A Beginners Guide to Grow Your eCommerce Site with Facebook
Social media channels provide businesses with many opportunities to interact with potential customers and online. On average people use social media to discover, research, engage, purchase, support and promote businesses online.
Why Facebook?
With 2.4 billion active monthly users Facebook is the easiest to use and results assured online marketing platform to sell almost all types of goods and services to any consumer group. Facebook also owns Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger, therefore you get access to a large audience of various ages, geographies and occupations. If you are a new or existing online business, tapping into a portion of this huge audience to promote your product will be one of the smartest choices you make when it comes to marketing.
How Businesses Can Use Facebook?
When individuals discover an interesting product on social media through a post or an advertisement, they tend to do more research on it. Then they engage with the product or the organization by interacting through comments, messages, and shares etc. This will lead the customers to the website that contains more of the product and gain their experience at the online store.
How does Facebook Help eCommerce?
When marketing a product or a brand on Facebook, a seller can always choose between the three motives of Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Awareness is when you let everyone know about the product that you offer. By doing this, people will get to know about the product, its uses, benefits and its availability at your business.
Facebook also provides excellent targeting. When creating an account everyone has to fill demographics such as their age, gender, relationship status and interests. When you target an audience based on such facts, Facebook automatically selects the perfect audience for you.
With the landing page of your Facebook ads being your website, you have the chance to drive inactive users, users, to your site through those ads. Always remember that these users are potential clients. Therefore, it is also very important to mention the link to your website even in a normal post that you will be uploading from your official Facebook page.
Having a Brand Presence on Facebook
Update your Business Information
Your website can be branded on Facebook in many forms. It is important to have an official Facebook Page that is updated regularly with information that is relevant to your present and future customers. You can add and edit your business information by simply clicking on the Edit Page Info section in the Manage Page Menu.
Make sure you add all the relevant information about your business, its products and services, location, contact details, service area, and open hours. You can also add temporary service changes made due to COVID-19, price range and other social media accounts including Twitter and Instagram.
Posting on Facebook
The posts uploaded to your businesses’ page have to contain a certain quality that will corporate with the image of your website. Therefore it is important to upload creative, attractive and relevant content that is also linked to the information pages of your website.
When posting on Facebook keep in mind that you need to;
- Post regularly - New and frequent posts tell your fans and followers that you're active, legitimate and care about them as customers.
- Post relevant content - Posting relevant and useful content helps to attract more followers to your page and by sharing useful information with them you can convert them into loyal customers.
A business can use Facebook posts to;
1. Showcase products
Use image posts to showcase products to your customers and potential customers. When you are posting images of your products you can always tag a product that is available in your Facebook shop.
2. Feature your team members
Humanise your business and give it a face and a name by sharing information and stories about your team
3. Behind the Scene views
Provide your followers with sneak peeks to your workshop, kitchen or warehouse. Share inside stories about your production process, CSR activities to provide a humanised perspective to your business.
4. Questions related to your business
Ask your customers about their preferences when it comes to your business. What products they like, how they like their delivery to be made, and what extra features they want with a particular product. Facebook question posts and Facebook polls help you to understand the behaviour and needs of your client better while creating a two-way conversation with the client.
5. Share blog posts, article and videos
Sharing knowledge and information that could be helpful to your customers are a great way to keep the followers engaged with your brand on Facebook. These can be blog posts from your website, white papers or even articles or videos from other publications.
6. Celebrate festivals and holidays
Always connect with your users online during major holidays. Whether you are offering them helpful shopping, decorating, and cooking tips for the holiday season or gifting ideas, festivals and holidays are a great reason to connect with your followers with useful tips and holiday cheers.
7. Keep it Funny
Funny videos, images and memes have been known to be a trend on many social media platforms. Memes are also used for marketing campaigns that indirectly promote brands. Post a funny meme once in a while. Get creative with it so that it promotes your business at the same time.
8.Offers & Promotions
Everybody loves a great deal. On Facebook, you can now create special offer based posts providing customers with all the relevant information about the offer and a way to redeem the offer online.
How to Post on Facebook?
While posting on Facebook is not the hardest job in the world. But if you do it right, you will be able to gain really good feedback.
For starters, there are many types of posts that you can decorate your Facebook wall with. But the most common ones are;
Facebook Video Posts
Videos are always set to reach a large percentage of the online community since people enjoy watching a wonderfully created clip that is informative at the same time. When posting clips on Facebook, it is important to make it short and sweet. Make sure these videos have the ability to turn on the interest to visit your page and learn more about you. You can post MP4, MOV or GIF versions of videos. The video duration can be anything between1 second to 241 minutes with a maximum file size of 4 GB and height and width of 120 px.
Find out more about Videos on your Facebook Timeline
Image Posts
Photos and images always get 2.3X engagements than a normal post. When promoting your website through an image, the image must contain information relevant to the activities of your website. Be creative enough to display your service in the form of an image since social media is based on creative ideas.
Find out more about Posting Images on your Facebook Timeline
Text Posts
You can always express information through a text. Whenever you have to address your audience regarding an important matter, it is best to do that in the form of text. It will be best to have a link of your website mentioned within the text. This will help the audience to explore more.
Learn More About Facebook Posts
Facebook Groups
Facebook groups are also a great option to go with. This is a place where you can interact much closer with your Facebook fans. These groups provide space for good discussions between group members. This can also be considered as an opportunity for you to identify the flaws of your business if you have any.
Features that Support Businesses
Facebook Shops is one of the latest features Facebook has introduced to support businesses. This involves having a single store for your products on Facebook and Instagram. Other than showcasing your products and services Facebook Shops gives you the chance to stay in touch with your customers through Whatsapp, Messenger, or Instagram Direct. Customers will be able to access your Facebook shop through your Instagram page or Facebook Page.
If you already have an Instagram page for your website, Facebook provides you with the option to connect this profile with your Facebook page. This will make your Instagram page a business profile with a lot of supportive features.
The message section of your Facebook page can be linked to your Facebook messenger mobile app. This allows you to reply to messages from your customers anytime. This results in high-quality customer service and helps in generating high-quality leads.
You can also add a Call To Action button to the top of your page. You can use this button to lead customers to your website. You can edit this button according to your wish based on the given options.
Facebook Ads
Ads on Facebook can be initiated based on various formats. Having a proper plan before boosting an ad will always help in building a sound customer base. Facebook Manager is there to help you with that since it provides space for your business pages, Facebook ad account and all the other tools that you can use to run an ad.
It is important to understand that your Ad on Facebook has to be able to get you the maximum number of customers it can drive into your website. Let’s see some types of Facebook ads that you can use to promote your online business.
Image Ads
Image ads are one of the most effective ad formats. The image used in the ad must be relevant to the promoted item or your website. The content has to be informative and it also has to have the ability to capture the eye of potential customers. In Facebook, you have the option to boost an image that you have already uploaded to your page. Before pushing the image to a larger audience it is important to make sure that the ad description contains a link to the landing page of your website.
Video Ads
Video ads are great for promoting a brand since it gives space and the time to provide information to the audience. Everyone likes to share an interesting video with their friends. Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create videos. You can also boost a clip you have already uploaded on your page as an ad. Always link the video to the landing page of your website.
Carousel Ads
You can include up to 10 images or videos in a Carousel ad. This one of the best ad types where you can promote multiple products at once. Each image or video can be linked to a unique landing page. If the promotion is based on one product, it’s unique features can be highlighted on each image of the carousel.
Collection
A Collection comprises a cover image or a video that is followed by multiple images. It is one of the best ways to present a product catalogue. Collections can be made visible on the Facebook feed, Instagram feed, and Instagram stories.
Facebook Pixel
If you are looking for a way to know how many people were motivated to visit your store and engage in some action through a Facebook ad, Facebook Pixel is the tool for you. This analytics tool helps you to measure the effectiveness of your Facebook advertisements. It helps to drive in more sales since it automatically pushes the ad towards people who are more likely to purchase from your website.
If someone who enters your website through a Facebook ad purchases something, the tool gets it on a record, which you can view later from the Events Manager in Pixel Manager. The tool further helps you to reach the same audience again when launching another campaign.
Want more help in bringing your business to Facebook. Facebook has more resources to help you.
