Start cultivating your brand with Facebook’s new collection ads

Guest post by Keegan Rush – E-commerce & Selling Guru

Hey guys! Anybody who is successful in this line of work is well versed in streamlining things. I’m going to touch on a couple things that can help streamline your business, help cultivate your brand, make things easier on your manual launches, and ultimately make you more money. That is the goal here right?

Facebook just introduced a new ad format called Collection that helps advertisers showcase multiple products while boosting mobile conversions. Collections have a visual appeal that really stands out while viewed on mobile devices (even more so on Facebook’s Mobile App). Facebook reports that 45% of all shopping happens on mobile, which shows how important the right ad placement can be for sales.

Of what importance is this new style of ad? The functionality of the ad is going to be a game changer for those developing brands, pages, and a following. But even more so, it is a big step in the right direction for where seller’s focus should be at. It’s time for all of us to seriously change how we think about selling shirts.

It isn’t a fly by night process anymore. If you want to launch one-off shirts, there is still a chance to be successful but it’s going to come at the cost of a true grind. Those who are developing brands as vehicles to sell to their customers/niche on more than one occasion, that follows up with emails & content, and have good social media engagement are going to be the ones who really succeed in this next phase of the T-Shirt game.

T-Shirts aren’t dead by any means and Facebook Ads aren’t either. It isn’t as easy as it once was but you need to work smarter, not harder. Facebook coming out with Collection Ads just gave you the ammo you need for your e-commerce game plan. I’m not suggesting that you completely stop everything that’s working. However, I would like to give a small nudge to you that is beyond the realm of the quick/short-term tactics and start thinking about long-term strategies that pay dividends and focus on quality.

Collections may be the first step in that direction. These formats are designed to increase the likelihood of buyers discovering and converting on your ads. Showing multiple products (shirts, stickers, decor, etc.) and multiple designs is a sure fire way to get better conversions. If a customer sees 1 design and doesn’t like it, you have lost that sale. If you display a handful of designs and they like 1 of them and decide to purchase it, you have successfully won that person over to your brand. The ad leads with a video (you may notice Facebook is always pushing video onto users) or image, followed by four product images below (hello variety of designs!). When a shopper clicks on your ad, they will be directed to a fast-loading page on Facebook that can showcase up to 50 products at a time…..storefront time.

If you aren’t already running ads to your Storefront, this gives you plenty of reason to. We have seen a lot of success running ads directly to the landing page. Ability to showcase multiple designs and products is paramount in the success of these ads. Having a good variety displayed will lead to your customers successfully converting. Be on the lookout for my next post where I’ll talk a bit about philosophy change and how your mind should be thinking in terms of ideation/design.

Tips for optimizing Collection ads

Visit Facebook’s Advertiser Help Center for a step by step guide on how to create a collection.

• Teespring Sellers should note how important videos are becoming for online ads. Not only are users more engaged with these ads but Facebook also seems to give preferential treatment to videos when it comes to ad auctions.
• Choose your first four photos wisely; don’t showcase four t-shirts for example, show off all your different product options.
• When creating your product set you should add at least 8 products to use with the collection format (this includes color options).
• Link your inspirational content with your products by showing products related to your inspirational video, slideshow or image.
• Build a beautiful storefront and test making that your destination.