7 min read

How to Drive a Flood of Ecommerce Sales Using Facebook

How to Drive a Flood of Ecommerce Sales Using Facebook

If you think products you sell on Amazon or eBay are not sexy enough or boring for Facebook audience, I have good news for you.

See some examples of Facebook pages of "unsexy" products here, here and here.

Why not send from Facebook audiences an additional traffic to your Amazon listings? At the end of the day managing the Facebook page of your store is not much harder than maintaining your personal social network account.

As a short-term tactics coupons, sales and lightning deals can be employed.

If you are a PRO seller and committed to your business, sooner or later you still have "be social" and get active on your social media accounts. Try to stand out while the competition is small and you can relatively easily grab a piece of cake.

We monitor social media channels and respond to customer service inquiries quickly, often within minutes. As a result we’ve gained over 30,000 Twitter followers and over 120,000 Facebook likes—and we’ve accomplished that in a little over two years.
Edward Wimmer, co-founder of "unsexy" Road ID

With more than 1 billion active users, Facebook is by far the biggest social media platform on the internet. With 1 in 7 people with an account, your business has a huge opportunity to promote brand awareness for your business.

So take a look at our top tips to help grow your business with the most used application on the planet.

Creating your Facebook page

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This is essentially like how you would set up your own personal profile except built for the business. It is the section where you interact with Facebook users that check out your page. The business page allows you to manage traffic so you can monitor who is visiting your site and how often.

Facebook gives us a platform where we can enhance our brand presence, build a user community and convert these users into paying customers. That's unique and powerful.
Herman Cheng, CEO of FunShare

Within the business Facebook page, there is an ‘About’ page. This is a tab where you can list everything about your organisation including a link back to your own store. It is a good idea to include business contact information here too, such as a telephone number and email address to allow potential customers to get in touch. When it comes to the display picture, you should use your business logo.

When creating the page, you can also customise its URL. The more simple the URL, the easier it becomes to remember and promoting it is a lot smoother.

Once the page has been fully set up and running, you should consider changing the cover photo on a more regular basis. The cover photo is one of the first few things a visitor sees on the page so by having a variety can show off that your product can be used in multiple ways and in different scenarios.

What to include in a post

Post things that relate to new your products, topical pieces such as blog posts and bonus content such as ideas they can use your product for. For example if you sell gym equipment, you can give a workout guide that includes exercises that rely on using your products. This is not only promotional but gives the reader a reason why they should use your product and also keeps it appealing.

Sell the Lifestyle Around Your Product

Where possible, create posts that are current and relate to things that are happening now. Being topical in terms of current relevance is fantastic at attracting new viewers and potential customers because they will be actively searching for related content.

A lot of people use Facebook because they like to share their pictures and videos with their friends. This is something your business should be looking to tap into. Pictures of a new product and a video of it in action is a great marketing tool and keeps your audience’s attention.

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Pro growth tip: Make sure you become an affiliate of your own Amazon products so you can get commissions on links on Facebook pointing to your Amazon listings. Not only do you get commission if customers purchase your item, it dumps a 14 day cookie and you get commission on ANY products they purchase on Amazon over 14 days. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/.

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Sharing a post

It’s all well and good having great products to promote but you need to create a following to share them with. In order to this, you need to create interesting content for your followers. They won’t stay around for long if you bore them to death! Be creative and really get into what the brand represents.

Followers that have liked your Facebook page will see all your updates in their news feed. Facebook can actually allow you to find out the prime time of when your followers are active. This gives you the opportunity to plan out when you list a product and promote it according to when most people will see it. Do you want to know how to find the "prime time"? Write us at [email protected].

When you share your listing on Facebook, readers can click on your items which can translate directly to views on your product details page or listing. Having clickable links is a really simple method of using Facebook for your business.

When it comes to promoting the listings on your page, you don’t want to come across as if you are obviously selling them a product. You need to be more creative than that. Keep them short and to the point. Like you would on any other platform, you should be trying to explain why your product is different to similar listings on the market.

Spread out the type of content that you put out. You want to be dropping regular pieces down to a minimum of once a week. You also need to be consistent with your posts. If you plan on posting more than once a week, then stick to it. If you become inconsistent with your posting, people could start to think your business is becoming lazy and overall it’s just bad for the brand reputation. Create a posting plan and stick to it.

Increase followers

There is a tool called ‘Build Audience’ built in to Facebook’s admin system. This will let you invite your friends and other contacts to like your page. They can also share the page on their news feeds too to further increase the number of followers your page can get.

Outside of Facebook, original connection techniques apply. If they have purchased a product, follow up with an email to leave a review and ask them like the page to keep up with the latest updates etc. On your store’s website, include a link to your Facebook page to increase further awareness and expose your brand.

Potential followers would like to know what they get in return for liking your page. Perhaps you can give them exclusive offer that they will not be able to get anywhere else. Tell them about upcoming news or product updates. Things that will get the audience excited to read your posts are a great way to grow your following.

Be in contact with your audience

Once you create a following, they will be sharing and commenting on your posts. This is exciting as you can see what the general feel to the content you are putting out is like. Take time out to reply to comments. Pages that respond to comments encourages them to engage with you again in the future. Active community members are likely to recommend you and because you are good at responding to their praise or queries, your reputation in that field will increase.

Contact with followers is also beneficial because you can also see what that you are currently doing well, any improvements you can make and what they would like to see happen next. Their opinions and ideas can be used to create new or improved products or services that will only serve you better. You show that you listen to the public which is greatly appreciated.

Facebook ads

This is a familiar method of advertising but of course, in order to get Facebook ads, you will need to pay for them. Facebook will allow your page to run custom adverts in your followers’ news feeds. Similarly to when you share a post, when they click on the add they will either go straight to the product page or to your website.

Because it is worldwide platform, marketing and advertising on Facebook can give you access to multinational channels. This will let you target specific audiences based on their location.

There is a lot of data that Facebook collects on people, as we are sure you have probably seen in the news recently. However, this data is useful to promote your business on Facebook. You can target followers or general users purely based on this data, such as their hobbies and interests. Built into their ads system is an analytics tool to help you decide on which ads are performing best in certain areas.

Just the beginning

These steps and are just the beginning of developing a strong presence on Facebook, but still require some significant time on the part of an online merchant. A successful Facebook business page can create great - and free - promotional opportunities, but a lack of followers or an unattractive page will do little to help a business.

Additionally, lack of basic information, product images and easy access to the products themselves can all harm the effectiveness of the page. As is the case with other social media efforts, getting the first steps right is vitally important for an effective page that creates engagement and drives sales.