24 Jun HOW AN ECOMMERCE OUTDOOR RECREATION STORE USED FACEBOOK ADS TO TURN $3,000 INTO $50,000

We love seeing our client’s success and we like sharing them with you to hopefully inspire you with your Facebook ads. Getting a $17 ROAS (Return on adspend) in the first month of testing is not normal but it is possible as you’ll read below. This client had tried for years with his own ads resulting in a $1 ROAS overall. When we took over his account we put our system into place and turned his account into a highly tuned marketing machine. Read below and let us know your thoughts, and if you’d like us to put this system into place in your business reach out to us through chat or email.

Data overview

Store type: eCommerce store selling outdoor/camping products
Total Adspend: $2,910.45
Total Products Sold: 616
Total Revenue: $50,918.0
Total Time: 1 month

Result Screenshot: please note that the screenshot is comparing the clients April results without our services and the May results with our services:

The Product

This particular client has a relatively high AOV (average order value) due to high product prices. Product prices range anywhere between $30 to $200+. However, the process described in this blog post is very similar to what we have used and seen positive results even for businesses with lower AOV’s.

The client’s products featured unique benefits and perks for outdoor lovers. Having a unique product with great features definitely helped with the performance of the Facebook and Instagram ads.

We do want to point out that even with the client’s good products, they were still very skeptical of our company’s past result and the client called the results, “too good to be true.” We are glad that they still decided to give it a try!

Client’s skeptical email before starting our services after reading our case studies:

The Setup For The Facebook and Instagram Ads

The Ad Creative
We ran split tests for several different ads and products to determine what would perform the best. In the end, the best performing ad was using a “Conversions” objective and targeting warm and cold audiences (separate ad sets for each audience). The copy for that ad briefly highlighted the benefits and unique features of the product.

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

The Targeting
We targeted a couple of different lookalike audiences (lla) based on 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 with different Facebook interests before getting the best results/returns.

This image shows the names of some of the interests we tested for our cold audiences:

Here are a couple of screenshots of the cold and warm targeting. Keep in mind that 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 verse warm audiences:

Cold targeting example:

Warm targeting example:

The Results

Total revenue return reported was $50,918.00 with only $2,910.45 spent in one month! That is an ROAS of 17.49 or about $17 made for every $1 in adspend‼️

Here’s a screenshot of the results at the campaign level for May 2019:

If you own an online eCommerce store and would like more sales and new foot 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.

Our Backstory

We are Black Bear Advertising and we have been doing digital marketing in one form or another for the past five years. Our services focus on accelerating customer acquisition through the use of online Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Pinterest ads. We’ve tested hundreds of ads specifically for eCommerce stores and have spent hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars in testing and getting results!

If your ad account is not performing well, odds are, mistakes are being made on your ad campaigns. Maybe it’s not even a mistake but a strategy you’re not aware of. Whether it’s you the business owner creating the ads or an agency you work with. Use our chat or Schedule a free call with our audit team and let us find the areas that can be improved within your ad account.

Thanks for reading and comment below your success stories!

Disclaimer – This is not a get rich quick or clickbait scenario, this is just one example with great results for an eCommerce business. There is no guarantee 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 in many eCommerce stores with very similar results.