
I love blogging about the intricate details of my business.
It allows me to show my readers exactly how I do things and hopefully gets people thinking about how they can apply this knowledge to earn some money themselves.
I Set up a batch of 7 products to test with FaceBook advertising.
This post is going to be about the results.
Choosing Products
I still don’t have a good method of choosing products.
Products that have sold in high quantities on Aliexpress usually mean that they’ve been marketed to a FaceBook audience before. Usually U.S.A, Australia or U.K.
If I still want to go ahead and try these products, I’ll try them in international european countries.
This time around, I just had a look around Aliexpress and noted down products that caught my eye.
Here are a few,
Tattoo Machine Pendant, (How cool is that!)
Cost: $3.00
FB Demographic: Tattoo Artists
Flower Ring
Cost: $2.00
Demographic: Women, Florists, Gardeners?
T Rex Necklace, (Again, HOW COOL IS THAT!)
Cost: $2.00
Demographic: Women, Palaeontology, (study of Dinosaurs)
Now, being a dude, I don’t understand much about jewellery but I’m sure there are people out there I can target that think these are pretty cool. I picked them because I could think of a demographic I could market to. If I see a product and can’t think of who I’d target on FaceBook, I’ll move on.
FaceBook Advertising
I used the same FB page that I’ve been using since my Teespring days. Something very generic that I solely use to test eCommerce Products.
I set up 7 Ads with an audience of at least 20,ooo+ and set the budget at $20 each.
Then I waited and monitored the results,
The last column is the total spend. (I accidentally cut of the titles – woops!)
If you look at the last 3 tests, you can see that the ‘post engagement’ costs are higher than usual.
I aim for something lower than 10 cents, (preferably in the 3-5 cent region), so I cut these early which is why the total spend is low.
The rest, I let run for a little longer because they were giving me sales!
I had campaigns with comments from people that were ridiculously interested. Read them below.
Along with this another metric I look at is the likes – share ratio.
I campaign giving you 2 cents per engagement might seem good, but if they’re all likes and no shares/comments then it’s usually a dud campaign.
What I look at are the number of shares. If this number is high, people love it.
They love it enough to take time out of their day and share it on their wall. Out of all the videos and images you come across FaceBook, how many do you share on your wall? Not many I bet. And the ones you do share are things you’re mega passionate about right?
Another thing I look at are ‘link clicks’.
Meaning, how many people are actually clicking on your product link in your advert?
There’s not point seeing great engagement with hardly any people clicking on the product.
I use a link shortening service called goo.gl
It’s a service from Google that shortens your product link and gives you metrics on how many people are clicking your link, which countries they’re coming from, etc.
I mainly use it for the number on the far right.
This number tells me how many people are actually clicking my links.
So with the same $20 spend, some ads are bringing in just a few clicks, others over 20! The higher this number, the more people are clicking through to check out the products which ultimately leads to sales.
Shopify Sales
Altogether, 6 sales resulted from an ad spend of around $120.
So approximate figures,
Costs
Products: $12
FB Spend: $120
Revenue
Product Sales $88.00
Profit/Loss -$44.00
So wait a second, we’re still at a loss?
When You’re ‘testing’, you’re most likely always going to be at a loss. But an experiment like this tells me, 3 out of the 7 products I can scratch straight away.
So my next test will not include these and I’ll hopefully have a break even day.
Then it’s a matter of running more traffic and testing, tweaking small things.
Some More Metrics
These are pretty good metrics.
I’m really impressed by the number of people that actually added to cart and eventually converted!
10% reached checkout – that’s pretty big.
A good thing to do is to place your FaceBook conversion pixel on the checkout page and once you’ve gathered enough data, get FaceBook to send you traffic that matches the characteristics of people that ‘add to cart’. These people are buyers and more specifically, buyers that are highly interested in your product/niche!
The plan now, is to do what I just mentioned above and see if I can get some more targeted, buy friendly traffic. This is a little advanced but once you learn it, it sets you apart.
Hey Mateen back again ..
Glad to see your doing some shopify fb stuff. I’m doing the same.
had about 40 sales so far on a general store then niched out once I saw i was getting more sales from a specific interest group..
Good to see you again man!
I’m assuming Facebook traffic?
40 sales is no joke, well done!
SO effing powerful. VALIDATE, VALIDATE, VALIDATE. 🙂 Love this Mateen, thank you for posting
It’s key man, the more it’s drilled into our heads the better!
Hey Mateen, thanks for the insights in your daily business, keep it up 🙂 One think I would like to know is, many times I read about facebook ad account bans for different reasons. Have you ever been banned on facebook? If yes, what was the reason for?
I actually have never been banned. I’ve had my ads disapproved for all legitimate reasons.
I think those that have had their accounts banned have done something shady even if it’s something small.
Hi Mateen. At the end of this video did you mean that you tested these products out on a generic store, that includes lots of other products other than jewellery? or did you actually setup a jewellery specific store to test these 7 products? I’m only asking just to clarify what you said at the end, as all 7 of your examples above were jewellery.
p.s By the way, loving these series of videos/case studies showing a different take on getting started with Shopify, with what is effectively an almost real time follow along step by step complete beginners guide to getting started with drop shipping on Shopify, as opposed to the usual (although often still very informative) “I’m an experienced Shopify seller and this how I make 7 figures…” type of training. It’s refreshing. Thanks and I hope you hit a big winning campaign soon.
Hey Mark,
Yes, this is a generic store. I sell all kinds of things including jewellery.
The only reason I set up specific stores or FB pages is when one of my product kicks off and starts making sales profitably.
I’m no guru when it comes to shopify or drop shipping so I guess it’s a journey along with me to make this work.
Thanks for the feedback, now I know what to blog about!
Thanks for the reply. I assumed that is what you meant. Just wanted to clarify it. Yes, we get to learn along with you and that’s why it’s interesting. A different take on it. And I’ll definitely be following your future blogs.
This is an epic post showing practical guide. I am following your blog and this post gave lots of hope. Thank you for this!
No worries!
Solid post Mateen!
Question – for a post per engagement ad, you only pay if somebody likes or shares it? I only run AdWords traffic ATM, so FB is black magic for me.
Also, as an aside, your store location is in one of your pics. Don’t know if that’s intentional.
Yes, but the better your CTR, the less you’ll pay for this. Kind of like Adwords.
Do you mean the domain name? That’s cool! I figured it’s just easier to be open about it
do you have skype?
I do but don’t really use it much!
Hello MATEEN,
I can’t thank you enough for all precious information you provide us through your amazing blog posts!
Quick question please, what payment methods are accepted on your store? PayPal + Cards? or PayPal only?
If more than one, which one is the most used by your customers?
Thanks again!
No worries!
Paypal + Credit card. I used to do just paypal but noticed people prefer credit card as well and I’m missing out on sales!
Hey Mateen, First of all I want to appreciate for sharing every single detail of your experiment and disclosing that you made $44 loss out of this. I am also running a shopify store that only sells sports good. I started facebook campaigns without knowing too much about it and lost few thousands initially, during research I found out Trackify fb pixel app that helps you build niche audience and create multiple events at every step to optimize ads I am still a learner but I can tell that I am doing quite good with this J It would be great if you also try it and share some useful insights that can help people like me.
Hey Adam, is there anything specific you would like to know? There’s a ton of videos on my youtube you can check out.