Sell more products with these 5 expert Facebook Ad strategies for E-commerce

Most web shop owners have tried some sort of advertising on Facebook.

A lot of times I've met with new clients who've said "I do a bit of Facebook ads", but when I ask about it, it turns out they are promoting random organic posts on their Facebook page.

However, that is far from all the options you have on Facebook.

To really get into advertising on Facebook and sell more products, you will need a business manager account.

If you don't have one yet, you're probably not tracking conversionsor using remarketing, look-a-like audiences, or even ANY Facebook strategies to boost your online sales.

That's why I want to share with you 5 'expert-level' ad types and strategies to use to boost your e-commerce sales on Facebook.

1. Dynamic Product Ads

Dynamic remarketing with product ads give you the opportunity to automatically track exactly which products a visitor in your shop views or purchases.

You can then show them an ad for that exact product, a similar product, or an up-sell add-on, after they leave your website. You can read more about Dynamic Product ads in my earlier article on marketing automation for web shops.


Example (see above image): a visitor looks at a few different products in your web shop, and then leaves without buying it. You can set up a dynamic product ad campaign which allows you to automatically show exactly those products, with a catching headline and even a great offer.

The product data and pricing are automatically inserted where you want them to show in the ad, which saves you loads of time.

Why is it effective?

Dynamic product ads normally have a higher click-through rate than a regular ad that someone sees for the first time. Why? Because it "reminds" the visitor of the product they already showed interest in by looking at it on your site.

We can't directly know why the person didn't buy the first time. They could have been distracted, or planned to come back to it later, (which usually doesn't happen).

In a world where we are constantly being bombarded with various ads and offers online, a familiar product and brand will stand out from the other.

2. Lead Ads

Great before product or webshop launches, because you can quickly collect contact information from interested people before your product is out/webshop goes live.

Lead ads are meant for collecting leads, not for direct sales. However, you can jump start your new web shop by collecting these warm leads first.

Based on the email addresses you can later make look-a-like audiences (more about these in point 3), and target these people with product-specific ads. (And of course email marketing, but that's a story for next time).

Why is it effective?

People already made contact with you before you launched, so they are very likely to remember you, and to want to buy your product if they left their email address.

If you are unsure about which exact target audience interest and demographics to choose, start broad with these ads. You can then little by little narrow down the audience based on i.e. age, location, gender.

This way you end up with a lot of warm leads for very little cost, who you can then target again when your product is out/webshop is live.

3. Look-a-like Conversion ads

When you have a running web shop and you've manage to get around 50 or more purchases, you can try out a look-a-like conversion strategy on Facebook.

A look-a-like audience is an automatically generated Facebook audience, that is based on actual customer data. Look-a-like stands for "looks like", and basically means you automatically generate targeting for a group that looks a lot like your current customers.

Why is it effective?

The audience contains people similar to the people i.e. behind the email addresses you collected via your lead ad, or in an e-commerce case; people who are similar to your customers.

Facebook will find a group of people in a particular country that you select, and you can tell it to look for a specific 1% who most match the demographics and interests of your audience sourceyour customers.

4. Remarketing Ads with exclusions

You've probably already heard of remarketing, or tried it already. (Reminder: it's those ads you keep seeing right after you've visited a website, and you know it's no coincidence).

However, a lot of people don't know that you can make these ads way more targeted and relevant, by excluding people who have visited specific web pages.

You should definitely look to exclude people who have already purchased the product. Because why throw ads at someone who already bought from you just a few hours or days ago? (unless you're selling a consumer product such as toilet paper, then by all means target them too).

You may also want to exclude your Facebook profile-likers, as these people may already know you and your product very well and you may already have top-of-mind position with these people.

However, this is completely depending on what type of product you have, what branch you're in and what your campaign goal is.

Why is it effective?

You're basically weeding out the least relevant people from an already highly targeted remarketing audience, which makes this audience much more likely to buy.

You're not wasting money on clicks with a very small chance of a sale.

5. Canvas Ads

Now this is one of the newer types of ads that not everyone has been trying out yet, however they are very cool.

With Canvas Ads you can create a mini website within Facebook, which opens when someone clicks your ad. In the Canvas environment you can show multiple products with links to several pages on your website, with great layout and flow.

Just look at this Canvas ad example by L'OCCITANE:

Why is it effective?

Say you quickly need a landing page for your ad campaign but don't have time or money to get your developer working on it - think canvas ad for a quick fix.

With a few high quality product images or even video, a nice font and strong USP's you could be serving your audience a "glossy" digital product catalogue in no-time. These ads usually have a much higher click-through-rate than regular image ads.


If you're one of the many web shop owners who's been promoting organic posts rather than actually using Facebook strategies to sell more products online, that's ok. As long as you're promoting the right posts and tracking the amount of sales these are generating, they're probably not doing too bad.

However, if you have no idea how they affect your sales and you're not tracking online purchases in Facebook; I can tell you right now you're actually wasting valuable advertising budget.

With one of my 5 Facebook types and strategiesthere is still hope!


About the author

Lina Andersson is an independent Online Marketing Specialist based in Amsterdam. She has in-depth knowledge and experience working for clients in various industries and especially enjoys working together with start-ups and web shops. She combines creative marketing ideas with real data to increase your profit and get your target audience to your website through clever marketing strategies.

Want to get in touch? Email merequest a proposal here, or connect with me on LinkedIn