Turning Your Facebook Page Into An Online Store – A Step by Step Guide
You’ve heard about people setting up their online stores on platforms like Wix, Shopify, and BigCommerce. There are also those who create their own fully customized websites just for selling a certain product. That process is painstakingly difficult, especially if you have no in-depth technical skills at your disposal.
But how about making an online store out of your very own Facebook account? If such a thought crossed your mind, read on because the following steps will be truly useful and effective.
What you’ll learn here:
- The importance of making a page based on your passion
- Why choosing a relevant product matters
- Providing attractive content regularly
- Kinds of ideal content to post on your Facebook page
- How to increase your page’s viewership
- Setting up a Facebook Shop
- Becoming an affiliate seller
It’s clear you’re very excited about selling right away, money-making is what we’re here for after all. But there is a huge difference between “selling” and “selling effectively.” The second one is what you want to learn, so be mindful of this series of steps because they can truly define your success in Facebook online selling.
Step 1: Make a page focused on your deepest passions
The first obvious step is making a Facebook page – this is a practical method of telling your potential clients that you’re a serious business owner. Sure, you can sell outright using your existing Facebook account, but there’s a huge chance that people (even your closest friends and family) would see you as “just another seller” – one that must not be taken seriously.
The remedy for this is to make the world believe that you have a handful of products that are worthy of checking out, worthy of buying, and worthy of promoting to thousands of people. Yes, thousands – this would be an excellent number in making a real profit, though, of course, a few tens or hundreds would be a reasonable expectation if you’re just starting out.
“But what kind of page should you consider making?”
The answer is simple – make one that revolves around a topic that you dearly love, or are so passionate about. It could also be something very related to your daily routine, or your greatest hobby if you may.
The reason for making a page like that is to diminish the likelihood that you’ll quit. Why only very few people succeed is that not too many of us are persistent enough.
If you’re making a page that revolves around something that you really love doing, the chances of you quitting will be very low since the whole process wouldn’t feel like a chore, but something that you truly enjoy.
Step 2: Choose a set of products that are very relevant to what your page is about
One of the worst mistakes that plenty of sellers are doing is they just pick a certain category of products without checking their emotional attachment to such products. Here’s one thing you should know, the most profitable businessmen achieved their success because…
“They love the products they’re selling, and the services they’re offering.”
A great majority of online sellers just pick items that they think would sell the most to people. Maybe you’re thinking of doing exactly the same. But are you knowledgeable about the ins and outs of those products? Do you even really like using them?
In addition to making a Facebook page relevant to your hobbies and passions, you have to sell only those products that would make sense to your page’s niche and what your posts are all about.
If your page’s posts are about movies, then sell movie-related products. If your page is about health and wellness, then sell vitamins, food supplements, or exercise equipment and accessories. The list of products to sell could go on and on, which should work to your advantage. The only thing to bear in mind is…
“Never sell products that have nothing to do with your page’s main topic.”
It will not only prevent your potential clients from approaching you… it will also push your existing followers away. The more people who will come to your page, the more buyers you’ll have, and the longer they stay with you on your page, the more purchases you’ll gain – never forget this very basic business model.
Step 3: Provide attractive and shareable content regularly
Though this might sound very cliché, let me speak of this anyway, “The best online stores are those that give value to their customers.” As an owner of a Facebook page, how can you give value to your clients aside from selling your products to their faces?
“Providing valuable and attractive content is the best answer.”
Inasmuch as more beer will be consumed in clubs where there’s a great rock band playing onstage, more visitors and followers will flock through your direction if there is very interesting stuff to see on your page, preferably the kinds that are a lot better than your competitors.
If you are providing the same kind of content that others are also giving, why should people choose you over them? Compared to other pages, you have to do better, you have to be exceptional or else, you will lose the very stiff competition.
If there are tons of top-class images, videos, animations, or memes to check out, (that are relevant to your main topic of course) people will keep coming back to your page and will spread the word. They might even share your content with their friends, which is something you’d greatly hope for.
Kinds of content you can post
But what kind of content exactly? Here are the most ideal types you should consider posting to fully enhance your page’s attractiveness.
Curated web articles
This is about picking articles from the web and sharing them on your page. The process is simple, you just have to browse through websites or blogsites that post articles about your page’s niche and post the links to your wall. Those website owners will love you for it, they appreciate the very act of sharing their content on other places on the web.
These articles could be news items, celebrity stories, how-to guides, or anything that grabs the interest of your visitors. Just be sure that none of those articles you curated are off-topic in any way. Posting ones that are non-relevant will earn you a barrage of dislikes which could greatly hurt your ratings.
Short but compelling videos
The fact that you must only post the most compelling videos is inarguable. But why the short ones? It doesn’t mean you must only post those videos that last only under 3 minutes. However, they have to be the most preferable – because you need your viewers to scroll down in the quickest time… so they can start buying the items you sell.
Unless you have a way of inserting a link or a button in the middle of the videos (that you only shared) that urges the viewer to buy, not making them stay too long in watching each video is a good strategy.
Catchy images and memes
Scrolling is what social media walls are all about. Now how are you going to prevent your viewers to scroll too much that they might hop into other pages and forget about you? Posting high-quality photos and eye-catching memes could never go wrong – they make up a huge portion of any social media site you could ever mention.
Since memes are built for the sake of comedy, bear in mind that the humor around the memes you post must always be centered on your page’s niche.
“Never depart from your page’s topic… never.”
Emotional Slogans
Another image category you must post are slogans. Unlike memes which are meant to be funny, slogans are meant to poke into the more serious depths of our emotions. Thanks to tons of free image-generating websites today, you can grab slogans from them without worrying about copyright issues.
You can even make your own, which should be pretty easy if you know how to use basic photo-editing or word processing. Just grab some pictures that are labeled as “fair use,” put some catchy emotional statements into them, and post them on your page. These can significantly increase your viewership.
Events and Invitations
Facebook has made this very easy, but you could make it a lot easier or catchier by being more innovative. You could post a thought-provoking question – one that your viewers could react to intensely, or something that could spark a debate.
This will be a truly hot item to boost your sales, though great care must be exercised as well as it might drag you into an unbearable controversy, or might totally have you banned by Facebook due to the outrage or reports you might get.
If you could invite a famous person to have a live talk or performance on your page on a certain date, you could announce it to your viewers a few days before so they can have something to look forward to. In that case, you should prepare for some hard selling acts because a great potential for revenue is coming… you should be ready to handle such an event.
You could also utilize other posts like my day-stories, and those standard, sentence/phrase structured posts. But because everyone else is doing it, yours could just get drowned easily in the internet noise. Put some extra creativity in posting those…
“You are meant to be a top-notch online seller, remember?”
Step 4: Increase Your Page’s Viewership
If you have 100 loyal customers 6 months ago, and still have the same number today, can you consider your business as truly profitable? The answer to this is debatable. It could be that those are the same customers, or they could be entirely different 100 people.
The point is that nobody wants to have a business that’s not showing any significant growth. You have to increase your page’s viewership since earning more than you had for the previous months is every merchant’s goal.
“Here’s what you should do to grow your audience.”
Be a member of other similar groups or pages
You can never be a good businessman if you are a lone wolf. This means you have to reach out to other social media groups or Facebook pages that are similar to yours and place your membership and participation in them.
Post helpful comments, interact with other sellers, give valuable advice as replies – this can make others be interested in you, and can drive more visitors to your account and to your own page, thereby boosting your sales.
Engage with your viewers (even the trolls!)
This is perhaps the most painstaking chore of all. This is fun during your first few weeks, but this gets tedious and boring over time. But this is a necessary compromise you have to do. You really must spend time replying to comments, answering client queries, and giving all the information your viewers might need – this is one of the most laborious, yet most effective ways of growing your visitors.
But there are trolls, there will always be. While these people could be extremely annoying and irritating, they are among those you need to deal with… which might eventually become customers! – if you handle them right, and treat them nice enough.
Invest in Facebook advertising
If you’re just starting out, you’d probably hate the idea of spending on a certain amount so your page will gain more viewership. But advertising still works so well and you should consider paying a small fee so Facebook can spread the word about your business and your products to interested parties.
The good thing about Facebook ads is that they can be tailored to your budget. For as low as $10, your product’s ads could already reach thousands of people, though this depends on the area or kinds of people you’re trying to reach.
“If you’re truly serious with your online-selling acts, you should strongly consider having your page advertised.”
Step 5: Set up a Facebook Shop
Once you’ve established your reputation and after increasing your viewership, it should be the moment to create your Facebook Shop. This is among the latest and most useful features of Facebook for those who do business on the platform.
With Facebook Shop, you can easily put up an online store right within your Facebook page. Typically, you’ll wait for around 48 hours to get approved. With it, you can create catalogs of your products, group them as collections, and gather statistics to help you sell strategically. You can even set up an online area where you can cater to customer support.
Anyone who owns a Facebook page is encouraged to set up a shop in it. Data integration for other popular selling platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify is also allowed which enables sellers to seamlessly conduct business nearly anywhere on the web.
Step 6: Apply as an Affiliate Seller
Affiliate selling is now one of the most solid business models today that so many multi-million businesses are offering such an option for even those who don’t own an online store. If your Facebook page has attained the ideal level of viewership already, you could apply as an affiliate seller for some online companies. Some of them don’t even have a number of followers requirement!
What you’ll be doing as an affiliate seller would be mainly posting links or photos to certain products, promoting product descriptions, and urging people to buy those products. For every purchase they’ll make, you’ll have commissions. This should remind you that making your posts as catchy as possible should be the ultimate strategy.
Those steps should be effective enough for selling effectively on Facebook. But bear this in mind, you can never be an effective seller, affiliate, or otherwise if you don’t engage with your clients properly.
“Give them value.”
“Show them that you truly care”
“Help them solve their problems”
Only by doing these can you truly have the highest revenue in making your Facebook page into an online store.
There is also another way of making money with Facebook, read this to find out.
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