Facebook is the leading social media channel in terms of active accounts, monthly usage, traffic and generally almost every other criteria. Just recently, about 1 billion people logged into Facebook during a single day. It currently has about 1.5 billion active monthly users and is only second to Google in terms of website traffic.

Recently, Facebook announced that they are adding some new features to help businesses simplify their sales cycle and make it easier to connect with their audience. The new features include: A new call-to-action, shopping tab and services section.

Call to actions

The new CTA button is aimed to bring your business’ most important goal that you want to achieve with the platform to the forefront of your page. You can also link the CTA to any page on or outside of Facebook to align your goals even further. The new CTA buttons are:

  • Book Now
  • Contact Us
  • Use App
  • Play Game
  • Play Now
  • Sign Up
  • Watch Video

It’s no secret that social media is an essential part of any business strategy nowadays. People invest a ton of resources to promote their social media pages, engage with their audience, use social media adds to get more visitors and fans to their pages and so on.

But the thing is after so much effort, it sort of just ends there. Consumers get to your Facebook page, like it, engage with your brand, share your content and suddenly there is nothing else to do. So they just leave the page and return to their feed.

With the new call to actions, businesses have the perfect opportunity to tell their fans and visitors to what they want them to do next, like play the game or contact the company.

Shopping Tab

Similar to CTAs, the new shopping tab is aimed to make it easier for businesses to showcase their products and have a chance to sell them directly through Facebook. As Facebook mentioned in a blog post, nearly half of their user base is actively looking for products and purchases on their feeds.

Facebook saw this as an opportunity to turn the platform into something like a single, global online store, where consumers could easily discover, share and purchase products, without the need to visit a specific brand’s website.

This is a great addition for everybody, but more so for startups and small businesses. It’s often costly to run an online retail store and keep the website up and running 24/7, ensuring everything works perfectly. With the new shopping tab, small businesses and startups get the chance to sell their products directly through Facebook, which opens up tons of opportunities and could lead to massive changes in business strategies.

Services section

Much like the shopping tab is for companies that sell products, the services section helps professional service providers make their product more “tangible” and noticeable to their audience.

Combined with the new CTAs, the services button will allow businesses to not only use their Facebook page for fun, engagement and customer support, but also acquire more leads directly through Facebook.

Though it is less likely for consumers to directly purchase services than products like electronics, clothing or accessories through a Facebook page, it’s still a great chance for service providers to shorten their sales cycle and make it a lot easier for consumers to get to know them.

Facebook is always on top of their game when it comes to monetizing their insanely popular platform and these additions look like a huge boost to their profits. But the best part is, businesses get a chance to benefit from this a great deal as well, especially when you consider mobile.

 

By Charles Dearing, blogger. 

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