As Facebook continues to bring down the organic reach of promotional posts, paid Facebook ads have become the most effective form of social media marketing.

93% of marketers use Facebook ads regularly. This means that all significant e-commerce brands are flooding their potential customers' newsfeeds with ads.

In such a case, how do you catch the attention of your potential customers and get them to click through to your website?

1. Make sure your ad is attractive.
2. Make sure your ad resonates with the audience you’re targeting.

Facebook ads should be eye-catching, and they must have something special to offer to the viewers they are aiming to turn into buyers. This requires getting a few things right.

Facebooks pulls product images from a store’s feed, and displays them in plain catalog format for carousel ads, which are the most successfully-run ads.

Consider this: in a matter of 10 mins, an engaged shopper interested in high fashion sees 5 carousel ads from 5 different apparel fashion brands. This means they get to see a string of apparel images on white templates, some cropped, some not, and it’s quite likely that the targeted customer skips over them.

Wordstream found that the average clickthrough rate on FB ads is 0.9%.

So, how do you hike it up? How can you make sure your target audience stops at your ad and clicks over to your website to make a purchase?

We’ve found that the most effective way to increase CTR on Facebook ads is by creating Branded Ad Catalogs.

You’ve seen these around. Amazon uses them. H&M uses them. So do Chopard, BodyShop, Adidas and all big brands that have stayed ahead of the race.

What are Branded Catalogs?

These are ad catalogs run on templates that can range from a simple frame around the product image and a sale sticker, to those that highlight any important information that you wouldn't want the buyer to miss.

Amazon adds their logo and review rating on their designed catalogs.

H&M has their logo and product pricing on their ad catalogs.

Placing your brand logo on your ad establishes authenticity and authority right away. Amazon’s customers don’t have to browse through all products in a particular category to check which one has been rated highly and is worth buying, while H&M’s potential customers get to see the product price straightaway to know whether they want to make that purchase.

While, by default, catalogs are created on plain white templates, Facebook now lets you add a frame and a price or sale sticker, if you want to make your ad stand out.

This is great, but there’s much more that can be done with Branded Catalogs. Most store owners spend a lot of time detailing out product information, pricing, deals and discounts in the ad caption. Sadly, most target customers do not even look at the caption.

You have only a few seconds to catch their attention. The ad graphic is all you have.

With Branded Catalogs you can announce sales, daily deals, new collections, bestsellers (right on the ad graphic itself!)—anything that you, as the store owner, think will get customers to your store.

Branded Catalogs are proven to increase CTR by an average of 80%-200% and hike up ROAS quickly. Read our case study on how fashion brand SR store multiplied their ROAS 10x in 30 days with Socioh’s Branded Catalogs.

What’s even better? Once you have audience in your Facebook Pixel, you can use Branded Catalogs to target buyers at every stage of their purchase journey.Here’s how:

Audience who’ve Viewed Content (VC)

These are people who’ve visited your store but left without taking any significant action. This means that they aren’t totally uninterested in your store. They may also have left for reasons unrelated to your website content, such as inconvenient timing or not being able to find a relevant product on the homepage.

Target this audience with a Bestseller ad catalog. These can be items that are actual best sellers on your store or items you would want to specifically promote as bestsellers.

If they have viewed a particular category, target them with products from that particular section. For instance, if you own an apparel store, and your visitors have viewed content from the men’s jacket section, target them with more men’s jackets.

Bonus:

‍To add more juice to your VC retargeting, target audience in this segment with catalogs that have lifestyle images of the same product. Selling maternity wear? Show real, pregnant women wearing them in your ad catalogs instead of just displaying the product image.

Audience who’ve Added to Cart (ATC)

These are people who have added items to cart but haven’t checked them out. You can assume that these people are significantly interested in your store, and may have abandoned checkout for unrelated reasons.

Segment this audience and show them two kinds of catalogs:

‍ATC 0-2 days: Target this group with their carted items in catalogs that say ‘Limited Stock’ or ‘Selling Out’. The idea is to add urgency, that would make this group check out their carted items.

ATC 3-7 days: Target this group with their carted items in catalogs that have a ‘Coupon Code’. If pricing is what kept them from checking out, this will probably make them purchase. Plus, everyone likes a good deal.

Audience who've Purchased from your store (Past Purchasers)

Target people who’ve already bought from your store with new arrivals. Unless they have complaints against your product, these people already trust your brand and are very likely to purchase again.

Showcase new arrivals, new collections, and exclusive deals to this group.

Bonus:

‍One of the best times to target Past Purchasers is during the lead-up to a special occasion such as Valentine’s Day or Christmas. Show them ‘Exclusive Collection’ or ‘Recommended’ items specific to the occasion in specially designed themed templates. Aside from highlighting a special collection, themed templates garner enough attention to warrant a second look.

Last Word

You don’t always need to have a sale to catch customer attention. In the case of Branded Catalogs, the design element itself is attention-grabbing.

You could have a simple frame around your product image in your brand colors, or a background in brand color gradient, or just your logo, and it would still stand out.

At the end of the day, there are are two things to keep in mind while creating your catalog:

• Ensure your products don’t get cropped or distorted. Since Facebook auto-pulls your images directly from your store, and products are generally of varying sizes, cropping is a common issue. A solution for this problem? Socioh’s Branded Catalogs. Our catalog templates come in 7 different variations. When product images get pulled from the store, they are fitted into the template variation best suited to their dimensions.

• Ensure that important information such as discounts, sales and coupon codes are highlighted well enough for your audience to notice them. This is especially problematic in Instagram ads where ad captions do not stand out at all. Here, unless you display information on the ad graphic itself, your customers are most likely to miss out on anything you may have to offer.

Try out Socioh's Branded Catalogs now! The first one is FREE to make. Sign up!

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