I recently started to work with Facebook ads, it is something I have always tried to understand but never could.
I decided to really dedicate myself to this art and learn everything I could about getting started, the optimizing stuff could come later.
I started by learning as much as I could, I used a course, blog posts, YouTube videos to get an understanding of how to do them effectively.
I spent the next few days learning everything I could on steroids!
Sometimes you just need to get your head around something 100% before you start.
PARTNERSHIP
My friend had started a Shopify store and all he wanted to do was produce the content for it. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to work with him and boost up my Facebook ad skills while paying half the price for the ad spend.
He was struggling to make sales and I wanted to boost this, we agreed on a 50/50 split on expenses and profit. I liked this as I saw a huge opportunity, his content is funny and I think people will love it!
The first day I did research to find what products we could sell that was in high demand. It took me around 3 hours and I found a lot of items which we could sell.
This was exciting as the starting point for our success.
THE BREAK-UP
As soon as it started it ended.
My friend wanted to take his store in a different direction, he wanted to concentrate on building up the brand, I wanted to make sales. I knew this could work but as he was the owner of it. I decided that it was best if we went our separate ways.
To this point, we are still friends and will keep co working together in the future
NEW PROJECT - DAY 2
I still had the buzz from before and wanted to do my own store.
I knew I wanted to start a Shopify store, I had the excitement and I knew this was what I wanted! It was the ultimate way forward for me.
I have seen many people start a Shopify store from nothing and made it into a hugely successful business, I knew I could do that too. I knew that it would take too much time to get sales via organic traffic so paid traffic was the way forward.
A lot of people have been using Facebook ads and getting fantastic results, I knew if I used them the right way I could do the same.
I set out at doing research to find which product to sell. I was important that the products were in high demand as I could create a store around this and make sales from the get go.
I did the searching via Facebook Search, typing into the search bar 'get yours' (niche), and - free only pay for shipping. This gave me many results, I looked for posts with a lot of engagement on them, this included likes, comments and shares.
I knew if people were getting a lot of engagement those posts were receiving a lot of paid traffic meaning it was profitable.
LONG NIGHT - DAY 3
I stayed up all night creating my Shopify store and Facebook page. I started with 1 products, yes you heard that right. It was a Free + Shipping offer, I knew if I could make this sell I could make anything else sell.
The Shopify store was simple and that's all I needed to get started
I set up my Facebook page, gave it a title, created a quick logo, took a royalty free image and put it in the cover photo header, made some posts to make the page look a bit fuller and created my first post.
The reason why I created a post is I wanted new people to the page to be able to see the ad and it would make sharing it easier. Basically making the engagement an all time high for it.
First I installed the Facebook pixel into my store so I could track everything, this was done via take the Facebook pixel number and copying it into the preferences area of Shopify.
I set up my ads on Facebook ads manager.
- 1 PPE (Helps with engagement in the post
- 1 Website conversion post for Add To Cart
- I made 5 website conversion ads, all pointing the post, just with different interests
After this, I went to sleep.
MISTAKES - DAY 4a
On my original ad I had screwed up, the link to the product page was invalid, basically, I was paying for traffic which they could never get to the page I intended, a huge fail. It was lucky I spotted this early on so I could stop the ad and create a completely new one
I learned that sometimes you make mistakes and you just have to move forward and improve.
SUCCESS - DAY 4b
In the evening I had finally had success with the ads, I was making sales!
This is pretty cool, but only the start, I know that the sales created are only the start of the blue print for my success.
As I saw that this niche can work I started to expand the store, I added 25 new products to the store, I wanted to give the store a fully feel, so if someone clicked off the page they could see that it was actually a real store and not just a one item store.
I used the app Oberlo to help me easily import the items from Ali Express.
The one extra thing I did was update the title and description, I wanted my description to be unique, to sell the product in a certain way which would match with my store.
I knew things would take time and it would be a success.
MORE SALES - DAY 5
Today I had more sales, it was amazing to see the good progress my store is making. It is a bit disappointing I am still down on a profit but I know that will come at a future date.
Today I optimized my store more, I created an abanded cart series of emails, a thank you email just for starters.
I hope you have enjoyed watching and reading so far, more posts will be coming as I progress, please feel free to ask questions below.