How to Create Facebook Dynamic Product Ads

In a world where a consumer’s Facebook feed is oversaturated with ads that are widely ignored, every company needs a competitive edge just to stand out. While there are many ways to stand out from the crowd, not all of them are cost-effective for sales. With CPM’s and CPC’s at an all-time high, it’s not easy for a solo entrepreneur or small company to compete with companies that have millions of dollars for advertising budgets–unless they know what they’re doing. Your company may not be able to compete with the quality or creativity of huge advertising teams or agencies, but you can take advantage of another aspect. An aspect that is more important than all others, so important that Facebook evaluates the quality of your ad on it: relevance. The most relevant ads you can make are Facebook Dynamic Product Ads, which I’ll show you how to create in this post.

What are Facebook dynamic product ads?

According to Facebook, “Facebook dynamic product ads automatically promote products to people who have expressed interest on your website, in your app, or elsewhere on the internet.” Basically, Facebook will serve ads to people who have gone to your website and viewed some of your products and/or have added them to their cart.

Here’s an example of a Dynamic Product Ad:

I added this shirt to my card, as you can see in the Facebook Pixel Helper this item has a specific content_id that appears under the “ViewContent” and “AddToCart” events.

About fifteen minutes later while browsing my Facebook newsfeed this popped up:

Before you can create a Facebook ad campaign for your company, there are a few things you need to set up first.

You will need:

• a Facebook Page (free)
• a Facebook Business Manager Account (free)
• Facebook Pixel on your website (free)
• a Product Catalog (free)

Setting up your Business Manager

• Login to your personal Facebook Account
• Go to Facebook’s Business Manager Overview page.
• Click on “Create Account”.
• Enter the name of your business.
• Put in your business email.

After you complete those steps you’ll be redirected to your Business Manager Account, where you can add pages and people who you want to be attached to your account. Next, you will need to create your Facebook Pixel.

Creating your Facebook Pixel

• Go to your Business Manager Account
• In the top-left corner click the drop-down menu and click on Pixels

Click “Create A Pixel”, name it, then click “Create”.

After your pixel is created you have to install it. If you use Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento or BigCommerce instructions on how to install your pixel can be found here.

If you don’t operate on any of these platforms, you or your developer will have to install the pixel and standard events on your website. Instructions on how to install your pixel manually can be found here.

Creating your product catalog

Now that your pixel is created it is time to create your product catalog. Go to your business manager and under “assets” click on “catalog”. Click on “create catalog”, name it, then click “create catalog.” After that’s complete, you will have to upload products into your catalog. If your store is hosted on an e-commerce platform there are free plugins that can create your product feed for you (such as Flexify for Shopify), if you are adding your products manually you will have to do so following these instructions.

Creating your Facebook Dynamic Product Ad

After all of this setup, it’s finally time to create your first dynamic product ad. Create a new campaign in your ads manager and make the campaign goal “catalog sales”. When you get into the ad set level you will notice it is set up differently. First, you will be able to choose which catalog you want to promote. Secondly, the audience section will look a lot different.

You can use the information from your Facebook Pixel to target people who have viewed or added an item from your catalog to their cart. After you choose your settings, you’ll just have to add the copy, since the creative will show the potential customer the product they were interested in.

Now you’re ready to sell products to your audience in the most relevant way on Facebook!