With more than a billion users around the globe, Facebook is the undisputed giant of social networking. It is a key part of the lives of millions of people around the globe and has grown into a diverse communication platform that offers everything from simple chat messages to complete ecommerce store features.
So if you own an ecommerce business and you’re still not using Facebook to promote your products and generate more leads, you’re missing out on a potential goldmine.
Here are a few stats to show you just how big Facebook really is
- Facebook has more than 1.5 billion registered users.
- More than 699 million people log in to Facebook every day.
- An average person spends around 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook every month. This makes it a total of 700 billion minutes globally.
- More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.
For many people, using Facebook is the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing before going to sleep. So the engagement levels you can draw from Facebook are unparalleled.
However, it’s not an entirely safe option to base your complete ecommerce strategy around Facebook, since it’s always changing its rules and algorithms. But you can certainly use Facebook as a part of your broader ecommerce business plan.
But to really take advantage from Facebook, you need to go beyond just sharing your product links. You need to have a complete ecommerce marketing plan.
Here’s how you can boost your ecommerce sales using Facebook.
Understand User Psyche To Succeed
Before you start promoting your products on Facebook, you need to understand the psyche of its users first.
People do not primarily use Facebook for buying and selling products. They use it to connect with their friends, follow their interests and stay updated with things happening around the world.
To successfully draw them to your Facebook page and drive ecommerce sales, you need to become a part of their interests. Align yourself with their preferences, and mold your marketing strategy according to their needs.
Initiate conversations, build relationships and focus on developing a loyal community around your brand. This mindset is crucial for success on Facebook.
Make Your eCommerce Website Facebook Friendly
To encourage people to share your products on Facebook with their friends, you need to make your ecommerce website Facebook friendly.
This specifically means that your product pages have Facebook “Like” and “Share” buttons, and your website has a clear link to your Facebook page.
Many ecommerce stores also give users the option to login using their Facebook profiles. I strongly recommend using it.
Another important thing is to make sure that when people share your products on Facebook,they appear properly, with a high quality image and product details. For this, you need to add Facebook meta tags and open graph.
And lastly, don’t forget to add Facebook comments to your product pages. Using this option, when a user comments on your pages, it will be shown in their Facebook timeline as well giving you additional exposure.
Optimize Your Facebook Posts for Maximum Engagement
Your key objective from Facebook should be user engagement. The more engagement you drive on your posts, the higher your chances of generating leads.
For this, you need to make sure that all your Facebook posts are optimized for highest engagement. You can do that by,
- Including high engagement words in your posts. Research shows that posts with words like Why, Most, World, How, Health, Bill attract more engagement (here’s the complete list)
- Keeping your updates within 80 characters max.
- Using emoticons in your updates.
- Asking questions to your fans.
- Sharing motivational quotes.
Also make sure that you have a clear call to action with every update you post (except for the motivational quotes). Don’t assume that people are going to click on your links. You need to ask them every time.
Create Visual Content to Get More Shares and Likes
Social networks are places where people share funny videos, images and other forms of visual content frequently with their connections.
You need to make visual content a key component of your Facebook marketing strategy. Create attractive images of your products, show different real life uses of your products, create funny memes and share infographics.
Studies show that image based content drives 40% more engagement as compared to simple text updates.
You can use tools such as Canva and Post Planner to create eye catching images for your page.
Run Contests and Offer Giveaways to Generate Word of Mouth
Who doesn’t like discounts and free giveaways? Facebook users just love contests that offer discounts, prizes and free giveaways.
No matter how many times you run a contest on Facebook, you’d still find users willing to participate in it.
Running contests is also a great way to generate word of mouth for your products. For example, you could run a contest which rewards the users who manage to bring in the most number of new page likes.
Or you could run a contest rewarding people for sharing your posts, or tagging you in their posts.
The possibilities are just endless.
Create a Seamless Buying Process
The objective of all your Facebook marketing efforts is to drive engagement, generate leads and ultimately boost your sales numbers.
However, all your hard work can go to waste if you do not provide a simple and easy to use buying and checkout process to your users.
You can do this either by providing a direct link to the checkout page for specific products, or by using a Facebook ecommerce store app like Shopify.
With a Shopify Facebook store, you won’t have to redirect users to your website for purchases. They’ll be able to buy products and make payments directly on your Facebook store.
This can significantly reduce the number of buyers who abandon purchases mid-way through the process.
Boost Product Sales with Facebook Advertisements
One of the best ways to find highly relevant buyers on Facebook is by promoting your products using Facebook advertisements.
Facebook ads offer very specific audience targeting features that you can use to zoom-in on your potential buyers. The cost per acquisition of Facebook ads is also much lower than Google Adwords.
Just make sure that while creating your ads you’re using high quality images of your products. Poor quality images are a major turn off for potential buyers.
Use Facebook to Provide Effective Customer Support
When most of your potential customers are already on Facebook, why not use it to provide timely and effective customer support as well?
Many leading ecommerce companies use Facebook to record customer complaints and respond immediately.
This not only gives out the impression that your company cares about its customers, but also encourages other customers to contact you, since all the conversations take place publicly on your Facebook page.
Automate Your Posts To Maximize Your Reach
One of the challenges of having an ecommerce business is that you have customers from all around the globe. But you can’t stay up on Facebook 24 hours to connect with users in different time zones.
This is where using automation tools can make your job easier. Instead of posting in the sleeping hours of your customers, you can schedule your Facebook posts for their active hours.
You can use the built-in scheduling option of Facebook or use a scheduling tool like Buffer.
Wrapping Up
Facebook is an amazingly useful and powerful platform that can help you find new prospects, build new relationships and generate more leads. Your challenge is to align your Facebook ecommerce strategy with the interests of your prospects. The more engaged your Facebook page fans are, the higher your chances of converting them into paying customers.
Have you ever used Facebook for ecommerce? What challenges did you face? Do you have any other learnings to share with us?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.