Firstly, let me just say that we are not experts at this, we're learning as we go just like everything else we do at 704 Shop. That being said, we've dabbled off and on with Facebook ads for a while now and we get some pretty decent results. Here's what we've tried, learned, and accomplished.
Boosting Posts
When we first introduced the #LUUUUKKE shirt, we initially printed it with TeeSpring. The only way to let people know that this shirt even existed was through Facebook; that's how our journey began. First, we shared the link from Teespring to our Facebook page. If you have a Like Page or Business Page on FB, you'll notice that below a post there is an option to "boost post." When you boost your post you have to set a certain amount of money you are willing to see and FB tells you how many potential people will see your post. It typically defaults to 3 days. I can't remember for certain but I think we started with $30 over the course of 3 days; or $10 per day.
Our goal to get our shirts printed was 25 shirts in 10 days. It took us about 4 days to reach that goal, but once we did we really started pumping some money into the boost. By the end of it all we spent about $250 and sold close to 100 shirts. In case you're wondering, we got paid $750 from teespring; net profit of $500. That's a pretty dope ROI if you ask me.
We know that a boosted post can work wonderfully but there are some drawbacks. Boosting a post can and will get that particular post seen by a lot of people, however that might not be the goal. For us, we want to get people to our website to buy products. When you boost a post, they might do that, or they might simply like the post. They might Like the page. They might comment or tag a friend that might be interested. While all of those things sound great (and they are in their own ways), the goal for us isn't any of those things. We want people to go to the website and buy a shirt or hat. We find that a boosted post does work, however FB users are more inclined to interact with the post versus take action and go to the website as a customer.
Carousel Ads
This is the model that we are currently testing. We've seen great results from it just like boosting a post, only the margins are a bit higher. When you create an ad to send people website you have more control over who the target audience is. For example, we can choose to target men and women, ages 18-65, within 50 miles of Charlotte who have an interest in Fitness & Wellness. This example is pretty broad, however you can get really intricate with who you target. The more you add filters on who you're targeting, the smaller and more defined the audience becomes.
In a boosted post, you can only use one image. That means we can only advertise ONE of our shirts. In this model of a FB ad we can add up to 5 different images that all link to their individual pages within our website. For us thats huge. Maybe someone isn't interested in our Home shirt but really loves the CLT shirt. This way we can get both customers, killing two birds with one stone.
At the end of the day, you still have to pay real money to do an ad or a boosted post. We're still testing these two particular models, however I will tell you that we are seeing slightly better results from the carousel ad. Our results are preliminary, so we can't really give you a great success story like the #LUUUUKKE shirts on teespring ... yet.
We plan to continue trying new ways of advertising, both on FB and off. We'll keep you updated on what our findings are.