9 Principles Every eCommerce Brand Should Adopt in their Paid Media Strategies (Facebook & IG)

Running FB & IG Ads for your eCom Store and find yourself often left Frustrated?

It's nearly Q4 now and since the eCom & FB Ads space is always booming, I want to Share what I've learnt from helping my clients scaling their stores with FB/IG Ads and also failing countless times myself and learning the hard way.

Through testing and listening to the best in business I've come up with these Core Principles which have really helped me on my journey and I hope they can do the same for you....

Word of Warning. I've observed that the success in any industry mostly comes down to mindset. Skills can be learnt by almost anyone with enough time. Just because I am not giving you the exact tactics to scale your FB Ads etc. do not think this advice won't help. 

My aim is to not give you fish on a plate (because there are way too many variables involved for that) but to teach you how to fish so you will never go Hungry....

Ignite Your Q4 Flame with these 9 eCommerce & FB/IG Ad Principles:

1) Never Give up

Sounds too Simple but Good Business is often Simple and effective. In essence, If you never give up, learn from your tests and just focus on eCommerce, whether that is dropshipping or not, and the marketing (FB in this case) you will eventually win guaranteed. Be in it for the long-term. Don't fall for shiny penny syndrome!

2) Data is King

Always obsess over your Facebook ad data and numbers like nothing else and you will have confidence and conviction to test new things in your store and across your FB campaigns

3) Be aware that there isn't any 'secret' to Facebook ads or IG ads.

It just takes hard work, more testing and learning from that testing and creating your own 'winning formula'. Sure you always want to learn from people who are experiencing massive success with FB Ads in eCom but you also need to really get in the Trenches and understand the process from your own experience. It's not a coincidence that most stock traders start out losing money, even when they read 1000 books and the same applies here. Flat out copying others kind of thinking leads to short-term average results and long-term failure

4) You have to lose (invest) money to make money.

See it as buying data and Knowledge which will compound and you can leverage in the future because you are seeing what works and what doesn't. Many newbies get it wrong here. I know because I did it myself. Just think of the law of compounding and use it as your secret weapon

5) Remove emotion,

Become data driven and think long-term all the time. You will see beginners doing dropshipping (no judging as I did this myself!) saying 'someone help me, i have spent $20 and im not making a huge ROI from 2 days testing'. Facebook takes time to optimize especially with a new store. 5/7 days, or even longer, is usually the best for revealing what is working, some of the best campaigns are below par on day one. But this is why it is so important that you know your numbers so you can make 'bets' on new campaigns with conviction. This includes all your back-end numbers, know it to the decimal place. E.g. LTV, ROI, ROAS, Profit Margins, all logistical info, staff etc. etc. If you suck at accounting you're going to get destroyed in this line of business. Read some books and get organized!

6) Re-target

When you are scaling always re-target, takes on average 7 interactions for cold customers to buy your product across all industries so if you don't re-target you aren't maximizing the opportunity and your competition will take your customers.

7) Keep leveraging your data,

Creating custom audiences, uploading email lists and making Lookalike audiences from that and testing them because Facebook loves accurate data so the more you can feed it the better results it will return for you. See Facebook like an animal and it's favorite food is data. When you feed it data it's performance is fast, powerful and incredible but if you don't feed it data it's slow, lethargic and ineffective.

8. Back-end

Have a solid email marketing campaigns in place from day 1, email marketing still works so don't get all hyped up about chatbots before you focus on that (Don't get me wrong, i think conversational commerce is going to be amazing but it's still early days so focus on what is battle-tested to start with then move to newer territories). Again, testing as much as possible with every variable, tracking and optimizing in email marketing will guarantee amazing results. But the Ultimate Goal is to make a connection with your audience and they will be your customers forever

9. ALWAYS PUT YOUR CUSTOMERS FIRST.

So many dropshippers don't care about their customers, long shipping times, poor packaging, slow customer response times etc.

If you were the customer would you like that??

No of course you wouldn't. (You probably shop on Amazon and use prime!)

If you make this a priority you will be head and shoulders above the rest.. trust me. If you make your customer experience amazing, then your customers will buy from you even without re-marketing and also word of mouth. This is one of the main reasons Jeff Bozos is the richest man in the world.

Bonus Tip: Understand Core Marketing Principles that have worked for years, regardless of what platform you advertise on. Marketing is all based around human psychology so as long as humans are around the same principles will stand! Read books like 'Breakthrough Advertising' by Eugene M. Schwartz and 'Ogilvy on Advertising' by David Ogilvy. These are 2 Classics which have stood after all the technological advancements.

Block out the Noise, become confident and at ease with your ability to master the eCom and FB Ads Game.

I would say Good Luck at this point but I have learned that Luck doesn't really apply.

People who win at this game put in hard work over long periods of time and Control their fate by setting a goal, listening to feedback and constantly optimizing.

If you do this, the World is your Oyster and you will become an eCom/FB & IG Ad Master.

Enjoy Q4 & make it yours!

-Nigel Thomas

P.S. If you have any questions just let me know in the comments or send me a quick message, thanks!