How to buy traffic from Facebook

In the olden days, business owners promote their products and services in traditional settings. They resort to newspaper advertorials, radio campaigns, TV commercials, and the good old “word of mouth,” all of which prove effective and useful in racking up mass following and sales. 

Don’t get it wrong. These practices are still considered relevant today since those mediums are still alive. But if you’re a business owner who wants to be successful and stand out among the sea of entrepreneurs and businesses, you need to do more than just pulling off old-school strategies that might no longer work in your favor. 

In an age where consumers are keen readers, conscious, specific, and critical about reviews and product recommendations, you’ve got to be proactive to level the playing field. Also, the way people shop nowadays is very different from how people do their shopping in the past. Back then, the only way to shop was to go and visit an actual store. 

Now, it’s no longer the case.

Most people prefer to shop online for a hassle-free buying experience. Even those who are not tech-savvy prefer to buy online. It’s instant and convenient — you don’t have to go out of the house to buy the items you need. You can now shop anytime and anywhere. And people love that.

So what does it mean for business owners like you?

If you want to be successful, don’t sit back and wait for customers to come and buy from you.

You need to reach out to your target market! You need to go online!

How? Start on social media platforms. 

It’s now the new park and social hub of millions of people. You can hardly see people now with no social media accounts. Almost everyone has adapted to the new way of socialization. Thanks to the conception of Facebook and other social media sites that made it possible for millions of people to connect with everyone worldwide. 

Although social platforms emerged in the past, it’s only Facebook that successfully revolutionized the way we socialize and communicate with other people.

It is now the world’s biggest social network, with 2.60 billion monthly active users, easily reaching 60.6% percent of internet users.

That’s massive!

Of course, Facebook wouldn’t grow this big if not for its developments. From being a simple social media channel, it has become a commercial channel through the years. Hence, the term social media marketing.

People no longer log in to post what’s on their minds or to check their friends. Now, they do so because they want to search for products or services they want to buy. 

This huge social network is now flocked with online sellers and business owners who want to reach and engage with their customers more easily and ultimately make sales.

Simply put, if you don’t have a Facebook Shop yet, you’re potentially missing an opportunity.

Why Facebook Shop Was Launched?

The mission of Facebook is to help people connect with what they love, such as family, friends, public figures, artists, and interests. After some rounds of developments, the list finally includes brands, products, and businesses. 

For years, people became accustomed to using mobile applications to sell and buy things. From the early days of posting a photo of a certain item, say, a cellphone with a “for sale” caption, to selling a secondhand car on Marketplace, and now shopping from different brands and influencers on Instagram. It was the people’s buying journey that gave birth to social commerce.

Facebook wanted to give people a platform where they can experience the joy of buying, and at the same time, help businesses, especially the small ones, to adapt and make it easier for people to discover their products and services.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, thousands of businesses worldwide were affected. Some were even forced to close down, while others have no choice but to furlough their employees. Those who are lucky to keep afloat amid the crisis decided to bring their businesses online to cover the losses in sales. One of the solutions is to use social media sites like Facebook.

Facebook wanted to extend its reach by enabling seamless shopping and empowering small business owners to utilize the platform for better customer engagement. Thus, they launched Facebook Shop and invested in features that will make buying and selling online easier and inspire people to shop.

Such an initiative helped businesses set up their mobile-optimized stores that customers can access on Facebook and Instagram. Through Facebook Shops, it will be easier for people to browse, explore, and purchase your products on the platforms they use every day.

Why Should You Open a Facebook Shop?

A straightforward answer would be Facebook Shop is a cost-effective platform for business owners, no matter the industry, to create a seamless online shopping experience for their target consumers. It’s even a good alternative to Search Engine Optimization strategy.

If your objective is to reach out to more people, here are other reasons why you should SERIOUSLY consider setting up a Facebook Shop:

1. You can create a Facebook Shop even if you don’t use an e-commerce platform or don’t have an online store. You can also display your products, collect a payment, and answer questions from the customers.

If you already have an e-commerce site like Shopify or have an online store, you can sync it with your Facebook Shop. In that way, pricing, updates to inventory, and other things you make in Shopify will automatically reflect your Facebook Shop. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone.

2. It will reduce friction in your customers’ buying journey. While Shopify is considered a good platform where you can sell your products, its checkout process proves to be difficult for customers. In the end, they give up and abandon online shopping carts.

Facebook Shop aims to remove that obstacle in two ways.

First, after the shopper made the payment for his/her first purchase through Checkout, the payment and shipping details will auto-fill for other vendors who are also using Checkout.

Second, the shopper can hop from one app to another and still continue the shopping process. Thus, if your customer will see a product on another site, say Instagram, and decides to place it in his/her cart, he/she can complete the purchase on Facebook later.

Given these two solutions, the rate of cart abandonment will be minimized, and that means more sales for your business.

3. Another good advantage of setting up a Facebook Shop is giving your business more visibility. With the help of popular Facebook app features, customers can easily find your shop. Facebook Shop can help you catch customers’ attention no matter how they use those platforms, given that people interact with Facebook in many different ways.

For example, you can display your products, including your shop’s link on your Business Page or even on your Instagram profile.

4. The best part of having a Facebook Shop is you can attach the links of your products on your Facebook Live Video and Story. That way, your organic posts, and ads can have tags that will lead the visitors to your product page. In return, this will give more exposure to your products and make them discoverable on Facebook’s shopping search tabs.

Think of these search tabs as the shopping mall of Facebook. You don’t need to do anything in order for your products to get featured there because, like most things Facebook, its algorithms will eventually show products that a visitor might be interested in, according to his/her last activity.

How to Set Up a Facebook Shop

The goal of Facebook is to make social commerce accessible to all businesses. Thus, they made Facebook Shop easy to set up and simple to navigate. 

If you already created a Facebook Business Page for your products, setting the Shop will only take a few minutes of your time.

If you want to create your own Facebook Shops, here are the things you need to do:

1. Comply with the Facebook Shops requirements.

Creating a Facebook Shop is free for all businesses, but there are a few requirements you need to meet, such as:

Having a Facebook Business Page where you have Business Manager admin access or privileges.

Having manager privileges for your brand’s catalog on Facebook.

Take note: 

You don’t necessarily need a Facebook Business account to take advantage of this tool. If you have an Instagram Business page where you have admin access, you can still set up a Facebook Shop.

2. Go to Facebook Commerce Manager to access Facebook Shops.

To set your Facebook Shop, go to Facebook Commerce Manager, then click the “Get Started” button that’s located at the top portion of the page. You will be given a few questions related to settings such as, “Choose how you want customers to make purchases.”

At this point, you can link an API (Application Programming Interface) or an e-commerce website that you’ve already set up, then direct your customers there to your items or make them buy directly at Facebook, Instagram, or through direct messages.

3. Add your business information.

In this step, Facebook will ask a few questions about your business, such as its location, your preferred contact information, and what category it belongs to. You can also include an overall business description during this step.

4. Add your products’ information.

After filling in the information about your business, the next step is to add your products either in bulk with a spreadsheet list upload or one-by-one via a simple product listing form.

Once the product listing is done, you can now add or update images, descriptions, and other important information. You can also add your product’s shipping information. 

Facebook Shop may require you to add products before you launch your store, but you can still add, edit, or remove the product listings later on.

5. Add the tax and banking information.

If you want to sell through Facebook or Instagram but don’t have an e-commerce store, you’ll be required to give your bank account information where your purchase revenue will be deposited.

You are also prompted to give your business tax information and agree to the policies of Facebook Shops before setting up your shop.

6. Customize your Facebook Shop.

You can take the creative and fun step of designing your mobile store once all of the logistical information is filled in. Facebook Shop will allow you to edit the layout and style of your store. As you make some tweaks to your Shop, such as adjusting button colors or font style, you can see the progress at a mobile preview screen on the right side.

7. Edit the products or group them into “Collections.”

In case you need to add a new product shot or a mistake with one of your product descriptions, you can edit or remove product listings, even after you launched your store.

Also, if you have products with a similar theme or were launched together, such as statement shirts, you can group them as “Collections” on Facebook Shops. 

To do so, Simply click “Layout” on the customization page of the Shop, then click the “Add Collection” button under the sidebar of Featured Collections. After creating the “Collection” group, you can add your products to it by editing the product’s listing or transferring them from the” Collection” page.

8. Launch and promote your Facebook Shop.

When your Shop is finally ready for business, you can publish it. Make sure to share about it on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels to attract initial visitors.

How to Drive More Traffic and Sales to Your Facebook Shop

Most business owners don’t realize that there are many ways to advertise on Facebook beyond just running straightforward ads or posting on their business pages.

For creative, smart marketers, Facebook is more than just a social media giant. It is a proven powerhouse of marketing opportunities just waiting to be utilized. However, one will need to think outside of the box and use it to fully benefit from these opportunities in ways that successful marketers do.

If you want to make your Facebook Shop a money-making platform, take your cue from the following:

1. Make your brand relatable

Nowadays, people patronize individuality and identity, having a keen understanding of how your target customers react to their products or brands is vital to generate more traffic and sales for your Shop. Thus, awareness for your brand must be given high-priority.

No matter how polished or enticing your store looks, if you don’t know how to pique their interests and needs, they are not likely to buy from you if they can’t relate or find value in your brand.

Ideally, you need a marketing strategy that will make customers see themselves in a scenario that you place before them. That said, make sure you add a variety of context, images, and videos to your Facebook Business Page. It will help you better tailor your voice according to your potential customer’s preference and make them resonate with your message on a personal level.

2. Personalized catalog experience to inspire shoppers

One efficient way to funnel shoppers to your Shop is to segment your items and create a product catalog that will enable the shoppers to search for the products they want to buy. A personalized catalog will also make it easy for them to make a purchase through various searches and explore filters and recommendations. 

Your shoppers can now see the collections in their feeds, and you can guide them to your Facebook Business Page to explore the catalog according to their interests.

3. Monitor the local insights

Facebook introduced the local insights feature within Facebook Business Page to help you learn about the aggregate demographics and latest trends in different niches. It will enable you to keep track of your product visibility, customer engagements, sales performance, and overall Shop activities. Besides, through the dashboard, you can determine when is the best time of the day, week, or month to post your content. 

It will help you analyze the timeframe to understand when your prospective customers’ availability is at a maximum. Posting contents on your Facebook Business Page when your target customers are available helps boost the chances of your products and services to get noticed by them.

4. Include CTA in the Caption

If there’s one thing that you should know about consumer behaviors, most of them do online shopping on impulse. Thus, make your every post count by using call-to-action phrases to your posts and stories to redirect your customers to your Facebook Business Page. It is one foolproof way to increase the curiosity of your ideal audience towards your products.

5. Repost your content

Sharing user-generated blogs, articles, infographics, and videos is another indispensable content strategy to acquire customers. More so, reposting them. You can better showcase your products and services to your prospects and direct their interests in your Facebook Business Page. 

But before you do it, be sure to revamp your content and keep track of your best-selling products.

6. Update your Facebook Business Page according to the latest trends and seasons.

If you want to widen your product reach, you will need to revamp your Facebook Business Page according to the occasions and latest market trends. 

For example, suppose the festive summer season is all around the corner. In that case, you can modify and decorate your storefront summer-related knickknacks, put up summer holiday sales and deals, or offer discount vouchers, coupons, and rewards to your loyal customers.

7. Post video and image content for maximum engagement.

It’s been proven that posting quality video and image content tends to increase the visibility and chances of getting your products and services to get noticed. Thus, as a marketer, try incorporating videos and images on your Facebook Business Page to drive more traffic to your Shop.

8. Use social proof

If you want to capture your target customers’ interests, you will need to broaden your audience network or influence in the market. You can start by using promotional strategies such as reposting content using ads on your Facebook Business Page or collaborating with various creators and social media influencers to enrich your brand’s value and attract more potential buyers to your Shop. 

9. Utilize scrolling images

Given that most online shoppers are visuals (like to watch pleasant, eye-candy content), it only fits that you employ scrolling image ads in your marketing tactics.

Scrolling ads allow for multiple displays of ads on the same screen, which effectively keeps your visitor curious. It’s also an excellent way to highlight various options for certain products, like, say, different colors of shoes of the same brand and style.

You can even go old-school and create your own GIF. But, Facebook has a better solution called the Carousel Format ad that allows you to show headlines and links, 3-5 photos and/or videos, or CTAs in a single ad unit.

10. Use short yet engaging 15-20 Second video ads

Do you regularly custom images? Create infographics for your site? If yes, find a graphic designer or animator who can create a video out of those contents, then post them to your Facebook Business Page. You can amplify those videos by using Facebook Ads to maximize their reach. The viewers you can gather can be your potential customers.

But make sure to bring your visitors to a landing page so you can get their email addresses or cookies. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t have the bandwidth or resources to create videos. Thus, if you figure out a streamlined and inexpensive way to create video ads for your page, you’ll gain an edge over your competitors.

11. Display your products across multiple Facebook commerce channels

Facebook Business Page gives you the benefit of displaying your products across different Facebook commerce surfaces such as Facebook Shops, Facebook Page Shop, Facebook Marketplace, and even Instagram Shopping. You can build your social commerce and drive more organic traffic to your Shops by displaying your products across these channels. 

12. Use relevant hashtags

Hashtags convert phrases and topics into “clickable” links in your posts. Your target customers can easily connect with you through the Facebook Business Page and find your products. 

For it to work, post a catchy photo of your product or service and tag it. For better reach, you can include the hashtags in the captions. A minimum of 2-3 hashtags on Facebook works best, while those with more than ten characters attract more engagement.

There’s no doubt that Facebook has succeeded in winning the hearts of people in the social arena. Although different social channels have emerged, none of them could nudge Facebook out of the top spot. It’s the reason why it stands second to none when we talk about e-commerce potential and benefits. 

If you consider its growing variety of business-tailored tools and huge market share, Facebook is an authority whenever driving a substantial volume of sales through social media is concerned. In fact, it could easily compete with major search engines. All that is there left to do is dive in and watch your brand flourish!

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