Online sellers rely on social media platforms like Facebook to promote the products they want to sell. But did you know that you can sell your products directly from your business’ Facebook page? By listing your products on the platform, customers can buy your products right after reading about them through your Facebook posts. If you’re interested, read about how selling on Facebook works, and see how it can benefit your business.
Benefits of Selling on Facebook
The biggest benefit of selling directly on Facebook is that you can take advantage of Facebook’s massive audience. Over 2 billion people have accounts on Facebook, making it one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.
Not only that, but lots of those people are using their time on the platform to shop, especially through the Facebook Marketplace. If you are already marketing your products on Facebook, you can catch interested shoppers by selling right on your profile.
Plus, communication is easier on Facebook, so you can quickly talk with customers if they have any questions or concerns about your products. Using the platform in conjunction with your regular eCommerce platform can lead to incredible growth for your business.
Set up Shop
To set up a shop on Facebook, you need to have a dedicated Business Page. If you have been selling products online for a long time, chances are you already have one. From there, you need to link your bank account and agree to the Merchant Terms set in place for Facebook users to create a shop.
You can create your store by clicking on the “Shop” tab on the left side of the page. From here, you need to input information on what you sell, where you are located, and other relevant pieces of information about your business. After that, you need to configure your payment settings and clarify your shipping details, and you will be ready to start populating your store with the items you want to sell.
Populate Your Store
As soon as you create your store, Facebook will encourage you to start adding products to your catalog. Click the “Add Product” button, and from there you must fill out a form that details everything about the products you want to sell. Of course, it is recommended that you add plenty of videos and photos to make your products more enticing to consumers.
One of the best things about running a Facebook shop is that you can import products you are already selling if you use a certain eCommerce platform. If you use BigCommerce, ChannelAdvisor, CommerceHub, Quipt, ShipStation, Shopify, or Zentail you can automatically carry over your catalog of items. When you set up your website, you can also set things up so the checkout takes place on your website (you will be prompted about this during the setup process).
Organize Your Products
If you sell a lot of products online, you will need a way to organize all of them so customers can find them easily. Fortunately, one of the Facebook Shop features allows you to sort your products into collections.
Find the “Add Collection” button on your Shop page to start adding products to a unique page. Be sure to give the collection a simple name that accurately represents all of the items being sold. You can even mark featured collections on your shop if you want to promote a specific group of products.
Promote Your Shop
Once your shop is setup, you can use Facebook’s sharing tools to get the word out about your new shopping platform. From the Shop menu, click the “Share Shop” button to create a post with a call-to-action that leads users to your shop. Be sure to add some copy to this post to entice users to click.
You can also create posts that promote individual products or specific collections of products that you want to give some attention. In addition, you can use Facebook’s Ads Manager tool, to develop ads that will further boost your shop’s presence online. Everyone on Facebook is competing for attention, so get creative, and make sure your posts and ads stand out.
Manage Orders
As you start preparing orders for your Facebook customers, you will need a way to manage them all quickly. To keep track of all the orders, just click the “Pending Orders” button on the sidebar under the Publishing Tools page.
From here, you can view all the orders you have received, communicate with buyers, and see how each order is currently progressing. Having this page makes managing your orders much more manageable.
Keep in mind that orders must be shipped three days after they are received, to remain Facebook compliant .