No matter what type of business model you are running, a dropshipping website or a print on demand business, ff you say your traffic and sales rarely come from Facebook, I would say you are losing a massive source of online sales because you haven’t mastered how to sell on Facebook.
“It’s a matter of time – within the next five or so years – before more business will be done on Facebook than Amazon” Sumeet Jain, Principal, CMEA Capital.
Let’s me prove to you why Facebook is the future of eCommerce:
- 20% of e-commerce sales comes from Facebook
- 7-10% increase in average order value for Facebook transactions (vs. web-store)
- 2-4% is the average conversion rates range on Facebook, quite on par with web-stores
And there are more stunning numbers on the huge potential of F-commerce.
You get the picture now. Don’t you think you should seriously focus on how to sell on Facebook?
Nah? That’s fine. But that’s not fine at all if you dream to build a unicorn online business of millions traffic a month and billions of dollars of sales a year.
Here is a list of 11 proven Facebook strategies every online store should take into their master plan to drive a successful business. It’s going to be a list of detailed, profit-driven and actionable tactics to help you sell online effectively on Facebook.
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#1 Build a popular Facebook business page
Everyone knows that the first and simplest thing to start with Facebook if they want to bring their business up here is to create a fan page. That’s nothing difficult, you can easily create a Facebook business page in a minute. The real challenge is how to build a popular one with millions of followers who could be your potential customers.
A facebook page is where you can build a fan community of your brand, raise your brand’s voice and present its color, educate and change your customer’s mind, and of course, sell directly to whom interested in your products.
The keys are you need to grow your page’s followers every single day, manage its content in a both strategic and creative way to keep their interest in your page.
Build a perfect page with maximally optimized elements, set yourself a target volume of followers that all your actions to attract Facebook users must focus on, and draw up a creative (but highly related) content curation plan to blow up your fans.
#2 Turn Messenger into a Customer Service channel
People are chatting on Facebook more than any other message carriers. Facebook is even developing its e-commerce chatbot to turn Messenger into a sales channel. Thus, we believe it’s wise at this moment to add Messenger into your customer support channel list.
How would it feel like if you enter into a store, see a chat window pop up that asks you to send any messages to the store’s Facebook page inbox, then someone from the store staff will chat with you right on your inbox, very personally and instantly, just like you’re chatting with your friends?
Source: Quick Facebook Chat app used on Seen On Celebs store
#3 Write Epic Facebook Ads that can highly convert
Posting on Facebook only isn’t enough anymore for brands to grow bigger because posts can only target your current followers.
In order to target more potential audience to sell on facebook, make them become your fan and convert them to your website, you need to run Facebook Ads and maximize your ROI by optimizing all elements that make a Facebook Ads perfect.
You don’t need to be a professional copywriter or designer to devise inspiring beautiful Facebook ads that can turn viewers into your followers. Just remember these principles when designing your ads’ image and copy:
- It’s visual
- It’s relevant
- It includes at least 1 enticing value for your target customers
- And it has a clear Call-To-Action message
Example of good vs bad Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads can be in many formats (single or multiple photos, video), stay in different positions (newsfeed, right-hand column, mobile). Make sure you know what and where your target audience prefer to see, so you can show your ads to them in the most attractive form, at the right time, and at the right place.
#4 Sponsored posts – let the news spread out
Before advertising on Facebook, you should understand the difference between Facebook Ads and Sponsored Posts – the 2 different advertising channels of Facebook. While Facebook Ads is advertising, Sponsored post is something in between a normal post and an advertisement. If you have a news or announcement that you want all your followers (and their friends, who you may include or exclude) to know, you can select to promote that post so it reaches as many followers as your budget allows.
While Facebook Ads may be easy to neglect as people know it is an advertisement (unless you design very attractive ads copy and image that makes people stop by), Facebook promoted posts are just like normal posts except it has a small “Sponsored” text. Compared to Facebook Ads, it is simpler to launch and very effective in increasing brand awareness.
#5 Sell multiple products with Facebook Carousel Ads
According to a report by Digiday, Facebook Carousel Ads can drive up to more than 10 times traffic to website than normal static single-post ads. Facebook Carousel ads are extremely engaging since they allow brands to show multiple images from their business. Ads viewers swipe left and right to see multiple images in a single ad unit, each has a different CTA to its specific page.
There are many creative ways to generate high engagement and click-through rates with Facebook carousel ads. You can feature one signature product by breaking its whole picture into 3-5 parts that you put into the image slide, like this:
You can describe a process how to use a product:
Or showcase a product tour:
#6 Encourage customers to share about you on their Facebook accounts
Ads cost a lot of money to maintain, that’s the ugly truth. For those who are tight on budgets for ads, there is a workaround that can still help you connect your brand with a broader audience on Facebook but cost you much less than ads.
When customers add some items to cart, they show genuine interest on these items (but not necessarily that they will certainly purchase). At this moment, you can display a pop-up that offers a free gift, a discount or free shipping coupon, if they share their chosen items on Facebook (or tweet on Twitter).
By getting your products shared on customers’ social profiles, you will get your brand promoted to their friend networks. Those who click on the shared post and visit your website are social referral traffic brought to you by your customers, and will also become your referrers.
Source: Checkout Boost App
This is how you get your customers help you sell on Facebook willingly: they love your products and introduce them to their friends so both get mutual benefits from your company.
#7 Share viral videos on Facebook
The best way to leverage your Facebook channel to promote your brand is to seed content that can go viral naturally.
What makes Facebook a globally popular platform is the power of social community sharing. Why Tasty now has 30 million followers on Facebook in less than a year? Because it produces food videos that regularly get tens of millions of views. That’s a great example of how viral content can get a Facebook page going so big.
Same advice for you if you want to grow your page quickly: invest on creating viral content (copywriting, videos, images…) that hit on hot topics your target audience care about and are mostly want to share to their networks. If your content is directly related to your products and brands, that’d be perfect because your products will go viral with the content and quickly sell on Facebook.
#8 Host a giveaway or contest
Sharing videos is not the only way to go viral on Facebook. You can host giveaways or contests that attract thousands of participants, who would love to join and tag a long their friends to join with them.
Giveaways are simpler than contests as they need no complicated game rules or winner selection process. You simply announce the giveaway items, then ask participants to complete required steps to get the gift, for example: visit your website and register an account, share your post on their wall, tag at least 3 friends in the comment,…
Contest is a bit more complicated in designing the rules and process but is more interactive and exciting than a giveaway. To create viral effects, you can ask participants to team up with 3-4 members, add community votes as a rule to win.
Consider using sponsored post boost to advertise your campaign to a much wider audience on Facebook.
Do you want to learn how to sell on Facebook? Remember this key point: social sharing can get you as far as you want to go, as long as your content is good enough to blow off.
#9 Create a Facebook Store
Facebook users spend 1.5x more online that other Internet users, according to Digital Intelligence Today. It’s the era of F-commerce. You cannot stop at building fan page to promote your products there if you want to build a successful online business. Instead, bring your store to Facebook by creating a Facebook store.
Below is an example of the Facebook store of http://theanimalrescuesite.com/ – an eCommerce website:
The Facebook store has products listing with prices just like in a web store. When you click on a product to view, it redirects to the product page on the website of the store, driving Facebook traffic right into your website. And because conversion rates from Facebook online shoppers is seeing a steady increase, you whole conversion rate will go up as a result.
#10 Provide exclusive offers for your Facebook fans
42% of Fans like a page on Facebook so that they can get a coupon or discount. If you already have an online store and you find Facebook another potential distribution point and an extension of your storefront, offering exclusive deals to your Facebook followers will keep them come back and be your loyal fans.
Consider offering some kinds of incentives such as a discount coupon, free gift, Buy-1-Get-1 deals… to anyone who likes your page. You’ll be surprised at how quickly word of such special deals spreads to others, who are highly likely to ‘like’ your Facebook page to get the deals.
#11 Co-promote with other brands to drive traffic to each other
Another great idea to consider if you want to attract more Facebook traffic is promotion partnership with other brands on Facebook.
Let’s say: you sell nutritional supplements, which is reasonable that you are targeting the same group of customers as fitness outfit brand or a gym & yoga club, while are not competing with them because you both offer different products/service. Why don’t you both co-promote each other’s products to your audience with an exclusive offer? It is a win-win-win promotion because you and your partners both win more traffic, while your customers win better deals.
Again, the power of Facebook is the global social community. Whichever kinds of promotions that can leverage the social networks sharing have a high chance to succeed.
Conclusion
How to sell on Facebook effectively isn’t that tricky, is it?
To win this e-Commerce game and build your online store a billion company, opening only a web-based store is never enough. Take Facebook – the most popular social platform that is diving deep into eCommerce – into the storm and make your brand soar by making the most use of its eCommerce-focusing features. Start selling on Facebook today because you need to get yourself ready for an even more eCommerce-driven Facebook in the next few years.
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