Facebook Shops launches
We had the highest search volume of the word ‘sales’ this month, mainly car sales, boat sales, and the like. But this past week Click Frenzy has boosted the search. Facebook Shops launches this week and for some businesses it will be a game changer. Will you benefit?
What I learned
- Sales searches are going through the roof
- Facebook Shops launches this week
- How does it work?
- What will it mean for your business?
- Will ads be worth it?
Transcript
Hey welcome back Rankers, big sale week this week. So let’s just go and have a look and see what’s happening in sales because there is quite a bit. So if we go sales and we say last 90 days, and we can see here this is Australia’s collective “What the?” moment, where everything just stopped and we all moved home.
The biggest sales period
This is the slow, steady climb back and then this week whoa, that’s nice. So to get some perspective on that, let’s go the last five years. And we can see here that this is the highest this search phrase has been in May, because this is Black Friday. So last year was the first day in Australia where Black Friday eclipsed sales at Christmas time, and you can see before that it was the other way around. But we can see this is the highest search volume, at least, of the word sales by itself.
Now when we go down and drill into that to see what’s going on, we can look at the last 30 days and that will tell us something about, obviously what’s been happening then. And it’s car sales, boat sales, car sales, Gumtree cars. These were all trending or rising searches. The top ones during that period, the highest volumes, car sales, bike sales, boat sales, caravan sales, truck sales.
Right, so then we go and have a look at the last seven days. And we go and have a look at our rising and we can see part of the reason for that uptick just in the last week or so has been Click Frenzy. Hi Click Frenzy, who are doing their sales right now. I’m not too sure who Graham is but he’s doing a few sales as well. And so are Barton car sales. So people trying to get out of Canberra, I suppose. Why wouldn’t you? Sorry to everyone in Canberra.
All right. The other thing that’s just been announced today is a thing called Facebook Shops. Now I had a little post here on Figurative Posters, I think it was Jason Grimwood but he first posted this and then I went and did some digging and there’s a whole video and we’re having a discussion here about what this means. Mark’s asked “Is this a game changer?” He doesn’t think so. Oh well he’s saying, “Yes or no?” I’m saying, “Maybe for some.”
Facebook Shops
So Facebook Shops, basically what it is, is the ability certainly in the whole world, wherever you are to upload your shop catalogue to your Facebook Page, your business page. So the business pages become shops. Which is great, which is fantastic if you have a huge following on Facebook. So if your audience is predominantly, and that is a large sector, anything to do with kitchen, anything to do with hobbies. Basically there are certain categories that go really, really well on Facebook and Instagram. And so the shops, if those brands have large followings, it’s going to really help them.
Facebook have said they’re doing it because they want to help business out and give businesses a chance, give businesses a leg up. But they kind of took away that organic reach from business years ago. So a lot of businesses stopped putting a lot of effort into their Facebook pages. Not so much if the product was visual and all those sorts of things, you’re all over Instagram. But for a lot of businesses, unless you’ve got that huge following I don’t really think it’s a game changer. Basically what it will allow you to do certainly in Australia is upload the catalogue via an XML feed or manually, or however you want to do it.
And then users or visitors to your pages or your stories or wherever they find you will be able to see a photograph, pricing and a link through to your website to buy the product. So it’s not nothing. In the US it’s a bit different in that they have enabled checkout within Facebook. So in that respect it becomes more like a marketplace. So we’ve going a few marketplaces now. We’ve got Google slowly trying to become one. You’ve got Shop, which is the Shopify stores. Can’t remember if we talked about that, but basically it’s an app where you can buy anything from anybody who’s on Shopify and buy it within the app. We’ve got Facebook now doing shops. And it seems to be the thing everyone’s trying to set up shops and marketplaces and clip the ticket on the transaction.
I would say the best thing for retailers to do is go and have a look at it. If your audience’s on it, examine it, get into it. If you don’t already have a big following on Facebook and you don’t have a big reach for your business page, probably not for you. The other thing that will be interesting is the attribution models now because the Facebook attribution model for me has always been a little bit too rubbery. This was told to me, I think it was Darlene at Facebook, her business card said Master of the Dark Arts or something like that, it was a joke Facebook card. But she was saying back in the day, I don’t know if it still exists, I’ll have to check, that Facebook would claim the transaction in your reporting inside Facebook if they got the last click to the website within a 28 day period. So if someone clicked on your ad in Facebook and within 28 days they then bought something. Facebook says, that’s us.
You could argue that. Well, you’ve exposed the brand to the user. They’ve gone to the side, but where they remarketed to in Google, did Google find them because Google is claiming that as well? So what will happen with Facebook shops and attribution? I can’t see it changing, but certainly I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of advertising product integrated into the Facebook shops. And they’ve already said the other thing about Facebook and Instagram, you’ll be able to just jump on WhatsApp, Messenger, whatever the comms medium is for the platform that you want to communicate and you can go straight through to the business and talk to someone there if you want to.
Sort of like chat on your website really, or a phone. If you have massive followings, yes. You’re going to have to look at doing it, but just measure and there’ll be another one next week. Hopefully that’s helpful. If you have any questions or if you have an opinion about Facebook Shops and if you are going to use them, please let me know. We’ve got a couple of clients who may benefit from it, but I’d love to hear what you were doing and whether you think that’s a game changer. Hit me up on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, wherever you are socialising. Thanks very much. Stay safe everyone. See you next week. Bye.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
