Currently at Byrne Media, we work primarily with Facebook ads for our clothing and fashion clients. It’s a fantastic platform to utilise and offers some great objectives when running advertisements on both Facebook and Instagram.
When we audit accounts for clothing brands, we tend to see problems that need addressing. There could be an ad structure issue, or the type of ads that are being published because they are not doing a good job of acquiring attention for the audiences they target.
There can be multiple reasons why an ad account is not performing. So in today’s article I want to focus on the idea of how you can make better ads when advertising your fashion brand on Facebook.
Let’s dive right in…
Develop a Compelling Offer
When running ads for the most part, you need to create and advertise a compelling offer that gets your audience’s attention. It’s like the core element to running an ad. Everything you create for the ad in terms of copy & creative is designed to draw your target audience’s attention to the offer or brand value you are trying to convey.
Fashion ads often fail to convert because they don’t have a compelling offer that stands out from other brands and make the viewers want to buy their clothing and fashion items right away.
As a result, their advertising tends to just blend in with other fashion brands that are not promoting a compelling offer. Their offer & messaging looks similar to other fashion brands, and the potential customer scrolls past the ad without paying attention to it.
So how can you craft an irresistible offer that makes potential customers notice your fashion Facebook ads in their newsfeed and want to click them?
First things first…
Start off by understanding your target audience and their needs, wants and desires. Once you know what your audience wants, put together an offer by highlighting the best features and benefits of your collection, offer discounts, free shipping and include a strong Call-To-Action to get people to buy your products right away.
You can also test the idea of adding an element of scarcity and urgency in your offer to create hype around your collections so customers feel like they’d miss out on trending designs if they don’t buy from you.
A few reasons why this ad to the left works so well.
- It’s got plenty of social proof. You can see it’s got high engagement with all the likes, comments and shares it received from the audience it targeted.
- The offer for 10% off would have influenced the target audience to purchase.
- The football jersey themed t-shirt was a popular product. Including a good product image helped to show off the product in an effective way.
Run Ads to Lookalike Audiences
We always recommend using lookalike audiences in your campaigns. The reason for this is because these are audiences that are of similar attributes to the audiences you are currently using to drive sales conversions.
Who doesn’t want more people who have a very good chance of converting into more sales?
It’s a bit of a no brainer really!
The more you drive sales conversions on Facebook’s platform, the more Facebook learns who on their platform is going to realistically purchase from your store. It’s like data mining for more sales conversions with data you already have.
Creating ads for these lookalike audiences and hooking them into your sales funnel will also be easier as you would already be aware of the preferences of your current customer base. You’ll be able to communicate more effectively and will understand their pain points better.
Here’s why running ads for a lookalike audience can be beneficial for your brand:
Save Ad Spend
Since you already know about the audience from previous data, you can reduce the money spent. You can target them directly with better ads as no time will be wasted identifying the right audience. Running ads for lookalike audiences also helps you reduce the customer acquisition cost by a significant percentage.
Improve Conversion Rates
Lookalike audiences can get you better conversion rates, as it’s easier to convince them to buy your products due to similar interest with your current audience. You can connect with them faster and convince them with more confidence as you already have an idea about their needs, wants and desires.
Optimise ROI
Targeting a similar audience will help you get better returns on investment due to higher conversion rates. The cost of these ads will also be less and with better response it can yield more leads and sales.
Run Retargeting Ads
You know what they say in marketing.
It takes multiple touch points and follow ups to convert a cold prospect into a customer. Heck! Even warm audiences need a few touch points in order to have them convert into a sale. So what’s a good way to continually communicate to your audience and lead them further down the sales funnel?
Retargeting ads of course!
This type of ad campaign can be very beneficial especially for small businesses as they can’t spend a lot of money on customer acquisition. It helps them reach already warm prospects rather than starting out by selling to a more cold audience who have a lower chance of converting.
As with any type of marketing strategy you implement, it’s always important to do things correctly in order to get the most bang for your ad spend.
Here’s why you should start running retargeting ads:
Convert The Already Interested
It’s tougher to convert an audience who are not aware about your product. Whereas a retargeting audience is already aware about your products and brand. So it will be easier to convert them. Bare in mind that not everyone who visits your website or are aware of what you offer, aren’t necessarily going to buy. About 96% of the visitors won’t make a purchase right away. They need to be advertised a few times before they are convinced to make a purchase..
Minimise Cart Abandonment Rates
Many times visitors add an item to the cart, but leave just before making a purchase. Retargeting helps convert these visitors into customers if you speed up the check out process and take the customer directly to their abandoned cart.
Target Your Audience More Specifically
You can target a very specific audience like you would while running a normal Facebook ad and include only customers who have visited specific pages or added items to your cart to get higher conversion rates without wasting ad spend.
Create Good & Enticing Ad Copy
Let’s Talk About Ad Copy
The type of copy you use in your ads, all depends on the way you want to communicate with audiences who are in different stages of your sales funnel. The ad copy you publish acts as a communication bridge between your visual content (your creative being either video or image) and the action that you want your prospects to take. Typically it’s the creative in your ad that garners attention and once you succeed with that, your copy needs to continue the conversation and keep your audience interested in what you are offering and communicating.
Good copy in your Facebook ad will guide your prospects to move further down your sales funnel and encourage them to visit your site.
Here are some tips to writing effective copy in your ads –
Start With an Enticing Hook
Your copy must have an attention grabbing opening headline or hook that triggers your target audience to engage with your ad further. This will help you cut through the noise and attract prospects to read what your ad is communicating. The Hook/Headline is the first thing people read, so make sure it’s enticing enough to get them to engage with the ad and find out more.
Write Body Copy That Engages Your Audience
The body of your copy must convey the emotion and information of ad. The goal is to engage and lead your audience to follow the call to action. The length and depth of the body copy will depend on the ad type and the customer awareness. If you are targeting a cold audience who have never heard of your brand before, you can test the idea of using longer type form copy to introduce your brand, what you offer & why you are a good choice in the marketplace.
Here’s how you can categorise your customers based on the level of awareness they have with your clothing brand:
– Awareness: This type of prospect is either aware of the problems they are facing, but are unaware of the solution. It can also consist of people who are aware about both their pain and solution, and are actively seeking to solve problems.
Eg: “I don’t know what to wear to this party, but I do know where to find an outfit that will be appropriate to wear for the occasion”
To the first type of prospect, you must first introduce the solution and then get into the benefits in your ad. To the second type of prospect, you should focus on building trust through testimonials and reviews as social proof and communicate your uniqueness before making the ask to eliminate the customer’s hesitation.
– Consideration: This segment of people are already aware about your products and who you are. With that in mind, you must focus on creating urgency and scarcity to attract customers. You can give offers for a limited edition or present an exclusive clothing line.
– Conversion: These customers are easier to convert as they already know what they want. You just have to show them the right products to make a purchase. Typically your copy should be kept short and have a compelling call to action to give potential customers a much needed push.
Utilise Your Ad Title & Description
Your title must be catchy enough to get people to click. But don’t go too fancy and comprise on the clarity of your message. We’ve made this mistake in the past. Confusion is the biggest conversion killer. So keep your copy focused on the product being sold and keep the title concise, add in all the necessary details of the product in the description and end with an actionable CTA.
Take advantage of Ad Scheduling
This is a topic I feel doesn’t get talked about too much. Ad scheduling should be included as part of your ad campaigns.
When I consult with clothing brands for Facebook ads, I tend to notice that many of these brands miss out on Facebook’s ad scheduling feature. It’s a very useful tool when running your ad campaigns.
Why?
When you optimise the ad scheduling feature, you can setup publish dates and choose to show your ads only during certain time slots. This means you can save on your ad spend and reduce your budget by showing ads only during times when your potential customers are most active on Facebook’s platform.
How do you find out when your potential customers are active?
Go to your Audience Insights page to understand when your followers are online the most. This way your ads will be most likely to reach them and you’ll save time from not having to post the ad during peak hours manually.
Be careful with how you optimise your ad scheduling as you don’t want to restrict your time slots too much. Pick multiple time slots when your audience might be online to make sure your ad acquires more reach. An example of this would be, if your audience is most active from 12pm – 3pm and you see a small spike between 6pm – 7pm, be sure to include this time slot as well while running your ads.
Monitor the results you’re getting from the ad scheduling feature and make changes to the ads so you can maximise the results from your ad spend.
Make Sure Your Creatives Grab Attention
The most important part of your ad is the creative. It’s the part of your ad that stops people from scrolling their newsfeed, grabbing their attention and drawing them further into what the ad is communicating.
In a world of social media, where attention is the main currency of any marketing campaign, acquiring eye balls toward your brand has never been more difficult. There is a wealth of content published daily on people’s feeds, which leads to a lot of choice. The result of this means that attention spans are low and getting your potential customers to engage with your brand is ever more challenging.
Even with the right target audience & compelling offer, your ad won’t give you the intended results if the creative can’t do a good job of acquiring their attention.
For an ad to perform efficiently, it must have visuals that clearly communicate your product’s features/benefits and it’s aesthetics.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common creatives you can use for your fashion brand:
Create & Publish Video Ads
I’ve mentioned this in the past with other content I have created and published. You need to be creating video content for your clothing/fashion brand. Your audiences prefer to watch videos over other creatives as they’re easier to process, bring more engagement, imagination and do a better job of influencing and persuading people to purchase.
Lifestyle Images
These types of images are simply pictures of outfits themed around a setting or event where your customers are most likely to wear it. When you show an outfit in a specific setting, your potential customers can paint a mental picture of what they’d look like in the outfit which will help them make a purchase decision. You have to convey what the end result looks like so that they can imagine themselves wearing that hoodie, trousers, sneakers etc etc.
Product Images
These are images of your garments and outfits displayed against a clean background. The contrasting background makes the garments stand out. This draws the audience’s focus toward observing the product, so they stop scrolling and check it out. You can use eye catching captions to demonstrate benefits or UPS’s that you feel are important and indeed help to influence people to purchase.
User Generated Content Creatives
If you’ve read my content in the past, you’ll know I am a big fan of user generated content (UGC). This is where you get your customers to create content based around their personal experience of your clothing. Nothing sells your product better than your customers sharing their positive experience with your products.
Some angles you can test for UGC are –
- Unboxing your products when they are delivered
- Demonstrating benefits and reasons why your customers are wearing one of your Hoodies, Shoes, Dresses etc
- Story telling – (Problem – Solution)
- Happy customer(s) voice on the phone, sharing their delight at using your brand
- Customer Reviews, Testimonials & Feedback
Think About These Things When Creating Ads
There are other factors that contribute to the attractiveness of a clothing ads creative. Things like product photograph quality, the colours and fonts used, design and layers, animation, models used in the shot, the type of themed ad you use (lifestyle, product) etc. These things can all help to develop a creative that garners attention and contributes to a sales conversion process.
Here are a few pointers I recommend when developing your ad creatives. Always bare these things in mind when creating a successful ad.
– Your ad has to be engaging and must grab attention quickly through good designs.
– It must navigate through the steps for an easy buying procedure, so that customers do not leave a purchase midway.
– Your ad should communicate your objective of presenting an offer and conveying your brand’s value.
– The ad copy should offer clarity and use simple yet effective words to persuade prospects to click the ad and move further down the sales process.
That’s a Wrap!
There you have it. I hope you got some value and that you come away with ideas on how to improve the effectiveness of your Facebook Ad campaigns for your fashion brand. Have you tested an ad theory with positive results?
