Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Chapter One – Introduction The internet has completely changed everything. Today, it’s possible to build a business that gives you the flexibility to build a lifestyle you love - whether that means spending more time with your family, taking an extra holiday, or even just having a little extra “cushion” in the bank so you know that you’re safe. If you’re reading this, you know you’re destined for more than just going to work from 9 to 5 for the rest of your life and feeling like you’re not being paid what you’re worth. It used to be the case that the only way to earn more money and freedom was through expensive college degrees, getting some Wall Street job, or taking a huge loan to start a high risk business. But now, it’s possible to build a life you love by sitting at home on your couch. Setting up an ecommerce store is one of the simplest, most “tried and true” routes to financial freedom. It’s not easy, but with the right approach, you could build a side revenue stream that gives you the freedom to design the life you want. In this eBook, I’ll show you how to set up a profitable ecommerce store within one week. I’ll cover topics like how to come up with good product ideas, all the logistics of setting up an ecommerce store, the technical side, and even how to launch your first ad campaign. Let’s dig in.
Chapter Two – AliExpress AliExpress makes it easy to find products to sell on your store, without having to worry about inventory or shipping. You can pay for products at wholesale prices and have them dropshipped directly to your customers.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
AliExpress is a gigantic marketplace with a wide selection of products you can sell in your store. Because most of the AliExpress sellers are overseas manufacturers, their prices are very competitive.
While AliExpress may position itself as an online retailer, most sellers on AliExpress understand that a large number of their customers are resellers and are much more interested in dropshipping. Dropshipping with AliExpress is also very easy. There’s no upfront cost or fee, so you can test out products without any financial commitment. You can start dropshipping with AliExpress today for free. Many sellers on AliExpress have great product photos that you can use on your website, as well as detailed product descriptions to help you describe the product in your store. Lastly, dropshipping using AliExpress is as simple as ordering the product on AliExpress after getting an order, and inputting the customer’s address. I’m going to go over in more detail how this all comes together, what to look for in a product and seller, and how to position yourself for success, but it’s really not any more complicated than what I described above. Dropshipping using AliExpress is a great way to get started selling online once you have everything setup. Why Would Someone Buy from Your Store If They Can Buy the Same Products on AliExpress? With an AliExpress Dropshipping business, your competitive advantage won’t be your price or unique proprietary products. Your competitive advantage will be reaching your customers before competitors do. It’s retail arbitrage. Good marketing and reaching customers first can be a competitive advantage. You can also add
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
more value to your customers by building a brand, creating content and providing awesome customer service.
Chapter Three – Finding and Validating your Niche A niche is a small, specialized market for a particular product or service. There are various different niches to go into. Some examples are Fitness, Travelling, Spiritual/Meditation and Fishing. There are many different ways to validate your niche. Google Trends, Social Media, Amazon or even Real Life. This choker necklace was seen on a popular German TV show: “Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten” (Good Times, Bad Times).
If one of the main characters of this really popular TV show is wearing one of these necklaces, it has to be a current trend. Why? Because the companies responsible for the actors’ styling and outfits are doing their homework and know which clothes and accessories are up-to-date. With that validation step crossed off, you can confidently move forward.
Chapter Four – Generating Product Ideas
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Picking the best products to sell is the next big challenge after deciding to start your eCommerce venture. There are millions of products to choose from, and all of them have had success. This is why picking products can be extremely difficult which can lead to products being picked on a whim, with little consideration which ends in poor performance. In this chapter, our goal is to provide a roadmap for brainstorming product ideas, so we can later filter out the ones that aren’t worth testing. There are over 100 million products on Polyvore and 30 million on Wanelo. Add in Fancy and Pinterest, and you now have an infinite number of products from around the world that can be sorted by popularity, trends, categories, and more. People often overlook these sites in their research, but they are very valuable.
Look around your house, your work, your life. Are there any products you can’t live without? What products would make your life easier? Is there anything that is hard to find in the supermarket or department store? Howard Schultz came up with his coffee shop idea on a trip to Italy and later called it Starbucks. The founder of Inkkas brought his idea from Peru, where he saw great shoes he thought that people in the US would like.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Chapter Five – Google Trends This is a must if you’re going to use Google Adwords or if you’re trying to grow your organic traffic. I recommend using these even if you’re going to use another marketing channel. It helps to see what products are trending and also to check the demand of your product ideas. Keyword Tool: Go through your product ideas and enter each product name and their variations into the Google Keywords Analysis tool. Select Keywords Ideas method and look at how many searches each Low Competition Keyword receives. Google Trends: Go to trends.google.com and do the same. Enter each of your product ideas into the search and look what the trend is. Is the trend increasing or decreasing? Are there any patterns? Do you see any spikes? In general, you should avoid product categories that have little or no search traffic (less than 500 monthly searches). If you are planning to do a lot of search campaigns or grow organically through SEO, you should further dismiss all product ideas that have high competition according to the Google Keyword Analysis Tool. Avoid seasonal products like Christmas decorations, Easter baskets, and even children’s toys. You can check product seasonality trends at Google Trends.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
By focusing on seasonal items, you are reducing your sales cycle. Most Christmas decoration sales do not take place in the spring or summer, and Easter basket sales are not high in the fall or winter. You want to put products in your store that will be attractive for buyers for the entire year.
Chapter Six – Finding Products on AliExpress AliExpress is just like an Amazon supplier database. Just go to AliExpress.com and look for the products you decided to sell in day two. Once you find a product that fits your search criteria’s, add it to your AliExpress account wish list.
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Make sure your products can be delivered with the ePacket delivery option. ePacket delivery takes only 14 days to arrive to the US, while other delivery options usually takes over a month.
Don’t always go for the products with the cheapest prices! Typically, the price on AliExpress.com goes down with the quality. So don’t get overly excited when you find the same product at a fraction of the price. There are a lot of sellers offering similar products on AliExpress.com. Be sure to compare prices different suppliers set. If a number of sellers have similar prices for the same product, but if one supplier has a significantly different price, this usually indicates that they have compromised on the quality of the product. Although a lower price does not necessarily mean lower quality and vice versa, we highly recommend you avoid those types of situations. Here is an example:
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Two most important things while evaluating AliExpress.com sellers are their Feedback Score and Positive Feedback Rate. The Feedback Score indicates the seller’s sales volume, while the Positive Feedback Rate represents the feedback rate that the supplier has received. Always aim for 95% or higher positive feedback rate and at least a 2,000 feedback score. Obviously, this doesn’t automatically mean that a supplier with a 500 feedback score is not to be trusted, but it is a good general measure to go by. You should also consider individual product feedback and the order count. It’s much safer to buy a product that has been ordered a few thousand times with a 90% positive feedback score, than a product that has only been sold twice but has a 100% positive feedback score. Look for any unhappy customers. Usually, the unhappy customers help identify possible products defects and issues.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
If a particular product does not yet have any feedback, look up the other products in the same category of that supplier and check the feedback. Some sellers start selling other vertical products, and you don’t want your customers to become the testers of those new products. Let’s say you have an emergency situation — a customer files a dispute on your PayPal account and insists on a reshipment. You want your supplier to respond to you immediately, don’t you? To protect yourself against such situations, always check how responsive the AliExpress.com supplier is before importing their product. Write them a message via AliExpress.com and see how quickly you receive an appropriate response. You can even create a fictional scenario where you say you haven’t received your order. Note how long it takes for your seller to reply and how they handle the situation.
Chapter Seven – Creating a Shopify Account In the olden days, you had to get a server, upload an eCommerce system to it, hire someone to change it according to your needs, and pay to maintain it. It was expensive, time consuming, and the final result was still a slow and ineffective website. Thankfully, Shopify and other alternative softwares have simplified the process. You can create your store in just a few clicks and all of the server setup and maintenance is taken care of for you. Go to Shopify.com, click ‘start your free trial’, enter your store name, and create your shop.
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Chapter Eight – Full Theme Overview Go to Shopify Theme Store and choose a theme. There are numerous free themes if your budget is tight. Try choosing the one that requires the least changes to make it look like you want. Editing your theme is a time consuming task and often ends in a website with lots of mistakes. A few popular selections are New Standard, Supply, Simple. Once you have found your preferred store look, click the green button Preview In Your Store, and install it to your store.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Shopify is non-programmer friendly. To edit your store look, just go to Online Store, Themes, Customize Theme. On the right-hand sidebar you’ll see each section of your theme: Header, Body, Footer, etc. Open each section and play around to get the feeling of what can be done with the theme. There’s nothing specific you need to change, but it’s good know what you can do if you ever want any customization.
Chapter Nine – Create a free custom logo Your store logo is likely to be the first element seen by your store visitors, but a logo made by a professional graphic designer can cost you a lot of time and money. That’s why Shopify has created a easy to use and absolutely free Logo Maker. Just go to Shopify Logo Maker, enter your brand name and test out some variations until you get a decent looking logo. Here’s an example:
Chapter Ten – Billing Info and Shipping Settings
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Add your PayPal email address under the Shopify Settings, Payments Section. Later, you can change, remove, or add additional payment options. If you don’t have a PayPal account, registration at PayPal.com will take about 5 minutes. Why PayPal? PayPal allows you to accept both PayPal and credit card payments. Plus, it’s the easiest solution for small merchants. Other payment providers like Stripe or BrainTree usually takes weeks to set up. The sourcing tool we will recommend to you will offer most of the products with a free delivery option. So I suggest adding a free shipping rate for all of your orders, as well. Go to Shopify Settings, Shipping, and delete all shipping zones that are non- international, and edit the international zone rate to Free. You can later adjust your shipping rates to include more delivery options. But Free Shipping is enough for now. In case you need help, here’s a short demo video (without sound): Before launching your store you should enter your Shopify billing information. You won’t be charged until your Trial Ends (14 days). Just go to your Shopify Settings, Account and enter your Billing information.
Chapter Eleven – Writing Product Descriptions For low-priced products like chokers, long, technical product descriptions are usually a waste of time. You should create an engaging (and extremely short) description for my product. If you’re using AliExpress DO NOT leave the product descriptions asis when pushing products to your store. Make them unique and fitting for your niche. Again, this is important. Don’t rush it!
Chapter – Pricing
Twelve your products
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Because you are trying to make the most amount of money in the least amount of time, you should choose to price yout products at a premium in order to earn more money from every customer. Here’s a breakdown of my pricing calculation: PayPal transaction fee (1.9% + 0.35€) PayPal currency changing fee (2% USD - EUR) Tax (19% in Germany) Affiliate commission (15%) Discounts (10%) Free giveaway (bonus bracelet at a $0.66 purchase price) I ended up pricing the 10-choker set we found on Amazon at $29.99. After deducting all my costs, fees, and discounts, I would earn $11.63 in net profit on each sale. Remember, this set was selling on Amazon for around $10. If I were able to sell it for almost $20 more, it should prove to you that cost isn't the only thing people think about when shopping online. After I was done calculating prices for every choker I was selling (I highly recommend doing this manually even though Oberlo’s global price multiplier seems so easy)
Chapter Thirteen – Overview of Instagram Influencers There are new marketing tactics popping up every single day. Ebooks. Whitepapers. Facebook ads. Twitter. Blogging. When you’re first getting started in the dropshipping game, it can be tough to figure out which ones you should be focusing on. Instagram influencer marketing has helped some stores skyrocket
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
their sales overnight. Marketing on Instagram is one channel you should definitely explore. Instagram influencers have grown large audiences who, when shown the right product (that’s where you come in), will convert. Instagram has over 300 million monthly users. According to KISSmetrics, 70% of Instagram users have already looked up various brands on the platform and actually want to consume their content. This is exactly why marketing on Instagram can be so effective for your ecommerce business. Just as new marketing channels are cropping up all the time, so are the strategies and approaches for using them. As people are exposed to more advertising content than ever, it’s important to get creative in order to stand out from your competitors. Advertising experiences must be appealing and not overly ‘salesy’. This is why Instagram influencer marketing can be such a winner for your brand. With Influencer marketing, messages will get through to your target customers, all without coming off as too “salesy”– a marketer’s dream.
An effective Instagram marketing strategy you can use to build your own following is stealing followers from your competition. People that follow a competitor’s account have already expressed interest in the type of product that you’re trying to sell — so by siphoning their audience, you’re almost guaranteed to build a targeted following. To do this, go to a competitor’s account, click “followers” to see the list of people who follow that competitor, and then engage with their followers by either 1) following them, 2) liking their photos, or 3) commenting on their photos. This is an effective technique for marketing on Instagram and growing your store’s reach.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Chapter Fourteen – Finding the perfect influencers The first step, when marketing on Instagram, is to find the right influencers who are popular within your specific sub-niche. Using Instagram influencers who are already popular within your niche will increase the likelihood that you’ll make sales, as their followers are already engaged. One way to increase your chances of getting good ROI through Instagram marketing is by being as targeted as possible in the people you’re going after. For example, if you have an online store that sells formal shoes, you might want to target influencers that specialize in “professional footwear for men” as opposed to influencers that are in “men’s fashion.” A quick way to find top Instagram influencers in your niche is by using a tool like Ninja Outreach or Snapfluence.
This aspect of Instagram marketing may take quite a while to complete. You might have to go through many posts and hashtags to find influencers that are a good fit to tell your brand’s story. But it’s worth investing time into this step to do it right– if you nail down the perfect Instagram influencers who cater to your specific target audience, you could enjoy a pretty good ROI on your marketing spend. And if you pick the wrong influencers, it could be at a pretty expensive cost.
Chapter Fifteen – Reaching Out To Influencers
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
You’ll need a PayPal account to pay most of these influencers, a large majority of them only accept PayPal. HOW TO GAUGE INFLUENCER QUALITY: 1. Use socialblade.com to enter their account and view their statistics. Check to make sure their account hasn’t had any major spikes in growth, as this is a major sign of BOUGHT FOLLOWERS. 2. Divide their follower number by their average post likes and comments and use this number to compare multiple influencers. 3. Shoot an email and ask for prices (details below. This is the part that not many people follow through with because it can slow you down very quickly, waiting on email replies. An influencer that is looking to make money with their following will typically have an email address attached to their profile somewhere (typically their bio). If not, it’s worth direct messaging them and attempting to get on their radar. I would message up to 20 at a time and wait to see what their response was, and gauge which to invest in based on: Price Engagement of their audience – How much it fits my niche ——————— EMAIL MESSAGE COPY & PASTE: Hi, My name is _______ and I'm an E-Commerce expert looking to experiment with multiple different products and influencers. Me and my team are currently testing this product: *link your product* And we'd like to know how much you charge for a post? As well, how long will the post stay up? Thank you! Name: ______ ————————
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Notice how I made you sound like a team? It’s important to find small and subtle ways to make yourself look more legit to potential partnerships. (Though I am building a team for E-Commerce currently.) DIRECT MESSAGES: Direct messages are as simple as asking for a quote on their prices. Feel free to use the above email message copy and paste for this, as well.
Chapter Sixteen – Creating your Instagram Ad Few tips on creating an ad from scratch: 1. As little text in the ad as possible is great. If anything, the only text involved should be the percentage off that you’re offering if any. 2. Keep the images you’re using consistent with the feed of the influencer 3. Make it look like it was user-generated, as much as possible. The more sales-pitchy, the worse.
Chapter Seventeen – Measuring Influencer Results
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Before you launch any campaign, it’s important to have a good framework in place to measure results. This way you know exactly what’s working and what isn’t. When it comes to marketing on Instagram, you’ll want to create trackable links for influencers. Tools like Bitly, can create multiple trackable links for each influencer you’re targeting. You can ask influencers to paste the link in their bio as well as the image caption. That way, you can see exactly how much traffic they’re driving to your page.
Chapter Seventeen –Why use Facebook Ads? Facebook Advertising is now one of the most effective tools out there to grow your business, create loyal customers, and generate leads and sales. There are now over 3 million businesses advertising on Facebook and there’s never been a better time to start than now. Here are just a few reasons why Facebook Advertising is hugely exciting for marketers:
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• Audience size: Facebook now boasts over 1.13 billion daily active users on – 1.03 billion of which access the social network via mobile devices. • Attention: People spend a lot of time on social networks. The average user spends about 50 minutes just on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger every day. • Organic reach decline: Organic reach on Facebook has been in decline for a few years now and has almost hit zero. If you want to break through now, Facebook is all but a pay-to-play network. • Targeting: The targeting options within Facebook Ads is incredible. Business can target users with by location, demographics, age, gender, interests, behavior, and much more.
Chapter Eighteen – Finding your way around the dashboard To get to your Facebook Ads dashboard, you can head to https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager or click the dropdown arrow in the upper-right corner of Facebook and choose “Manage Ads” from the drop-down.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
From the ads dashboard, you’re able to manage every aspect of your Facebook ads experience. There’s a lot here! This is where to find all the essential tools, menus, and buttons.
Chapter Nineteen – How to find your audience If you choose an audience that’s not relevant enough to your ad, you’ll waste a lot of advertising budget on reaching the wrong people. So when it comes to targeting, I like to get super specific, like aiming for an audience in the US that’s from 100,000 to 600,000 people. If it’s a smaller country, the potential audience could also be even smaller. You should avoid using generic interests, like nature, sports, or food and choose very specific ones instead: relevant brands, authors, books, magazines, websites or even other Facebook pages. To identify them, use the Audience Insights tool.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Go to Audience Insights and enter the “seed audience” you want to analyze in the sidebar:
Then, click “Page Likes” on the top menu bar and scroll down to see a list of other pages, relevant to the audience you selected. Again, finding the right audience is absolutely critical for a successful campaign. So you need to choose the location, age, gender, and language of your audience:
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Then, plug one or a few interests you’ve already discovered into the Detailed Targeting section:
You can even use a combination of interests by using the Narrow Audience feature – e.g. targeting people who are interested in all of the above AND the Runkeeper app:
By doing that, you’ll make sure you’re reaching the most relevant audience, so the response to your ads will be higher too. Better response will lead to cheaper clicks and more chances to get a sale.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Chapter Twenty – Advanced Targeting (FB ADS) In each ad set, you’ll have the chance to target a specific audience with your ad, and this is where Facebook advertising can become truly powerful and significant. There is lots to understand about how these audience segments work, and there’re plenty of strategies to try, too. Here’s a quick overview of how and what to do with choosing a Facebook ad audience.
Location segmentation allows you to include or exclude people who will see your ad, based on where they are in the world. Like most Facebook ad settings, the location info is quite robust. Start by choosing how you want to define that a person is in a particular area: 1. Target “Everyone in this location” to reach everyone whose home or most recent location is in the area
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2. Target “People who live in this location” to reach everyone whose home is in the area 3. Target “People recently in this location” to reach people whose most recent location is in the area Target “People traveling in this location” to reach people whose most recent location is in the area but whose home is at least 125 miles away Then you can add an exact location by typing in the name of a country, state, region, city, postal code, address — even a Nielsen TV region or congressional district. Lastly, you can choose to segment based on how a person has (or hasn’t) interacted with your Facebook page, app, or event before. This can be a necessary segmentation feature, particularly if you’re trying to track down an audience that might not be familiar with you, or to followup with an audience that already has context with what you do.
Chapter Twenty-One – Custom Audiences (FB ADS) This is really neat stuff: A custom audience is a group of people who have a previous relationship with you, perhaps as customers or contacts. You can build an audience of just these particular people and serve your ads directly to them. To get started, click the “Create new custom audience” link at the top of the audience settings page. Your previously created custom audiences appear just above, and you can select those for future campaigns. A popup will appear with three different ways to create your audience: Customer List, Website Traffic, or App Activity.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
With the Customer List, you can upload or copy/paste a data file of email addresses, phone numbers, or Facebook user IDs. Facebook also integrates directly with MailChimp so you can pull from your existing MailChimp lists to create a custom audience. With the Website Traffic, Facebook can create an audience based on the conversion pixel you’ve installed on your site. Here, you have the options to choose a timeframe for the traffic as well as segment by: • Anyone who visits your site • People who have seen particular pages • People who have seen particular pages but not other pages • People who haven’t visited for awhile With the App Activity, you select one of your connected Facebook apps and segment based on activity within the app. Custom audiences help to further refine the pool from which you can segment. For instance, once you select or create a custom audience, you can then go ahead and continue to filter that audience based on location, demographics, interests, and behaviors. Once you’ve created an audience, you can save it for quick use next time. Check the box at the bottom of the audience settings to name and save this particular audience. The next time you create an ad, you can choose an existing audience at the top of the settings.
Chapter Twenty-Two – Setting Ad Budget and Schedule Once you found an optimal audience, choose from a daily or lifetime budget, and enter how much you’d like to spend.
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Then, choose whether to run it continuously or between a specific start and end date. In the Advanced Budget Settings, you can also choose your bidding and optimization preferences. It deserves a separate article just for this one topic, but I’d generally suggest to begin with the default options: optimizing for link clicks to your website or website conversions and using automatic bids. Once you’re happy with the Settings, click “Choose Ad Creative” to create the actual ads.
Chapter Twenty-Three – Creating and Designing your Ad For the ad creative, select to create a new ad or choose an existing post that you’ve already published on your page. Also, decide whether you want to use a single image or video in your ads, or go with multiple images (also known as carrousel or multi-product ads):
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If you wanted to promote a few products from the same category in one ad, go with the multiple images format. If you have just one specific offer, choose single image format. Next, choose what will be the media for your ads: images, slideshow, or a video. I would suggest to begin with using images for your ads:
You can select up to 6 images when creating a new campaign, which will create up to 6 ad variations in your campaign. By creating a few ads, you can quickly see which image is working the best. You can choose this one and pause the other ads to save your ad budget. The recommended image size is 1200 x 628 pixels and I suggest to save them in .png format.
After images, move on to the text part. Here, choose the Facebook page you will be running the ads from – you can also choose to remove it, but that will stop you from running the ads in the mobile news feed or desktop news feed, which you don’t want. You can connect your Instagram account too, if you wanted to show your ads on Instagram.
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Then, enter the headline and text that will be used for your ad and choose an optional call-to-action button. Text will appear above the image and the headline immediately below it. For the headline you have a character limit of 25 symbols, and for a post text, you have 90 characters.
Check the ad
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Check the ad preview to make sure it looks exactly how you want:
Finally, remove any ad placements that you don’t want to use. My advice would be use just one placement whenever possible: if you choose multiple ad placements, Facebook will again try to optimize your campaign and will usually push most of your budget to mobile devices. If that’s what you want, great. But if you don’t have a mobilefriendly website, this could lead to getting a ton of mobile traffic but very few checkouts.
Chapter Twenty-Four – Conversion Tracking & Pixel
Facebook has a unique system for tracking actions that occur after someone leaves a Facebook ad and travels to a web page. You can install a Facebook pixel that tracks things like page views, registration, and orders. To get your Facebook pixel, go to the menu at the top of the page, and select “Pixels” under the “Assets” menu.
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From the pixel page, click Create a Pixel. Then click View Pixel Code. The pixel code goes into the code of your page, in the <head> section. You can copy and paste the code from Facebook into your page, and for further tracking, you can add any number of variables to your code from Facebook’s many options. • View Content • Search • Add to Cart • Add to Wishlist • Initiate Checkout • Add Payment Info • Purchase • Lead • Complete Registration For example, if you were to add extra conversion tracking for Leads to your Facebook code, you might take the original code from Facebook and add in the extra snippet for Leads to the page where your lead capture takes place.
Chapter Twenty-Five – 5 Working Fb Ads Strategies There’s a host of great information out there on Facebook advertising tips and best practices. Ad Espresso has a wonderful blog, the Facebook content on Moz is outstanding, everything Jon Loomer writes is incredible. We’ve collected some of our favorite tips and tactics for Facebook ads here. 1. Consider the placement of your URL From Karen Jones, How Facebook Advertising Performed vs. Google Ads.
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This article is chock full of useful titbits: the pros and cons list from earlier came from Karen’s great work here. She goes on to recap some of her top takeaways for successful Facebook ads. • Keep your information short • Include an offer or price • Include keywordsInclude persuasive or interesting imagery/video • Include your URL above the image/video in the text section • Use taglines and hooks to draw your potential customers in (i.e., “Make This a Year to Remember”) 2. Don’t wait: Double down on what’s working From Massimo Chieruzzi, Facebook Ads Suicide: 6 Deadly Errors to Avoid The team at AdEspresso has some fantastic advice on best practices for Facebook advertising (they’re drip campaign emails for new signups are particularly fantastic). Double down on what’s working: don’t wait to increase your spending on a great Adv. Down the line it might not work any more — or just not as well! Don’t ignore New Features and Ad Types: every new format will over-perform in the first few months before users are familiar with it! Test every aspect of a campaign: the wrong picture can cost >100% more. But you’ll never guess which one without split testing for it! Don’t leave campaigns alone: on Facebook you target users based on interests and demographics. They’ll get tired of seeing your ads over and over again! 3. Spend at least $5 per ad Andrea Marban, The Dos and Don’ts of Facebook Advertising Another gem from AdEspresso, this one covers the do’s and don’ts of Facebook advertising and gets into some wonderfully specific advice. Do: • create Buyer Personas and a specific call to action for each of them • choose an image that stands out, but also represents your brand • include Social Proof in your Ad, numbers can work very very well
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
• use Custom Audiences, it’s one of the most effective tools as of now Don’t: • allocate too small of a budget (best is at least $5 per ad, typically) • use too small or a poorly designed image (use a minimum pics’ width of 1024px) • mix different countries in an AdSet (best is to target one country per AdSet)h • ave too small of an audience (best is usually at least 500k people) • be aware that the elements above can impact significantly your campaign, so taking some time to understand and fine-tune them is an investment that will pay off in spades 4. Image tips Fred Perrotta, A Deep Dive Into Facebook Advertising The most important part of your ad is the image. You can write the most brilliant copy in the world, but if your image doesn’t catch a user’s eye, you won’t get any clicks. Don’t use low-quality images, generic stock photography, or any images that you don’t have the rights to use. Don’t steal anything from Google Images. Unless you’re a famous brand, don’t use your logo. Images of people work best. Preferably their faces. Use closeups of attractive faces that resemble your target audience. Facebook ad images are small (100 x 72 pixels). Make sure to focus on a person’s face and crop it if necessary. Don’t use a blurry or dark picture. Advanced tip: Use images of people facing to the right. Users will follow the subject’s line of sight and be more likely to read your ad text. 5. Segment more than you think you should (and don’t overlook mobile!) Kane Jamison, 10 Things I’ve Learned While Learning Facebook Ads I love this post from Kane about his learnings with Facebook Ads. It’s a great primer for beginners (with something to be learned for pros, too, I’d imagine). Here are a couple of my favorite takeaways:
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
Make sure the creative imagery and copy is tightly targeted to your audience. Instead of targeting an audience of 2,000,000 people, find a way to break them into smaller, more specific groups, and show them customized copy and graphics that will appeal to them. Kane mentions that you can even go so far as to select an audience of cyclists if you have a cyclist in your ad creative. Awesome! And here’s a great tip on mobile vs. desktop: Regardless of the age or demographics of the audience you’re targeting, don’t assume that they’re scanning through a laptop Facebook feed just because you’re on a laptop all day while editing ads. The vast majority of Facebook users are on mobile apps, and many of your ad sets may never get a click from desktop users.
Step-By-Step Guideline: 1. Research what niche you want to go into 2. Have a look on AliExpress at some of the products you might want to sell 3. Create your Shopify Account (shopify.com) 4. Design it by adding images, text etc and then import your products using the ‘Oberlo’ Shopify app. 5. When writing products descriptions, don’t just copy and paste the specifications from AliExpress. Aim to write 6-10 lines of fun, enticing words that describe the product. 6. Create your free custom logo by typing in ‘Canva free logo templates’ on Google.
Written by Ben Newcombe (Available from 9am-10pm GMT (UK Time)
7. Use Instagram Marketing to built up some pixel data, reach out to Instagram Influencers and get them to post an ad of one of your products ( see the course above for more information on how to do this ) 8. Once you have the pixel data, use custom audiences (lookalike audiences) on Facebook Ads to scale up!