During this period of uncertainty, plenty of small businesses in our local communities have had to adapt to a new way of selling their products and services. Or perhaps even close up shop altogether. Many businesses will have turned to their online marketplace in order to keep selling their products and services. But even with the ability to sell online; it has still been tough on the smaller businesses that depend on their bricks and mortar location.
One of the great ways businesses around us have been able to stay in touch with their customers is through social media. Sites such as Facebook and Instagram have been incredibly useful in keeping your customers up-to-date. Whether you’re posting about opening hours, sharing products from your online shop, or posting updates on how the business is getting on; it’s a great way to stay in touch.
Facebook Shops – A Potential Game-Changer
Yesterday, Facebook announced a new feature to help small businesses to sell products online directly through their social media page. This could be a game-changer in the world of local business. From today, anyone with a Facebook or Instagram page can have an online E-Commerce offering for their customers.
“Facebook Shops aim to make shopping seamless and can empower anyone from a small business owner to a global brand to use our apps to connect with customers.”
Facebook
What Facebook Shops allows you to do is to create an online shopping platform for your products that can be viewed within the Facebook App or website. This makes it easier than ever to promote your products to your followers on social media. It also makes it easy for customers to browse through your products, ultimately being able to purchase products and services from you.
During this uncertain time, this feature will be a great help to businesses struggling to move to an online marketplace. If you have a Facebook page, it will be simple to set up a shop and start selling to customers.
Integration with Ecommerce Websites
If you already have a website for selling your products, you might not think that Facebook Shops would help you to reach more people and increase your sales online. But according to Facebook, this new feature can import, and integrate items from Ecommerce systems such as WooCommerce, Shopify, and BigCommerce.
Facebook is also working with these Ecommerce sites to ensure Facebook Shops work hand-in-hand with an established online shop. This means you won’t have to spend time constantly updating the stock on two different platforms.
Having your products on Facebook also creates a new form of advertising. You can use Facebook Ads to promote a particular product, which then leads to a product page on Facebook. By doing this, you can create very specific targeted ads that advertise individual products or collections. You can then use this to advertise to niche audiences who will be more likely to buy certain products.
How can I get started?
If you already have a Facebook page, you can set up your shop straight away. We’re already working with some of our clients to make sure they’re up and running on Facebook Shops. We’ll be uncovering the full potential of these online shops in the coming weeks. We hope to soon understand exactly how much this will help the businesses we work with.
If you’d like to set up a Facebook Shop for your business, and you’re not sure where to start; get in touch with us, and we’ll be happy to help you get started.