RISK vs OPPORTUNITY – Facebook and Instagram shopping

Update: Latest stats – March 2021

It’s always worth re-visiting your strategies at regular intervals. Updates to changes in consumer buying habits are being monitored. Hubspot published a report to buying habits through social media in March 2021. A relatively small sample 467 consumers was asked whether they actually bought through social media, and if so, which channels, so that this could be benchmarked against their purchases on e-commerce sites. Of the sample, over 50% had bought a product directly through a social media platform.

Today’s big Facebook and Instagram news: Facebook and Instagram to have Facebook Shops.

AMAZING WOO HOO! You might say! Get me a shop now!

SLOW DOWN! I say!

Selling online is the answer to all our business problems! (says Mark Zuckerberg)

What he actually said was ‘I think this particularly important right now because so many small businesses are moving online to deal with the economic fallout from Covid-19.’

Why are Facebook really doing this?

No, it’s not about helping people during the Coronavirus outbreak, it’s about business basics, about growth and profit.

• They want continued growth and revenue through ownership of the market and ad share.
• They want to keep people on their platform using it for as long as possible and not following links off-site to other websites or platforms.
• They want you to invest all your time into their platform, growing it for them, you are going the work, YOU are engaging THEIR audience.
• They want you to commit to using all their features instead of their competitors.
• They want to own a greater share of the internet and more data.

 

Should I have a Facebook or Instagram shop?

THINK ABOUT THE RISKS Is this a business RISK or is it an OPPORTUNITY

This is something you need to think about strategically. And you need to think about the risks and benefits before you launch full on into setting up your shop.

And you have to think about why Facebook is offering this, and whether it’s a fit for your business.

OPPORTUNITY

Yes. Shopping directly from Facebook and Instagram is good in many ways

• It’s a shorter customer journey to buy
• Your audience might be in Facebook or Instagram, engaged and ready to buy
• You can sell to people suffering lazy-itis
• You can make the Facebook ads link well to the shop
• It will be a good way to showcase products through Facebook as a channel
• Your competitors might be about to jump on this and you may need to compete to win share of the market

RISK

Most importantly: DO YOU WANT TO PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET?

Do you want Facebook to in effect ‘own’ all of your customer data? Don’t you want to own all of your customer data, your customers’ buying information and your own website analysis by having it flow through your site, a site you control not just the selling part of this, but the functionality and the entire experience?

Are you a high end product and do you need to have website landing pages to inform, persuade and convert your own messaging with well crafted messages.

Perhaps if you’re exclusively on Facebook and it works well for you, this might be the right platform, but for many it might not be a good fit for the business.

CUSTOMER TRUST AND DEMOGRAPHICS

What is your customer demographic, where are your customers looking for your product or service? Facebook? Pinterest? Instagram? Offline? Your customers might be more active, more engaged with other channels and those might be a better place in which to engage their conversation and sell your products. Some businesses are much more successful on Pinterest, for example.

Buyers are on multiple platforms and have varying degrees of trust. Your customers may have much more TRUST IN YOUR WEBSITE than in passing their buying data through Facebook and Instagram. Facebook can be glitchy and painful to use both as a brand and as a customer, you won’t be in control of your customer’s buying experience in the same way you are if you own your website and shop. If you control the sales, you can control the returns, the brand’s reputation.

 

SELLING ON YOUR SITE VS SELLING ON FACEBOOK OR INSTAGRAM

Does the Facebook integration offer you the functionality you need to showcase your products well? Are the images big enough, is there enough space for product information, do the pages on your own website do this better? Can you offer higher resolution imagery, 360 degree product views or advanced or bespoke features? Do you have landing pages that do a better job than the product shop pages? Before you rush in to setting up a shop, you need to consider and plan all of this so that it’s not an afterthought.

Do you have a product or a service based business? Can you get across the information people need or to help people in their decision making process

What’s your product price point? How much of a decision do your customers need to make? Do you need to offer discounts or packages?

What information do you want your customers to know before you buy? You might need to have this in your own owned space where your website, branding and buyer experience can show you in your best light.

Think about your business aims and objectives. What is the future for your business? You may need to drive people to your site to learn more about your evolving business needs and in which case, a quick sale through Facebook or Instagram won’t necessarily meet your long term business needs.

 

Ways forward for selling on Facebook and instagram

Do you already have another shop on your own platform? If not, what’s holding you back from doing this?

Can your existing website integrate shop features into Facebook? Many such as WooCommerce are ahead of Facebook in this respect (and Facebook wants a share of that market) with WooCommerce, for example, a really big and strong, bespoke selling platform (which can handle much more than Facebook will)  it already has an inbuilt ‘Facebook for WooCommerce’ tab system where you can sell through Facebook.

THINK BEFORE YOU COMMIT – is this right for my brand? Perhaps I want to run a trial, be an early adopter, get on the train early and see if I can get some sales on specific product lines and test if it’s working for you. Perhaps it’s a great starting point to having an online shop before you develop your own website.

Have you got the time to update more than one shop? Your website and your Facebook shop? IF YOU HAVE TIME, Maybe you want to consider having a limited selection of best-selling products in Facebook/ Instagram but then building a customer journey around engaging those customers and driving them to your site for your enhanced offering.

And finally, maybe you want a different, other strategy that engages your customer or which is designed to get the most for your business overall.

So think before you leap, plan your strategy, look at the risks and think about all the factors, fees and functions to see what works for your unique business.