If you want to drive more people to your Shopify store, boost awareness about your products, and increase your sales, Facebook ads are an excellent tool to leverage.
Given that almost 1 in 4 posts on both Instagram and Facebook are ads, you also don’t need to worry about whether these will be received well by your audience.
But creating Facebook ads for your Shopify store isn’t exactly a cakewalk — if that’s the sentiment you’ve been harboring, then we’re here to help. If you’ve been wanting to run Shopify ads on Facebook, we’ve done the legwork and prepared an extensive guide on how you can leverage this tool to promote your store and boost sales.
Stick with us till the end, and we’ll also give you some exciting Shopify Facebook ads ideas for inspiration. And if you already have some ideas in your kitty, consider turning them into stunning video ads by signing up for a free account on InVideo.
Here’s what we’ll cover in this blog:
1. Benefits of integrating Facebook with your Shopify store
2. How to set up and run Shopify Facebook ads integration
3. 9 Shopify Facebook ads ideas to grow your eCommerce store
4. Pro tips for creating Shopify Facebook ads
Let’s begin!
1. Benefits of integrating Facebook with your Shopify store
We all understand why Facebook ads are beneficial — Facebook has an incredible reach, and marketing on the platform can help you increase brand awareness, sales, and revenue. But what’s the specific benefit for Shopify store owners? Well, that comes in the form of Shopify’s interface allowing for a Facebook integration within the store’s backend, making it easier than ever to run ads, manage visits, create audiences, and more.
So if you have a Shopify store but are not making use of the Facebook integration, here’s why you should start doing so: .
- You can connect your store to Facebook, create a Facebook Shop on your business page, and display and sell your products directly through the platform.
- Your customers can even contact you via Facebook Messenger—you’ll be notified in your Shopify Inbox and can reply to them promptly, improving their experience at your store.
- You can also enable Facebook checkout to allow customers to browse, shop, and check out without leaving the platform, smoothening their experience from start to end.
- Integrating your store with Facebook can help when running ads as well, for you can direct ad viewers straight to your product on the Facebook Shop and make the buying process faster.
- And, you also get the option to create and run Facebook ads directly from your Shopify admin. You can target these ads to people similar to your store customers, visitors, or those who like your Facebook page, increasing their effectiveness and the chances of conversions.
Without further ado, let’s explore how you can reap these benefits and help your store’s bottom line!
2. How to set up and run Shopify Facebook ads integration?
Now that you know how beneficial having a Facebook integration for your spotify store can be, let’s go ahead and look at how you can utilize its full potential by running Facebook ads right from your Shopify backend.
1. Prerequisites to run Facebook ads for Shopify
First things first, you’ll need to create a Facebook Business Page for your store (which automatically gives you an Ads Manager account) and a Facebook Business Manager account to get started with advertising.
The Facebook Business Manager is where you can manage your page, access advertising tools, and create and track campaigns. Watch this guide to understand how to create an account here, connect it to your business page, and create or add an ad account:
After setting these up, you’ll have all the assets ready to start your Shopify Facebook ad campaigns.
2. Integrating Facebook as a sales channel
To allow customers to browse and purchase your products directly from Facebook, you need to set up Facebook as a sales channel on your online store.
This will allow you to create a Facebook Shop on your business page, and even to set up Instagram Shopping and create Facebook ads right from Shopify.
Here’s how to integrate Facebook as a sales channel:
Step 1: Click the + icon next to Sales Channels in your Shopify store admin.
Step 2: Scroll down to Facebook, click the + icon and then Update sales channel to install the Facebook channel.
Step 3: Click Start setup on the features you want to install (like Facebook Shop).
Step 4: Then, connect your Facebook account, business page, Business Manager account, and other assets required.
Step 5: Click on Finish setup, and you’ll be done.
After Facebook’s review and approval, your store catalog will sync with the platform, allowing customers to shop right from your page.
Pro tip: With certain Shopify themes, you can also integrate product videos within your store and also add them to your Facebook sales channel. Videos can help improve conversion massively as they give viewers a more realistic look at the product. To create these videos, you can easily take the help of a tool like InVideo which has thousands of templates to help you create compelling videos in minutes.
3. Setting up the Facebook pixel
Once you’ve set up the Facebook channel, you also want to be able to track your customers’ behavior on your store so that you can customize your marketing strategy and ads accordingly. For this you need to set up the Facebook pixel
Facebook pixel is the connection point between your store and the ads you run.
It’s a 16-digit piece of code (shown below) that tracks the actions visitors take on your website—whether it’s browsing a particular product or adding it to the cart.
It also helps track the performance and effectiveness of your Facebook ads because you can understand how many visitors your ads bring in and how they act on your store. Not just that—it’ll also tell you which audience, ads, or creatives get you the best results so that you can double down on them.
You can also run relevant retargeting Facebook ads based on the products a shopper viewed or added to the cart on your store using the data the pixel captures.
To create your Facebook pixel:
Step 1: Go to Events Manager on your Business Manager page.
Step 2: Click on Connect data sources in the left menu.
Step 3: Choose Web from the options that show up, then Facebook Pixel.
Step 4: Then, add a name for your pixel, your website URL, and follow the prompts.
You can also refer to this guide or watch this video to understand the process:
Next, you’ll have to set up this pixel on your store—the process is simple and requires no technical knowledge or coding.
Here’s what you need to do:
- In your Shopify Admin, go to the Online Store, then Preferences.
- Scroll down to the Facebook Pixel section and add your pixel id there.
Here’s a video to see things in action:
The pixel can take up to a couple of hours to set up, but after that, you can track page visits, searches, add to carts, purchases, and more—all from your Business Manager account.
4. Integrating Facebook ads and Shopify
We’ve covered setting up the Facebook Shop, now let’s understand how you can leverage another great feature available for Shopify store-owners—creating Facebook ads right from your store’s admin.
To do this, you’ll have to activate the Marketing feature while setting up the Facebook channel.
This will allow you to create Facebook marketing activities like audience-building ads and retargeting ads in Shopify.
Audience-building ads are carousel ads featuring your products, helping you boost brand awareness and sales. Meanwhile, retargeting ads allow you to reach and stay top-of-mind of people who’ve visited your store—Facebook tracks the products they browsed using the pixel, and then shows personalized carousel ads based on that.
Taking the example of audience-building ads, here’s how to set them up:
Step 1: In your Shopify admin, go to Marketing and then Campaigns.
Step 2: Click Create campaign and then Facebook audience building ad.
Step 3: Name the activity, browse and select products to display in the ad, and add text to it. You can also check the preview on the right to see what the ad will look like.
Step 4: You can also add offers and discounts to your ad from here to entice viewers to buy.
Step 5: Next, configure the audience you want to target through the ad. For example, your audience can be similar to your customers or store visitors.
Step 6: Specify your budget and when you want the ad to start and stop.
Step 7: Save the draft or hit Publish so Facebook can begin reviewing your ad.
Here’s a video illustrating this:
You can also refer to this guide to know more about Facebook marketing on Shopify and how to run retargeting ads.
5. Running Shopify Facebook ads
By now, you’ve created the different Facebook assets required to run ads, set up the all-important Facebook pixel, and integrated your store with Facebook.
Now, you’re all ready to leverage Facebook’s advertising features and create your first ad.
The ads you see on Facebook, whether they’re image or video ads or a carousel, are all part of a larger setup called “ad campaign.” A campaign contains multiple ad sets, which in turn include different ads you can run simultaneously.
So, to start with your first ad, you’ll first have to create your campaign by going to Ads Manager from your Business Manager account and clicking on + Create.
You’ll then be asked to pick your campaign name and objective:
So, for instance, you can choose brand awareness if your goal is to make more people know about your shop.
Or, you can choose traffic to direct people to your online store and entice them to check out your collection, or if you want to reach people already familiar with your brand and nudge them towards a purchase.
You can refer to this detailed guide to understand and choose the right objective for your campaign or check out this short guide from Facebook.
After setting the objective, it’ll take you to the ad set level, where you can specify your budget, audience, and ad placement for a particular set.
Here, you’ll also have to specify the event you want to optimize the set for. Say you chose traffic as your objective, so you can select where it is you want to direct the traffic—whether to your website or app.
As for your target audience, you can filter it down based on gender, age, location, etc. The detailed targeting feature allows you to further refine your target group based on their interests, behavior, or demographics.
And finally, you’ll come to the ad level, where you can specify your ad name, the format (image, video, carousel, etc.), and then come to the most exciting part—adding your creative.
Besides going for image ads, you can also use a tool like InVideo to create eye-catching video ads and increase the chances of conversion.
Using this intuitive video-editing tool, you can upload your footage, add attractive backgrounds and text, and some catchy music to your ad to finish it to perfection. Or better still, you can customize any one of InVideo’s premade video templates with exciting visuals, text, animation, and music and create a scroll-stopping video ad in minutes.
You can use this video ad by itself or as a part of a collection or carousel ad.
After making your creative, you can upload it, write the primary text, description, headline, and other details, and your ad will be ready to run!
You can watch this video to see things in action and understand the whole process better:
6. Tracking Shopify Facebook ads conversion
Your job doesn’t end once your ad goes live—you need to constantly monitor it and understand how to optimize it for the best results.
That doesn’t mean editing your campaign frequently or stopping it within a few days. The goal is to understand whether it’s reaching the right audience, how they’re reacting to it, and what’s working and what’s not.
You can track your campaign from the Facebook Business Manager and your store’s admin. Here’s how:
Tracking conversions in Business Manager
In the Ads Manager, you can click on the campaign, ad set, and the ad whose performance you want to see.
Here, you can see insights like the number of people who saw your ad (reach), clicked on it, the demographics it’s appealing to, the placement where it’s receiving the best results, the amount spent, the number of purchases made, and more.
This information can help you refine factors like your budget, creative, message, target audience, and offer for your next ad campaign. Here’s a detailed video about how you can track all this information on Facebook:
Tracking conversions in Shopify
You can also assess your ad’s performance from the Marketing section of your Shopify admin. Here, you can see the traffic and sales generated from different marketing channels, including Facebook ads. So, it allows you to assess how your Facebook ads compare to other sources and optimize your ad spend accordingly.
Now that you know how to integrate and run Facebook ads for your Shopify store, let’s get into some ideas that you can use to create these ads.
3. 9 Shopify Facebook ads ideas to grow your eCommerce store
Since Facebook video ads receive 10-30% more views than other formats, and because we want you to focus on ads that will give you the best conversion, several ideas we share will involve making video ads. But don’t worry; creating Facebook video ads doesn’t have to be challenging, time-consuming, or expensive. With a cost-effective and feature-rich tool like InVideo, you can create videos ads filled with quality visuals, text, animations, and music within minutes.
If you’re hard-pressed on time or don’t want to create videos from scratch, you can also use one of its 1900+ video ad templates—they come with all the right ingredients to help you attract users and hook them to your ad.
Let’s dive in
1. Introduce your brand
Creating an ad conveying your brand story, purpose, or mission is an excellent way to reel users in and turn them into customers.
United by blue, for instance, is a brand focused on ocean preservation and creating sustainable products. In this Facebook ad, they used the caption to talk about their mission and how much trash they’d removed to date.
That’s a great way to introduce their brand to first-timers, build awareness, and attract like-minded people.
If your brand is involved with conscious business practices, you can highlight that through an image or video ad that highlights your efforts, the charitable work that you do, and the values your brand stands for. These ads work really well for brands that have a humanitarian or environmental cause attached with their image.
2. Introduce your product
Simple ads introducing your products, what your store is about, and all you offer are great ideas to kickstart Shopify Facebook marketing.
For instance, Pipcorn created a short and quick slideshow video showing the products they offer and how affordable they are.
Such ads can help you build brand awareness and even drive sales, and the good news is, they’re also easy to create. All you need are some high-quality product images shot against an attractive background. You can then compile them into a fast-paced video on InVideo, add some text and sweet tunes to them, and your ad creative will be ready.
3. Testimonial ad
Testimonials describing your customers’ positive experiences with your store can compel people to stop mid-scroll, check out your ad, and even take the desired action.
Take inspiration from these ads from Blenders Eyewear—they take viewers through their products and unique selling points and double down as testimonial ads given their caption.
Miracle Brand also does a good job with this, using an attractive visual to showcase their product and a review in the primary text.
The best part is you can leverage testimonials for Facebook ads in many ways. For instance, you can compile video testimonials from your customers using a template like this and create a warm, engaging ad.
Or, you can turn your written testimonials into a video using this template and run it as an ad.
You can even create single-image ads by pulling snippets from testimonials and using them as the ad copy.
4. User-generated content as ads
Besides testimonials, an excellent way to build trust and credibility is to use videos of your customers talking about or using your products as ads.
This ad by Bombas does this well. A customer filmed it, most likely without any fancy equipment, making the ad feel authentic (and not very salesy) and a natural fit in a user’s feed.
The video takes viewers through their different products and features, describing how they look, feel, and fit, which can further entice people to check or purchase them. Bonus points for the fun and creative caption!
You can create something similar, too—ask a loyal customer or an influencer to record a video with your product. Put it against any one of InVideo’s templates, customize the music, add text to make it more engaging, and you’ll have a winning video ready.
5. Product demo ad
A related and highly effective idea is to run product demo videos as ads. You’ll most likely film them on your smartphone, so these ads can look like organic “how-to” videos within a user’s feed, increasing their chances of watching them and sticking to the end.
Here’s an example:
Nutriseed here also created this video ad showing how to use their product in a recipe. It makes for great content on a user’s timeline while naturally tying in their product to boost sales.
You can record such a video yourself or even partner with an influencer. Then, add some text and music to it to make it more engaging and ready to serve to your audience. You can even answer an audience FAQ or create a tips video for your Facebook ad. For instance, Bolden made an ad addressing a pressing question on face-washing the right way.
They didn’t sell their product directly through it—instead, the goal was to educate the viewer and build trust first. Using a template like this, you can create a similar video to provide genuine value to your audience.
6. Sales announcement ad
If you’re running a sale or other special offers on your store, Facebook ads can be a great way to get more exposure and customers. You can create simple image ads for this, like Gymshark below.
Or, you can use videos to get the message across in a more interesting manner and build excitement. The Fascination knew this well and created this simple yet effective video ad to promote Leesa mattresses.
The copy and the visual are eye-catching, but notice how they also used ratings and reviews within the ad to build credibility and nudge people towards a purchase.
You can also create an exciting sales announcement video ad using a template like this—just customize the text and footage if required and you’ll be done.
7. Spotlight your best-selling products
Creating ads around your best-selling products, describing their features, what makes them unique, and tying in some reviews if possible is a great way to attract new and existing customers and increase sales.
You can create a simple but effective image ad like Helm Boots above or use a video to showcase your bestsellers with descriptive text using this template.
8. New launch announcement ad
LeSportsac created a Facebook ad to promote their new collection—a great way to expose new products to their target audience and get good initial sales.
The best part is, a video like this is pretty easy to create. All you need are some high-quality shots of your new products. Then, you can compile them on a template like this, customize the text and music to your taste, and you’ll create an exciting video.
To increase the effectiveness of such ads, you can even target them just to your existing customers to show them what’s just in and bring them back to your store.
Moreover, it can be easier to get an existing customer to make a repeat purchase than convert a prospect into a first-time customer, so fine-tuning your target audience can pay off.
9. Ads for giveaways and competitions
If you’re running a giveaway or contest on your store, Facebook ads can help you increase exposure and participation.
Nutriseed, for instance, recently launched Facebook ads like this to promote their contests and giveaways.
Even if a viewer doesn’t participate in the contest, they’re still an excellent way to bring your store and products in front of more users and build awareness and recognition.
For more inspiration on what ads you can create and how, you can watch this YouTube video:
You can also go through our collection of templates, including over 1500 ad templates, to get some amazing ideas for your next Shopify Facebook ad.
4. Pro tips for creating Shopify Facebook ads
These examples would’ve given you a good idea on how to kickstart Facebook advertising and what ads you’d like to run, but here are some pro tips to further help you:
Tip #1 - Research what others are doing
One of the best ways to brainstorm ad ideas and understand what works for your industry or product is to look at other brands and your immediate competitors.
The good thing is, you have this information at your disposal and won’t have to do a lot of digging. You can use the Facebook Ad library to check out these brands’ ads—just type in their Facebook page and all their past and active ads will show up. You can look at the type of ads and creatives they’re using, the copy, description, etc., to understand what you can do.
You can also invest in tools like AdEspresso or Adplexity down the line to see what ads your competitors are running and which ones perform the best.
Tip #2 - Focus on audience research
Facebook has a massive user base spread across countries, ages, interests, income groups, and more.
However, it does offer rich tools like detailed targeting to help you nail down your audience and show ads to only relevant users. So, make sure to use this feature smartly, research your audience, and prepare buyer personas before you start running ads.
If you sell a niche product—like dog food, for example—your job will be easier because you can target all the dog-lovers/owners in your area.
However, if you offer a general appeal product that can have a large audience, think about what interests and hobbies your audience is likely to have, what pages they’d like on Facebook, and which competitors they currently purchase from to plan your ads.
You can also use Facebook’s Audience Insights tool to learn more about people who have interacted with your page as well as your potential audience—their interests, gender, where they live, etc.
When it comes to the audience size for ads, there’s no one particular number that works for everyone. But in general, having an audience of at least 250K can be a good way to start. The size of your audience will also depend on your objective. For instance, if you want to drive traffic or sales, you’ll want to focus only on people who are likely to buy from you. On the other hand, if your goal is to generate brand awareness, you can consider running ads for a broader audience.
Tip #3 - Don’t neglect the creative
While audience research is critical, your creatives and the copy can make or break your ad. Even if your ad reaches the right user, your creative will determine whether they pay attention or just scroll past it and whether they take the necessary action.
Let’s take the example of this ad from Slack to understand the elements of a great ad.
- It uses a high-quality visual and message that captures the audience’s attention and piques their interest. Plus, it uses bright and contrasting colors to catch the eye.
- The visual makes the user feel what using their product will be like.
- The copy on the ad addresses a common pain point. Then, the headline “Make work better” presents their product as a solution.
- They use the description to further explain how they can solve the user’s problem, nudging them to check out more.
- They keep the text on the ad minimal. Facebook says there’s no longer a limit on the text you can use on your image ads. However, data still says that ads with less than 20% text overlay typically perform better.
In addition, you can also use social proof or product benefit statements in your creatives to drive conversions faster.
When it comes to your creatives, you also want to create and leverage video ads, which brings us to our next tip.
Tip #4 - Make use of video
Video content is booming across platforms, and Facebook is no different. In fact, research shows that 49% of Facebook users engage with video content from brands—more than any other platform.
Given these statistics and how videos help you show off your products and convey your message and value proposition engagingly, incorporating them into your Facebook advertising strategy is an excellent idea.
InVideo can help you create compelling video ads for your store within minutes, even if you have no experience in video editing. All you have to do is add your clips or images to the editor and elements like text, music, animations, and transitions to your taste.
Or, let one of InVideo’s templates do the heavy lifting for you—just pick a template you like and customize it with your photos, videos, and branding, and you’ll be done.
Besides using high-quality visuals, keep the following pointers in mind when making video ads:
- Use a square or vertical aspect ratio, so the ad works well on mobiles and desktops.
- Keep the video short—Facebook recommends keeping them 15 seconds or less. Even if you go for longer videos, make sure to capture attention in the first few seconds, so viewers feel compelled to watch it through.
- Use text, graphics, and captions to make your video ad more engaging. Many people even watch ads with the sound off, so these features can help provide them an equally exciting experience.
Tip #5 - Create ads that don’t look like ads!
As Elliot Prendy says in this video, the #1 secret to creating Facebook ads that’ll make people stop mid-scroll is to create ads that look native and blend within a user’s timeline.
In short, create ads that don’t look like ads—don’t make them very salesy or pushy. Testimonials, informative “tips” or “how-to” video ads where you tie in your products, user-generated content, partnering with influencers or loyal brand fans are all great ideas for this. They can help create ads that have a human touch to them and don’t put audiences off.
What’s more, you can also use attractive visuals from InVideo’s library of stock photos and videos to make your ads feel like ordinary posts and not very salesy.
Tip #6 - Give your ads time to breathe
It might seem tempting to tweak or stop your ads if you don’t see results immediately, but this can be a major blunder.
Facebook takes time to understand how to optimize your ad, whom to show it to, and when and where. It’s best to let your ad reach at least 1,000 impressions before you make a change or pause it.
Moreover, running your ad for a certain period—even if it doesn’t bring you the sales or conversions you expected—will provide you with valuable information on how to plan and structure your next campaign. You’ll gather enough data to understand what went right and wrong and how you can improve your targeting, messaging, and offers.
Here’s a video you can watch for more useful tips on Facebook ads:
Wrapping up
We’ve spilled all the essential details you need to know to get started with Facebook ads for your Shopify store. Like any other platform, the key to succeeding with Facebook ads is experimenting with different formats and types of content, understanding your audience and what works, and then doubling down on it.
To know more about Facebook ads, refer to this guide that covers every inch of detail you’d possibly need. If you’re a visual learner, we also have many videos on Facebook marketing and advertising on our YouTube channel, so be sure to check them out.
And if you're looking to create scroll-stopping videos for your brand, sign up for InVideo today!
This post was written by Komal and edited by Adete from Team InVideo
