Categories
Digital Marketing Facebook Ads

Simple Facebook Campaign Structure for DTC Brands

Evergreen Campaigns

An Evergreen Campaign Structure is one that does not change much year over year: Ideally the Campaigns and Ad Sets are continually in use, and only the ad creative is changed.

Evergreen Campaigns add some sanity to your Facebook Ad management. They prevent the typical disorganized Campaign sprawl that plagues most Facebook Ad Accounts. Evergreen Campaigns encourage continuous improvement and optimization, facilitates data analysis, and lowers maintenance costs.

It usually takes a few iterations before you land on your ideal evergreen structure, but here are some recommendations to get you started on the right foot.

Campaign Structure Overview

The campaign structure will look like this

Dynamic Product AdsDynamic Product Ads, targeting people who have previously purchased and interacted with your site
Past PurchasersPeople who have previously purchased from you.
RemarketingPeople who have interacted with your brand but have yet not purchased from you.
ProspectingPeople who have never purchased from you, and who have not interacted with your brand.

Audiences

Before you can create your campaigns, you will need to define some base audiences to capture purchasers and website visitors. A list of essential Facebook audiences that should be created is available here.

Building the Campaigns

Common Settings

All the campaigns you create will have the following settings

Buying TypeAuction
ObjectiveSales
CatalogYes for Dynamic
No for Regular
Advanced Campaign BudgetYes
Campaign Bid StrategyBid Cap

Conversion Events & Attribution

Initially select “Purchase” as your converion event, with a 1-day or 7 day click only converison window.

If, however, you are unable to obtain at least 50 purchase events per week for an ad set, you will want to instead choose “Add to cart” as your conversion event, with a 1-day click only conversion window.

Campaign #1:
Dynamic Product Ads

This campaign will contain all your Dynamic Product ads and ad sets. This is the most automated campaign type, with generally very little management required.

You will need to have your Product Catalog and Product Feeds setup before you can create this campaign.

Campaign NameDynamic Product Ads
Buying TypeAuction
ObjectiveSales
CatalogYes
Advanced Campaign BudgetYes
Campaign Bid StrategyBid Cap

Ad Sets

1. Dynamic Remarketing < 30d
Ad Set NameDynamic Remarketing < 30d
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting1-day click
Product SetAll in-stock products
AudienceCreate new Audience
Retarget Ads:
Viewed or Added to Cart
but not Purchased: 30d
Audience ExclusionsNone
2. Dynamic Remarketing 30d-180d
Ad Set NameDynamic Remarketing 30d-180d
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting7-day click
Product SetAll in-stock products
AudienceCreate new Audience
Retarget Ads:
Viewed or Added to Cart
but not Purchased: 180d
Audience Exclusions– Purchase All Time
– AddToCart 30d
– Website Visitors 30d
3. Dynamic Past Purchasers > 30d
Ad Set NameDynamic Past Purchasers > 30d
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting7-day click
Product SetAll in-stock products
AudienceCreate new Audience
Find Prospective Customers
– Purchase 180d
– Purchase All Time
Audience Exclusions– Purchase 30d
– AddToCart 30d
– Website Visitors 30d
4. Dynamic Prospecting
Ad Set NameDynamic Prospecting
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting7-day click
Product SetAll in-stock products
AudienceCreate new Audience
Find Prospective Customers
(no explicit targeting)
Audience Exclusions– Purchase All Time
– Purchase 180d
– AddToCart 180d
– Website Visitors 30d
– Website Visitors Top 25% 180d

For high-volume sites, or for periods of high sales such as Black Friday, you can also consider creating additional more granular ad sets, with shorter time windows, or explicitly targeting cart abandoners.

For lower-volume sites, you may need to change your conversion event to “AddToCart” instead of “Purchase” if you have less than 50 purchases per week.

Campaign #2:
Past Purchasers

This campaign targets people who have previously purchased from you.

Campaign NamePast Purchasers
Buying TypeAuction
ObjectiveSales
CatalogNo
Advanced Campaign BudgetYes
Campaign Bid StrategyBid Cap

Ad Sets

At it’s most basic, the campaign contains a single Ad Set containing all your past customers:

1. Past Purchasers All Time
Ad Set NamePast Purchasers All Time
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting7-day click
Audience– Purchase All Time
– Purchase 180d
Audience Exclusions– AddToCart 30d
– Purchase 30d
– Website Visitors Top 25% 30d

For high volume businesses that have large amount of customers, multiple Ad Sets could be created to have more granular control based on past purchase date.

Campaign #3:
Remarketing

This campaign targets website visitors and people who have previously engaged with your brand on facebook, instagram, or otherwise, but who have never purchased from your business.

Campaign NameRemarketing
Buying TypeAuction
ObjectiveSales
CatalogNo
Advanced Campaign BudgetYes
Campaign Bid StrategyBid Cap

Ad Sets

Ad it’s most basic, the Remarketing Campaign contains only two Ad Sets: One targeting site visitors up to 30 days ago, and another targeting site visitors up to 180 days ago (the Facebook maximum)

1. Remarketing < 30d
Ad Set NameRemarketing < 30d
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting1-day click
Audience– Visitors 30d
– FB Engagement 30d
– IG Engagement 30d
Audience Exclusions– Purchase All Time
– Purchase 180d
2. Remarketing 30d-180d
Ad Set NameRemarketing 30d-180d
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting7-day click
Audience– Site Visitors 180d
– FB Engagement 180d
– IG Engagement 180d
Audience Exclusions– Purchase All Time
– Purchase 180d
– Visitors 30d
– FB Engagement 30d
– IG Engagement 30d

For higher volume sites, you can consider adding more granular Ad Sets for 10, 60, 90 day etc… Or separating ad sets into stronger/weaker pruchase intent such as Add to Carts, Product Views, Social Engagement, etc…

Campaign #4:
Prospecting

This campaign will target “brand unaware” customers. People that have never purchased from you, and that have not interacted with your brand or site in at least 180 days.

This campaign will feed your Remarketing campaigns. You can expect your Cost per Acquisition (CPA) to be relatively high, but the more you can manage to spend here, the more you will be able to spend on Remarketing.

Campaign NameRemarketing
Buying TypeAuction
ObjectiveSales
CatalogNo
Advanced Campaign BudgetYes
Campaign Bid StrategyBid Cap

Ad Sets

At it’s most basic, the prospecting Campaign should target a 1% look-a-like audience (based on the Purchase pixel event).

More advanced campaigns can also target 2%-10% look-a-like audiences, or custom interest based audiences. But it is important to always exclude your Past Purchasers and lower funnel Remarketing audiences so that there is no overlap with your campaigns.

1. Prospecting 1% Look-a-Like
Ad Set NameProspecting 1% Look-a-Like
Performance GoalMaximize number of conversions
Conversion EventPurchase
Bid ControlTBD
Attribution Setting7-day click
Audience– 1% Look-a-like Purchase
Audience Exclusions– Purchase All Time
– Purchase 180d
– Visitors 30d
– Visitors Top 25% 180d

More to Explore

In a follow-up post I will give some guidelines into how to:

  • Calculate your Bid Caps
  • When (and how) to change your Conversion Event from Purchase to Add to Cart.
  • Building your first ads and replicating your organic posts into this campaign structure.

Related Reading

Categories
Digital Marketing Facebook Ads

Essential Facebook Audiences

Below is a list of the Essential Facebook Audiences that every e-commerce DTC brand should create. Even if you don’t plan on using them right away, creating them now will ensure that you can serve ads to these users in the future.

Past Purchaser Audiences

These target users that have previously purchased from you. Larger e-commerce sites may wish to get more granular on the time-spans, but the 4 audiences cover most scenarios.

Audience NameSourcePixel Criteria
Purchase: 7 dayWebsitePurchase: 7 days
Purchase: 30 dayWebsitePurchase: 30 days
Purchase: 180 dayWebsitePurchase: 180 days
Purchase: All TimeCustomer ListCustomer list upload*
* The “Purchase: All Time” audience will need to be updated at least every 180 days.

Remarketing Audiences

These will target website visitors, cart abandoners, and people who have engaged with your content on Facebook and Instagram. These are all people that are “brand aware” and are the lowest hanging fruit for generating sales.

Larger e-commerce sites may want to get more granular on the time-scales.

Audience NameSourcePixel Criteria
Add to Cart: 4 dayWebsiteAddToCart: 4 days
Add to Cart: 30 dayWebsiteAddToCart: 30 days
Add to Cart: 180 dayWebsiteAddToCart: 180 days
Site Visitors: Top 25%: 7 dayWebsiteVisitors by Time spent:
Top 25%: 7 days
Site Visitors: Top 25%: 30 dayWebsiteVisitors by Time spent:
Top 25%: 30 days
Site Visitors: Top 25%: 180 dayWebsiteVisitors by Time spent:
Top 25%: 180 days
FB Engagement: 7 dayFacebookEveryone who engaged
with your page: 7d
FB Engagement: 30 dayFacebookEveryone who engaged
with your page: 30d
FB Engagement: 180 dayFacebookEveryone who engaged
with your page: 180d
IG Engagement: 7 dayInstagramEveryone who engaged
with your business: 7d
IG Engagement: 30 dayInstagramEveryone who engaged
with your business: 30d
IG Engagement: 180 dayInstagramEveryone who engaged
with your business: 180d

Prospecting Audiences

Lookalike audiences are a good start for new customer prospecting.

Lookalike SourceEventNumber of
Audiences
Audience Markers
Facebook Pixel
or
Purchase: All Time
Purchase40%, 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%
Choose 4 audiences, and set markers at 0%, 1%, 2%, 5%, and 10%

Related Posts

Categories
Digital Marketing Google Ads

Essential Google Ads Remarketing Audiences

Below is a list of the Essential Google Audiences the every e-commerce site should create in their Google Ads Account. Even if you don’t plan on using them right away, creating them now will ensure that they can grow so they are ready to be used in the future.

Google’s Built-in Audiences

Before we create our own audiences, we first need to install the Google Ads Dynamic Remarketing Code. This triggers Google to automatically create some built-in Remarketing Audiences:

Audience NameDurationDescription
Shopping cart abandoners30 daysPeople who added products to the shopping cart in the past 30 days but did not complete the purchase
Product Viewers30 daysPeople who viewed specific product pages on your site in the past 30 days but did not create a shopping cart
Past buyer30 daysPeople who purchased products from you in the past 30 days
All visitors30 daysPeople who visited pages that contain your remarketing tags in the past 30 days
All converters180 daysPeople who converted on your site in the last 180 days. Based on your conversion tracking tag. This is not necessarily people who have purchased from you, but anyone who has triggered a “conversion”. (eg: Phone call from an ad)
General Visitors30 daysPeople who visited your website in the past 30 days but did not view any specific products

Additional Audiences

The additional audiences to create follow the same pattern used in Google’s built-in audiences, but with expanded membership durations. The main focus is on Shopping Cart Abandoners, Product Viewers, and Past Buyers.

Shopping Cart Abandoners

Google will have already created a “Shopping cart abandoners” audience with 30 day time window. We will create the following additional audiences for 7, 14, 90, and 180 day durations:

Audience Name:Shopping cart abandoners: xd
“x” will be the duration.
Eg: Shopping cart abandoners: 7d
List Members:Visitors of a page who did not visit another page
Visited page:URL contains cart
Unvisited pageURL contains thank_you
Membership Duration:7, 14, 90, 180 days
* 30 day duration is already created by Google

Past Buyers

Google will have already created a “Past buyers” audience with 30 day time window. We will create these additional audiences for 14, 90, 180, 365, and 520 day durations:

Audience NamePast buyers xd
“x” will be the duration.
Eg: Past buyers: 14d
List MembersVisitors of a page with specific tags
TagsPurchase
Membership duration14, 90, 180, 365, 520 days

Product Viewers

Google will have already created a “Product viewers” audience with a 30 day duration. We will create additional audiences with 14, 90, 180, 365, and 520 day durations.

Audience Name:Product viewers: xd
“x” will be the duration.
Eg: Product Viewers: 14d
List Members:Visitors of a page who did not visit another page
Visited page:URL contains product
Unvisited pageURL contains cart
Membership Duration:14, 90, 180, 365, 520 days
* 30 day duration is already created by Google

General Notes

  • The Membership Durations are somewhat arbitrary. You can get more or less granular, and set your own intervals. It is however best to start with something simple and add granularity later on.
  • A Remarketing Audience needs a minimum of 1,000 members to be eligible to serve. When creating your audience durations, consider how much time it will take to reach 1,000 memebers. eg: How long will it take before your site generates 1,000 abandoned carts, or 1,000 purchases? That will probably be the shortest duration with which you should start.
  • You should generally add all these lists as “Observations” to all your campaigns.

More Reading…

Categories
Digital Marketing Google Ads Shopify

Google Ads Dynamic Remarketing for Shopify

Last Updated: September 25, 2020

STEP 1
Activate Dynamic Remarketing in Google

  1. Go to Google Ads > Tools & Settings > Shared Library > Audience Manager > Audience Sources
  2. Click Set up tag in the “Google Ads tag” card
  3. Remarketing: Choose “Collect data on specific actions…
  4. Business Type: Choose “Retail
  5. Retail Parameters: Select All Parameters
  6. Click Save and continue.
  7. Click on Install Tag Yourself
  8. In the first code box, look for the number at the end of the first line of code and write it down or copy it. This is your Google Conversion Id — you will need it in the next step.
<!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Ads: 123456789 -->
  1. Click Continue and then Done

STEP 2
Install the Remarketing Code in Theme.liquid

In your store’s admin section go to:

  • Online Store > Themes > Actions > Edit Code
  • Expand the Snippets section and choose Add new snippet
  • Call the snippet “adwords-remarketing
  • Paste the code below into the snippet
  • Enter your google_conversion_id that you obtained in Step 1.8 above.
{% comment %}
Google Ads Dynamic Remarketing Script by Alex Czartoryski
https://business.czarto.com/2017/02/07/shopify-dynamic-remarketing-setup/

This version: Sept 30, 2020
The latest version of this script available here:
https://github.com/Czarto/ShopifyScripts/blob/master/snippets/adwords-remarketing.liquid
{% endcomment %}

{% comment %}Set to false if GTAG is already loaded on the page. Leave to true if unsure.{%endcomment%}
{% assign load_gtag = true %}

{% comment %} Enter your google conversion id below {% endcomment %}
{% assign google_conversion_id = 123456789 %}

{% assign shopify_store_country  = 'US' %}
{% if shop.currency == 'CAD' %}
{% assign shopify_store_country  = 'CA' %}
{% elsif shop.currency == 'AUD' %}
{% assign shopify_store_country  = 'AU' %}
{% endif %}

{%if load_gtag %}
<!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=AW-{{ google_conversion_id }}"></script>
{% endif %}
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());
  gtag('config', 'AW-{{ google_conversion_id }}');
</script>

{% assign google_event = false %}
{% assign google_items = false %}
{% assign google_value = false %}
{% if template contains 'cart' %}
	{% assign google_event = 'add_to_cart' %}
	{% capture google_items %}{% for item in cart.items %}{'id':'shopify_{{ shopify_store_country  }}_{{ item.product.id }}_{{ item.variant.id }}','google_business_vertical': 'retail'}{% unless forloop.last %}, {% endunless %}{% endfor %}{% endcapture %}
	{% assign google_value = cart.total_price %}
{% elsif template contains 'collection' %}
	{% assign google_event = 'view_item_list' %}
	{% capture google_items %}{% for item in collection.products limit:5 %}{'id':'shopify_{{ shopify_store_country  }}_{{ item.id }}_{{ item.variants.first.id }}','google_business_vertical': 'retail'}{% unless forloop.last %}, {% endunless %}{% endfor %}{% endcapture %}
{% elsif template contains 'product' %}
	{% assign google_event = 'view_item' %}
	{% capture google_items %}{'id':'shopify_{{ shopify_store_country  }}_{{ product.id }}_{{ product.selected_or_first_available_variant.id }}','google_business_vertical': 'retail'}{% endcapture %}
	{% assign google_value = product.selected_or_first_available_variant.price %}
{% elsif template contains 'search' %}
	{% assign google_event = 'view_search_results' %}
	{% capture google_items %}{% for item in search.results limit:5 %}{'id':'shopify_{{ shopify_store_country  }}_{{ item.id }}_{{ item.variants.first.id }}','google_business_vertical': 'retail'}{% unless forloop.last %}, {% endunless %}{% endfor %}{% endcapture %}
{% endif %}

{% if google_event %}
<script>
	gtag('event', '{{ google_event }}', {
	  'send_to': 'AW-{{ google_conversion_id }}',
	  {% if google_value %}'value': '{{ google_value | divided_by: 100.0 }}',{% endif %}
	  'items': [{{ google_items }}]
	});
</script>
{% endif %}

The latest version of this code is available on Github

Add snippet to your Theme file

Open up Layout > theme.liquid and add the following line of code before the closing </head> tag:

{% include 'adwords-remarketing' %}

STEP 3
Install Remarketing in the Checkout Scripts

  • In the very bottom left hand corner the Shopify Admin choose Settings and then Checkout
  • Scroll down to the Additional Scripts section.
  • Copy and paste the code below into the “Additional Scripts” field and update google_conversion_id with your value from step 1.8 as before.
{% comment %}
Google Ads Dynamic Remarkting Script by Alex Czartoryski https://business.czarto.com/

This version: Sep 30, 2020
The latest version of this script available here:
https://github.com/Czarto/ShopifyScripts/blob/master/settings/checkout/adwords-remarketing.liquid
{% endcomment %}

{% comment %}Set to false if GTAG is already loaded on the page. Leave to true if unsure.{%endcomment%}
{% assign load_gtag = true %}

{% if first_time_accessed %}
{% comment %} Enter your account specific values below {% endcomment %}
{% assign google_conversion_id = "123456789" %}

{% assign shopify_store_country  = 'US' %}
{% if shop.currency == 'CAD' %}
{% assign shopify_store_country  = 'CA' %}
{% elsif shop.currency == 'AUD' %}
{% assign shopify_store_country  = 'AU' %}
{% endif %}


{%if load_gtag %}
<!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=AW-{{ google_conversion_id }}"></script>
{% endif %}
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());
  gtag('config', 'AW-{{ google_conversion_id }}');
</script>

<!-- Event snippet for Web Order conversion page -->
<script>
    // Google Ads Remarketing
    gtag('event', 'purchase', {
	  'send_to': 'AW-{{ google_conversion_id }}',
	  'value': '{{ total_price | divided_by: 100.0 }}',
	  'items': [{% for item in order.line_items %}{'id':'shopify_{{ shopify_store_country }}_{{ item.product.id }}_{{ item.variant.id }}','google_business_vertical': 'retail'}{% unless forloop.last %}, {% endunless %}{% endfor %}]
	});
</script>

{% endif %}

Download the lastest version from Github

STEP 4
Verification

Once you’ve installed all your code, it’s time to run through your main pages (collection, product, cart, and purchase pages) with Google Tag Assistant installed to make sure there are no errors.

Next Steps
Configure your Remarketing Audiences

Now that your store is collecting dynamic remarketing data, the next step is to properly organize and segment your visitors into Purchasers, Cart Abandoners and Product Viewers. This is covered in the next post about Google Ads Remarketing Audiences.

Additional Reading…