How to use Facebook to sell products

How to use Facebook to sell products.

Facebook is still one of the largest social media platforms according to the Stastica website more than 2.5 billion people are actively using Facebook every month, this is a massive opportunity for people like you and me to market and sell products to this worldwide audience. In this post I’m going to show you how to use Facebook to sell products in this marketplace.

To support the running costs of this website I will receive a small commission that doesn’t affect the cost should you decide to purchase a product or service.

Sell products on a Facebook shop

A Facebook shop is one of the ways to on how use Facebook to sell products, you need to set up a dedicated page for your business where you can post articles that will attract buyers to your products.


Next you need either to connect a recommended Facebook ecommerce platform to your business Facebook page or upload your products into categories manually. To promote your Facebook business page you create engaging content, use Facebook paid ads, use the boost posts option or use contests to get more likes, comments and traffic.

Ecommerce platform

If you want to do business on Facebook it’s essential to have a professional looking ecommerce platform linked to your business page that will sync all of your products, manage inventory, sales and customers seamlessly in one place. 3 dcart is one ecommerce platform that you can use on Facebook, there is a monthly fee starting at $19.95 the price is affordable to try the system out for free go here.

create a facebook business page

How do I set up a business page on Facebook?

This is your first step in learning how to use Facebook to sell products, it’s free so go ahead and create a Facebook page for your business (not a personal page).

Setting up a business page is relatively easy just click on the create tab at the top, go to select page and create one, use a string image place it at the top of the page, having a strong Facebook business page gives you a number of benefits such as:

• It gives you access to Facebook marketplace

• You have many choices in how you market your products

• Suitable for a low budget

• Gives you the opportunity to connect with your customers

• Gives you the opportunity to build trust with your customers

Your options to sell products on Facebook are two-fold, you can use a recommended ecommerce integrated platform or you can use the free Facebook shop where you upload your products directly.

What is the difference between the recommended ecommerce platforms and the free Facebook shop?

As far as I can tell, a Facebook shop is a good way to start learning how to use Facebook to sell products however there I’d a lot of work that you have to do yourself like manually managing orders, this can take up a lot of your time if you are selling a big range of products.

You will also have to manually upload new products and each time you a customer places an order you will have to log in to process the order and to mark it as shipped time is money so if you want to build a serious business on Facebook you need the tools to make it work for you.

I believe that using one of the big ecommerce platforms will be more beneficial for your business and will give you time to spend on more productive tasks like writing engaging content or sourcing new products.

How to use Facebook to sell products

Why use ecommerce platforms?

The best ecommerce platforms like Big commerce and Shopify offer many distinct advantages over a free Facebook shop for example,

1. You can list and sell on many other sites, not just Facebook

2. You can list a full product range

3. Automated ordering and shipping

4. Time saving

5. Automated shipping updates

6.Low monthly cost

Facebook shop account

A Facebook shop is an extension of your Facebook business page where people can browse the products that you have on offer and make a purchase, initially it was set up so that people could sell used stuff, list accommodation for rent, sell a user car and do on, each item for sale has to be uploaded separately.

By connecting a Facebook shop to a recommended ecommerce platform, you have the facility to make more sales to more customers especially if you use other online sales channels like Amazon or EBay.


Create products to link to your Facebook shop

Using an ecommerce platform makes it so much easier to create and list products, you can input all the information easily images, product description, price, shipping, returns policy and do much more.

You are starting your first online store, take your time, choose an image that reflects your brand and will be memorable to your customers, give accurate detailed descriptions of each product, use high quality product images, make sure your store is mobile friendly, add measurements, weight or any other possible details that will make the shopping and buying process as easy as possible for your customer.

Follow these four important steps when building your online store;

1. Put your contact information where it can be seen easily

2. Add a customer service & privacy policy

3. Put an about us section

4. Add shipping rates

5. Add any applicable vat rates or taxes

Using your ecommerce platform add every piece of information that you feel will be needed for a great customer user experience and sync everything with your Facebook dashboard. Once you have connected your ecommerce platform to your Facebook shop all products will be seen by your business page visitors.

Make sure that you read Facebook’s guidelines on images and product descriptions otherwise they may not publish until you edit your store.

When your store is up and running your next step is to promote your content and products.

How to promote your products on Facebook

One of the nice things about Facebook is the millions of potential customers for your business, by creating a business page aligned to your shop gives you access to a vast marketplace of people numbering more than 2.5 billion users.

The question is how do you use Facebook to sell products? considering that 68% of adults in the USA are on Facebook means that by targeting these potential customers via posting content that will attract your audience to your page is a good place to start.

First off you need to find keywords that are associated with your products, for example let’s say you are selling dog collars for poodles you need to know what words are people putting into Facebook when they are looking for a product.

Use this keyword tool and type in dog collars for poodles, as you can see a long list of keywords will pop up, find the best keyword and write an article related to the keyword with a link to your store.

Write a post

Alternatively, you can write a post using some other keywords that are related to a product within your store, then use Facebook boost post, this will have the effect of getting more potential customers that are interested in your products to get the opportunity to visit your online ecommerce store.

Your third option is to use Facebook ads, you can set a daily budget, don’t go crazy try maybe a small daily budget of $20 set up your campaign, give it a name, identify your target market ( this is easy on Facebook) use images of your product, add the locations and age bracket that you want to target.

Then check that you are happy with your ad, publish the ad and wait for Facebook to approve your ad, they have a brilliant ad reporting system that will give you live and up to date reports on how you’re as is performing.

If you aren’t getting the sales that you had hoped for stop the ad and start again, try a video ad these are short images that you provide presented in a 3 second video, I have found that short videos get a lot of attention and can turn into sales.

Use all three methods to learn how to use Facebook to sell products, if you are on a budget try writing valuable content that will attract visitors to your online store, if you are looking to boost your posts use Facebook post boost, or to get more detailed targeting for potential customers use Facebook paid ads based around your daily or weekly budget.

facebook groups

Sell products through Facebook groups

Within the Facebook platform you have access to people that buy and sell products, these can be location specific or niche specific, for example a niche group could be interested in a particular health product, they are looking for further information and feedback on certain health products, some will be selling similar products. So how do you find your niche group?

Log into Facebook and click the groups tag on the left, find a group that you want to post a product listing to, click on the button what are you selling, fill in all the details about your product, images, cost, description, then just post it..

How to use Facebook to sell products FAQ.

I hope that by now you are better acquainted at how to use Facebook to sell products, it is a relatively easy process, Facebook is constantly changing how things are done, it’s a good idea to keep up to date, here is a list of frequently asked questions about selling products on Facebook.

What type of products can I sell?

I have checked through Facebook’s terms and conditions here is a list of what you can’t sell on Facebook rather than what you can sell

• Healthcare products

• First aid kits

• Animals

• Thermometer

• Anything that isn’t a physical item

• Before and after images (as in weight loss)

• A service

• Or an event ticket

How do you sell on Facebook marketplace?

Fairly simple, just click on sell something top left hand corner, all you need is a personal Facebook account, Facebook marketplace is ideal for one off items like used clothes, used cars, used kitchen utensils, nothing to worry about providing you are selling stuff that belongs to you.

Are there risks to selling on Facebook?

If you just want to use Facebook to sell something personal the odd time then Facebook marketplace is a risk free option for you, if you want to sell stuff more often to make an extra income then a Facebook shop would be your best option, there is an approval process before you can post. As long as you are honest with people and selling products that are yours there are no risks.

Is Facebook connected to Instagram?

One of the benefits of having a Facebook account is that it is directly connected to Instagram as long as it is an approved business page, if you have a Facebook business page make sure to connect it to Instagram, it will give you even more access to potential customers that use Instagram ( according to Stastica more than one billion people use Instagram) so they will get to see your posts in their newsfeeds.

What is Facebook business manager?

Facebook business manager is a powerful free tool for people that use the platform, it helps you to manage everything including;

• Posts

• Ads

• Ads reporting

• Financials

conclusion on how to use facebook to sell products

Conclusion

Getting set up to sell products on Facebook isn’t that difficult once you know where to start, depending on whether you just want to sell a few personal items or whether you want to create an online store and turn it into a genuine online money making enterprise Facebook has an audience filter you.

You have a number of options Facebook shop, Facebook marketplace, ecommerce integration, then you can use unique content in your posts to drive traffic to your online store, sell to targeted groups of people, use Facebook to boost your posts, use Facebook paid advertising.

Once you are set up properly with a Facebook business page connected to Instagram you can start to write posts using this keyword tool based on the product you want to sell, this will bring people to your business page and hopefully make sales for you.

If you need to boost your online store visitors through Facebook it is relatively inexpensive to try out their post boost or paid advertising using targeted ads.

References

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-reaches-238-billion-users-beats-revenue-estimates-in-latest-upda/553403

10 thoughts on “How to use Facebook to sell products

  1. I truly need to initially value your exertion in assembling this incredible site and composing this article. Much thanks for the extraordinary article on ” how to use Facebook to sell products”.We all know that Facebook is the most popular social media platform. But I didn’t know how to sell a product on Facebook. But after reading your post I learned about “how to use Facebook to sell products ” clearly. The article answered my question. I think I will get marvelous outcomes from your specialty article. I think this article can help me earn a Legitimate Online Income. I will share this article among friends. I hope they benefit. Much obliged and thanks.

  2. Hi, 

    This sounds interesting, I run a website on male health. My main source of income is affiliate marketing, one of the things I promote is blood tests, I’ve seen a lot of ads for blood testing on Facebook, so I guess there may be a market for this. Is it possible to advertise affiliate marketing offers using this method, as supposed to products that I own?

    1. Hi Nate,

                   I use Facebook to drive traffic to my site, from there they may buy an affiliate product. If I were you I would check Facebook’s terms and conditions for ads before you jump in. Hope this helps,

      Fintan

  3. Good post. I just started my research on selling into Facebook. I finally developed a software product called AchieveYourReality. I’m super proud of it! But honestly, here lies the challenge, promoting. One that I like about Facebook, it’s much cheaper to advertise. What do you recommend on Facebook ads? Is their paid advertising worth it?

    1. Hi JB,

      I have used Facebooks ads in the past, to be fair the results were good, a lot depends on what you are promoting and how you promote, Facebook have very detailed demographics analytics so you can target the people that you need to target. Like all advertising some will do well and some won’t.

      Fintan

  4. Hey there! Thank you so much for sharing such an informative article. Actually I knew about facebook marketing a little bit from before. But when I went through your article I had a clear idea how to sell product in facebook and do my business online. The things you described about how to promote products in facebook is really amazing.
    Your article had benefited me a lot. Now I think I can start my facebook marketing in a proper way. I am going to follow the things you wrote in your article, thank you. I am gonna share your article in my facebook account.

  5. This is really a great article. Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful article with us. Your post is very informative and very helpful to me.

    Through my facebook friend, I saw selling products, I was interested in this but didn’t know how to do it. Reading your post clearly shows how to set up a business page on Facebook. I will start selling the product through Facebook. The information you provide will benefit me. I hope to become a business page professional on Facebook very soon.

    I will share this article via social media. I think those who read your post they will benefit.

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