Disclaimer – This is not clickbait and it isn’t a get rich quick scheme. This is just one example with great results for an ecommerce business. There are no guarantees of anything in Facebook marketing, especially how much return you will get if you implement the following formula into your own advertising. However, we have used this formula for many ecommerce stores with very similar results.

Case Study Overview

Store type: Ecommerce store selling office furniture
Total Adspend: $40,792
Total products sold: 499
Total Profit: ~$499,000
Total time: 1 year
Note: Each sell had an average order value of $1,000.

The Product

This particular client has a high AOV (average order value) due to the high cost of their products. The clients average order value is $1,000. However, the processes described in this blog post are very similar to what we have used and seen positive results with other businesses with lower AOV’s.

Another great element of the the client’s products were its unique features. For example, one of their most popular products was a voice controled standing desk. Having unique products with great features definitely helped with the ads performing so well for this business.

Business’s Facebook Advertising Goals

This client had used other advertising agencies in the past with minimal results and had experienced being lost in the shuffle with them. He was also a very savvy business owner and had been running his own Facebook ads before we met him. He had some very specific retargeting ads setup that were running and getting purchases at a good return but he didn’t have the time to find new “cold” audiences for his ads. Those issues became our tasks. Optimize the warm retargeting efforts and bring in new customers profitably and consistently.

The Facebook and Instagram Ad Creative

This gif style video ad outperformed every other ad for cold traffic for almost a year straight:

We ran split tests (similar ads run at the same time with limited variables in an effort to find the most successful setup for ads for this business) for several different ads and products to determine what would perform the best. In the end, the best performing ad was with the client’s new standing desk. The ad copy (descriptive text used in the advertisement) we used highlighted some of the product features and it pushed heavily on the 30 day money back guarantee and free shipping. Since this was a high priced item, it was also high risk for the customer. Our goal was to lower that risk as much as possible in the minds of the potential customers.

We tested several other types of ads, products, copy and offers. In the end the clients most popular product with simple features and benefits produced the best results.

Facebook Retargeting Ad Setup

We had several different types of retargeting videos running at all times:

The benefit of running so many ads with retargeting is that it’s harder for the ads to become stale and it allows Facebook to optimize them to the right person. As you can see our average cost per sale (again, the average order value is $1,000) in this stage of the funnel was under $40!

The Targeting

We targeted a couple different lookalike audiences (lla) based off of the customers who had already purchased from the client’s online store. The client had several customers on that list and that large amount of data created a great lla to work with. We still ended up testing more than a dozen different combinations of the lla’s with different Facebook interests before getting the best results/returns. In the end, creating a lla based on an exported email list of purchases proved to work best!

Keep in mind, we usually see the best results with “placement” excluding Facebook Audiences Network. In fact, some of our clients only see results on Instagram, and when we see those kinds of stats we do recommend turning off any placement not giving you your target KPI’s (key performance indicators). This is all the more tried and true for ads run towards cold audiences versus warm audiences.

Another “trick” for ecommerce ads is selecting that ads only be shown while potential customer is connected to Wifi. This can be good because more than likely the person seeing the ad will have more time to look at the ad and make a purchase. When not on wifi the potential customer might just just be checking Facebook while at a bus stop or somewhere where they are not in a position to make a purchase. This selection doesn’t work for all eCommerce businesses but it is one test we do recommend trying with your business.

The Results

With a high price point of around $1,000, we were able to keep the average cost per acquisition down to about $81! This was accomplished by sending qualified traffic through the top of the funnel (“cold” new potential customers who hadn’t heard of the product or business), then retargeting them (show the ad to potential customers who are aware of the product or business) on the “bottom of the funnel” if they didn’t make a purchase already.Average gross revenue reported was $499,000.00 with only $40,792.84 spent. That is an ROAS of 12.23 or about $12 made for every $1 in adspend‼️

Here’s a screenshot of the overall results for one year:

If you own an online ecommerce store and would like more sales and new traffic, reach out to us. We would be happy to jump on a call with you to discuss how to implement this formula into your business. Schedule a call with us by clicking here. You can also chat with us now by clicking here.

Our backstory – We are Black Bear Advertising. We have been doing digital marketing in one form or another for the past six years. Our services focus on accelerating customer acquisition through the use of online Facebook, Instagram, Google and Pinterest ads. Contact us for a quote. We’ve tested thousands of ads specifically for ecommerce stores and have spent millions of advertising dollars in testing and getting results! If you’re interested in our services or have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Thanks for reading!