Facebook ads have been working great for your business, right? Based on that success, you’re probably ready to turn around and increase your investment.

Maybe you already have and your fully optimized and profitable campaign has gone haywire. If so, you’re not alone.

There is a trick to scale your Facebook Ad campaigns.

It takes a deeper understanding of your business and the Facebook platform than you may think, and that’s exactly what I’m here to outline for you today.

I’ll show you exactly what you need to consider before you scale up your Facebook Ad campaigns so that you can fully understand the investment you’ll need to achieve your results.

Plus, you’ll understand exactly how to scale your successful campaign so that you don’t screw up the hard work you’ve already put forth.

How Most Companies Scale Facebook Ad Campaigns – The Wrong Way

Most businesses create small-scale Facebook Ad campaigns to test their results before making a large investment. THAT is a smart move. You should always understand the behavior of a campaign before throwing a ton of money behind it.

Also, you should learn how to measure the success of your campaigns, for instance by learning how to measure conversions with a Facebook Pixel, and therefore the ROI of your investment. This will give you an idea on what’s working and what’s not.

After companies realize that some of their campaigns are working, they increase the spend and scale up the successful campaigns, something like this:
Let’s say, for instance, they created and optimized a campaign with a $50/day budget, getting 10 conversions per day. The campaign is working well, so they will then increase that budget to $500 dollars overnight. Everyone would expect 100 conversions coming daily, right? Wrong, and that is the problem.

This, my friends, is not the correct way to scale Facebook Ads campaigns. The Facebook algorithm doesn’t allow for those types of changes to be made without having a more dramatic impact on your campaign. Instead of getting 100 conversions, you might end up getting maybe 20, if not less, and therefore you’ll pay much more and the campaign would not be sustainable.

Why is that?

What to Know About Your Business First

I’m about to tell you exactly how to scale your campaigns, but first…

Before you ever create a Facebook Ad campaign, it’s imperative that you understand some very specific things if you ever hope to be successful with large-scale Facebook advertising.

Most companies assign a Facebook Ad budget without ever knowing what they’ll see out of their investment. In order to truly understand that investment, you need to approach your campaign by starting at the end.

These are important considerations when scaling Facebook Ad campaigns because they will be the determining factors in the budget you assign to your goal and the way you approach your scaling.

Ask yourself these questions before you create your next campaign:

How many new customers do you want?

You should have a goal assigned to every Facebook Ad campaign. If you want to acquire 100 new customers, set that as your goal before you set yourself a budget. What are 100 new customers worth to you?

What is your customer’s lifetime value?

If a customer buys from you once, they may only spend $100, but how many times does your average customer buy from you? If they buy 6 times, their lifetime value is $600 and you may decide you want to spend more to acquire them. Even if you spend $100 to convert them and break even, you’ll be seeing a $500 return over the course of their lifetime as a customer.

How much are you willing to spend to convert each customer?

Now that you know how many customers you want to bring in, you need to decide how much each of them is worth to you and what you’re willing to spend to convert them. If your average customer spends $100, you may be willing to spend $25, $50, or even $100 to convert them.

If your average customer makes a purchase of $1,000, you may be willing to spend $200, $300, or even more to close the deal. You need to know what you’re willing to spend before you ever set yourself a budget.

How much will you need to spend to convert that many customers?

If you determine that a customer’s lifetime value is $250 and you are therefore willing to spend $50 to convert them, in order to acquire 100 new customers you will need to set your budget at or above $5000.

How to Scale Facebook Ad Campaigns

The trick to scaling Facebook Ad campaigns is simple —

Make small changes.

Rather than taking a successful campaign and doubling or quintupling its budget, move in smaller increments. The most that you may be able to get away with is a 50% increase, but we recommend making even smaller changes (think around 20%).

The way Facebook’s algorithm works, you’ll need to allow that change to take hold for 24 hours, then return and analyze the data. Ask yourself the following questions as you do so:

• Have your CPC, CPM, CPA shifted dramatically?
• Is everything within the predetermined KPI thresholds?
• How has this change affected the cost per lead/sale?
• Is this campaign still profitable in the long term?

If your campaign hasn’t changed dramatically and your numbers are still in line, go ahead and make that same incremental change and repeat the process until you have scaled to the desired level.

But…before you go and start making changes, be sure to read the next section. It’s vital to your success because there is another common mistake that many Facebook marketers make.

Make only one change at a time.

Every single change you make may have a dramatic impact on your numbers when you return the following day. If you start implementing multiple changes at the same time, you may find yourself with a problem you don’t know how to fix.

Move slow and you’ll have an easier time maintaining the success of your campaign, as it will be much easier to understand when and where you’ve gone wrong.

How to make incremental changes

Inside your ad manager, edit one ad set and get to the budget session. You’ll notice a button named “adjust budget”.

 

When you click on it you’ll be able to edit the budget and increase it by a certain percentage.

Now you know

Making any changes to your Facebook Ad campaigns can shift them dramatically. You always run the risk of turning a perfectly optimized campaign into a complete mess.

The key is to move slow, make small changes, and make them one at a time. If you apply those rules to your strategy you’ll be able to scale Facebook Ad campaigns with little risk and a better understanding of how those changes affect your advertising.

Be sure to ask your questions or tell me about your scaling experience in the comments below.

More than any other paid media platform out there, Facebook Ads have revolutionized the way marketers are able to distribute their content and other messages to a highly targeted audience.

In the past, advertisers and media buyers have always been able to go after specific customer segments where they’re likely to be – specific TV channels, specific magazines and print media, and even specific websites with display ads.

However, over the past decade, Facebook has built the most complete database of demographic and psychographic data that has ever existed.

It’s taken our targeting abilities to levels that those other options couldn’t come close to.

WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS ?

Getting to know who your customers really are is a crucial step for a successful Facebook Ads campaign. With more than 1 billion daily active Facebook users, it’s absolutely critical that you target only those who are potentially interested in your product.

Luckily, Facebook offers a wide range of targeting options that will help you find the right niche!

How to Create Facebook Audiences

To create and manage your Facebook target audiences, you’ll have to use the Audience Manager tool.
You can find this tool in the Business Manager, by clicking on the top-right menu and selecting “Audiences.”

On the Audiences page, you can see all your saved Facebook audiences as well as create new ones. To understand the wide range of targeting options that come with Facebook ads, let’s start from the basics.

Facebook has three primary audience types:

• Saved Audiences
• Custom Audiences
• Lookalike Audiences

Each of these audience types gives you plenty of additional options for creating the perfect target audience for your Facebook campaigns.

Facebook Saved Audiences

Saved Audiences are the audiences that you can define by choosing people’s interests location, age, gender, used devices, income level, etc. You can create Saved Audiences both in the campaign setup phase or in the Audience Manager.

Location-based targeting

Facebook allows you to target people in specific locations, including:

• Country
• State/Region
• Counties
• DMA (Designated Market Area)
• City
• Postal Code
• Specific Address Radius

Simply type in the regions you wish to target.

You also have another layer of location targeting, allowing to be even more specific:

Everyone in this location (the default targeting option) – The last updated location of an actual Facebook user

People who live in this location – Location is set by the location on a user’s Facebook profile and confirmed by their IP address.

People recently in this location – Tracked by mobile device usage in the geographic area you intend to target.

People traveling to this location – Users who had this geographic area as a recent location that’s at least 100 miles away from their home location.

Demographics-based targeting

As you click on the Demographics tab, you’ll get plenty of targeting topics to refine your audience based on many options. The basic 3 are:

Age – If you’re targeting an audience with a specified age range, you can easily reach them by telling Facebook who your ideal customers are.

Gender – You can also select to target a particular gender.

Language – If you’re advertising in a particular language, you might want to only target the people who can understand your ads.

But you can get way more detailed. As an example, you’ll be able to target people by their political views, life events, job titles, ethnicity, and so on.

Interest-based targeting

Interests are one of the best (and easiest) Facebook ads targeting options as they allow you to target people specifically interested in a subject related to your product. For example, you could target people interested in your competitors or your broader market segment, or magazines and blogs covering your market.

To target based on interests, you can either browse the menu with hundreds of interests or simply type in one interest, so that Facebook will suggest to you other related topics.

The interests are based on Facebook users’ likes and interests, apps they use, Pages they’ve Liked, and more. Adding more than one interest will target people with at least one of them so you’ll make your reach broader.

Behaviour-based targeting

Unlike precise Interests, Behaviors allow you to target people by purchase history, events they like, personal anniversaries, etc. This data is gathered by Facebook analyzing many factors and also using external data sets.

 

They are not always useful, but when they are they work great! As an example, you can target people currently traveling or planning their next trip … priceless if you’re in the hotel or event booking market. Check them out and see if they can work for your business.

Facebook Custom Audiences

Facebook Custom Audiences are probably your most high-value target audiences as they allow to retarget past website visitors and people who have engaged with your content or app. There are multiple ways to create a Custom Audience, and we’re going to cover each of them briefly.

Creating Custom Audiences from Customer Files

This first type of Facebook Custom Audience is based on your existing customer files – the lists of email accounts, phone numbers or app IDs. The Customer File audience is a great way to target your newsletter subscribers or app users.

To create a Facebook Custom Audience, follow these steps:

1. Create a Facebook Custom Audience
2. Select the “Customer File” option
3. Select whether you wish to add a customer file or import contacts from MailChimp.
4. Import your customer data to create a new Custom Audience
5. Select the identifiers
6. Upload a customer file
7. Give your Custom Audience a name

Your customer files can include 15 different identifiers, the most popular ones being:

1. Email
2. Phone number
3. Mobile advertiser IDIf you need to clean up the data inside your customer files before the import, this Facebook’s guide can help you out.
   

   Creating Custom Audiences Based on Website Traffic

   Website traffic-based Facebook audiences allow you to create remarketing campaigns for people who have engaged with your website. These are high-value audiences as the users seeing your ads have already shown some interest in it. Important! To create audiences based on your website traffic, you first need to install Facebook Pixel.

   If you’ve built your website on WordPress, you can also create this type of Custom Audiences with the Pixel Caffeine plugin.

   Once you’ve installed the Facebook Pixel, you can simply go to the Audience Manager and create a Custom Audience based on past website traffic.

   

You can choose between multiple options:

• Target everyone who visited your website
• Target people who visited specific web pages
• Target people who visited specific web pages but not others
• Target people who haven’t visited your website for a certain amount of time
• Other custom combinations

Creating Custom Audiences Based on App Activity

If you want to reach the people who have engaged with your iOS or Android app, you can set up a Facebook target audience to do that. To target people based on the app activity, you first need to register your app and set up app events.

To create a Facebook Custom Audience based on app activity, target people who have taken specific actions (events) in your app. You can also select the timeframe for targeted events.

For example, you could select a purchase event and specify “In The Last 90 days” to reach people who have completed an in-app purchase event in the past 90 days. Here’s the official guide by Facebook to help you create Custom Audiences based on app activity.

Creating Custom Audiences Based on Engagement

Did you know that you can also target the users that have engaged with your content on Facebook, e.g. viewed your videos or liked a Page post. The latest addition to Custom Audiences is the possibility to target people who have done one of the following:

• Visited your Facebook Page
• Engaged with your Facebook Page posts or ads
• Clicked on any call-to-action buttons
• Sent a message to your Page
• Saved your Page or posts

This gives you the perfect opportunity to reach high-potential audiences that are interested in learning more about your brand or product.

Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Facebook Lookalike Audiences let you reach the people who are similar to your existing customer database – making them highly likely to convert as well.

To create a Lookalike Audience, you first need to create a Custom Audience to tell Facebook what type of users you want to reach. Next, select the “Lookalike Audience” from the audience creation menu and select a target country and a percentage (1%-10%) of the targeted country’s Facebook users. The percentage signifies the people most similar to your selected Custom Audience.

Lookalike Audiences help you to extend your ad campaign’s reach so that you only target people who are likely to be interested in your offer.

How To Narrow Down Your Audiences

Sometimes, a Facebook audience can include millions of users. Unless you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising budgets waiting around the corner, you should keep your target audiences smaller and more precise.

When creating Saved Audiences, you can narrow your audience with the AND/OR targeting options. The OR targeting means that when you add new targeting options under the same category of targeting, your audience will grow larger. The AND targeting means that a person who’s in your target audience must fall into multiple categories. This will help to decrease your audience size and create niche audiences.

As you may have noticed from the image above, you can also EXCLUDE people who match specific interests or demographics. You can also EXCLUDE specific Custom Audiences from the general target audience. For example, you could exclude past converters to avoid your ads reaching people who are already customers.

Bonus Tip

If some Lookalike Audience or Custom Audiences are too large (hundreds of thousands of people), narrow them down with interest-based targeting by creating a Saved Audience.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a Facebook Saved Audience
• Select a Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience
• Add interest- or demographics-based targeting options

When you think of Facebook ads for your ecommerce business, maybe you begin to wonder if it’s too expensive, if it’s too difficult to figure out, or if it’s still too early for your business to pay for advertising.

Facebook has over a billion monthly active users according to Statista. With Facebook ads, you have the opportunity to put your business and product in front of this very large and active user base. Many ecommerce businesses have been able to make the most of this opportunity and have grown their businesses significantly with Facebook ads.

In this article, we’re going to go through the basics and fundamentals of Facebook ads and provide you with a detailed overview of the platform, we’ll walk you through, step-by-step, how to create your first ad Campaign.  so let’s dive into the world of Facebook ads and what they look like for ecommerce businesses.

What is Facebook Ads Manager?

Facebook has two ad management tools: Facebook Ads Manager and Power Editor.

Both of these tools are free. If you’re just starting out, we suggest that you setup your campaigns in the Ads Manager (Power Editor is a more complex tool that’s mainly used for managing large-scale campaigns. It’s mainly used by agencies and enterprise-level advertisers.)

By using the Facebook Ads Manager, you can:

• Set up Facebook ad campaigns
• Create new ad sets and ads
• Manage Facebook ad bids
• Target many different audiences
• Optimize your ad campaigns
• Keep track of your campaigns’ performance
• A/B test your Facebook ad campaigns.

How to use and navigate the Ads Manager

There are three ways to access your Facebook Ads Manager account:

1. Use this link that will take you to your Ads Manager account (You better bookmark the link for quick access!)
2. Click on the drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of any Facebook page (that you have Admin access to) and select “Manage Ads” in the drop-down menu.
3. Use Facebook’s Ads Manager mobile app to access and manage your ad campaigns anytime and anywhere.

To help you better understand your Facebook Ads Manager account, here’s a quick roadmap.

However, we suggest that you play around inside the Ads Manager and see what else you’ll discover.

If you’re left wondering where are all your Facebook audiences, advanced reports, etc., know that you can access all the important tools inside the Facebook Business Manager by using the main navigation menu in the top-left corner of your screen.

Now that you’re familiar with the navigation of the Facebook Ads Manager, let’s move fast to the part you’ve been waiting for: creating your first ad campaign on Facebook.

How to Set Up a Facebook Ad Campaign

Alright, let’s start with the basics, i.e. by answering the question “How can you start creating a new Facebook campaign?”
First, make sure you’ve chosen the Ads Manager tool from the top-left menu shown in the screenshot above. Then, click on the green “Create Ad” button in the top-right side of the page.

Et voila! You’ll be guided through the entire campaign creation funnel (image below). All you have to do is select your preferred options and enter some ad details like images and copy.

Let us show you how to do it, step by step.

Step 1: Select Your Campaign Objective

The first selection you’re going to make is choosing your campaign objective.

Here’s the complete list of Facebook campaign objectives available in the Ads Manager:

• Brand awareness
• Local awareness
• Reach
• Traffic
• Engagement
• All installs
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Conversions
• Product catalog sales
• Store visits

How to choose your campaign objective?

The reason Facebook’s asking about your campaign’s goal, i.e. objective, is because it will determine the campaign’s ad formats, bidding options, and auto-optimization.

If you tell Facebook your goal, it can auto-optimize your ads to deliver you more results.

Anyway, we recommend that you always select the campaign objective that reflects on your end goal. Most of the time, it’s Conversions. However, if your campaign’s ultimate goal is to increase brand awareness, select the “Brand awareness” objective and so on.

Step 2: Give Your Ad Campaign a Name

Do I need to explain this point? Well, the name tells it all, but maybe I can share one of my secret tips with you: When naming your Facebook ad campaign, don’t forget to add the date range so that it will be easier to navigate between your campaigns later.

Step 3: Set Up the Audience Targeting

In this phase of your campaign setup, you have two options:

• Create a new Facebook target audience
• Use a Saved Audience

You can also select Custom Audiences that you’ve previously created in the Audience Manager. (Note that you can’t create new Custom Audiences in the campaign creation phase. You need to create these first in the Audience Manager).

You can also select Custom Audiences that you’ve previously created in the Audience Manager. (Note that you can’t create new Custom Audiences in the campaign creation phase. You need to create these first in the Audience Manager).

 

Step 4: Set Up Your Ad Placement

Facebook ads appear in multiple places, including:

• Facebook News Feeds (Mobile and Desktop)
• Facebook Right-Hand Column
• Instagram
• Audience Network
• Instant Articles
• In-Stream Video

In this phase of your campaign setup, you have two options: you can either select the Automatic Placement or configure your ad campaign so that your ads are only shown in some “real estates” of Facebook’s advertising network.

While Facebook does a pretty good job auto-optimizing your ad placements, Facebook ad cost data shows that the cost-per-results can differ deeply, depending on the placement you’re using.

How to select your Facebook ad placements?

If you’re setting up your first campaign, we recommend that you use the Automatic Placements.

However, if you’re trying to get people convert on your website and it’s difficult to navigate on mobile, de-select the Mobile Newsfeed, Instagram and Audience Network placements.

Here are the ad placements recommended by Facebook for every campaign objective:

• Brand awareness: Facebook and Instagram
• Engagement: Facebook and Instagram
• Video views: Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network
• App installs: Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network
• Traffic (for website clicks and app engagement): Facebook and Audience Network
• Product catalog sales: Facebook and Audience Network
• Conversions: Facebook and Audience Network

Step 5: Set Up Your Campaign Budget and Bidding

Picking the right budget for your campaign is critical to success. The first step of the “Budget & Schedule” setup is to assign a budget for your campaign.

Facebook gives you two budgeting options:

1. Daily budget –  Facebook will spend this sum on delivering your ads every day during your campaign. When you set your daily budget, you’re telling Facebook to get you roughly your daily budget’s worth of the results every day.
Some days, when Facebook spots high-potential opportunities, it may spend up to 25% more than your daily budget (and then lower the spend on the low-potential days). As you select the daily budget, your daily ad spend could look like a set of curves.
Don’t worry, that’s completely normal and means that Facebook’s auto-optimizing your ad delivery (which is a good thing).

2. Lifetime budget – Facebook will divide the total campaign budget more or less evenly across the campaign dates. If you set a lifetime budget, Facebook will ask you for the campaign dates, so that it can calculate the average spend for each day.

We recommend that you set a daily budget and an unlimited campaign duration, so that you can later edit the size of your daily budgets and pause the campaign whenever you see fit.

Important! You can’t change an ad set’s budget type after the ad set has been created. Make sure you make the right selection during the campaign setup.

Facebook Ads Bidding – How it Works?

As you advertise on Facebook, you’ll be competing with hundreds of thousands of advertisers, each wishing to reach their target audience. Facebook ad bidding works on an auction basis. Who’s winning the bid? – The advertiser who has the best combination of best bid, relevance score, and “estimated action rates.”

Manual vs. Automatic Bidding

If you’re putting your first steps in the world of Facebook advertising, we suggest that you use the Automatic bidding. This way, you don’t need any previous knowledge about the average bids and the average cost-per-result.

Use the manual bidding if you know how much the results are worth to you. For example, when optimizing your ad set for Link Clicks, you can set the highest price per click you’re willing to pay. As you set a manual bid, Facebook will show you the range of suggested bids and automatically inserts a suggested bid in the box.

Always change the Facebook’s pre-set manual bid in the custom bidding box. For example, if Facebook first suggests that you bid €1.0 per link click and the bid range is (€0.43–€0.88), you could bid €0.60 or even €0.44.

Step 6: Set Up Your Facebook Ads

As the final step of your campaign setup process, you can select your preferred Facebook ad type and insert your ad images and copy.

You can either select an existing Facebook Page post or create new ads:

Set Up Your Facebook Ad Copy

Setting up your ad copy is super easy. All you need to do is enter text in the right fields.

You’ll also see a preview of your ad campaign. If you’re testing multiple ad images or wish to see how your ad looks on different screens (Desktop vs. Mobile), you can do so by selecting other views from the two menus highlighted in the image below.

You have three choices when it comes where your Facebook Ads will appear: the News Feed, Mobile, and right column.

Many marketers assume right column ads are a waste of money since they don’t perform as well as News Feed ads. However, right side ads are relatively cheap and you’ll never know which ad type is best for your campaign without testing. Give them a try.

Another thing to keep in mind is mobile targeting. Some advertisers make the mistake of sending users who click mobile ads to non-mobile optimized sites. Only use mobile advertising if your site is mobile-friendly otherwise you’ll waste lots of money since Facebook mobile generates lots of clicks.

Removing a target is pretty simple. When creating an ad,  you’ll have three tabs to check a preview of it in the three available placements. At the end of each placement’s tab, you have a “Remove” link. Just click it to disable a placement.

Et voila! You’ve created your first Facebook ad!

 

You’ve got a product. You’ve taken product photos and written product descriptions. You’ve setup your online store, populated it with great content and launched it to the world,  Now what?

Now it’s time to sit back and watch the traffic and sales come flooding in, right?

If only it were that easy.

For many first time eCommerce entrepreneurs, it can be frustrating to work so hard getting your business ready only to to hear crickets when you finally launch.

Well that’s exactly what we’re going to explore in this Blog, we put together this comprehensive guide to help you make your first sale.

1 – SOCIAL MEDIA

A/ Make Friends on Facebook:

Learn how to get started with Facebook marketing – everything from crafting strategic status updates to creating a compelling Facebook page for your store.

B/ Network on LinkedIn:

Find out how to strategically connect with people, complete your profile, what to post and how to leverage LinkedIn groups.

C/ Get Busy on Youtube:

Discover how to sell with video, what video software to use, what kind of video content to produce and how to get started with YouTube analytics.

D/ Spark Conversations on Twitter:

If you’re new to Twitter then this section is for you. Learn how to get started setting up your account and how to strategically engage potential followers and customers.

E/ Inspire with Pinterest:

Pinterest can be a huge driver of traffic. In this chapter we show you how to integrate a ‘Pin it’ button on your site and start inspiring potential customers to start following your pins.

F/ Work It on Instagram:

Instagram is quickly becoming one of the best platforms for online store owners to build an audience with. Discover how to post photos that drive engagement, run contests and more.

G/ Tap Into Tumblr:

Here’s where we show you everything you need to know to get started with Tumblr, from picking a theme, adding content and building links back to your store.

2 – SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

A/ Stand Out on Comparison Shopping Engines:

Price driven shoppers often use comparison shopping engines to make a purchase these days. Here, you’ll learn how to leverage these website and get your products in front of more people.

B/ Get On Google Places:

Google Places is Google’s answer to the good old yellow pages, and yes even if you haven’t made a dime, you’re going to want to be found on Google Places. In this chapter we show you how.

C/ Leverage the Yahoo! Bing Network:

Learn how to use paid search ads on the Yahoo! Bing Network to drive targeted traffic to your store.

D/ Get Search Engine Optimized (SEO):

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often considered by some as the holy grail of Internet marketing. In this chapter we show you how to get your site to rank higher in Google.

E/  Learn from Web Analytics:

Analytics (for short) will show you what your customers are doing on your site, on which web pages they leave your site, and in some cases how long they have been a customer.

F/  Be Accessible on Mobile Devices:

One way to gain an edge on your competition and be accessible by consumers on whatever device they decide to use is to make sure your current website is mobile friendly or create a separate mobile site.

3 – Product Reviews

A/ Get Product Reviews:

This is the online guerrilla marketing method of PR. There is a unique benefit of getting product reviews from other websites that helps increase brand credibility and trustworthiness in addition to word-of-mouth marketing.

B/  Write a Press Release:

Learn how to be newsworthy and craft a press release that rises above the noise.

C/ Pull a PR Stunt:

PR stunts are the ancient version of the viral video. They are loads of fun and help bring tons of attention to your brand if executed well.

D/ Sell a Unique and Newsworthy Product:

Standing out from the crowd is one of the best ways to move merchandise. Especially if you’re in a crowded space where your competitors sell similar, if not the exact same products.

E/  Interview an Industry Influencer:

A great way to produce easy and very exceptional blog content is to interview someone important and well known in your industry.

4 – CONTENT MARKETING

A/ Write a Guest Post:

One of the most high-impact ways to get some internet buzz for your business is to write guest blog posts for various websites that are relevant to your niche.

B/ Create a Viral Video:

Discover the five characteristics of viral videos and how to create your own.

C/ Start Your Own Blog:

Starting a successful blog can be the easiest and cheapest way to attract thousands of new customers. All it comes down to is how well you can create valuable content for your readers.

D/ Write a Controversial Blog Post:

Creating controversy is one way to get your brand to race out in front of the masses and garner some serious consumer attention. But it has to be done carefully and artfully.

E/ Create a Youtube Channel:

Having a YouTube channel can be one of the strongest marketing and sales tools you’ll ever own. Here’s how to get started.

F/ Build Your Email List: There’s no question how important email marketing is when it comes to adding to your bottom line, in fact, research shows that for every dollar spent on email marketing, companies made on average $40 back.

5 – PAID ADS

A/ Advertise on Facebook:

This is where the power of your Facebook page will become fully realized, especially when it comes to helping you generate sales.

B/ Pay for Google Adwords:

No other advertising network will give you faster sales results than Adwords. In this chapter we show you how to get started using the platform and generating targeted traffic to your site.

C/ Buy Banner Ads:

Banner ads can work magic when it comes to selling products online, but like every form of marketing, they have to be done right.

D/ Promote Your Tweets on Twitter:

Learn how to leverage Twitter’s advertising platform to get your content in front of more people and increase your engagement on Twitter.

6 – Offline Advertising

A/ Get a Booth at a Flea Market or Farmer’s Market:

Nothing beats speaking to potential customers one-on-one and selling to them directly, especially early on when you’re still building your company and you’ll do next to anything to get that first sale.

B/ Engage Your Local Business Network:

In this chapter we’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of how to effectively network in the real world to get results, and by results we mean sales for your business.

C/ Say Hello to Strangers with Meetup.com:

Learn how to find meetups in your area and use them to help make important industry connections and ultimately promote your brand.

D/ Sell Wholesale to Other Retailers:

Here’s where you get an introduction on distributing your own products (or even other products from other companies) to other retailers.

E/ Take Your Business On the Road:

A fun and productive way to see the rest of your country while looking to make that first sale is to showcase your business in other locations.

F/ Deploy a Sales Team:

Sometimes getting that first sale is a quick endeavour but sustaining growth in sales quickly makes you realize how tough it can be to be a one-person sales team, especially if your product requires a little more convincing than traditional consumer goods.

7 – CLASSIC ADVERTISING

A/ Get Going with Trade shows:

Trade shows can have a profound impact on your business, especially if you’re the manufacturer or source of your own products.

B/ Go Door to Door:

This might be one of the most overlooked startup techniques known to earthlings. But it actually can work for digital, subscription and physical products.

C/ Use Print Ads:

In the age of online advertising where you can calculate your return on investment to the penny, suggesting print advertising may seem quite unusual. That’s exactly why we’re suggesting it.

D/ Sponsor an Event:

Sponsoring events is an age old form of marketing that can be really hit or miss. In this chapter we show how to make sure you get a solid ROI for your sponsorship dollars.

E/ Distribute Flyers:

Even with the popularity of internet marketing, flyers and direct mail are still effective ways to make sales, especially that tricky and often allusive first one.

F/ Advertise Outdoors:

If you’re really hungry for that first sale and traditional online methods aren’t yielding any results, offline methods like billboards can be your holy grail.

8 – Any Other Way Possible

A/ Tell Family and Friends:

Your network of friends and family will mostly likely be your easiest first sales. You may not want to sell to them, but this is powerful way to kickstart word of mouth for your business.

B/ Participate on Forums:

Participating in online forums can be an amazing way to get your business in front of the right audience. Here’s how to get started.

C/ Create a Listing on Craigslist:

Perhaps the easiest way to launch any business is through Craigslist. Started in 1995 by Craig Newmark, Craigslist has been providing the world a (nearly) free marketplace to sell just about anything.

D/ Give Out Coupon Codes:

Coupon codes can be a powerful tool to attract new and repeat customers. However, it’s important to make sure discounting fits into your overall brand strategy.

E/ Get Others Involved with Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate marketing can be an amazing sales channel for an online retailer. A lot of your success has to do with the type of products you sell and how well you pay your affiliates.

F/ Build Relationships with Suppliers:

Have reliable supplies can make your break your business. In this chapter we show you the importance of supplier relationships and how they con contribute to your sales and bottom line.

G/ Demonstrate Trust and Security:

A major hurdle all small online retail businesses have to face when they are just starting out is getting consumers to trust doing business with them. Discover how to increase your sales by making sure your website appears trustworthy.

H/ Target Different Languages and Countries:

Targeting a user base which speaks a different language or lives in a different geographic region is a powerful strategy to not only get your first sale, but take your business to the next level.

I/ Delegate and Get Things Done:

When you’re first starting out, it feels like the entire weight of the world is on your shoulders. Here’s where we show you how to decide which tasks to do yourself and which ones you should be delegating in order to run your business efficiently and maximize sales.

J/ Be Persistent:

When it’s all said and done, sometime it’s takes hard work and persistence to make that first sale. In this chapter we show you some strategies to make sure your persistence pays off.

 

For new entrepreneurs, deciding to start an online business is an exciting journey, but it’s also new terrain that can be intimidating and difficult to navigate.

Maybe you’ve tried starting your own business before, or maybe you’re planning your very first one. Regardless, every new business will present its own unique opportunities and challenges. From choosing a product, evaluating it, validating the market, sourcing inventory, building your online storefront, marketing and fulfillment, there’s a lot to learn.

One of the biggest hurdles for eCommerce entrepreneurs starting their online business is the very first step of figuring out what products to actually sell online. This seemingly mountainous choice typically ends up being the reason most people never actually start their online business in the first place.

Coming up with a great idea for a product to sell online will occasionally strike when you least expect it, most of the time though, it’s something you need to be proactively on the lookout for. The Internet contains a wealth of ideas and inspiration, but where exactly should you begin?

1 – Start with What You Have or Solve Your Own Problems

Before you begin searching the depths of the Internet and the ends of the earth for product and niche ideas, it’s always best to start with the ideas that you already have. If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you likely already have a few ideas for products you want to sell or have thought about selling in the past. Maybe it’s an idea you’ve had for years or maybe you have a problem in your own life that there is no good solution for currently.

Here are a few questions to consider when searching for your product :

• What products, niches or industries are you particularly passionate about or interested in?
• What products, niches or industries are your friends passionate about?
• What pain points or frustrating experience do you have in your own life?

2 – Local Communities

The idea for the perfect product might be closer than you think.

Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses have been around much longer than their ecommerce counterparts. Paying attention to trends locally in brick-and-mortar retail just might help spark product ideas you can take online.

Try spending an afternoon taking a look around your community and note what new or interesting retail concepts and products are on display.

Another great source of product inspiration within your community can come from your local newspapers which tend to feature new, innovative and local concepts and products. As you look at these resources, ask yourself if they can be turned into an online opportunity.

3 – Online Consumer Trend Publications

What better place to find an interesting products to sell online than from publications whose job it is to curate new, interesting and trending product ideas. Following trend publications is great way to begin getting a sense of the direction consumer products are going and the ideas other entrepreneurs are introducing to the market.

Following these publications can also expose you to new product categories and industries that you previously didn’t know about.

As a starting point, take a look at the following popular online trend publications:

• Trend Watching – Trend Watching is an independent trend firm that scans the globe for the most promising consumer trends and insights.

Trend Watching has a team of thirty professionals in locations like London, New York, ingapore, Sydney and Lagos all looking for and reporting on worldwide trends.

• Trend Hunter – Trend Hunter is the world’s largest, most popular trend community. Fuelled by a global network of 137,000 members and 3,000,000 fans, Trend Hunter is a source of inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs on the hunt for new product ideas.
• Springwise – There are millions of business ideas spanning the globe that operate in a specific way, have their own style, and market in a unique fashion.

It’s not always possible to travel the world searching for these ideas to bring home though. That’s where Springwise comes in.

Springwise travels the world for you, on the search for new entrepreneurial ideas,

trends, and stories.

4 – Social Curation Sites

Social curation sites like Pinterest can be a goldmine for product and niche ideas. Many of the images contain interesting, new and trending consumer products.

Using the built-in social signals you can sometimes get a sense almost immediately of their popularity. This could be your first clue if there is a market for the product.

Several of the larger social curations sites to check out include:

PINTEREST – Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social network with over 50 million monthly users. Make sure to check out the popular section for what’s currently trending.

POLYVORE – Polyvore is another great service, similar to Pinterest. Polyvore’s global community has created over 80 million collage-like “sets” that are shared across the web.

FANCY – Fancy describes themselves as part store, magazine, and wish list. Regardless of what it is, it’s filled with product ideas for you to explore.

WANELO – Wanelo (Want – Need – Love) describes itself as a community for all of the worlds shopping, bringing together products and stores in a Pinterest-like product posting format.

5 – Business-To-Business (B2B) Wholesale Marketplaces

What better way to get product ideas than right from the source. This has been a popular option amongst ecommerce entrepreneurs for a while and this list wouldn’t be complete without it.

Wholesale and manufacturer sourcing sites like Alibaba exposes you to thousands of

potential product ideas. It can be easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of product available so take your time.

Some of the more popular B2B wholesale product sites are:

ALIBABA – You’ve likely heard of Alibaba. They are the biggest eCommerce company in the world, even larger than Amazon and eBay combined. Alibaba connects consumers all over the world with wholesalers and manufacturers (typically) from Asia. With hundreds of thousands of products, there’s not much you can’t find on Alibaba.

Although it’s generally accepted that Alibaba is the largest online wholesale and manufacturer database, there are many other sites similar to Alibaba you can use for inspiration and to find product ideas.

Some of the largest competitors of Alibaba you should also spend

some time exploring include:

• TradeKey
• Global Sources
• Made-in-China

6 – Online Consumer Marketplaces

Another rich source for product ideas are online consumer marketplaces. Millions of products is probably an understatement so you may want to begin your search with some of the popular and trending items and branch out into other interesting categories that catch your eye from there:

• ebay : eBay is the largest online consumer auction site.

eBay Popular – A list of some of the most popular product categories on eBay

eBay Watch Count – An online tool that will list the most popular items on eBay based on how many people are “watching” them.

• Amazon : Amazon is the largest internet retailer.

Amazon Bestsellers – Amazon’s most popular products based on sales.Updated hourly.

Amazon Movers and Shakers – Amazon’s biggest gainers in sales rank over the past 24 hours. Updated hourly.

• Kickstarter : Kickstarter is the largest crowd-funding website.

Kickstarter Discover – Browse all projects by popularity, funding, staff picks, as well as many other options.

• Etsy : Etsy is a marketplace for handmade items.

Etsy Trending Items – Check out the current trending items and listings on Etsy.

• Aliexpress : AliExpress is a new consumer wholesale marketplace from Alibaba that allows you to order in small quantities.

Aliexpress Popular – The most popular products being bought on AliExpress..

7 – Social Forum Communities

Reddit is the largest social media news aggregator. It describes itself as the front page of the internet and is enormously influential. Reddit has thousands of “subreddits” that are sub-sections or niches that cater to different topics and areas of interest. It’s within these subreddits that you can find lots of inspiration for product ideas.

If you have an idea for a particular industry, niche or product category, it’s worth doing a search and finding a suitable subreddit community to join and actively become a part of.

There are also many product focused subreddits that are packed with

Ideas.

Here are a few examples:

BUY IT FOR LIFE – For practical, durable and quality made products that are built to last.

Reddit SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY – Interesting, clever, useful products that that people want… badly.

There are also several subreddits for curated Amazon products, make sure to check out the following:

• Reddit The Best of Amazon
• Reddit Find It On Amazon

If you’re active on Reddit and pay close attention, occasionally you have come across interesting posts like these:

• Reddit, What is One Product Under $20 That You Recommend Everyone To Buy?
• What $100 Item Has The Single Greatest Ability to Increase Quality of Life?

No matter which approach you take, Reddit is has been and continues to be a rich and valuable source of entrepreneurial ideas and inspiration, coupled with a supportive community.

8 – Instagram

Instagram isn’t just pictures of food and puppies, it’s also a great option for discovering new product ideas. Because it’s photo-based, it makes it easy to scan through many ideas and photos quickly.

There are a few ways you can use Instagram to search for product and niche ideas:

HASHTAGS – Once again, if you have a particular interest in a product category or industry, you can try searching for applicable hashtags and following relevant people in the market/niche or industry. Another great option is to do a search on Instagram for applicable hashtags that insinuate buyer interest and intent like #want and #buy.

PRODUCT CURATION ACCOUNTS – There are many accounts on Instagram that post curated product content. You’ll likely want to search for and find accounts within the niches you are particularly interested in. As an example, Shopify curates interesting and unique products from their merchant’s stores.

9 – Ecomhunt

If you want to make more money you either have to invest TIME or MONEY, this is where Ecomhunt come in handy, you could just spend a tiny bit of money and you would have all the top-selling products on your screen instantly.

Our main purpose is to help people find good products to sell on their stores, We have a team specialized in product research, before we add any product we make sure it’s new and got high engagement on social media and all the products we add are tested and getting hot sales in the best pro ecom stores.

The products data listed on Ecomhunt includes :

Profit, Analytics, Engagement, Links, Facebook Ads, Product Video, Facebook Targeting, and Offer type.

We put together all this Valuable content for our users so they can find their winning products.

More Reasons to join Ecomhunt :

* You’ll find the top products instantly.

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* Save products for future use

* No delay time on new products

* BE PART OF OUR PRO COMMUNITY!

“The good news is that right now there are a 31% discount on the pro plan. That means that you only pay $20 if you join our PRO membership now, Join Ecomhunt.”