Selling in is nothing new. It’s actually old (<—obviously). All social networks have tried, not once but many times, to incorporate sales tools, with results that we could qualify as below “scant” and above “total disaster”depending on the case.
If you’re relatively young, you probably don’t remember, young padawan, when a few years ago Facebook launched special direct sales pages within the network itself. telepizza was one of the companies that signed up. You could order a pizza without leaving Facebook! Wow… The magnitude of the smack was such that astronomers can still pick up the echo with their radio telescopes. Another example of a cataclysmic smack. I wonder if anyone other than jack dorsey, ever paid with a tweet. He was as successful as I could be building nuclear reactors.
But oh, the world has changed. She has turned inside out.
And in this world of social distance, queues, disinfections, gloves and masks to go out shopping, physical stores, especially small ones, have come face to face with reality: they have to sell online and they have to start doing it now . it is possible, but smart is to use all possible sales channels.
Social networks have matured in this time, and , which has bought the most successful ones except Twitter, has also matured the idea of selling on social networks, making it much easier and more practical. No cumbersome landing pages imitating web pages. If you have your page on Facebook, you can have your store in the Facebook format.
Facebook and Instagram, it rides so much, it rides so much.
Since they got married, Facebook and Instagram are like the Catholic Monarchs: each one has their kingdom, but both govern themselves together. You will have already seen that for a few months both Instagram and WhatsApp incorporate the message “from Facebook” when you open them. Facebook has been taking small steps in the integration of its 3 networks for a long time, without haste and measuring the results of each step well. has the icing on the cake.
One of those integration steps is the one that refers to selling on social networks, specifically on Facebook and Instagram. If you have a Facebook page, creating a store is as simple as activating the “store” tab in the menu of your page, accept the conditions of use, start uploading products and give them a description and price.
The catch: At the moment it is not possible to pay within the Facebook platform itself. Until Facebook Pay is active in Spain, payment for products has to be made outside of Facebook. This gives you two options:
- If you already have an online storeadd the product URL and the customer will be redirected to your eCommerce store when they click “Buy”, where they will complete the purchase process with your payment and shipping system.
- If you don’t have an eCommerce storethe customer will have the option to send you a message saying that they want to buy the product and you can agree on payment and delivery methods, which can be from picking up the product at your physical store (if you are targeting the ) or agreeing on a way payment by one of the payment apps like Bizum or by PayPal.
Plus, this will allow you to use features like , so people know that those cool shoes or skirt (or that tempting chainsaw) are for sale.
Let’s get one thing straight before we go on: If you want to sell on social networks, you have to start with Facebookunless your potential customers:
- be teenagers (go to )
- be obsessed nerds living in a bunker (send them coded signals in a YouTube video, they’ll love it) or
- are single-celled life forms that live in the oceans of Europa (not the continent, but Jupiter’s moon).
If you already have a store on your Facebook page, voilayou already have it on Instagram. What’s more, it’s the only way to do it without turning your head by resorting to pitching a tent or the like. You’ll be able to do the same thing: tag photos in your Instagram feed with your products and people will see that they can be bought by clicking on them.
WhatsApp Business: another quick and easy way to sell on social networks
is, at the moment, free. And it is a fantastic sales tool that allows you to upload a catalog of products with their price. You can send your customers (if you have their mobile, of course) news and products that you have in promotion.
Also, if you don’t have their mobile, you can advertise your WhatsApp Business number in your physical store and they can enter and see your catalog. That yes, tol Just like Facebook/Instagram, if you don’t have an online store to redirect to, payment will need to be completed outside of the platform. Here you have first-hand information on how to do it.
The thing looks more or less like this.
As you can see, you have a company profile with your contact details, location, type of products you offer, hours, a link to your website and, most importantly, a product catalog with photos, features and prices. Something that can be extremely useful to you in these upcoming times of queues, access and capacity restrictions and disinfection protocols.
Remember that you can’t have two whatsapp accounts on the same phone (Except tricks that would be long to explain) so you have two options: transform your personal account into Business, keeping all your contacts and conversations, or have a mobile dedicated to the Business account. If you are going to sell seriously on social networks and you have employees, I recommend the second option.
Selling on social networks is not just having the products uploaded
Actually, that’s the easy part. The difficult part and the one that will make you succeed is basically that you work hard. That you have a clear and specific target for your products, either for all of them or for families of them, and that you direct your content to that target.
If you dedicate yourself to publishing products like there was no tomorrow, you will most likely get tired and that no one or almost no one buys from you, unless your product is especially striking. That you want to sell on social networks does not mean that you cold your followers to promotions.
It must be clear that most of the content, let’s say 60-70%, must be nonpromotional, but useful content for the client and related to your product, which in marketing dialect is called . Don’t just show your products, show how they are used, how they are cared for, what can be done with them and what shouldn’t be done with them. If part of that content is video, even better. Hook your audience with content and you can sell them things. That is as old as the media.
Do not expect that selling on social networks is the panacea. The main goal is still drive traffic to your website, which is a space that you fully control and in which, if you do it right, you can exponentially increase the chances of sales. Social networks should be a complement that helps and that, incidentally, serves to make someone who is fascinated by that specific product buy from you. But don’t trust it too much. Things do not sell themselves and for social networks to work you will have to work hard. And for your followers to grow, word of mouth is not enough. You will have to put gasoline in it, that is, carry out paid promotions on your social networks.
And the other social networks?
You’ll notice I haven’t talked about Twitter. Forget it. You do not have direct sales tools on Twitter and promoting products aimed at the general public does NOT work in 99% of cases. As for LinkedIn, consider it only if you are dedicated to B2B, and more to make contacts than to sell products or services. TikTok? If you already have everything set up and working on Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp and you are targeting a young audience, you can consider it.
The normal thing would be to build an eCommerce store and after start uploading and promoting products on social networks. But now nothing is normal. It is very possible that if you have a small business you cannot wait while you build (or build) an eCommerce website. You need to start selling online now, and quickly. Social networks are a perfect ally to get out of trouble, but do not jump in head first without having a plan and a defined strategy of what you want to do and how to do it.
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