FacebookListsTips & TricksSelling on Facebook Marketplace in 2021 like a professional

Today’s generation is opting for online purchases instead of spending their money on buying an item from a physical store. A majority of brick-and-mortar retailers and marketers are making their online presence. Around 30% of online shoppers make a purchase from a social media channel like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, and a majority of these sales come from Facebook. For the same reason Selling on Facebook Marketplace is an opportunity to explore.

Facebook is where people connect, and in 2016, Facebook launched a new shopping experience, Facebook Marketplace, for people to buy and sell locally and chat over Messenger, which was earlier happening in Facebook Groups as a direct peer-to-peer shopping. In 2018, more than one in three people in the US used Facebook Marketplace to make a purchase.

With the ease of discovering and making purchases from a variety of offerings from marketers, Facebook Marketplace has become a convenient destination to shop. People can browse what they’re looking for by using by filtering results based on category, location, and price.

What does selling on Facebook Marketplace mean for your business?

In these years, Facebook Marketplace has grown in popularity and is now used in 70 countries by 800 million people every month. This Marketplace, which lets people buy and sell services and items like Furniture used vehicles and clothes on the platform can be used by anyone to list a product, check-in on groups, go to stores and directly connect with the potential audience. Facebook Marketplace is accessible on the Facebook app and Desktop. Currently, only US merchants are eligible to apply for listing and selling products in Facebook Marketplace.

Given Facebook’s highly engaging audience, many big brands and businesses have started their expansion to Marketplace. A number of eCommerce platforms BigCommerce, ChannelAdvisor, ShipStation, Shopify, CommerceHub, Quipt, and Zentails have partnered with Facebook Marketplace. Although listing inventory on the Marketplace is free, there may be charges to work with these partners.

Listings on Facebook Marketplace

Listings in Facebook Marketplace are organized based on categories like Vehicles, Rentals, Hobbies, Clothing & Accessories, and Deals. Each listing can have a maximum of 10 photos with a description.

Shoppers can view a particular category, search for a specific product or can message directly to a seller on Facebook messenger to ask questions.

To create your listing, click on “+Sell something” under Marketplace

Select the type of product being listed

Fill other relevant details of your product in the next page as seen in the below image

Click Next and Post to finish listing your products.

Products available for sell on Facebook Marketplace will automatically show up as a part of your Store, which is directly accessible via the “Shop” tab of your Facebook Business page.

Prohibited Items on Facebook Marketplace

Below is the list of items and services prohibited from selling on Facebook Marketplace

1. Prescription, Illegal or Recreational drugs
2. Ingestible supplements
3. Tobacco products
4. Ammunitions, Weapons or Explosives
5. Animals
6. Adult Products or Services
7. Alcohol
8. Healthcare products( thermometers, first-aid, etc.) or those containing nicotine
9. Devices streaming digital content in an unauthorized way
10. Real, Virtual or Fake currency
11. Event ticket
12. Gift Cards

Business advertisements in Facebook Marketplace 

To help businesses reach more people when they are shopping, Facebook, in the year 2018 introduced advertisements for businesses on Marketplace, which appear in feeds when someone browses. Ads appear alongside other relevant services and products on Marketplace, and interested customers can directly click to your website or app. By Automatic ads placement, your ads appear on News Feed, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience network.

According to Facebook’s success stories, a women’s lifestyle subscription box and media company, FabFitFun, generated a 2.2x return on ad spendings and increased its subscription base.

Creating an ad for selling on Facebook Marketplace

Whenever you create an ad in Ads Manager, it will show up in Facebook Marketplace.

To create an ad for selling on Facebook Marketplace,

1. Go to Ads Manager and choose from one of the following ad objectives. Choose one from Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, Lead generation, Video views, Catalog sales, Store traffic, Messages, and conversions.
2. Chose Destination and define your target audience.
3. Choose automatic Placements or Edit Placements
4. Select a Budget and Schedule.
5. Choose the ad’s creative format. Use Facebook’s recommended video and image specifications
6. Click Done and then Place order

Once approved, the ad is visible to people when they browser Marketplace on the Facebook app on their phones

Criteria for eCommerce retailers in the US

1. Orders should be shipped within three days and received within seven days
2. All Returns must be accepted within 30 days
3. Product listings must include description, images, and a thumbnail image without any text, graphics, icons or badges

Dealership programs on Facebook Marketplace

There are three tiers of the deals program: The Everyday Deal, Featured Deal, and Lighthouse Deal. Based on the quality of the deal, your product can qualify for one of the deals, which surfaces to relevant shoppers on Marketplace feed with the added advantage of Facebook’s targeting and ranking algorithm

For Daily Deals, pricing must be 15% less than your MSRP. Qualifying for the other two deal program depends on discounts your offer or discount on high demand products

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Facebook Marketplace

In October 2018, Facebook introduced AI in Marketplace with new features like the price-range suggestion, ratings, auto-categorization for sellers aimed at improving the user experience on Marketplace.

Automatic price suggestion and categorization: For example, if you want to sell a Dining Table on Marketplace, Facebook will suggest a selling price range based on what similar tables recently sold for.

Visual Search: Based on a photo or description, it will automatically detect and categorize an item in its relevant category

Buyer and Seller ratings: Buyers and sellers can leave ratings and feedbacks after transactions to improve response time, reliability and help peer buyers by sharing your bad or good experience

Detecting and removing inappropriate content: Using AI to analyze image, content, and context within a listing, Facebook will detect and remove items that violate any of its Marketplace policies

All these things makes up the selling on Facebook Marketplace a nicer way to market your products and thus, even if you have not tried it by now, you should give it a try and let the money pour in. So keep sharing and do let us know your experiences in the comments section below.

---