Facebook Advertising Basics for E - commerce Companies with Jamie Stenton

Andy Splichal:

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichel, and we are happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is Facebook advertising basics for e commerce companies. Today's guest is the director of a digital marketing agency, Lilac James, that specializes in Google advertising, SEO and social media marketing. He has helped hundreds of clients achieve sustainable digital growth since 2008. In addition, he is the newest contributor to make each click count university with his Masterclass Beginners guide to meta ads for e commerce a big welcome to Jamie Stinton. Hi Jamie.

Jamie Stenton:

Hello. Thank you very much for having me. That's really, it's a pleasure to be here.

Andy Splichal:

Well, thanks for coming on. So let's get started talking about your new Masterclass beginner's guide to meta ads for e commerce, which covers essential Facebook meta advertising techniques. Can you share with your listeners what the key steps involved on setting up Facebook advertising elements are? The Facebook Pixel conversion API, etcetera.

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah. So when I was composing the course, essentially what I did is designed a really simple checklist because there's a bunch of things that need doing just to set up your ecommerce account the right way. So, you know, you have to have your pixel installed and you have to have your conversion API installed. Conversion API. I think people used to think that this was quite a complex thing, and perhaps it was a while ago. Nowadays it's really, really simple. So if you're running your store on Shopify or WordPress or anything, really, there's always a simple integration somewhere to ensure that your conversion API can run what we do. See, because some clients don't like it, they don't like conversion API because it sends data from your server and they worry about data sharing.

Jamie Stenton:

And, you know, if they're running data, if they're running ads in Europe or America or the UK, they tend to have slightly different perceptions on what data consent they need for conversion API. Some clients say, we just don't want that, we're not going to have it at all. We always see lesser results when they eventually decide that they're okay to have it. We see probably, I mean, Facebook will tell you it's 19%, a 19% improvement in conversions. We think it's a bit more. We would say that it's around 30% to 35% improvements that we'll see. I think the main thing is that although this is just the conversions that reported, so some clients are happy to say, do you know what? We're not that bothered because these conversions will happen anyway. But the caveat to that is what happens when Facebook can record more events is the AI can optimize far better.

Jamie Stenton:

So you're not just having it there to record, so you can work out what your returns are. It actually helps your campaigns improve because the system can learn the type of people that are buying your products more and more.

Andy Splichal:

For people who are not familiar, I mean, can you go into what is the conversion API and what are the alternatives that the other companies might want to use?

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah, so initially there was just the Facebook pixel, which people should be familiar with. And essentially, if you've got Facebook here, Facebook ads manager here, and you've got the website, the pixel was just a little bit of code that sat on the website that allowed the Facebook ads manager and the website to send data back and forth to each other. And it was as simple as that. However, what then happened with. I think Apple really started it with iOS 14 when they started having issues with data sharing agreements, and they started sending these cookie policies coming up where you can accept and reject. And now it's evolved even further with consent. Version two from Google and all of this side of things, version API adds like a triangulation. So there's a little fly buzzing around in this office.

Jamie Stenton:

So it adds like a triangulation. So not only does it send data backwards and forwards between the website, but it sends data backwards and forwards between the server as well. Now the risk with that is that you end up counting the same event twice. But then Facebook goes through what's called a de duplication process, which just makes sure that you will only count this. You count one event on one occasion, and this is why. So if the pixel misses an event, the chances are the conversion API will catch it and vice versa. If you miss it. With server tracking, you pick it up.

Jamie Stenton:

With the pixel tracking, there's a bunch of ways you can integrate it.

Andy Splichal:

And so people don't want to use it because they're worried that that violates privacy laws.

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah. So generally with people's. If you look at all the consent options that come up when it talks about what it talks about generally is sending information from the website around Facebook ads, it doesn't actually talk about the server side tracking and sending data that way sometimes. So we have a really big, large e commerce client that sells products between Germany, Japan, the US and Europe with a focus on Germany. And they really weren't happy with it because they had all these different competing data laws, but all they did is they just wrote a bit of extra stuff into their data sharing agreement. So it's quite simple, but generally it's not something smaller businesses concern themselves too much with.

Andy Splichal:

Well, let's talk about Facebook. I mean, once you get everything set up right. I keep hearing from advertisers one of their common complaints is that Facebook's oversaturated and what were four, five, six years ago? Cheaper ads where you could really be profitable. It's a lot more difficult now to be profitable running Facebook ads. How would you address that concern?

Jamie Stenton:

So I think Facebook is, outside of Google, the best place that you can advertise for most things. Not everything, but for most things, I think it's just supply and demand. And the demand wouldn't be there for Facebook advertising space if the product wasn't good. You know, I think we've. We've tried advertising, or we have advertised on lots of different channels. You know, we've done a bit of TikTok and we've done. We've done Snapchat and X or what's Twitter, et cetera. Nothing comes close to Facebook and Google in terms of how sophisticated their AI is and their systems are at finding you the correct buyer.

Jamie Stenton:

So, you know, I'm actually bumping into a problem recently where the CPM. The cost per milli. So that's the. I know you understand, but for the listeners, that's the cost to reach 1000 people. And the cost per milli is the highest I've ever seen it on Facebook. But I think this is because we're targeting small business owners in the US. So I think that the. And the client doesn't have Instagram account, which limits the placements the ads can show on, so it can only show on the Facebook feed.

Jamie Stenton:

And he's also not running video assets yet. We're developing him towards that, which means that all the video placements are restricted. So his ads are forced just into the real prime real estate, which is the Facebook newsfeed. Now, that is where you'll get most of your conversions. But really, if you want to drive down the cost of the CPM, you need to be advertising across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, all of the Facebook platforms. So messenger, etcetera, just use the advantage plus placements feature. So that's letting the AI show it wherever, wherever it thinks it's going to stand the best chance of having a successful conversion. And also integrate videos into your ads, because then it opens up the video feed, the reels feed, the stories feed and more.

Jamie Stenton:

So there's so many different parts where your ads can appear. But if you want to just laser in on that Facebook feed or just the Instagram feed, you will pay more for that, for that privilege.

Andy Splichal:

Now, how important do you think that Google Analytics four is in tracking Facebook results? Or do you not even worry about that? Do you just go off of what Facebook is reporting?

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah, we do a bit of both Google Analytics and Facebook. They attribute sales very differently. So Facebook can do it in a variety of ways, but the widest way is what's called a seven day click or one day view. Different people have different opinions about what's best because you can do one day click. So all this means is seven day click. One day view means if somebody has clicked on your ad and within seven days completes your optimization event for ecom, that's going to be a purchase. That's what you want to do. You want to make a sale.

Jamie Stenton:

So if somebody clicks on your ad and then within seven days makes that sale, it will attribute the sale. Or if they've seen your ad, and this is where it can be a little bit. I think Facebook pushes the boundaries with attribution sometimes, because if they've seen your ad, they haven't necessarily engaged with it, they haven't clicked on it. You know, they haven't even necessarily hovered over it, but they've seen your ad, but then have bought from your website within 24 hours, it can still attribute the sale. So what my reservation is with that is that sometimes that sale might have happened anyway. This might just be somebody who's an engaged shopper, they're looking for garden furniture, they've been on your website, perhaps through a Google Ad, and then might be.

Andy Splichal:

Retargeting with a Facebook ad.

Jamie Stenton:

Retarget through Facebook. They don't even click on the ad, don't even engage with it, but they just scroll straight by and Facebook tries to claim the same sale, whereas Google has actually generated that sale. So the thing with digital marketing is it's not always entirely clear, because Google will do it on a last touch basis. And now it's doing this. You might understand better than me about this new modeling computer modeling system that it's using. And so it's not always straightforward. Sometimes Google will tell you nowadays that you've got 8.47 sales and the client will be saying to me, you know, what does 0.47 sales mean? And that's just like, it's difficult to sort of explain that and get that through to the client. But with GA four, we do use URL parameters to track the meta ads through to GA four.

Jamie Stenton:

Now you won't have any signs in, you won't be able to track without having URL parameters. You can build that in the. In Facebook. I've got a video on my YouTube which explains exactly how you do that. It's actually really simple. It can seem quite complicated, but when somebody just spends a few minutes like it does on the video, explaining that, it's dead straightforward. Sorry, go on.

Andy Splichal:

No, I was just wanting to get in a little bit more into the masterclass. I mean, mention the video, but the masterclass. So I guess, you know, without giving away the whole thing, can you discuss the importance of audience targeting that you go over and the campaign structures?

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah. So audience targeting, there's two main ways of doing it nowadays on Google. No, in fact, there's a lot of ways, but let me just take you through. I'll take you through the main way and I go into a lot of detail around this. On the masterclass, it used to be that you had custom audiences and then you had, you had detailed targeting. So a custom audience is an audience that you create with your own data. So that could be people who visited your website, it might be that you've got a customer list, it might be people who've engaged with you on Facebook or who like and follow you on Facebook, that sort of thing. So it's data of people who have already interacted with your business.

Jamie Stenton:

Then you have your detailed targeting, which is where you would say, hey, Facebook, I want to target women who are over 50, who are within 50 miles of London, England, who have also got interests in healthcare or something like that. So this is where you would be super targeted and you would really tell Facebook what it is, who it is that you want to reach. Then Facebook have introduced something called their advantage plus audience targeting, which is kind of similar to the performance max that you'll be working with and on Google.

Andy Splichal:

Right.

Jamie Stenton:

And it's basically allowing the AI to figure out what your ad is to figure out who it is to be delivered for and to get it in front of those people. And I'd say maybe a year ago, we always found that we could get better results with detailed targeting in custom audiences, that sort of thing. Nowadays we find when we work with the AI tools, we'll almost always form everything else that we do.

Andy Splichal:

Interesting.

Jamie Stenton:

And then go on.

Andy Splichal:

Well, I was just wondering, so do you test anymore or do you just go straight with the AI tool?

Jamie Stenton:

No, always testing, always, always testing. For e commerce in particular, though, there's really kind of, because we work with e commerce brands, lots of different markets, etcetera, what we have seen is a consistent way that, that we sort of tend to get the best results every single time. And that is, and again, it goes into it in the masterclass. But if you go into the account settings section of your ads manager and you can tell Facebook, these are my existing customers, so these are all the people who have already bought from me. So you set up a custom event which is for purchases over 180 day period, which is the maximum period you can do. You might also have a custom list. So you might have, you know, you might have made 5000 sales this year. And you have names, addresses, emails from all of these people.

Jamie Stenton:

You upload that into the Facebook system and you say, hey, all these people who have bought through the website in the past six months and all of these 5000 people, they're my existing customers. That's who I have already sold to. All these people who have added to cart initiated checkout, they're my highly engaged audience. So you prime their back end system, if you like their data center with all of this information. If you do that, what Facebook can do is it can learn the type of person who buys your stuff and who engages with your audience. Then the AI can easier go out and find these people. If you don't take that step and you just leave Facebook to just run off and do whatever it wants, it can still work if your product's really easy to understand. So if you're selling office furniture, Facebook will understand that and it will go, okay, here's Andy and he's been looking for office furniture online, therefore it goes through its database.

Jamie Stenton:

Right, we've got Jamie, he's trying to sell some office furniture. Let's put Jamie's ads in front of Andy. And it's nice and simple, but not all products are that straightforward. You know, some, some of our products actually, you know, we do really need to get it into a specific individual with a specific problem. And if you prime Facebook with that data in the ad account settings, and this isn't made obvious to people, this isn't something I think a lot of Facebook marketers actually really know about. I think they just over rely on the AI, hoping that AI is just going to do everything for them. But you have to do that groundwork and that's what it goes into in the masterclass.

Andy Splichal:

How many people do you need? How many prior customers do you need to be able to feed into that, to have AI learn what, have Facebook's AI learn what kind of customers you're looking for?

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah, there's no minimum amount. There's no minimum amount on there. And obviously the longer you're. Because you might, you know, if I started an ads manager account today with a new pixel, new conversion API and I just, I'm making, let's say 30 sales a day, it's going to take a while for that data to build. So the more you advertise, the stronger that will get, the stronger the performance will become. For custom audiences. Generally, it's, it's a thousand, you need at least a thousand people within there. So, you know, if you're, if you want to make a custom audience of, you know, website visitors or people who visited a specific page, generally speaking, it's about a thousand that you need.

Jamie Stenton:

So that is, that is what I feel is the drawback of pushing in the direction of all this. AI is. AI is fantastic, but it, it's just a machine that's crunching numbers. Right?

Andy Splichal:

I.

Jamie Stenton:

So it's just data. Data. So this is why, as I'm sure you'll have experienced plenty of frustrations with Google, Andy, where it's like you need to put your budget up and if you put your budget up, we'll get you these great results. And sometimes, you know, as the human making the decision, that's not actually the best result at this point for the client just to tip, you know, another hundred dollars a day or whatever into an account. But that's what their computer will tell you to do because what it's basically screaming is, give me more data.

Andy Splichal:

More data. Yeah, I mean, the classic, I mean, it's great and it really shows someone how to effectively, you know, use Facebook advertising. But I guess I'm just, I'm curious about once you're going, what's your methodology on the scaling ads and how do you, you know, figure out the risk and benefits for, you know, we believe in the AI and, you know, we had just talked about, you know, they're screaming for more data, wanting you to up the budget. But how do you decide when, when to do that? And how quickly do you scale your ads?

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah, so it's not. And this is something that I'll cover with you when I do the advanced masterclass that is planned. I've just got to film it and then I'll get that over to you. And this is one of the main topics that I'll go over in that. But I guess to tease it, it's not a straightforward answer and I guess experience comes a lot into it. But one of the things that we talk about with our clients is we talk about a bell curve in terms of performance. And generally speaking, the more budget you put into something, the performance will improve and it'll improve until a point, because there's only so many buyers in any given market. So what you're essentially looking for is that tip of the iceberg.

Jamie Stenton:

And then you'll start results, you'll see results start to tail off, unless you start employing other strategies. So the good example of this, we've got a client that sells just within the UK. They're a multi million pound business and they sell. They're the UK's biggest supplier of astronomy equipment. So they sell beginners, ranges of telescopes and that sort of thing. A little bit archaic in terms of the industry. Most of their competitors are still running, like print magazines and articles, and they've sort of realized that that digital really is the way forward because it's provable, it's trackable, etcetera. And what they've said to us is they're happy.

Jamie Stenton:

So every beginner's telescope they sell, there is at least 45 pounds in profit in that telescope, of which they're happy to assign a third of it to acquire the sale. Now, the reason they adopt that strategy is because they know a good proportion of people who buy their beginner's telescopes are going to upgrade to their medium ranges and they're going to go on.

Andy Splichal:

Suspension with the most high lifetime value.

Jamie Stenton:

Exactly, yeah. Lifetime customer value. And so what we do is we use that 15 pounds per sale as a metric of basically how much market demand there is and where to push the budget to. So we'll be running an ad with at least 30 different ads within the campaign. So this is advantage plus 30 different ads in the campaign. What will happen is there'll be some news event about some meteor shower or something like that, and we'll notice market demand increases. And what we see is the cost per acquisition dips, the cost per acquisition starts coming down and it will go from, say, pound twelve to ten pounds. And then when it starts hitting about ten pounds, we'll be saying to our clients, we'll be saying, right, we should push on with the budget a little bit here, and we'll start making more sales.

Jamie Stenton:

But you'll see the cost per acquisition start to sneak up. When we start getting to around 1314, 1515 pounds, then we know we've sort of hit the top of that bell curve. And again, if we come above and we start getting to like 17, 1819, then we just dip the budget down, because all that clients doing is they're just looking for that real low hanging fruit in the market, and they're looking to essentially ride the waves of the existing demand that's in the market.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, that's interesting. You know, what that really shows is the importance to know your numbers and proper tracking as well, which absolutely, you go in and the fundamentals. So I'm curious, I guess, who should be taking this masterclass, in your opinion?

Jamie Stenton:

Anybody who's interested in growing their e commerce business, basically. You know, if they don't have that much experience in Facebook ads, or maybe they're outsourcing their Facebook ads and they're not convinced they're getting the best value for money, they're not convinced they're getting the best results. Even businesses like the fundamentals that I've shown to, it is specific to e commerce. But actually, if you go through the checklist and you follow a lot of the fundamentals that I talk about, it is relevant to anybody that's advertising on Facebook, e commerce businesses. The way that I look at it is Google Ads is the king of targeting people at the tip of the iceberg. So we have clients who sell garden furniture. So they're one of the UK's biggest suppliers of garden furniture. And if somebody's typing in Rattan garden furniture set, or, you know, gas fire pit garden furniture set, and we can get our clients products at that very moment, they're looking for it and get it in front of them, then that's super strong.

Jamie Stenton:

You know, that's, that's, you don't get, you don't get any better than that. But that's only the top sort of like 3% of people in the market, I would say, you know, the real tip of the iceberg, the people who are walking around with their credit card out and they're just looking to make a sale for stuff that you're selling. Google will get to those people. It also gets to people really well in that information gathering mode where they're, like, researching products, because people do a lot of research nowadays. Facebook is fantastic for targeting people a little bit further above in the customer journey than that. So people who have a nice garden, but, you know, it's looking a bit run down, it's looking a bit shabby. They haven't renewed their garden furniture for ten years, 15 years. That's the people.

Jamie Stenton:

But they're not necessarily shopping for garden furniture. That's who Facebook can really get into. So we always encourage our e comm clients to do both because Facebook will. Sorry, Google will absolutely get people in that information gathering, and the tip of the iceberg, and Facebook will pick everybody up and it will also has fantastic retargeting. So it's going to really reach everybody who's already engaged with the website and already sort of had a good shop around online.

Andy Splichal:

You know, I got to say, that's one of the best explanations I think I've heard on Google versus Facebook ads. The way that you just described it with the iceberg and. And how Google can reach them right when they're going to do it, but Facebook maybe a little bit more of figuring out the audience that could be wanting to buy your stuff, you know, I'm curious, how did you get into digital marketing?

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah, it's a funny one for me, actually. I'm an ex senior detective, police officer, so I did that pretty much when I left college. That's what I did. I wanted to run around on the streets locking up villains and that sort of thing. My family had a digital marketing company, and it went through a little bit of a rocky patch because of just a couple of key members of staff sort of moved on at the same time, nothing, you know, it's just one of those things. One of them went traveling, one of them took another job. And so I stepped into the business to sort of steady the ship, sort of thing, because I was already managing in the police, this was back in 2015, I think, and was just really good at it and managed to grow the agency. So I was lucky because when I stepped into doing Facebook marketing and digital marketing, I had people to learn from.

Jamie Stenton:

I had people who I could, like, run a campaign and ask them questions about it and, you know, see where I was going wrong and what I could learn from their mistakes. I think that was the big thing. And I think that's. That is the great thing of, you know, taking a course and listening to podcasts and all of that, because you can learn from the mistakes that other people have made, because anybody with a bit of skin in the game has made way more mistakes than they'd like to admit to.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, for sure.

Jamie Stenton:

So yeah, like nine years doing this now and it's changed and continues to change so much. It's like every time we log into the systems nowadays, they seem to operate just slightly different or a different button, a different functionality appears. But if you stick to the fundamentals which are taught in the masterclass, then you will be fine. If you stick to those basic principles of marketing which haven't been any different for the last hundred years, then you're going to be fine.

Andy Splichal:

And if somebody wanted to learn more about working with you directly, how could they do that?

Jamie Stenton:

Yeah, they can visit the website, which is lilacjames.com, or just email me jamielockjames.com. i'm perfectly or connect with me on LinkedIn, just search me on LinkedIn, you can find me there. Reach out however you want.

Andy Splichal:

Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up today, Jamie?

Jamie Stenton:

No, I look forward to doing the advanced one for you, which, like I said, we'll cover all around, all around scaling and how to really sort of push on with your ads. Because you know, what we always advise our clients is to start with a modest budget. It has to be healthy. It has to be relatively healthy because of the data that we spoke about. You need to start gathering and analyzing that information. But you start modest, and then when you have returns that you're comfortable with on a smaller budget, then you just start building, building. And I'm going to show you exactly, exactly how we do that, the process that we take our clients through.

Andy Splichal:

Well, that's great. We're excited to see that. And thanks for your time today, Jamie.

Jamie Stenton:

No problem at all. Thank you for having me.

Andy Splichal:

For listeners, remember, if you liked this episode, please go to Apple Podcast and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Jamie, you'll find the links in the show notes below. In addition, if you're interested in his masterclass, visit Make Each Click Account University, where you can currently access his masterclass and all other content for just $19 a month. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.