StoreHero's Guide to Using Meta Partnership Ads
In this article, we introduce how Shopify merchants can leverage Meta Partnership Ads. Rather than simply explaining how to run partnership ads, we also want to share how to combine them with ambassador initiatives for an even more effective approach.
For the basics of using Meta Ads on Shopify, please refer to this article (Tips for improving Meta Ads performance on Shopify with just a few tweaks).
How Partnership Ads Work
Overview of Partnership Ads
Meta Partnership Ads are a type of advertisement run primarily on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, where brands (advertisers) collaborate with creators. This enables brands to reach new customer segments and leverage the influence of creators to expand brand awareness.
Benefits for Advertisers and Creators
Benefits for advertisers: Advertisers gain easier access to a creator's followers and surrounding audience, allowing them to expand their brand's reach. Through the creator's content, they can also naturally communicate the appeal of their products and services.
Benefits for creators: Creators can generate revenue through collaboration with brands. By establishing an official partnership, they can also grow their personal brand power and recognition.
How to Set Up Partnership Ads
Below are the basic steps for effectively implementing partnership ads.
Applying for and Approving a Partnership
First, go to the Partnership Ads Hub within Meta Business Manager and click the Add Partnership button.
Search for and select your ad partner (creator).
Select the business assets to link and submit a review request.
Once the creator approves, the status will change to "Active," and you will be able to run partnership ads in collaboration with your ad partner.
Using the Creator Marketplace
Meta provides a Creator Marketplace to help you find ad partners. You can search for creators from a variety of angles, manage lists, and contact them directly.
The Creator Marketplace is a feature that requires registration and approval before use, but if you have an eligible account, we encourage you to make full use of it.
Running Your Ads
To run partnership ads, start by going to the ad settings screen, turning on Partnership Ads, and selecting your partnership.
When you select a partnership, the ad will display both your name and the partner's name, and you will be able to select the partner's posts as ad creatives.
In practice, running these ads tends to make it easier to reach the partner's surrounding audience, and they often deliver performance that differs from regular ads. Engagement rates also tend to be higher than with standard ads.
However, since the creative was not made exclusively for advertising, the last-click CVR (conversion rate) tends to be lower. We recommend combining partnership ad creatives with creatives that perform well on last-click within the same ad set.
Leveraging Ambassador Pages
When visitors arrive at your Shopify store via a partnership ad's creative, if the store only contains brand-centric content, they may feel a disconnect and leave without converting.
By placing the creator's content and UGC (User-Generated Content) within your store as well, you can naturally encourage consideration among customers who arrive through partnership ads.
Review apps like Judge.me allow you to display reviews with photos and videos, making it easy to incorporate UGC.
Some brands also create dedicated ambassador pages within their store. Lululemon and The North Face, for example, both operate pages introducing their ambassadors.
A well-built ambassador page makes it easier for each ambassador to link to it from their own social media accounts. It also helps attract backlinks, making it effective for SEO as well.
StoreHero provides the brands we support with a system that allows them to easily create ambassador pages simply by approving content posted by brand ambassadors. It serves as the ideal place to showcase the brand's story and real-world product usage examples to both prospective and existing customers.
When customers visit an ambassador page after seeing a creative partnership ad, their trust in the brand increases, which is expected to encourage purchasing behavior.
Summary
In this article, we explained how Shopify merchants can use Meta Partnership Ads. From setting up a business account to running ads and integrating them with ambassador initiatives, we hope this guide helps you move forward with your actual operations smoothly and apply these strategies in ways that best fit your brand.
We encourage you to put partnership ads into practice and accelerate your Shopify store's growth strategy.