Simple Tips to Boost Meta Ads Performance on Shopify

In this article, we share simple tips that can significantly improve the performance of your Meta ads on Shopify with just a few adjustments.

If you're running Meta ads on Shopify but not seeing the results you hoped for, the tips in this article are for you. No advanced marketing expertise is required — these are straightforward tweaks that can increase your chances of success with Meta ads.

Please read through to the end and use this as a reference for running more effective Meta ad campaigns.

StoreHero leverages its proprietary growth platform to support detailed operations that manual management can't achieve, as well as business growth through the large-scale execution of initiatives. If you're struggling to increase sales on Shopify, feel free to reach out. =>Download our free service introduction materials here

Connecting Shopify with Meta Ads

If you're running Meta ads on Shopify, start by using the Facebook & Instagram sales channel to connect Shopify with Meta ads.

Once properly connected, purchase events, add-to-cart actions, and other events on Shopify will be tracked in Meta ads via the Conversions API, and your Shopify product data will be synced with Meta's catalog.

Some standard events are not fired even after connecting Shopify and Meta. Depending on your store, you may want to track events such as wishlist additions or store searches. To add standard events, you'll need to configure the Meta Pixel.

For example, in the case of a wishlist addition, you can use Google Tag Manager to fire a JavaScript tag like the one below whenever a user adds an item to their wishlist. A full list of standard events provided by Meta can be found in this reference (Standard Events Reference).

<script>

  fbq('track', 'AddToWishlist');

</script>

Checking Events Manager

After connecting Shopify and Meta, check Meta's Events Manager to confirm that events are being tracked correctly. If events are not being measured properly, or if the event match quality is low, your ads won't optimize effectively — so investigate the cause and take corrective action.

By selecting each event, you can verify whether it is being measured accurately. Check the event coverage rate, match quality, deduplication, and freshness status. If any alerts appear, it's possible that the Conversions API is not integrating correctly. Investigate and address each issue individually.

Adding Custom Events

Use Google Tag Manager to fire events that occur during the purchase consideration phase (such as on-site search, wishlist additions, and video plays), then aggregate them in Google Analytics to review the number of fires per event and the purchase rate. Once you identify events with high CVR (conversion rate), publish custom events so that customers who performed those actions can be used as a Meta ads audience.

For example, if you want to track an event called ViewVideo that fires when a video is played, fire a tag like the one below when the video plays. For standard events, you use the fbq('track') function, but for custom events, you call the fbq('trackCustom') function. Everything else is the same as using the Pixel for standard events.

<script>

    fbq('trackCustom', 'ViewVideo');

</script>

Incidentally, you can also write code directly in your Shopify theme to fire the Pixel without using Google Tag Manager. In that case, you'll need to include the timing of the Pixel call in the code as well. The example below fires an event when the Klaviyo newsletter signup form (named "newsletter") is submitted.

<script>

window.addEventListener("klaviyoForms", function(e) { 

  if (e.detail.type == 'submit') {

    fbq('trackCustom', 'newsletter');

  }

});

</script>

Once you've created your custom events, go to Meta's audience creation screen to create a Custom Audience. Create an audience targeting the custom events you've added. These can then be used for retargeting ads.

Catalog Grouping

When using your product catalog for ads, it becomes much easier to manage if you group products using the product sets feature. You can categorize products by product type, custom labels, and more. With the Facebook & Instagram integration between Shopify and Meta, custom label data cannot be synced to Meta's custom labels. If you want to automatically categorize products such as best sellers or recommended items, you'll need to use an app that customizes your feed (such as Multifeed Google Shopping Feed).

Audience Data Integration

You can connect your Shopify customer data with Meta ads and use it as a Custom Audience for ad targeting.

CRM apps like Klaviyo allow you to sync customer segments used for email campaigns directly to Meta ads as audience data. Segment by purchase amount, purchased products, and other criteria to connect the data for the customers you want to target.

Every time a customer has a brand experience (such as a chat consultation, in-store visit, or event attendance) or completes a survey, register data in customer tags or metafields. This allows you to segment customers beyond just purchase history, enabling you not only to improve CRM but also to run ads based on those segments — increasing the precision of your ad targeting.

Syncing data from customers who are unlikely to purchase will only add noise, so it's important to limit the sync to customers who have purchased or loyal customers (those who buy repeatedly).

If you don't have enough loyal customer data, it can be effective to identify potential customers who share similar attributes and behaviors with your loyal customers, tag them accordingly, and sync them to Meta ads along with your loyal customers for audience targeting.

Attribution

Are you making use of Meta ads attribution? With Meta ads, you can configure attribution settings at the ad set level — 1 day after view, 1 day after click, or 7 days after click.

In the reporting view, you can also check how many days after a view or click a conversion occurred by using "Compare Attribution Settings."

If the proportion of view-through conversions (within 1 day of seeing the ad) is high relative to click-through conversions, it's likely that many of those customers would have converted even without seeing the ad. In that case, consider adjusting your settings — for example, by adding exclusions — so that your ads reach more potential new customers.

Meta Ad Library

When creating ads, you need to focus on clearly communicating your brand's and products' strengths.

Your strengths are relative to competitors, so researching competitor ads and landing pages (LPs) will help clarify what makes your brand unique. Just like Google, Meta provides a tool called the Meta Ad Library for researching other companies' ads.

Start by researching the ads and LPs of competitors you're likely to be compared against, define your approach, and then create your ads.

Campaign Type Delivery Settings

Now let's walk through the delivery settings. Delivery methods differ by campaign type. Here we'll cover the setup for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) with a sales objective, and for manually created sales campaigns.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaign (ASC)

ASC is a shopping-focused campaign that leverages Meta's machine learning to automatically deliver ads. While it doesn't offer granular targeting controls, Meta optimizes ad delivery toward your goals and objectives.

Campaign Objective Setting

Select your campaign objective. Since this is a sales-focused campaign, choose "Sales."

Selecting Campaign Configuration

Under "Select Campaign Configuration," you can choose between ASC or a manually created sales campaign. Your choice here determines the setup steps that follow. First, we'll walk through the configuration for ASC.

Conversion

Select your conversion point. Previously, ASC only allowed you to select the Purchase event, but as of September 2024, other events can be selected as well. Since this is a sales campaign, selecting Purchase should be fine.

Budget and Schedule

Set your budget and campaign duration. You can also set a budget cap for existing customers, so if you're focused on acquiring new customers, set a cap on the budget share allocated to existing customers.

Ad Creative

Create the ads to run in your ASC campaign. To improve performance with ASC, it is recommended to set up a large number of ad creatives. You can register up to 150 ads per campaign. We recommend registering at least 10 to 20 creatives with varying formats and different messages.

Partnership Ads

At the top, you'll see an option to select whether this is a Partnership Ad. Partnership Ads are a method of using posts by creators or influencers as ad creative. Unlike standard ads, the partner's name is also displayed where the advertiser's name typically appears.

Ad Setup, Ad Source, and Creative

You can create ads by uploading images or videos, use data from your product catalog, or run existing Instagram or Facebook posts as ads.

Available formats include Flexible, Single Image or Video, Carousel, and Collection. When running ASC, it's a good idea to start by distributing your creatives across formats and monitoring performance.

In Ad Source, you can select which product catalog or product set to use. Create product sets in your Meta Commerce Manager catalog organized by purpose.

If you have a large product range, organizing products into various categories — such as products popular with new customers, products popular with repeat customers, top products by item category, and product sets by color — will make them much easier to leverage in your ads.

Some people assume that selecting a catalog in the media settings limits you to only showing product images, but multiple templates are available so you can choose how your creative is expressed.

Enabling Advantage+ Creative Optimization allows Meta to automatically adjust creatives based on the person viewing the ad. Since this can occasionally result in creatives that look visually off, you'll need to use your judgment about whether to enable it.

Measurement Parameter Settings

You can configure parameters to measure the effectiveness of your ads. Set these up in line with your GA4 UTM parameter structure.

Manual Campaign

Following ASC, let's cover the setup for manual campaigns. Manual campaigns are a traditional delivery method that allows for granular targeting settings, but you'll need to create separate ad sets for audiences with different targeting and manage them effectively.

Selecting Campaign Configuration

Under "Select Campaign Configuration," choose "Manual Sales Campaign."

Choose whether to use a catalog and whether to enable Advantage Campaign Budget. Enabling Advantage Campaign Budget will distribute your budget across multiple ad sets based on their respective performance.

Ad Set

In the ad set, you primarily configure the objective, the target audience, and placement settings. Start by setting the conversion event and target values.

Audience

Audience settings vary depending on whether you use Advantage+ Audience. With Advantage+ Audience, ads are primarily delivered to the audience you've specified, but if Meta determines that broader delivery will improve performance, it may expand to reach a wider group.

Even with Advantage+ Audience, setting Custom Audiences, age, gender, and detailed targeting gives Meta useful signals for optimization, so be sure to configure these properly. On the other hand, if you don't use Advantage+ Audience, delivery will be limited strictly to the audience you've set.

Placements

Placements determine which inventory within Meta's network your ads are shown in. Selecting Advantage+ Placements allows Meta to prioritize delivery to the placements it determines will yield the highest performance.

If you don't use Advantage+ Placements, you can manually select which placements to use. Choose manual settings when you have specific placements you want to include or exclude.

Ad Creative

The ad creative settings are largely the same as for ASC, but the recommended number of ad creatives differs.

For ASC, you can register up to 150 ads per campaign and registering 10 to 20 is recommended. For manual campaigns, Meta's official documentation recommends a maximum of 6 ads. Having too many ads can prevent the learning phase from completing, resulting in poor CPA performance.

Executing Meta Ads Operations at Scale with StoreHero

StoreHero supports Shopify merchants who want to grow their sales through the thorough execution of growth initiatives.

For Meta ads as well, we leverage StoreHero's growth platform to automatically generate feed data based on each product's and SKU's performance and inventory data, as well as audience data based on customers' purchase history and attributes. This enables detailed operations that are difficult to achieve manually and drives continuous growth through the large-scale execution of initiatives.

We are currently offering a free store diagnosis. If you have challenges with Meta ads or growth initiatives in general, please feel free to contact us.
=>Learn more about our free store diagnosis here

Summary

Did you find any areas to revisit in your Meta ads setup and operations? Use the foundational Meta ads settings introduced in this article as a base, incorporate your own winning patterns, and maximize your results.

StoreHero supports business growth using an automated system for Shopify x growth initiatives. If you'd like to work alongside Shopify and growth experts to tackle initiatives across Meta ads, Google ads, CRM, site improvements, inventory management, and more, please don't hesitate to reach out.