According to a study carried out by Statia, 44% of consumers admit that Facebook influences the purchases they make and, currently, there are millions of advertisers using Facebook Ads to promote their products. 

Selling on Facebook: advantages and disadvantages 

We know that social selling is a good idea for your dropshipping store, but it isn’t as easy as it might seem. To start with, you have to invest a significant amount of time and money, something that not everyone is willing or able to do. If you want to sell more on Facebook, we tell you all the advantages and disadvantages of this platform below: 

Advantages of selling on Facebook 

– Creating a community: one of the main advantages of having a business page on Facebook is the opportunity to – organically – create a community where you can bring potential buyers together. 

– Platform to carry out paid campaigns: Facebook Ads is an extremely powerful tool for generating impulse sales. Moreover, another advantage is the ease of analysis for the campaigns, which enables you to make decisions much more quickly.

– Excellent audience segmentation: linked to the previous point, with Facebook it is very easy to focus campaigns towards segmented audiences in a precise way, not just using demographic data, but also by interests, tastes and preferences. 

– Possibility of conversing with customers: a major advantage of Facebook – and most social networks – is the possibility of talking to your customers, whether through the comments, private messages, etc. Also, bear in mind that most social networks have become a customer service point for businesses, so you constantly have to pay attention and join in the conversation.  

Disadvantages of selling on Facebook 

– It takes a lot of effort to create a community organically: it is true that it isn’t easy to increase the size of the community without investing in advertising. Although it can be done, it is a slow processes and requires a lot of effort: preparing a good content strategy, performing attractive actions that have appeal, working on collaborations to increase your reach, etc. 

– You will have to pay to obtain a wider reach: as we mentioned earlier, it is becoming increasingly complicated to create a community without investing in advertising. That’s why, if you want to increase your reach, you are highly likely to need to spend some money, no matter what. 

– High degree of competition with other social networks: there are an increasing number of platforms that users spend their time on. Instagram, of course, but also TikTok for a younger audience, or Twitter, with a very different audience. 

Before you start: how to create and optimise your catalogue

To start selling on Facebook, you are going to need an up-to-date and optimised catalogue. You won’t just use it to tag your products in posts, but also to appear in the Facebook Store, create dynamic adverts, etc. 

For example, with dynamic ads, you can create automatic campaigns with products from your online store, both on Instagram and Facebook, without the need to upload them one by one. This type of campaign is perfect for remarketing on social networks and will help you to have an impact on users that have visited your website. 

But, returning to the most important thing: to create the catalogue and synchronise your product feed on Facebook, we recommend you use a plugin or module on your ecommerce platform. That way, the fields that Facebook requires you to complete will be done automatically.

Starting is quite simple, but keeping it optimised is another kettle of fish. And if you are still asking yourself whether the success of your campaigns will be directly related to how optimised your catalogue is, the answer is yes. 

Five steps to optimise your catalogue on Facebook: 

As we mentioned earlier, having a product catalogue which is optimised for Facebook will help you to improve the visibility of your products, the conversion ratio and the click-through rate. But, what type of improvements can you make to your Facebook catalogue? You will find some examples below:

1. Make sure you synchronise the minimum compulsory fields of your products 

Facebook requires, as a minimum, that products have the following fields. If any are missing or incorrect, it is likely that the product won’t load in the feed. 

• ID: a unique identifier, the SKU code if possible.
• Title: a specific product title, with a limit of 150 characters. 
• Description: a brief description with the main features of the product. 
• Availability: the availability of the product. 
• Condition: refers to whether it is: new, refurbished, used.
• Price: which should go with the three letter currency code and use the point for the decimals. 
• Link: the link to the product data sheet in your online store. 
• Image_link: link to the main image of the product, which should take up a maximum of 8MB.
• Brand: the brand the product belongs to. 

2. The more fields, the better 

In addition to the required values, we recommend you add all the additional fields possible such as: size, colour, product category, material, offers, etc. 

3. Delete duplicated products

If you have the same product with different variations (colour, size, etc.), make sure they are grouped together and that there are no duplicated products.  

4. Optimise the titles 

The product title is the only copy you have to capture the user’s attention in the adverts, so imagine how important it is! Write attractive titles and guide your customers perfectly to find what they need. 

5. Refresh the catalogue at least once a day 

It is important to keep all the information about your products up to date. Imagine that your star product is out of stock and, because you didn’t update the feed, users end up on your website with a bad user experience. Luckily, you can schedule the update of your catalogue automatically, even on an hourly basis. 

How to sell on Facebook Marketplace 

Facebook’s marketplace, like any other, is a meeting place for buyers and sellers from all over the world. In it, you can find new, refurbished and second hand products, and it has become a powerful platform to boost the sales of any business. 

So that you better understand how it works, Facebook wants to boost the sales of the local community, which is why it categorises items according to the proximity of the buyer and positions the products that are nearest to the buyer’s location. Additionally, the algorithm captures data from users’ searches and displays products related to their history. 

As you can see, there are many benefits to listing and promoting the products of your dropshipping online store. The main advantages of selling on Facebook Marketplace are: 

• Ease of use: you can list your products with just a few clicks. 
• Optimisation of products: to take maximum advantage of the sales potential, in the Marketplace you can upload up to 10 photos, write your own description, etc.  
• It is free: You don’t have to pay to list on the tool and Facebook does not charge commission for sales. 

First steps in Facebook Marketplace 

As a seller, you can use your business profile to start to create product listings. Indeed, we advise you to check the commercial policies thoroughly to prevent future complications with your listings. On the other hand, you will also be able to create paid campaigns so your ads appear in the marketplace without needing to post the products directly on the platform.

1. Create a new listing.
2. Choose the product category.
3. Type the advert details: title, description, price and condition of the product. Our advice is to apply SEO practices to your item descriptions. 
4. Upload up to 10 photos: make sure they are attractive enough for potential customers. The recommended resolution is, as a minimum, 1080×1080 px. 
5. List your advert and, you’re ready to go!  

As well as complying with all these requirements, it is also important that you maintain a high response rate. In fact, Facebook awards the “Very responsive” badge so that buyers can keep this in mind. To improve in this respect, you can use chatbots with FAQs about delivery, payment method, stock availability, etc.   

Selling on Facebook Ads: how to create campaigns

Advertising campaigns on Facebook are a critical aspect of having an online store, and more so if you do dropshipping. Whether you like it or not, you are going to need to spend part of your investment on paid campaigns to scale your project, so it is important for you to understand how to create and optimise your adverts on Facebook. Additionally, as shown in the previous section, an extremely interesting option is to appear in Facebook Marketplace. 

To take your first steps on Facebook Ads, you need to have an ad account linked to Meta Business Manager. Once you have your account, we recommend you start to create your campaigns from the Ads Manager.

 It is also important for you to familiarise yourself with the structure of the campaigns, which consist of three parts: 

– Campaign: where you configure the name, objective (awareness, consideration or conversion), and the budget. 

– Ad set: here you can configure the activation dates for the campaign, the segmentation of the target audience and the locations where you want to display your adverts. 

– Ads: lastly, the adverts are what the campaign has created. In these, you have to select the format (video, photo, carousel, etc.) and the content. 

Recommended resolution, weight and size for adverts on Facebook Ads.  

Each creation for your adverts should be adapted to meet the resolution and size requirements of the tool locations. Below, we give you a brief guide:  

For the feed: 

Resolution: 1080×1080 px. or 1200×628 px. 

Image format: JPG or PNG. 

Video format: MP4 and MOV.  

For video, it is advisable to upload it without pillarbox or letterbox (the black bars)

Maximum video size: 4GB

For stories: 

Resolution: 1080×1920 px. (the text inside of 1080×1420 px) 

Image format: JPG or PNG. 

Video format: MP4 and MOV.  

Size: maximum 4 GB   

Bear in mind that each clip lasts for 15 seconds

In order for your campaigns to be as successful as possible, we advise you to keep them up to date at all times. Carry out A/B tests and find out what works best for your business. The world of social networks evolves so quickly that you have to adapt at the same speed. This is the true key to success: it isn’t the best person that survives, it’s the one that adapts best.  

In conclusion: the main aspects for selling on Facebook  

After this short guide on how to get started to optimise your profile and your catalogue and find the best strategies for selling on Facebook, we summarise the most important aspects below:  

– Facebook continues to be one of the most important social networks, with almost three billion active users each month. If you want to scale your business, doing social selling on Facebook is almost a requirement. 

– Keep your catalogue updated. As we have seen, the Facebook catalogue – used properly- can be an extremely powerful tool and one of the main sources of traffic to your online store. 

– You need some knowledge of Facebook Ads. If you have a dropshipping store, you are going to need to invest in advertising: to test winning products, to encourage impulse sales, to increase the reach of your account, etc. 

We hope you have found this article useful and that you have found out a little more about social selling and how to make the most of Facebook to sell more. If you are starting out in the world of dropshipping or you have any suggestions, we would be delighted to read your comments. Go for it!

La entrada How to sell on Facebook: A definitive guide to Social Selling aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

After all, “social selling” consists of getting the most out of social networks to increase your sales.  

As well as creating a profile and periodically updating it to generate a community of followers, you should take advantage of the power of social network advertising platforms to reach the maximum number of users.

How to promote your products on each social network

Facebook

Facebook is the quintessential social network and, nowadays, it is the one which offers the most options for ecommerce. It has a powerful advertising platform, Facebook Business Manager (from where you can also manage the advertising of your Instagram account).

In our blog, we have various articles about Facebook Ads, where we explain the most important aspects so that you can begin advertising on this platform:

Advertising on Facebook: How to Get Started – Facebook Ads Guide (Part 1)
How to use Facebook Ads targeting and succeed – Facebook Ads Guide (Part 2)
5 Tips for Designing Successful Ads | Facebook Ads Guide (Part 3)

Upload your product catalogue to Facebook

Facebook offers the possibility of uploading your product catalogue and tagging these items in your posts.  How is this useful? Among other things, it allows you the following:

• Once you have uploaded your catalogue, you can make all types of adverts, whether they are dynamic (with retargeting to different users) or traditional adverts. By having your products on Facebook, you will save a lot of time and you will be able to personalise your campaigns more effectively.
• You will be able to tag items in organic posts.

Instagram

Instagram has been growing exponentially over recent months. In fact, today, it has already doubled the number of Twitter users.

This social network is a very good option for product ecommerce, since it is less saturated with advertising and is much more visual than Facebook.  

Advertising on Instagram

Some aspects you should know about regarding advertising on this social network:

• Adverts on Instagram are one of two types: advertising format (whether it’s an image or video) or stories format (a type of post in vertical format, which is only visible for 24 hours).
• Advertising on Instagram is managed from Facebook, so you will have to link the two pages before you start to configure your campaigns.
• Instagram has introduced the possibility of tagging your products in a post free of charge.   To do this, you need to upload your catalogue to Facebook, and Instagram will import it from there.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a very interesting social network for ecommerce.  Although it isn’t as widely used as Instagram or Facebook, the figures are clear:

• The average order of sales coming from Pinterest is $50 more than the rest of the social networks.
• 93% of users who use Pinterest plan to make a purchase.

Advertising on Pinterest

• Advertising on Pinterest is not at all invasive and is usually done in the form of advertised posts. In this article we will explain more about this.
• The image format on Pinterest is different to the rest of the social networks, since they are vertical instead of horizontal.

Twitter

Of the social networks we are looking at in this article, Twitter is the least visual and, perhaps, the least suitable for product ecommerce. However, it is also true that, because there is less competition, it can be an opportunity.

It is a network based mainly on text, and on the immediacy of it.  Even so, you can create campaigns and advertise your products.

In this article we explain the basics of a Twitter advertising campaign.

What BigBuy can provide to help you

At BigBuy we provide images and videos of our products which are already in suitable formats for each social network.

You will be able to find these videos and images in the Downloads > Social networks material section of your control panel.

What resources do we offer?

• Horizontal Facebook Image: 1200 x 628 px.
• Square Facebook Image: 1080 x 1080 px.
• Instagram Image: 1080 x 1080 px.
• Twitter Image: 1500 x 600 px.
• Pinterest Image: 600 x 900 px.
• HQ Image: 1500 x 1500 px.
• Text of 120 characters that you can use as a basis for writing your posts.
• Product video of 30-35 seconds.

La entrada Social networks for ecommerce: How to sell on social media aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

There are many companies which need to contact their customers in a more direct way, whether the users are potential future customers or already loyal to the brand/business. Posts which are published on Facebook reach an ever-decreasing range of people due to the changing algorithms which are running on this social network. We thus miss a large number of opportunities to connect with the right target audience.

As a result, this reduction and the consequent reduction in engagement and interaction with Facebook users, translates into greater difficulty in successfully meeting previously established goals. It will cost more, for example, to increase brand awareness and your online reputation as well as increasing the total number of sessions (quality traffic) coming from the social media channel.

So, to get around this problem and for many other reasons, companies decide to invest in what is known as Facebook advertising, that is to say the advertising platform which is provided by Facebook itself. You can use this system to promote your own Facebook page or any of your posts, as well as a website, an event or an application.
But how can should you go about creating a successful Facebook Ads campaign?

What is the main objective of your Facebook Ads campaign? | Advertising on Facebook

1. Once you are on your Facebook profile, go to the drop down menu on the right hand side of the top bar and choose the option “Create Ads”.
2. Once inside the Ads Manager, select the main marketing objective for your campaign.

To advertise successfully on Facebook, you first need to know exactly what goal you want to achieve through this process. The three possible marketing objectives which Facebook suggests are the following:

Awareness:

• Brand awareness: increase your brand’s awareness and reach everybody who is likely to be interested in it.
• Local awareness: promote your brand amongst those who are closest to your business.
• Reach: show your Facebook ads to the highest number of people possible.

Consideration:

• Traffic: attract the most people to your web site or application.
• Engagement: get more interactions through your posts. Facebook ‘Like’, responses to events and requests for offers.
• App installs: get more people to install your application.
• Video views: get more people watching your video content.
• Lead generation: get more data on potential clients (for example, email addresses of people interested in your brand/business).

Conversion:

• Conversions: generates valuable activity on your website or application.
• Product catalogue sales: create advertisements on Facebook which automatically show products from your catalogue according to the target audience.
• Store visits: get more people visiting your physical store.

This is just the beginning of how to use Facebook advertising and learning how to do it the right way, and more importantly, learning how to generate positive results and a satisfactory return on investment.
However, keep reading our next post in which we will give you more information about segmentation in a Facebook Ads campaign.

La entrada Advertising on Facebook: How to Get Started – Facebook Ads Guide I aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

Social networks are one of the biggest showcases for any company, especially those who sell to consumers. In fact, it is the basic way for businesses to make themselves known to their target audience to the public in general. As people say “if you want to exist, you have to be on social media”. So, if you have decided to boost your business’ presence on social media, then here is some advice to make a success out of it:

Create a social media plan

1. Choose your goals: Stablish what you want to achieve  and what type of posts will generate the most interest and feedback.
2. Analyse the competition in your sector. Bear in mind that it is possible that many of your competitors have been using social media for a long time now and that the sector in which you do business has developed in a certain way on social networks. The fashion industry for example, is very much involved with social networks and there are many peculiarities in the way it operates and a lot of competition. Anyway, it is a good idea to investigate how the sector is moving: what type of posts, what campaigns are under way, and which social media do they use… As well as observing how the competition works: what makes their followers engage and interact with the brand and what special things do they do (competitions, promotions…). This is a good way to understand what works and what doesn’t, and to see what your customers expect from a brand like yours. Once you know this, you can plan to break the rules a little and try something different.
3. Devise the correct strategy to achieve your planned objective(s).  After the first three steps you will be ready for this, you have the key ideas with which to establish your business social media strategy.
4. Monitor and study the results. It is very important to analyse the results that you get on a day to day basis. They will show you if the strategy you are following is successful or if you need to rethink things.

Which social networks are the best for your online business?

It is crucial to work out which social networks are the most useful for your online store as this will help you to focus your efforts and to avoid wasting time and effort on other social networks which will not help you to communicate with your target market.

If, for example you have an online store selling cosmetics or fashion, the most important network will be Instagram. Here you can post your products along with a link which will direct interested followers to make a purchase.

Facebook

Facebook is the social network with the highest number of users around the world.

With Facebook it is a good idea to make one post per day so that your followers do not forget you, and it will make it easier for them to interact with you every day. It is not such a good idea to go over the top and make many posts every day or to only ever talk about your business. The best option is to post some news or information about your industry every now and again so that you can add some value for your followers. For example in the fashion industry, you could post info on the latest trends.

Another recommended way to get more followers and loyalty is to have competitions or prize draws.

Twitter

Twitter is a very useful social network when it comes to customer care since you can interact with your customers in real time. Of course, we must bear in mind that Twitter takes a lot of dedication and it takes up a lot of time for your target audience to really connect with the business. If you do use it for customer service, then you will have to make sure that you can offer a resolution for their problems quickly, otherwise, you might generate a negative image.

The huge advantage of this social network is that if you monitor the name of your business and the main key words for your industry you will find out what people think about your business and in general. Likewise you will see what needs your market has and follow what the competition is doing.

Instagram

Instagram is the perfect social network if your company targets a young audience, or if your products are very visual.  Your merchandise can be seen in a very visual way through the photos and videos that you post on this network. Therefore, using this social network requires a lot of care when it comes to aesthetics, since the photographs posted are the main focus of attention. The best option is to post your own photographs of your products, study the composition well so that the photo will show off the product in its best light. One type of image which has a lot of scope in this social network is the still, or “mock up”. Here are some examples posted on the Shopify Instagram account:

It is also a good idea to have prize draws and competitions on Instagram, this will increase brand loyalty amongst your followers and reach out to your potential future customers.

Another Instagram functionality which can be very useful is Instagram Stories. You can use this to post exclusive content which will give added value to your followers and hopefully increase their number. For example, you could announce a special promotion which will last for 24 hours. By doing things like this you are communicating the fact that you are constantly updating your Instagram profile and that you are close to your followers. It is a great tool for connecting with your customers and increasing their faith in you.

Pinterest

In the same way as Instagram, Pinterest is based on sharing images (of your products). Post them with a link which directs users to your web page for that product and where they can purchase it. Customers will appreciate the speed with which they can make a purchase which will guarantee you a sale.

Google +

Out of the five, Google + is the least used, but it is important to include it since it influences your position in Google searches.

With all of this information, you already know what you need to start having a business presence on social media. The important thing is to be creative and observant so that you can differentiate yourself from the competition, reach a larger number of people, get more followers, and generate interaction with them which will also earn you their loyalty.

La entrada How to properly use social media for your ecommerce marketing aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

In order to better explain the fundamental aspects of creating optimal Facebook campaigns, we will use the marketing objective ‘brand recognition’ as an example.

A campaign can contain multiple sets of ads. It is therefore advisable that you edit the name of yours at this point to as to differentiate it from other Facebook campaigns that were previously created, or from future Facebook campaigns that you might create and activate with this account.

After clicking on the ‘continue’ button, you will go to the next step: ad set. Here, you will be able to segment your Facebook campaigns in relation to three key factors: your audience, your location and, finally, your budget and the dates for both the activation and completion of the campaign.

The keys to properly targeting your Facebook campaigns

Carrying out an effective segmentation will be the key to whether or not your Facebook campaigns have the expected level of success and if they achieve the marketing goal that you’ve just entered in your ad management panel. This point is, therefore, very important in the creation and configuration of your Facebook campaigns, and it is also here that you should invest the most effort in ensuring that this segmentation at its most optimal.

Target, search, and connect with your ideal user!

Segmentation in your Facebook campaigns | Audience

• Firstly, Facebook Ads offers you the option to choose from any of your previously created audiences in other Facebook campaigns, or on the contrary, to create a new audience that is much more compatible with the main goal you are looking to achieve.
• You’ll be able to indicate where your target audience resides. Add as many places as you see fit, or for example you can also mark a specific location and how many kilometres from that place that you want Facebook Ads to locate your target audience.
• You will also be able to indicate the age range of your audience, as well as if you only want your Facebook campaigns to be directed at women, men or to both sexes at the same time.
• Last but not least, you will also be able to find the interests of your audience. This is a basic point when it comes to any segmentation, because that’s what really gives Facebook advertising its power. You can insert as many interests as you want, either manually, with the ‘suggestions’ option or using the suggestions that the Facebook Ads system itself provides you with, by using the ‘explore’ option. Using this second option, you can select from a myriad of suggestions related to demographic data, interests, behaviours and other categories of interest.

We recommend that, before saving this category of public in your Ad Manager and continuing with the next step of the Facebook campaign, you go to the ‘Connections’ section and select the following option: Facebook pages > exclude people who like your page. It is understood that your fans and loyal followers tend to be more aware of all the posts that you continuously publish on your Facebook page or that they can see them on their timeline. What should be of greatest interest to you is being able to grab the attention of those that still don’t know about you, that don’t know of the existence of your brand or business and who, therefore, also wouldn’t know of your presence in a social network. So you need to broaden your horizons and open up to new users and future fans of your Facebook page. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find some prospective customers and future buyers!

Segmentation in your Facebook campaigns | Locations

At this second step in the targeting of a Facebook campaign, we advise you to select the first option, ‘Automatic locations (recommended)’. What does this mean? Your ad group will automatically be shown in places that are more likely to get better performance, including both Facebook and Instagram.

If you choose the other option, ‘edit locations’, you may reduce the number of people your ads reach and you will therefore be less likely to achieve your main goal with the campaign.

Segmentation in your Facebook campaigns | Budget and Calendar

As the Facebook ads system will tell you, you simply have to “define how much you want to spend and when you want your ads to be displayed.

We recommend that you specify a daily budget, not a general ad set budget, as well as a start and end date for your Facebook campaigns, in order to be able to take better control.

Finally, one more recommendation: take a look to your right. Here, you will find an estimate of the daily scope of the campaign and, therefore, of the possible results to be obtained based on the defined target audience, its duration and the indicated budget.

As we have been stressing throughout this post, targeting is the cornerstone for your Facebook campaigns to really reach a quality target audience, those who might become fans of your Facebook page, click on the ad and go to your website.

Despite knowing in advance that the key to success lies in a correct segmentation of Facebook campaigns, we musn’t forget the last creation and configuration step: the Facebook ads themselves.

La entrada How to use Facebook Ads targeting and succeed aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

You will almost certainly have heard or read these words with reference to different types of individuals, at least once in the last few years: Influencer, YouTuber, Blogger, Instagrammer. Who are these people and why are they called that? How can they help me increase sales in my dropshipping store? How can I set up an influencer marketing campaign in my e-commerce site? We’ll answer all those questions (and more) in this article.

Let’s start at the beginning, what is Influencer marketing?

This is a new (and, at the same time, old) online marketing strategy that involves contacting people with a certain role in different sectors on the internet to speak positively about your products or services.

We say that it is a new yet old strategy because the fact of including relevant or influential people in advertising campaigns is actually very common. However, an influencer is not the same as a famous person, as we have always known them.

Who can be considered to be influencer?

It has been proven time and time again that consumers, especially those looking for products and/or services on the internet, are looking for opinions from similar users when deciding whether to purchase or not. On that basis, online influencers are people with great prominence in this arena, that have a hook for whatever reason and are able to become a reference for millions of people who are eager to learn about their latest acquisitions, experiences or opinions.

One might say that influencers are a rather heterogeneous group of people, as they belong to or are involved in many different aspects of life: lovers of sport and healthy living, video game experts or people with a broad knowledge of the business world. It is difficult for our business to dedicate itself to a subject that does not have any influence or a significant number of followers.

What types of influencers are there?

Influencers often become known in the online world through different channels of communication. Depending on the channel in which they are most important, they may be any one of various different types:

• Bloggers: are writers or authors of blogs in which they talk about all kinds of topics, and who, because of the content they write, have managed to obtain a high volume of readers and people who follow their opinions. Depending on the number of readers and the importance of their articles, bloggers can become true opinion leaders.
• Instagramers: are a community of users of the mobile phone application Instagram, who, thanks to the photographs they publish and share, have also managed to have a huge number of followers, fans of whatever they capture with their mobile phone cameras.
• YouTubers: are professional users of the YouTube video platform who perform in, edit and share videos with opinions, experiences, tips or guides on any topic.

What all these people have in common is the importance and influence that they manage to transmit to their followers, as well as the economic reward that they obtain from their online communication channel. This monetisation is achieved in most cases through the sponsorships that companies pay for the publicity given to their products or services.

Advantages of influencer marketing for my business

If your online business is an e-commerce or dropshipping store for products like those we have at your disposal at BigBuy, influencer marketing can be very effective and of great help in increasing sales.

• This is known as native advertising, as internet users do not usually like to receive direct and invasive advertising. The fact that an influencer speaks well about your product and explains its operation and advantages affects your users more naturally, as they are more likely to pay attention and be influenced by such opinions.

• It improves reputation and confidence in the product, as influencers, although they may also be paid, tend to have pre-defined criteria for the most part. In other words, they are not usually going to be convinced to promote products or brands that might then give them a bad reputation. If the proposed product or service is of poor quality, they do not usually accept a collaboration.

• It increases conversion. It has been studied and demonstrated that the opinion of influencers increases the intention to buy among followers. It is important to know how to take advantage of this positive influence. When it comes to making agreements with your chosen influencer, you can also include things like posting links to your store, plan contests or hold raffles, in addition to the regular reviews. You can even agree on a commission with the influencer, whereby they would receive a payment anytime someone buys products from your online store with the promo code that he/she provides.

• Improve SEO positioning. A basic action when organising collaborations with influencers is that they include a link from their blog or social network to your e-commerce site. You know the importance of off-site linkbuilding for SEO, so you can also put that into practice.

What kind of sponsorship can I set up with influencers?

We have already covered the correct basis for designing influencer marketing strategies. Now we need to know the practical part of the collaboration and what the specific actions might consist of.

Some examples are as follows:

• Guest posting or product reviews. We have already talked about the advantages of guest posting in our blog. This is the search for external writers (ideally with a certain reputation) who can post material on your blog.

• Product placement.This consists of making subtle mentions and/or of placing products from your e-commerce store in different scenarios which are controlled by influencers. A photo from an instagramer or a video from a YouTuber, for example. You can use a product of your own, but without talking directly about it.

• Sponsored sections. There are bloggers who have sections sponsored by a brand or company within their own website. For example, if your online store sells cooking products, why not talk to a cookery blogger and create a recipe section made with your products?

This is the most important information to know when it comes to influencer marketing. Now the only thing that remains is to figure out which people would be the most appropriate ones to reach your audience and to work on establishing productive collaborations with them.

La entrada What is influencer marketing and how can it help me? aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

The format of your Facebook ads

First of all, you will choose how you want your Facebook ads to appear, i.e. their format. This can take different forms:

• Sequential ads: create Facebook ads which include between 2 and 10 images or videos.
• Just one image: create up to 6 ads for Facebook, which each include an image, without any additional cost.
• Just one video: create a Facebook ad with a video.
• Presentation: create a Facebook ad with a video, with up to 10 images.
• Canvas: create a Facebook ad which combines images and videos to tell a more captivating story.

Multimedia content

It never hurts to remember that images and videos should be as eye-catching and as impressive as possible. Remember that this Facebook ad has to draw the user’s attention away from everything else on their timeline which will be full of all kinds of posts (pictures, gifs, videos…) which have been posted by thousands of individuals and many other companies. There are many Facebook ads which your competition is launching continually which you will have to stand out from if you want to be noticed by the right people.
Some important recommendations:

• 1200×628 pixels is the best size for your images. Another important factor to remember is that the text inside a picture should not take up more than 20% of the total area.
• Videos should be in the following formats only: .MOV or .MP4, with a minimum resolution of 720 pixels and a maximum duration of 60 minutes (2.3 GB).

Your Facebook page and the ad’s text

You have already decided on the format that your Facebook ad will take and all of the content (images, videos or both). Now it is time to, connect it to your Facebook page (here, you also have the option to link it to your Instagram profile if you want this campaign to run simultaneously on Facebook and Instagram Ads). Create a copy which is just as eye-catching as the multimedia content and finally, enter the info which will redirect your traffic from the Facebook ad to your website.
At this point it is time for 5 pieces of essential advice for your Facebook ads to run smoothly:

1. Make your content attractive and very visual

As we have said before, whichever format you choose for your Facebook ads, their content must always meet the following requirements: it must be attractive to look at, attention grabbing and must make users react so that they will click on the Facebook ad and therefore continue to enquire about your products and services.

2. The copy must be concise, direct and effective

The title, body of the text and any other writing on a Facebook ad have a limited number of maximum characters. So, Facebook already forces you to be brief and direct since its limits are very strict. If you do go over the limit of total characters, ads will show with incomplete text; unfinished sentences followed by an ellipsis (…) which means that users cannot read the rest of your content.
Therefore, you will need to use as few words as possible to summarise all of the essential information to engage your audience and to call them to action.

3. Call To Action

Even with the knowledge that Facebook ads are strictly limited in terms of the total number of characters for the various textual elements, it is impossible to create good copy which does not include a call to action, which invites the user to perform a certain action (‘Like’ your Facebook page, fill in a contact info form, book an appointment, attract useful traffic to your web page etc.). Without a call to action, the user will feel disorientated and will not know what to do after they have seen your Facebook ad..

4. Mobile version

Nowadays, mobile devices are an important part of our lives, they are indispensable in our day to day activities both for business and for our social life. We use different devices, phones and tablets to carry out day to day tasks, to communicate, search for information, shop, claim refunds…

Facebook even confirm that 700 million people use the social network on a phone or a tablet. Therefore, when creating and setting up Facebook ads, don’t forget that many people will be seeing them on a mobile device. For this reason, it is vitally important to check that your text is not cut off in the mobile version and that your images are very visual and don’t have much text – that way they will be perfectly legible.

If you take all of these tips into account when designing your Facebook ads, you will have much higher chances of success. All of the statistics which you will find in the Ads Manager will help you to monitor and optimise your Facebook ads. This tool will allow you to make as many modifications as you would like to, meaning that you can improve the profitability of all your Facebook ads and therefore use your advertising budget in a more efficient and strategic way.

La entrada 5 Tips for Designing Successful Ads | Facebook Ads Guide 3 aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

Today, Facebook has more than 1,600 million users, many of whom are very active on the site. Logging on to this social network has become just one more daily routine for a huge percentage of the population. They don’t just “consume” content put out by their friends and family, but also that of the companies they follow or those who advertise with the specific aim of impacting upon them through their advertisements.

Parallel to the rise of social networks, we can also see an unstoppable growth in Internet sales. In fact, according to figures from the Statista portal, at a global level, e-commerce transactions will top 2,000 billion dollars. Bearing this in mind, Facebook have decided to go one step further and offer companies the opportunity to sell directly through the social network.

An online store on Facebook allows the business to convert a traditional fan page into a showcase for merchandise. Users can see your catalogue, the products you have on offer and your prices, and then make a purchase very easily. Interesting, isn’t it?

How to Create an Online Store on Facebook

Creating a store on Facebook is very simple, but first of all you will need a fan page. Do you have one? Then let’s go to it now.

1. First, access the tabs menu and select “Store”.
2. When you select “Store”, Facebook will ask you if you accept their Terms and Conditions for sellers. In short, you will be accepting clauses which refer to the following:

• The fact that you are putting products up for sale.
• Dealing with deliveries, returns and claims.
• Managing personal information.

3. Once you have accepted them, you must enter a description for your store. Remember that you have maximum of 200 characters.
4. Now, the fun starts. You can already start adding the products that you want to sell to your store. You can enter an unlimited number of products, but it will only show the last 1000.
5. When you have finished the previous step, it is time to create the pages for each product. It should include an image, a description (optional), the price and the URL for making a payment. This is the link to the page where users can buy the item. Of course, the best idea would be to link them to the product’s page on your online store.

After filling in the form, you can choose if you wish this item to be highlighted or not. Keep in mind that only 10 items can be highlighted in your store. These items appear at the top of the page and at the beginning of lists of items in your store. You can choose whatever you like: the best-sellers, the most profitable, the ones you want to sell first because you have too much stock…

6. Once all of the products have been uploaded, each one will have its own tab. You can organise them in categories, although within these categories, the items will be organised by date.

Recommendations and Requirements When Creating an Online Facebook Store

Images

• You have to use at least one image per product, and it must be of the product itself. We would recommend that the image shows the product in detail and in the most attractive way, because this is what will most capture people’s attention, causing potential buyers to become interested in the item.
• It is advisable that the images are square and have a resolution of 1024 x 1024 or higher.
• The product should be the focus of the picture, so it should be a close up with a white background, as this will make it stand out more. It is also a good idea to get a shot of the product being used in a real-life situation.
• It is not recommended to use text in the image; for example, a call to action, promo codes or information of a temporary nature (such as limited time only offers or discounts).
• And although it may sound obvious, it is highly unadvisable to use images which contain offensive content, such as nudity or violence.

Product Description

The description of the items in your Facebook store should be directly linked to product itself and should be easy to understand. Moreover, it is a good idea to highlight any special features of the product, such as characteristics which will attract people’s attention and which could have an influence on the purchase decision.

What should be avoided?

• HTML code in the description.
• Telephone numbers or email addresses.
• Too many exclamation points.

Product Variations

If some of your products have different versions, like a dress that comes in different colours for example, then this is not a problem. Facebook allows for various different versions of the product to be included on the same page. You can include up to 4 different versions (e.g. sizes/colours).

Advantages and Disadvantages of Creating an Online Store with Facebook

• Although we have already mentioned several advantages of selling online through Facebook, there are others which we have not mentioned yet:
  • Once your store is up and running, when you post an image on your fan page, you will have the option to tag the product in your store.
  • You can, of course, promote your store on Facebook by using Facebook Ads. If you would like to reach more potential clients, you can promote selected products using Facebook Ads. With the correct segmentation, you can increase both the sales of your online store and your website traffic.
• However, it must also be noted that there are certain inconveniences to keep in mind:
  • If you do not sell products to the United States, Facebook will not let you complete the sale through its own platform. This is a disadvantage for users, but if it is managed well, it can be turned into a positive for the store since it can increase traffic to your website and lead acquisition.
  • If you sell alcoholic drinks, you will not be able to sell them through your Facebook store. Zuckerberg’s social network prohibits these items and will eliminate them form your store automatically.

In short, the opportunity to integrate your online store with the Facebook platform is a very good idea for small and medium enterprises which are looking for more channels to boost sales.

La entrada Tips for Creating and Optimising your Online Facebook Store aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

There are many opportunities to increase the visibility of your products on the Internet and, therefore, create more sales opportunities.

First of all, as we mentioned in the post on how to use social media for your online business, it is important to plan what you want to achieve and how you are going to get it, as well as looking at which social networks are the most appropriate for an online business.

Once you have all of this clear, it is time to put things into practice and use any tools that facilitate social media management and the analysis of your posts as much as possible. Out of all of these tools, some of the most useful are those which allow you to automatically programme your posts and responses.

What social network solutions and tools are available? There are all kinds, for different tastes, but in this post we will discuss the ones which are the most comprehensive.

Hootsuite

This is one of the most well rounded and well known social media tools on the market. There is a free version and different paid versions are also available, which depend, above anything else, on the number of social networks which are linked to it and the functions that you have access to. If you have just one online store, and you are using the basic social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…) then the free version works as an automation tool which means you can manage all of your networks through one platform.

Using the free version of Hootsuite you can manage three different social media profiles and access basic (but very important) analytical data so that you can see how your audience reacts to your posts. You can also programme it so that your content and posts will go public at the date and time that you want them to, access content suggestions to improve interactivity, manage social media advertising campaigns and even access free courses organised by Hootsuite themselves.

As you can see, the free version of Hootsuite is very well rounded, although  you can check the payment plans here. It is also very easy to use and very manageable.

Buffer

Buffer is another of the most well known popular social network tools, both for those who use it as “amateurs” and for social media professionals.

With the free version of Buffer you can automate your posts on the main social networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram. If, for example, you want to manage Pinterest too, you would need to use one of the paid versions. Another difference with Hootsuite is that you cannot manage YouTube posts from Buffer. On the other hand, on the free version you can manage up to 10 posts. Another unique feature of Buffer is that with any payment plan you can access another very interesting tool called Pablo.

Pablo by Buffer is a tool to create images to go with your posts on social media. It has a database of preprepared images, as well as different fonts, and ready made templates for different social networks. You can see  the different Buffer price plans here.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck has changed over the last few years in terms of its functions and characteristics. It was originally created to schedule posts and to analyse their performance on many different social networks, but it was acquired by Twitter some time ago. It now only works with Twitter and is completely free.

The big advantage is that it is 100% free. You can use it to manage notifications, followers, mentions, direct messages, exceptional activity, trending topics… as well as of course scheduling posts.

Finally, there are different extras which can be added to Tweetdeck such as the ability to add emojis to tweets or preview what they will look like.  If you want to start using Tweetdeck you can do it straight away, all you need is a Twitter profile.

Social Flow

Finally, we come to another of the main tools for social networks which is often used by professionals –  Social Flow.

This time there is no free version, but it does have other very interesting functions which the others that we have mentioned do not.

For example, once you are using Social Flow, according to a proprietary algorithm, the tool itself analyses the performance of your posts and decides what day and time to post different content to get the best out of it. It also has its own advertising management system for social networks and lots of interesting resources to keep you learning how to manage social media for your online business.

Do you know of any other social network tools? Tell us what you know!

La entrada 4 Social Media tools which will make your life easier aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

In previous posts, we have discussed the main reasons why companies decide to activate advertising campaigns on Facebook or Twitter. Although many tend to consider Pinterest to be a secondary social network, its importance shouldn’t be downplayed. There are already more than 70 million people who use this social network on a daily basis, 80% of the total number of users being women.

But how does Pinterest work for companies? Pinterest offers a multitude of possibilities and is a unique opportunity to position your e-commerce site and bring you greater visibility. However, as is the case with all social networks, one should create continuous advertising campaigns on Pinterest in order to reach and connect with the higher quality users. This means ensuring that your pins are located right where your target audience will see them, which therefore makes it easier for them to quickly interact with them.

With advertising on Pinterest, it should always be the case that the pins visible to users are based on their own interests and the activities they have been involved in thus far. If this segmentation is not properly done, users cannot disable the promoted pins, but they can hide those that they do not like or that do not match their interests.

What is the main goal of your Pinterest ads campaign?

First of all, you have to define what the main goal of your advertising campaign on Pinterest is. You should choose from the following 3 objectives:

• Engagement: if you are looking for good engagement you will want to bring about any kind of interaction with your promoted pin, such as re-pins and clicks for example. In this case you pay for each interaction that takes place.
• Traffic: redirect traffic to your website when users click on your promoted pin. You will pay for each click that links to your website.
• Visibility: promote a pin in order to present your brand to a relevant target audience.

How to create a promoted pin

To create a promoted Pinterest pin, you need to have a company account. If you don’t already have one, you can either create a new account or you can convert your current Pinterest profile into a company account.

1. Then head to the top left of the Pinterest home page, place the cursor over the ads button and choose the Overview option. Pinterest will then show you a panel or Ad manager very similar to the one in Facebook. Now you can start creating and configuring your new Pinterest advertising campaigns!

2. The first thing that you must decide on, as we have already covered in some depth, is the main objective of your campaign. To advertise on Pinterest it’s important to know how to create a promoted pin, select the engagement objective and thereby boost engagement with your pins. And if you need to direct traffic to your website, it’s as easy as selecting the Get Traffic To Your Website option.

3. The next step is also very similar to Facebook or Twitter: name your campaign, select a start and end date and choose a daily budget. Once you have pressed the continue button, the system asks us to add more details about our advertising campaign, such as creating the audience that we want to focus on, the interests of our target audience, localisation, languages, devices and so on. Among these options we also have the chance to add keywords to better define our promoted pin. We’ll break down these points below.

4. After completing this stage a list of all your pins will immediately be displayed so you can select the pin you want to use for your Pinterest ads campaign. If you already have in mind which pin you want to promote, you can search for it directly through the search engine to expedite the process.
Another option is to first know which PIN has been the most clicked on or the most re-pinned in the last 30 days and to promote it, which will ensure the success of the campaign in advance. After selecting the pin, add a name and a destination URL, making sure that it goes to the specific page where you want users to land, not a generic home page. This will significantly improve the CTR and bounce results.

5. Now select those topics that are most relevant to your target audience. This point of creating a promoted pin is very important with advertising on Pinterest, as a good choice will help you reach and quickly connect with your target audience. So the main objective here is to place your promoted pin in the Pinterest categories that these users will come across while browsing. Very important! Make sure you choose only those interests that are relevant to your particular pin, not the general interests of your entire audience. Be very precise!

6. Then select the keywords you want to add to your promoted pin so that it appears when users search for these items while browsing Pinterest. As previously mentioned, a correct selection of keywords is fundamental for the campaign to obtain the anticipated results. It is also really important to connect with users throughout the purchase process, as Pinterest works like any other search engine. At this point Pinterest also gives you some relevant keywords related to those that were previously inserted, that you can also add.

7. Once we have established the interests and the key words, it’s time to segment our campaign and select data that are also very important to its success: the geographical locations where the promoted pin will appear, the language(s), devices (mobile, tablet and/or desktop PC) and the sex (male, female or both) which you want to address.

8. To complete the process you have to enter the maximum amount you are willing to spend on your bid for the cost per engagement (CPE), at the bottom of the page. To help you make this decision Pinterest offers you a list of what advertisers are bidding and will also tell you if your offer is low, good or strong. In other words, Pinterest will inform you of how your offer compares to those of other advertisers. CPE is a Pinterest advertising system that pays every time the user performs an action beyond simple visualisation or clicking on a promoted pin, such as providing “like” comments, or in short, interacting. This is not the only method of payment offered by Pinterest, but it is the one that is usually used when promoting a pin.

9. Finally, enter all the payment information and set up your billing, if you have not already done so. Very important! There is no review page, so make sure your campaign is 100% correct before you click Send, as you will not be able to change your ad once you have sent it. You will always be able to edit certain details about your campaigns at any given time, including the campaign name, end date and daily expenses, as well as to end the campaign.

How to set up a conversion tag to track performance

To monitor, optimise and analyse the advertising campaign on Pinterest and to see how successful your promoted pin is, you can enable conversion tracking. To do this, you will need to add a code or conversion tag to your website in order to track the behaviour of the traffic in question.

This conversion code helps you to know for certain how many people have made purchases on your e-commerce site after seeing and interacting with your promoted pin. This factor is very important in order to be able to assess whether it is really worth investing money in advertising on Pinterest.

To create this conversion tag, go to the top left of the Pinterest home page, place the cursor over the ads button and then choose the Tracking option. From here, you can review all the conversion tags that you have created so far or create new ones. After you create a new conversion tag, Pinterest will show you a snippet of code that you must copy and paste into the website that you want to track.

We recommend that you combine your Pinterest SEO strategy with advertising so that your e-commerce site gains visibility, in addition to attracting more traffic through different channels that increase brand visibility while reaching more of your target audience.

La entrada Advertising on Pinterest: A basic guide to creating a Pinterest Ads campaign aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.