One of the main reasons why I advise aspiring entrepreneurs to use Facebook Ads is interest-based targeting. Essentially, if you know what your potential customers are interested in, your ads are likely to be able to show up in their news feeds.
Amanda Asks
“How can I make sure the right people are seeing my ads?”
My answer: Facebook’s ‘Audience Insights’ tool is a great way to figure this out.
It’s a tool that lets you analyze a broad interest, as well as find a relevant audience.
To take advantage of it, open your Facebook Ads Manager and click on ‘Audience Insights’ as your first step.
Put in a broad interest of your niche, for example, ‘fashion accessories’ in the Interests section and see the results.
Facebook will show you an estimated number of individuals related to the interest you just entered. Scroll down to see the age, gender, relationship status, and education level of the people interested in the niche.
It’s apparent that women are more interested in fashion accessories than men.
Next, click on the ‘Page Likes’ tab to get ideas for narrower targeting.
Because Facebook allows you to target audiences who ‘like’ specific pages, the research you do here can serve as a foundation for your ads targeting.
Look through the listed pages and check which of them are relevant for you to target.
For example, Amanda could target young females who are interested in Refinery29, The Mint Julep Boutique, and Bath & Body Works.
You could also directly put the name of your product in the interest section and see the Page Likes tab to find relevant ideas. Here’s what Amanda saw when she put ‘scarf’ as an interest.
I explained this with the help of a broader category because Facebook may not generate enough data for every product out there.
Jot down relevant pages to list as ‘interests’ in the Audience section of the Facebook Ads setup window.
Additionally, you can get ideas from the ‘Suggestions’ feature present in the same window.
Suggestions for additional interests
You can find the ‘Suggestions’ feature under the Audiences section when creating a Facebook ad. Click it after putting in some interests to get more ideas.
Here’s what Facebook showed as suggestions for Amanda’s product:
In this image alone, there are 9 new interests that a fashion entrepreneur like Amanda could add to their list.
Age, gender & location
Besides interests, you can also target an audience based on their age, gender, and the region/country/city/town they live in.
When you’re just getting started, the trend says to target the big 4: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. But based on my personal experience, there’s nothing set in stone about this one.
For example, one of the stores I built got orders from European countries.
So you’re better off testing different regions instead of making assumptions on where your customers will actually be.
[highlight]Note: Shipping viability is crucial. Make sure you choose locations where your supplier is capable of shipping. It is going to be a waste of time and effort to target people in Germany if your supplier doesn’t ship to Europe. Hence, double-check if your supplier is okay with shipping to locations you’re planning to reach with Facebook Ads. [/highlight] For the gender, I advised her to choose both male and female for her initial Facebook Ads test run. That’s because she was launching her store near the holiday season, a time when a lot of men buy gifts for their sisters, cousins, spouses, etc.
I also advised her to choose an audience between 18-65+ (the default setting for most Facebook advertisers).
Here’s what her first audience looked like:
Overall, Facebook Ads make it easy for dropshipping entrepreneurs to reach relevant audiences, so they’re the ideal route to take for getting that first sale.
Facebook Ad tools to consider
Creating a Facebook ad can be a bit tedious.
Besides choosing an audience, you have to come up with an intriguing design, find a way to compare the performance of one ad creative with another, and more.
Fortunately, there are tools you can use to relieve some of these burdens.
Photoshop allows users to create graphics for Facebook Ads, enhance or tweak product photography, and make banner advertisements for sales and discounts – just to name a few of its capabilities.
However, it can take a while to get used to its functions, which is why I recommend Canva for beginner dropshippers.
If you’re familiar with Photoshop as Amanda is, you can use that too.
Someone with basic design skills should stick with simpler tools, especially if Photoshop isn’t already installed on their computer.
If you’re curious, Photoshop costs $10 a month via Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription, whereas a boxed copy typically costs more than $500 (equal to Amanda’s whole budget for her dropshipping venture).
Facebook ad reports can appear a bit dry in terms of aesthetics, so I you can use Facebook Ad Compass. Created by AdEspresso, Facebook Ad Compass presents you with beautiful ad reports that highlight key engagement metrics like reach, clicks, and CPC.
You can simply use your Facebook account to access Compass.
Choose one of your twenty recent ad campaigns and enter your email. You’ll then receive an email reply with a link to a beautiful report.
Here’s an example:
In the event that you aren’t satisfied with your ads’ performance, you could simply use another free tool from AdEspresso to work toward improving your next campaign.
The Facebook Ads Gallery from AdEspresso offers access to over 600,000 Facebook ad examples.
There’s no need to login to see the good and not-so-good out there. This may give you a fresh perspective for your next round of ads.
That’s it for the tools.
In the next chapter, I’ll take you through the steps Amanda took to launch her first Facebook Ads campaign.
✓ Dove into audience research using the awesome tools Facebook has available ✓ Chose an audience that you’ll use for targeting your first round of ads tomorrow ✓ Installed a few Facebook ad tools to enhance the experience
