Navigating advertising in the eCommerce landscape can be intimidating but it doesn’t have to be. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have features designed specifically to highlight eCommerce products.
Alongside this, platforms are constantly changing, as are the ways people use them. Features that are relatively new to Facebook and its subsidiaries are valuable new assets for you to advertise your business and make your products stand out. Between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, there’s many useful ways to sell your products and get creative.
Facebook, ads, and catalog sales
Beyond just advertising itself, other Facebook features help you improve your business’s visibility; customer reviews act as testimonial for others considering your products or services, expanded access to augmented reality helps users picture your product in their home, and Facebook Shops allows people to purchase your goods directly.
When you’re running an e-commerce campaign on Facebook, carousel ads and collection ads are your friend! They help showcase specific products with concrete details about them, so users don’t have to go through a more generic ad where they click and then browse through a more general group of products — an extra step that will deter many.
Both carousel and collection ads are similar in that way but have slightly different formats that are ideal for when you want to emphasize different things. Carousel ads allow users to flip through different images and products (like a line of rides in a carousel, if you will). Collection ads come in a few formats and take up more space onscreen, but in general they display images of multiple products and invite users to browse a specific collection of the products shown in the ads.
Example of a Carousel Ad available on Facebook. Image source: Wordstream.com.
Example of a Collection Ad available on Facebook. Image source: Adweek.
You can run these collection ads by setting up a catalog sales campaign. To set this up, go to Catalog Manager — from there you’ll be prompted to create a product fee, or you can upload one. From there you’ll follow other steps to get things started; Wordstream dives into that process here.
Catalogs on Instagram and WhatsApp
Instagram and Whatsapp also are useful for direct e-commerce.
Instagram especially can be valuable because of its nature as a visual platform to begin with. You begin by setting up your shop through which people can browse through your products while also getting to know your brand. And through product tags, you can showcase your products in photos and videos. You can also put product tags on your ads in Ads Manager to increase their reach. Instagram has their own guide on how to set up shop, plus a look at the minutiae of how to make the most of selling on Instagram.
From left to right, examples of a the Instagram Shop, Instagram Collections, and Instagram Promotion features available on Instagram. Image source: Instagram.
And while Instagram might seem exceptionally well-suited to sales, WhatsApp is becoming a medium for selling products, too. This is through their new feature, “Collections,” launched in October 2021. This allows businesses to organize their products into categories — a fashion brand might want to filter via pants, tops, outerwear, and so on, for example. Users can browse, and from there make an order.
Examples of WhatsApp Collections available on WhatsApp. Image source: TechCrunch.
Starting up shopping opportunities on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, allows you to showcase your products to people right on their social media instead of having to put extra resources into getting users to come to your site to view what you have to offer.
The end result is people who are more naturally engaged, all while you’re putting less time, energy, and money into the process.
