In the world of e-commerce, the ability to effectively reach and engage with potential customers through digital advertising can make all the difference in driving sales and growing a business.
It’s paramount that you decide on the right placements for your brand to make the most out of your marketing dollars, especially if your margins are narrow.
In this piece, we’re going to look at how Shopify store sellers can capitalize on Facebook Ads to drive sales and create a steady revenue stream.
We’ll tackle each Shopify Facebook ads case study and assess their initial need, how they addressed it through social ads and what results they yielded.
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Do Facebook Ads Play Nice with Shopify Stores?
They do.
In fact, the two platforms work almost seamlessly together with clean integration and intuitive reporting. All it takes is having a sufficiently installed Facebook Pixel, which can be used to communicate with Shopify data.
It’s made easy so that data is transferred directly to and from each platform with no intermediary steps (like importing data from Google Analytics, for example).
Sales data from Shopify can be presented in Facebook Ads Manager, tying conversion activity to sales figures.
On the flip side, Shopify’s dashboard can attribute origin sources for sales, especially including sales from social platforms like Facebook and Instagram:
Related Content: 8 Best Shopify Apps for Growing E-commerce Merchants
7 Examples of a Shopify Facebook Ads Case Study
Facebook is conveniently agile in that it can leverage ads effectively for service-based companies while also serving as a productive e-commerce sales driver, making ads on the social media platform fit like a glove with Shopify sellers.
As we walk through each case study, let’s consider how each brand leveraged social media ads and used them to generate positive results.
1) Arm & Hammer: How a Rotating Video Ad Increased Sales
Church & Dwight, a company that makes consumer goods, wanted to see how effective their ads on Facebook were at selling their Arm & Hammer laundry products in retail outlets.
They wanted to figure out if showing ads on Facebook and Instagram could convince people to buy their stuff in the store, so they made use of Facebook video ads to try to achieve their desired results.
The Solution
They decided to do a test using a tool called Ansa that measures the number of items people purchase in a store after seeing an ad.
The ads they showed were videos with stories that featured families using the Arm & Hammer laundry products and showing how good they were at cleaning clothes.
The ads talked about how the Power Paks and Liquid Detergent work well for different members of the family. They experimented with variants of one video ad that was cycled in and out with new material periodically.
The Results
Deemed a resounding success, the campaign rendered a 5.8% increase in in-store sales for the two main Arm & Hammer products they were advertising and a 10.7% increase in sales for other related products.
The whole project returned revenue that was 12x the ad spend they initially invested into the project. This was a spearhead campaign that inspired numerous campaign iterations to follow.
Read the full case study here.
2) Tomcat: The Time a Facebook Ad Featured Killing Rodents and Blew Up a Fanbase
This case study will one day be a classic icon that we remember as the time Tomcat managed to vilify its target audience by urging them to murder mice.
Debuting on Halloween, Tomcat Rodent Control’s peculiar campaign employed horror film tropes but with an eerie catch: Viewers could choose in real time how each mouse character would meet their demise, effectively becoming killers.
The Solution
The campaign’s objective was to raise brand awareness and increase online reach, video views and engagement via an interactive Facebook Live horror film.
Barton F. Graf, the agency behind the campaign, produced a fake trailer and posters to promote the Halloween live stream (or “Facebook Not Live”), which featured already-dead rodent puppets enjoying a summer cabin getaway. The campaign’s return of the “Dead Mouse Theater” characters, which highlighted the fun one could have with deceased mice, encouraged viewers to participate in the murder of the clueless teenage rodents.
The Results
The campaign reached 2.3 million unique users, with 21% actively participating in the rodent killings, and increased the brand’s Facebook fanbase by 58%. The ad won a Cyber Lion at the Cannes Lions Awards.
Read the full (hilarious) case study here.
Related Content: Facebook Ads E-commerce Case Studies that Increased ROAS
3) Pandora: How Holiday Social Ad Placements Skyrocketed Sales
Pandora, a Danish jewelry company, used Facebook’s automatic placement options to create a Christmas video ad series. The company wanted to generate positive sentiment among German audiences during the Christmas shopping season and measure how ad frequency affected its Facebook advertising campaigns.
Additionally, it aimed to compare in-stream ads to videos running in Facebook News Feed and test whether a brand campaign using videos could have the same impact on its e-commerce business while also building the Pandora brand.
The Solution
To measure the effectiveness of its Facebook Ads, Pandora chose a Germany-wide campaign that ran a video ad on Facebook and targeted people in Germany aged 18-50.
Pandora used Facebook’s automatic placement to guarantee the most efficient in-stream and News Feed placements on Facebook and, in some cases, automatic placements in the audience network.
The Results
The campaign generated an unprecedented view-through rate on in-stream video while also lifting brand sentiment and favorability during a crucial period. The two-month campaign resulted in:
- 10-point increase in favorability
- 61% increase in purchases
- 42% increase in number of buyers
Read the full case study here.
4) RXBAR: Drove In-store Sales with a Multi-Faceted Social Campaign
RXBAR, a U.S. snack food company, faced several industry challenges, including a product recall and the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a decline in sales.
The Solution
To boost brand awareness and sales, the company collaborated with teams across Meta and worked with its agency, Publicis, to develop a multi-asset brand awareness campaign.
The campaign used a combination of ad formats, creative, messaging and placements, including short-form and longer-form video ads and ads in the collection format, to drive product discovery and more sales.
The ad creative highlighted how RXBAR’s real ingredients (“No B.S.!”) and high protein could help fuel active people in their quest for a healthy lifestyle.
The campaign was delivered to adults between the ages of 25-54, including those with health- and wellness-related interests, in Feed and Stories on Facebook and Instagram, as well as in Instagram Explore.
The Results
The campaign brought increased in-store sales by 8.8% for RXBAR and 7.5% for the full RXBAR portfolio of products, according to a Nielsen Catalina Solutions sales lift study.
The team used Meta’s Advantage campaign budget feature to automatically distribute ad spend across the best-performing ad sets in real time.
The success of the campaign showed that using a diversified ad creative strategy consisting of different formats and placements, new lifestyle and brand imagery, and revised product messaging can drive a strong bottom-line impact.
Read the full case study here.
Related Content: 9 Tips for Creating Instagram Video Ads that Actually Generate Sales
5) Femibion: How Social Ads Led to a 35% Higher Conversion Rate
Femibion, a German health brand that produces pregnancy consumer healthcare products, used Facebook lead ads to effectively distribute product samples to potential customers.
Merck Consumer Health, the parent company of Femibion, aimed to raise brand awareness among women in Germany and generate leads for their sampling campaign to provide women with the opportunity to experience the product and its benefits. To achieve these objectives, they executed a multi-stage campaign, including various ad formats, culminating in continual lead flow.
The Solution
The campaign began with carousel and link ads that targeted expectant mothers and were based on “baby-making places,” featuring stylish shots of locations where women might conceive. The campaign then used lead ads retargeted to those who engaged with the initial ads, allowing people to easily sign up and receive a sample of Femibion BabyPlanung.
The Results
Due to careful planning, exquisite creatives and on-target ad delivery, Merck’s campaign for Femibion BabyPlanung surpassed expectations. Over a five-month period, the campaign achieved:
• 10,000 leads generated
• 2X lower sample distribution cost
• 35% increase in conversion rate
Femibion successfully delivered product samples to potential customers, raising brand awareness and generating leads while also decreasing the distribution cost of the samples.
The company’s Facebook campaign helped them gain more attention and recognition in a competitive market, demonstrating the power and utility of well-targeted Facebook Ads.
Read the full case study here.
Related Content: 15 Fast and Easy Ways to Improve Your Site’s Conversion Rate
6) Seltzer Goods: Outperformed Pre-Pandemic Sales by Using Multi-Channel Social Ads
Seltzer Goods, an online retailer of charming stationery, books and other household items, faced a plummet in sales during the pandemic, but instead of scaling back, they doubled down and increased their ad spend, leading to remarkable results.
The Solution
To drive more interest in their products, Seltzer Goods ran one Facebook and one Instagram ad campaign with strong creative and ad copy for both. A receptive (cold) audience was targeted, and an ad budget was carefully scaled. The Facebook pixel was added to the e-commerce site to collect data on purchasers and site visitors, allowing the team to create well-informed ads.
The campaign was structured using a single campaign that targeted cold audiences. A conversion-based approach optimized for purchases was used, which meant Facebook and Instagram served the ads to users most likely to take action.
To keep it simple, all devices and automatic placements were opted into, and a one-day click delivery optimization was used.
For audience targeting, the team started with an interest-based ad set closely related to the puzzles Seltzer Goods was selling, then quickly added in lookalike audiences for key landing page visitors, add-to-cart users and purchasers once the seed audiences were sufficient.
By implementing the Facebook pixel correctly and firing it on key events, such as “View Content” events and “add-to-cart” triggers, the team was able to create a successful Facebook Ad campaign.
The Results
Even in the face of adversity with the looming pandemic, they were able to break new records from the ad campaign, which produced:
- 9.68X return on ad spend
- 785% increase in monthly revenue
- $4.87 cost per customer acquisition
- 6.6% organic conversion rate
- 183% increase in monthly organic traffic
- 931% increase in brand query and product searches
- 200% increase in non-branded search query impressions
Read the full case study here.
Related Content: Why You Should Use Multiple Channels to Maximize Your Customer Acquisition
7) Aurum Brothers: Doubled Monthly Online Sales Through Facebook Ads
Aurum Brothers is a luxury brand that specializes in men’s wristwear. The company wanted to increase its sales and raise awareness of its unique and high-quality products.
To achieve this goal, the brand started a campaign that focused on advanced Facebook targeting techniques.
The Solution
The campaign involved using retargeting ads to three groups based on their behavior on the brand’s website. These groups included people who had added an item to their baskets, people who had viewed specific items, and people who had visited the Aurum Brothers website.
The brand used photo and video ads that clearly showcased their products and popped up in the Facebook Feed:
Aurum Brothers also experimented with different bidding options and ad objectives, such as clicks to the website and website conversions.
The Results
Aurum Brothers saw such great results, they now use Facebook as a main channel for advertising:
• 100% monthly increase in sales
• 50% of revenue generated directly by Facebook ads
• 13X increase in return on ad spend
The success of the campaign has enabled the brand to scale its business tremendously in countries where it previously had no sales channels.
Read the full case study here.
Related Content:
* 50 Impactful Facebook Ads Statistics to Help Your Ads Strategy
* How to Easily Set Up a High-Conversion Facebook Retargeting Campaign
Last Word on Facebook Ad Case Studies
If your brand relies on Shopify, the combined use with Facebook Ads is definitely worth trying.
Remember that the above case studies may not perfectly apply to your situation. It’s worth your while to seek insight in as many places as possible as you build your own plan for an integrated approach to Facebook Ads as a Shopify seller.
Hopefully you got inspired by these Shopify Facebook ads, but if you just want someone to do the work for you, Single Grain’s paid ads experts can help!👇
