Social commerce is the future, and it is on you to take advantage of it now to grow your small business. With Meta recently announcing that it will be hosting daily live shopping experiences on Facebook and Instagram to support small businesses, you can count on the fact that social commerce will only get more significant in the future. Social commerce is also booming in Southeast Asia; the average gross merchandise value growth of social commerce in the region grew by a whopping 307% in the past year.
To take advantage of this burgeoning trend, you must first know the ins and outs of Facebook live selling to grow your small business. Here are 4 things to take note of to make your Facebook live session a roaring success.
Practice makes perfect
The beauty of live sessions is that they don’t need to be polished and perfect, but that doesn’t mean that you should skip rehearsals. So how do you do a Facebook live selling? First, familiarize yourself with the features and functions on Facebook Live. For example, you can change the broadcast privacy setting when rehearsing to have an accurate picture of how the session will run. During your rehearsals, repeatedly go through the key points you want to make during the session, and remember to keep introducing yourself as people tune into your live stream at different timings. Demonstrate the products if you have to. For example, if you are selling fresh seafood, talk about the freshness of the fish. Demonstrate to your audience how and why your seafood is fresh by incorporating live quizzes to make it more interactive. Have a script full of crucial points right in front of you if it puts you at ease. After all, these live sessions can be kept informal.
Play around with different formats. You can even explore an auction-style to increase eyeballs and attention. With a Facebook live auction, you can increase the hype of some exclusive products and increase engagement with your customers.
Be smart with how you promote your Facebook live selling session
Leverage your pre-existing social channels to highlight your upcoming live selling session. Drop-in sneak peeks and previews of your products to showcase your products. To further create greater urgency, you can also highlight limited supply or editions of products available during the live stream.
Share reminders with a live countdown feature on your Instagram stories to build more anticipation. Develop creative posts on Facebook and Instagram highlighting your features. Don’t also just count on yourself to run the Facebook live selling session; partnering with key opinion leaders (KOLs) is another way to encourage your customers to tune in and find out more about the product. But don’t just pick any KOL; you have to be mindful about your collaborations. The KOL must match your business’s values as they will be advocating for your brand.
Lock in orders the moment someone comments
A key advantage of live selling on Facebook is that you can sell to more than one person simultaneously and lock in orders the moment a customer comments. With a reputable Facebook live selling system, you can capture orders as comments. Customers would comment on the product code and quantity (e.g., dd+1), and the system would easily automate the process to capture it as an order.
You can also address various customer questions and concerns while ‘personally’ interacting with them. To further seal the sale, express your thanks to the customers who have placed an order. Call out repeat customers to express your gratitude. Doing so signals not only your trustworthiness but also the high quality of your products and customer service.
Getting support to ensure things run without a hitch
How you interact and provide support to your customers during your Facebook live selling can impact whether your customers will return or not, especially if you are just starting. Whether pre, during, or post-live stream, it is vital to ensure things are in their proper place and everything runs smoothly without a hitch. This means having the support you need when required. Consider a Facebook live selling system that offers 24/7 live support amongst many things such as inventory and order management. With 24/7 live support, a customer service team will always be on standby to help you should you encounter any technical issues related to your live stream.
A proper inventory and order management system also enables you to properly take stock of your products while keeping track of the distribution of your products once you secure a sale. The post-purchase side of things after a successful Facebook live session often gets overlooked. It is also the number one reason you are burning the midnight oil as your time is spent keeping track of your inventory. Don’t forget other support features, such as having proper payment gateway options. This is especially important as this increases your credibility in the eyes of many customers. Adopting other options such as bank transfers can be confusing and chaotic as customers may sometimes enter the wrong account number.
This also means ensuring you have a site up and running. Suppose you don’t have the technical know-how to create a web page. In that case, you can develop a simple one by partnering with a Facebook live management partner that offers support to customize a simple web page. With this, customers can browse your products and learn more about your brand.
So there you have it, four tips to make your Facebook live session a success. A lot of it involves trial and error, but these simple tips are great ways to get you started and capture this growing opportunity. To simplify things, we also recommend a holistic, reliable, and affordable Facebook live software to support your Facebook live selling. You don’t have to sweat the small, mundane, and logistical parts of things with a proper management tool. You can now focus on selling products that matter to your customers and engaging them better.