Step-by-Step Guide: How to Promote T-Shirts With Facebook Ads
Step-by-step guide to follow and create Facebook T-shirt Ads and skyrocket sales.
What you will need:
✓ A Facebook Page.
✓ A Facebook Ads Manager account.
✓ A credit card.
✓ A clear objective.
✓ Attractive imagery.
✓ Your ideal customer’s buyer persona.
✓ The URL where you want to send your audience once they engage with your ad.
Ready? Let’s do this!
Head to the Facebook Ads Manager screen and start a new ad.
Step 1: Choose your Marketing Objective.
Choose traffic as your marketing objective. By choosing this option you will be able to send people directly to your shop or product page which is what we want.
Step 2: Creating an Ad Account.
In this step, you will enter your account and billing information. Choose the country where you are located, currency, and time zone.
Step 3: Creating a New Ad Set
Part 1: Traffic
Once you give your Ad Set a name, you will be asked where you want to drive traffic to. Choose Website or Messenger.
Part 2: Offer
This option allows you to create an offer people can save and get reminders about but it will not work for us at the moment, so let’s ignore it.
Part 3: Audience
Here is where your customer buyer persona will come in handy. By defining an audience for your Ads you will let Facebook know who you want to see your Ads and sell your t-shirts to.
By knowing the characteristics of the person that is more likely to engage with our ad you will benefit in two ways; first, Facebook will reduce your Ads’ cost because the more accurately targeted your Ads are, the more the user will be pleased, or not bothered at least, and a positive experience will be delivered which is what Facebook wants. Second, the people who click your Ads will be more likely to convert (make the purchase) and you will see a real monetary benefit from advertising t-shirts on Facebook.
Since this may be your first time using Facebook Ads, you won’t be able to create a Custom Audience, so leave it blank. But just so you know, Custom Audiences are groups you create based upon your email lists, phone numbers, app users, or website retargeting
Now on location, select “People who live in this location.” This option allows you to enter one or more global regions, countries, states/regions, cities, postal codes, addresses to show or exclude your ad to people in those locations.
For illustration purposes, I chose to target the states of North Dakota and New Hampshire because according to information I learned via Google, these two states are where people consume the most beer in the United States and the t-shirts that I will be selling this time are meant to appeal people from 25 to 54 years old, which is the core beer-drinking demographics.
Now. Choose the age range and gender of the people who will most likely wear your t-shirts.
Then on Languages, choose the language your ad is displayed in. In this guide’s case, English (ALL) will do the job.
Now comes my favorite part, the Detailed Targeting section. In this section, you are able to define your audience by including or excluding demographics, interests, and behaviors.
- Demographics: education, relationship status, income, job title, employer name, language, financial, homeownership, parental status, etc.
- Interests: everything from Facebook brand pages to celebrities and every topic you can think of.
- Behaviors: shopping habits, spending, mobile, device ownership, travel habits, etc.
My ideal customer is most likely to have liked the Budweiser page on Facebook AND enjoy Baseball so that’s what I typed in.
Going for intersections like I just did, helps to narrow down the audience and laser targeting your audience. Because a person that liked Budweiser might not be necessarily interested in Baseball, targeting an audience who likes Budweiser OR enjoys Baseball might end up displaying my Ads to the wrong people. Don’t forget, these are variables in the advertising equation which can always be optimized in the future.
Under the Connections section, you can choose to “Exclude people who like your Page” to deliver your Ads only to new users. This is an optional step, you might choose to leave this blank or to target only your current Page followers, just don’t forget to tailor your ad’s image accordingly.
Part 4: Ad Placements
Here you will be able to define where will people see your t-shirt Ads.
Choose to edit placements, deselect everything and select only to show your Ads on user’s News Feeds (both mobile and desktop) and on the Right column on the desktop. These are my recommended settings, but you are encouraged to prove me wrong.
Personally, I believe that the audience I’m targeting will rarely be on Instagram nor would engage with an ad featured on Facebook’s Audience Network nor on an Instant Article, reason why I deselected them. I have recently read that Instagram is a very good method of reaching your audience. You may want to include Instagram.
Part 5: Budget & Schedule
Here you will define how much you’d like to spend, and when you’d like your Ads to appear. Start with low quantities first, the minimum is $10.00 USD, to test the effectiveness of your Ads.
You don’t want to go and invest $500.00 USD when you haven’t tested your Ads yet, right?
If you find your ad is having good hits or sales, then I suggest adding 10% to your budget each day it grows. Back off or delete the ad when there are few hits or sales. Remember that running tests initially is super important, when advertising shirts on Facebook.
By setting the daily budget to $10 USD and the ad to run for 7 days, you will be able to learn, gather data, and most likely, see how t-shirts sales go up during these 7 days. Pixels are so important to utilize. Will discuss pixels at another time.
Now click on Show Advanced Options and let’s tell Facebook that we only want to get charged when a user actually clicks on our ad. This is super important, choosing to be charged by impressions just works if your goal is to boost brand awareness, but this is not our case, on this occasion we want CLICKS & SALES!
Once you are done, you will see a summarized version of your ad on the right side. Your audience definition “meter” should fall as much as possible towards the left side. Don’t forget, the more specific your selected audience is, the more effective your t-shirt Facebook Ads will be. In my case, the potential reach of my Ads is 12,000 people as can be seen on the next screenshot. Remember that having a very well defined audience will allow you to spend less in t-shirts Ads and sell way more t-shirts.
Step 4: Ad Creation
On this Ad Creation section, you will be able to add text and media to your t-shirt Facebook ad. Select the Facebook page that your Ads are related to.
Part 1: Ad Format
Single image works very well. Facebook has moved to a “video first” strategy. We all love video and Facebook knows it, besides, video content is able to keep users engaged in the platform for a long time which is beneficial for Facebook as well. Knowing this, promoting your t-shirt with a video is desirable so go ahead and choose the “Single Video” format.
If you need help SellMyTees.com can assist Silver/Gold Level stores with creating video ads for you.
Now select your Facebook Page and copy and paste the URL where you want to send people to.
It is time now to get creative with compelling copy that will talk to your audience and will help convince users of clicking or tapping on your ad.
- Use wording that creates urgency and drives sales
- Appeal to emotions. People buy emotions...they are not buying t-shirts.
- Use active verbs that will push users to make the purchase immediately
Since I’m selling a t-shirt, the call to action should say “Shop Now” because I want people to go to my store I have on SellMyTees.com. Some people suggest the call to action is better when it states “Learn More”.
Now under Advanced Options, add supporting copy and a short display link that will tell your audience where they will be taken to, in this case, to SellMyTees.com.
Your T-Shirt Facebook Ad is Now Ready!
Hit the “Place Order” green button at the bottom right corner and you will be good to go.
This is the final result of my ad and it is a great looking one. Too easy wasn’t it?
Your ad now shows a t-shirt video featuring your design being worn by your target audience and it looks awesome wearing this t-shirt proudly!
