How to Use Facebook Dynamic Ads

by Zubair Hassan, Guest Contributor

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin laid the foundation of Facebook, which later became the largest social networking website design agency in the world. After a decade, it has accumulated more than a billion monthly active users. It soon attracted the attention of businesses as well and brands started using it as a powerful medium to promote their products and services.

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Dynamic Ads help advertisers expand their reach.

As the competition skyrocketed, we saw brands indulging in a rat-race to vie for user attention. Unfortunately, the ever-changing Facebook algorithms spoiled the party for brands. The dwindling attention span of users and declining Facebook organic reach made it extremely difficult for businesses to engage fans and followers. This is why brands had to look for alternatives such as Facebook Ads to get their message in front of their target audience on Facebook.

What are Facebook Dynamic Product Ads?
According to Facebook, “Facebook Dynamic product ads are a solution designed to help businesses promote multiple products or complete product catalogs across all devices that their customer use. With product ads, businesses can showcase more products and Facebook Users can discover more relevant products.”

Facebook launched Dynamic Ads in 2015. It was a much-needed breath of fresh air for brands as it provided them with a new and efficient way to advertise their products on Facebook, Instagram and audience network. It didn’t take long for businesses to start implementing Dynamic Ads in their social media marketing campaigns.

Why Use Facebook Dynamic Ads?
The biggest reason why Facebook Dynamic Ads became such a hit with businesses is that they offer a lower cost-per-click and higher click-through-rates. Additionally, it also lets you retarget customers and serve ads to previous website visitors and app users. Facebook also released Dynamic Ads for broader audiences to help advertisers expand their reach.

In addition to this, advertisers can upload entire product catalogs to serve ads dynamically based on their interests, behaviors and demographics. More importantly, you can also retarget customers who have either viewed your products, added them to their carts, or purchased specific items.

How to Set up Dynamic Product Ads?
Unlike traditional Facebook marketing campaigns, setting up dynamic product ads on Facebook is not easy but the time and effort you invest in is truly worthwhile. Thankfully, Facebook has done its fair share to simplify the process and things have improved significantly. Now, you don’t have to create separate templates outside the Ad Manager.

Here are some steps you need to take to create and run dynamic product ads.

1. Create a Product Catalog.
2. Go to your page’s business manager and upload product catalogs under assets.
3. Choose a category.
4. Assign a catalog to a page or business
5. You can upload products through CSV file or connect with Shopify and WooCommerce feeds or a data URL feed.
6. Use CSV template files which automatically fill product information.
7. Keep checking it to upload new products or when the product is out of stock.

How to Run Dynamic Ad Campaigns?
Now that you are done setting up your ad campaigns, it is time to put it into execution. Here is how you can go about it.

1. Choose an objective of catalog sales.
2. If you have access to multiple pixels, you will have to choose one.
3. Select your retargeting method
4. Choose your retention window and select how much time will pass before user sees your ad again.
5. Create your own template and choose from carousel ads, single image ads or collection ads.
6. You can either choose one headline or news feed link description or can enter multiple product names, short descriptions and price which can be swapped.
7. You can preview how your ad will look in real.
8. Review everything and make sure that everything is updated and accurate.

Examples
To give you a better idea about how to use Facebook Dynamic Ads effectively, here is how successful brands are doing it.

Philips
Philips did a wonderful job by combining video content with carousel ads. Each video acts as a use case for their new product known as “One Blade razor”. Short and sweet copy, value-driven video and a clear call to action in a carousel tile makes this ad stand out from the crowd.

Although the copy of this ad might seem concise and succinct to many, it manages to deliver the message in two sentences. By showing the product in action and highlighting the versatility it can offer to customers by using different use cases, the ad managed to impress users and convinced them to buy the product. The smart carousel description combined with titles makes the ad even more effective while eliminating all the doubts from customer’s minds regarding the product and shedding light on the benefit at the same time.

Kit and Kin
Another brand that made perfect use of carousel ad format is Kit and Kin. Their retargeting ad highlights the 25% discount which attracts new customers towards making their first purchase of eco nappies. What makes their ad special is their value-centric copy. Not only does the ad highlight the discount, it also guides buyers on how to avail it.

First carousel title reiterates the offer in case you might have missed it or forgot about it. The “Shop Now” call-to-action tells the users that they can purchase the product now and avail the discount, which encourages buyers to make a purchase. The use of animals, symbols and emojis convey the message that these products are eco-friendly.​

​5 Facebook Dynamic Ads Tricks to Boost Your Sales
Here are five tricks that will help you boost your sales with Facebook Dynamic Ads.

1. Align ad copy and creative with your product strategy
2. Test different recency windows
3. Upsell and Cross sell at Campaign Level
4. Create and Streamline Media plans
5. Improve match rates for optimal delivery

1. Align Ad Copy and Creative with your Product Strategy

Imagine seeing an ad with ad copy telling you a different story while the visuals convey a different message. What if both are detracting away from the product strategy that you are following? There is an ad catastrophe. Make sure that everything from ad copy, visuals to call to action aligns with your product strategy and convey the right message to buyers. Otherwise, no one will purchase your products.

Test Different Recency Windows
With dynamic ad campaigns, you can choose to promote products to people from 0 to 180-day splits. Try different recency windows to identify the best frequency and where users start to get bored. When upselling or cross selling, you can see results within a week while others might take time. Conducting different experiments will help you hit the sweet spot for frequency.

Upsell and Cross Sell at Campaign Level
Instead of leaving upselling and cross selling until the end, it is better to set up cross selling and up selling at campaign level and set up product set at ad set level. Once you are done creating a media plan for existing customers, design separate campaigns for upselling and cross selling purposes. This allows you to identify your best performing ads and helps you improve poorly performing ones quickly. Make the decision of which product set was used with an ad set to prevent any issues during the campaign.

Create and Streamline Media Plans
Instead of creating a single media plan for both existing and new customers, you are better off creating separate media plans for each so that you can easily track performance with KPIs and budgets. One reason for doing it is because most companies have different budgets for each stage of the funnel. A majority of companies are ready to spend more on top of the funnel activities than they do on bottom of the funnel activities so, you should keep that in mind too.

Moreover, attracting new customers is much more difficult as compared to retaining new customers. According to this infographic, it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer. Moreover, the probability of selling to a new customer is 5%-20% while probability of selling to an existing customer is 60%-70%. Additionally, existing customers are 50% more likely to try a new product and spend 31% more as compared to new customers. These clearly shows why companies are spending more money on top of the funnel activities.

Improve Match Rates for Optimal Delivery
Conversion events from Facebook Pixel such as Purchase, and View Content is a clear indicator about which users have made a purchase and has seen you products. The content ID from the conversion event is mapped with the content ID within your Facebook feed.
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Let’s say someone makes a purchase on your website and the content ID does not matches with the feed, then the same ad will be visible to people who have already made a purchase. This results in waste of money you spend on advertising and makes it tough for you to scale your cross selling and upselling campaigns. That is why it is important to improve match rates to ensure optimal delivery of ads.
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Author Bio:

Zubair Hassan is a digital marketing expert working at Branex UK which is based in the UK. He loves to work for companies who need his skills in the marketing domain to market their product and make a mark for itself.

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