 wrote: »

Hmmm, will take this advice and try get permission to implement this campaign. The other reasoning for the social was that because it’s a relatively new company and a niche competitive category in a sun section of food that the daily/monthly searches would not be enough to fill the funnel quick enough.

If it's a niche then you're in a much better position than those of us who have to compete with a large number of competitors

culchie07 wrote: »

Our content is great, the bounce rates and conversion rates are better than industry benchmarks but it’s the limited budget to get the new customers to the site that is the issue.

If your content was so good then you wouldn't need as much PPC ..

culchie07 wrote: »

Would you think that Facebook is saturated with competition because of holiday sales and companies going online with covid-19? Cheers for the advice, appreciate it.

Maybe? It's hard to know as I still don't really understand what you're advertising, but as FB is "interested based" the competition should be direct or close to it