Free Plus Shipping Facebook Ad Guidelines (How to Do It Right)

In this article I’ll discuss some simple free plus shipping Facebook ad guidelines.

Some people have gotten their ads disabled when running free plus shipping offers. As with everything, prevention is the best remedy, and the same is true with Facebook.

Before you do anything else, read the Facebook Advertising Policies.

It’s mind-blowing to see how many people start advertising without ever reading the policies.

This is a recipe to get your ad account disabled. Facebook’s ad policy aren’t common sense, you have to actually read them to know what you’re allowed to do and what not. Although some aspects of the policy are kind of “grey zone”, reading the Advertising Policies will help you prevent a lot of stupid mistakes. That being said, let me highlight a few things.

The Most Common Reasons Why Facebook Ad Accounts Get Disabled

Many things can lead to your ad account being disabled.

But there are a few usual suspects.

• Not having a privacy policy on your website
• Using deceptive marketing or unrealistic claims
• Selling copyrighted products or using copyrighted content

Of course, there are many other things that can put your Facebook ad account at risk. This includes accessing your ad account with a VPN or Proxy, using popups that open when a user enters or exists a website, using redirects or making remarks about personal attributes.

If any of these things sound new or confusing, read the Facebook Advertising Policies.

Facebook never actually tells you the exact reason why your ad account got disabled. They’ll usually just tell you that it was because you breached their advertising policies or because of suspicious activities in your ad account. This makes it hard to know what went wrong.

For example, if you’ve been running a free plus shipping Facebook ad and your account get disabled, it could be because of something simple like not having a privacy policy no your store.

But you might wrongly attribute it to the free plus shipping offer.

So let’s bust the myths.

Will Running A Free Plus Shipping Facebook Ad Get You Banned?

It won’t.

I know because I asked Facebook.

I had an extensive talk with one of their “marketing experts” and they confirmed that giving away a product for free and only charging shipping is totally fine as long as you mention the shipping costs. What’s not okay is to run free plus shipping offers and hiding the fact that the customer has to pay shipping fees. This would be considered deceptive marketing.

But you won’t run into problems as long as you do it correctly.

I’ve also talked about countdown timers and other things with Facebook support. There were some rumors a while ago about Facebook not allowing countdown timers on landing pages. The rumors were wrong. You should always use Facebook’s official Advertising Policies as your source of information and not rumors you found in a forum or blog post.

That being said, you still have to read between the lines of Facebook’s Advertising Policies sometimes. Some things aren’t stated clearly or are considered a grey zone, so be careful.

How to Make Sure Your Free Plus Shipping Facebook Ad Is Safe

Let’s talk about how to run free plus shipping ads on Facebook without getting banned.

I’ve been running free plus shipping ads on Facebook since years and I have hundreds of students who have done the same without ever running into problems. But you have to make sure you phrase your offer correctly because messing this up can get you banned.

How to make your free plus shipping ads safe:

• Mention the shipping costs whenever you claim something is “free”
• Don’t use “$0” price tags in the caption or headlines

Let me give you some examples.

Here’s some examples of free plus shipping ads that could get you banned:

• “Get this phone cover for free”
• “We’re giving away our book for free”
• “Price: $0”

This is deceptive marketing in Facebook’s eyes because you are hiding the fact that there are hidden costs during the checkout process. You are misleading the customer into believing the entire offer is free, when in reality the customer needs to pay something.

Here’s some examples of safe free plus shipping ads:

• “Get this phone cover for free. Just pay shipping.”
• “We’re giving away our book for free. All we ask is that you help us cover the shipping costs”

You don’t have to mention exactly how much the shipping costs are (such as “Just pay $7.99 shipping”). But you have to mention the fact that customers have to pay shipping.

That’s it.

If your ad account got banned because of running a free plus shipping Facebook ad, it was likely because you didn’t adhere to the above rules. And if you did, but still got banned, it’s likely because you breached some other aspect of Facebook’s Advertising Policies.