Recently, I had a discussion with a company that had a large retail store presence, but like most retail companies, have shifted a lot of their business online.
Their retail business was booming and they rapidly expanded to multiple locations to sell more product. As most retailers realize, online shoppers and retail shoppers behave differently. Without the focus and dedication they have in a retail store, eCommerce shoppers are free to let their minds wander and get distracted by anything they see on their device.
What’s more, there are countless brands constantly competing for their attention on direct-advertising platforms.
It’s increasingly getting more and more difficult to funnel that attention online. And, it’s increasingly difficult to figure out how to start advertising on Facebook/Meta. You see, they hired an agency with the hopes of developing a successful paid ads program and boosting sales.
The agency was a bit green at running paid media and really didn’t run appropriate product testing to determine the best converting product.
If you have an established product line, existing inventory and current or previous retail locations, then you might be in a similar boat. It’s tough to know what’s going to sell online because the retail sales don’t always reflect the online sales.
Especially, the top selling products may differ from what you experienced in retail. This is largely because we’re competing on a different playing field online and we don’t have the human-human interaction to help motivate the sale.
Typically, customers need to understand and know what their buying within 3 seconds of landing on the page and they need to immediately be intrigued.
Fortunately, for eCommerce, copy, landing page and positioning isn’t all that important in the beginning when performing product testing. The good news in eCommerce world is that the product does most of the selling.
The product does what it says it does. It’s not a digital Facebook course, that requires explaining. A litter box is a litter box. Jewelry is jewelry. Make up is make up. A weight loss supplement is a…well, that’s another story. It’s still a supplement, but the value props may require some explaining.
For example, an ashwagandha supplement is going to be hard to sell on its own accord.
But, if we start talking about how it could help support stress relief and help support healthy anxiety, then we’re talking about a different type of offer. We’re no longer selling an herb, but rather something that solves a fundamental human problem.
In fact, all problems solve fundamental human problems. There’s a great book called Cashvertising that goes over this really well.
Benefits
Briefly, humans are programmed to want 8 desires and as Drew Eric Whitman in Cashvertising coined the term the “Life Force 8”:
- Survival, enjoyment of life, life extensionÂ
- Enjoyment of food and drinks
- Freedom from fear, pain and danger
- Sexual companionship
- Comfortable living conditions
- To be superior
- Care and protection of Loved Ones
- Social Approval
These are not just ideas. These are the things that drive sales and motivate people’s decisions. So a supplement is not just a pill you take as the raw product, it’s something that is going to help you live longer, feel better, be more accepted with your peers.
A lotion is not just a lotion you rub on your face. A lotion helps you look better, be more socially accepted (becuase it reduces wrinkles), make you look YOUNGER. Same with makeup. Same with a lot of products.
Seeing a pattern yet?
And this is where we start discussing the difference between benefits and features. Outline one of those 8 life forces that drive decisions in your copy and you’ll be in a great starting place.
Features
Showcase, the secondary things about the product. This can be something like it’s Organic, made in a GMP facility, handmade, uses the rarest Earth-minerals. None of these things truly matter, but they help sell the product.
Let’s say I’m selling a face cream that helps moisturize skin (a feature). This cream is organic, contains essential oils and some of the best ingredients known to man. It’s locally made and produced without chemicals or anything else that would damage the skin. And?
Focus on Benefits
So what. If I lead my marketing with that, it would be much weaker than if I simply said, this cream helps you look and feel young. Here’s some before and afters. Or, perhaps it helps alleviate pain due to dry skin. Do you see what just happened?
We took a boring product and made it into a benefit-driven problem solving product.
This is no longer a skin care cream, but rather something that can solve my problem of wrinkles, dry skin or both! Suddenly this product has more perceived value.Â
I can charge 3-5x what I would normally charge for this product because now it solves a problem.
Compare that to some $5 coconut oil in a grocery store.
If all we cared about were features, then I would just take some organic coconut oil (single ingredient) and rub that on my face. Maybe that would help. Maybe it wouldn’t. Labeling it as “coconut oil” I sell it for $5, which is a commodity based price.
Labeling it as “miracle oil” suddenly bumps the value to $14.99 and there is nothing else on the market like it. It’s in its own class. It’s now unique.
In the beginning of online advertising, put your best effort to implement the best, benefit-leading copy before talking about features.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just talk about how the product will help the user, not what’s in it, what it’s made out, the size, color etc. Focus on how people can feel better, relieve pain, be better than others, etc etc.
Since we’re talking about just starting out and testing multiple products to statistically determine the best sellers on direct response paid ads, it’s best to put up our best-effort copy. We don’t need to optimize it yet.
Landing page optimization can come later when we are iterating on the product to help increase the KPIs.
We can do this via bundling, offering a 3 tiered package, subscription, free + shipping offers, long form sales letters, advertorials, squeeze pages and even video sales letters (VSLs). There’s also a lot more, this is just a starting place.
How to Test Multiple Products from an eCommerce store with Facebook/Meta Ads
I know you might have an idea of what your top seller in your retail channel was. Or, maybe you’ve been sending emails and customers have helped you determine your top seller. But, that still doesn’t mean that when we run paid ads, users are going to gravitate to that product. There’s a high probability, but that doesn’t mean it’s definitive. Until we have the channel data to support it, it’s still speculative. 
In my Ads Growth Blueprint Facebook Ad Course, I go over exactly how product testing with paid ads works on the paid ad side. The goal here is to establish baseline KPIs for all the products and determine which one to focus more time and energy on. Which one of the products is going to have the best Cost per Acquisition (CPA) coupled with the best Return on Ads Spent (ROAS).
First, familiarize yourself with Facebook metrics and what they mean. Next, you’ll want to understand the basics of Facebook Advertising. Once you understand the fundamentals, it’s time to set up this test.
In the above diagram, you will see 5 separate CBOs. Generally, with product testing, it’s important to have a separate budget for each product so you can have good results from each test. In other words, allocate $500 for each test and that way you know each product will get an equal distribution of budget.
However, if you’re on a tight budget, or really don’t care about equal data, then you can throw them all into the same CBO and let the algorithm determine the results.
Each Ad Set will represent a different product. In this test, it’s very important to keep ALL variables the same in the ad sets, except the products. Of course, the ad images, and even the videos may vary, but try to keep them as consistent as possible.
Each creative will have a different image, primary text headline, and landing page. If possible, choose a primary text and headline that is generic. Maybe coupon-forward copy or general information about how some of the products help your consumers. Maybe you can even run categories.
For example, if you have a line of facial care products, include some generic ad copy about Facial care to keep things consistent.
It’s ok if that variable changes because we’re gathering data and determining the best performing product for our paid media.
From there, we can focus on optimizing the conversions from that product. Since we’re running an eCommerce test, the landing pages would ALL be to the cart page of that relevant product.
Since the landing page is the same, the ads are similar and the copy is similar, we can effectively determine which product will produce the best results.
On the ad side of things, it’s important to keep things consistent across all products. In other words, have 1-5 ads per ad set that are similar to the other ones. A product image, a generic video testimonial or UGC, a similar talking head, and/or product video. This template is to be used across each ad set.
Later on, we can even run another test to various pages like a /collections page or the home page or any other page on the site. However, though you may offer many options for your customers, my experience tells me that 80% of your revenue will come from a single product. Most of your sales will come from a single product or bundle of products. We can call that the “offer”.
From this test, maybe we determine two of the products sell really well. Then, perhaps bundling those two products can sell even better. We can pack more value and offer a higher discount to the customer in order to capture a higher Average Order Value.
Once we identify the “winning” product, the rest of the products can be used in a retargeting strategy or in part of a post-purchase upsell flow.
We can take it a step further by creating niche-bundles of products and start value-stacking our offers so they become irresistible to our customers. This test helps identify what product or products are going to be the main revenue-drivers for your business and where you should focus most of your time and energy.
Sure, it’s possible to have an optimized landing page and funnel for each product in your catalog, but it’s really not necessary until you have data defining your best course of action. This is about taking raw elements of an eCommerce store and standardizing as much as we can about the presentation to create the most even test possible.
Of course, this test isn’t fool-proof and can have inherent pixel bias or human-bias. Frankly, that doesn’t concern me as I can redo the test at a later date.
The main concern for this discussion is to help retailers, gone online, establish what product is going to be their “80%er” and where to focus time and energy. Conducting this test early on can help prevent you from spinning your wheels in the future.
*NOTE* Since the algorithm has gone through a lot of changes recently, it is possible to conduct this test all within the same ad set. Basically, dumping all the products into the same ad set with similar creatives. The drawback from this is that distribution of budget will be difficult to manage and a lot of ads and products won’t get even distribution. This will act a lot more like a catalog Dynamic Product Ad vs a true split test. So, I still advise to keep things separated at least by the ad set so you have a bit more control over budget and creatives. If you start seeing success on a product, you can simply start creating more creatives and adding them to that ad set, vs having to create an entirely new one dedicated to that product.
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