Facebook Publishes New Marketplace Optimisation Guide for the Holidays

The final weeks of shopping are a busy time for many retailers, and in an effort to help you get the most out of these crucial sales periods, Facebook has published a new Holiday Playbook. It is an 18-page guide to optimising your Marketplace listings so you can maximise reach and interest, as well as sell more products over the holidays.

The guidebook includes a ton of useful information. It’s not just about Marketplace though, many aspects of it relate to eCommerce in general. You can download the full guide here, but below are just a few key points to take from it.

The holidays are always an interesting time to see what people want and how they’re spending money. In the first part of the guide, Facebook shares some notable consumer trends (US specific), with a focus on Marketplace listings that popped up this year.

If you’re wondering what consumers find important when shopping online, within the guide is a helpful graph showcasing the consumer shopping journey.

From this, you can see that ‘sales and discounts’ are the most important, followed by product quality. Slightly confusing in design, but it may help you figure out what your customers need in their journey mapping process.

When it comes to gifts with all the hustle and bustles of online browsing, it can be hard to know what is popular. Within this guide, there are some interesting data on what gifts are being searched for online.

Also, which products are in high demand!

The guide also notes key holiday dates to remember (US specific)

The UPS shipping calculator at the bottom is handy, as it includes links to various carrier dates and times in this period (US specific).

The Facebook Marketplace Holiday Guide then provides details on how to improve your Marketplace listings, including suggestions for inventory planning, pricing strategies, return policies, customer support and more.

This guide can certainly be used for more than just Marketplace listings, and provides more than a superficial glance into consumer search trends. In particular, it could provide valuable information on broader search preferences that could maximise your reach, impressions and ultimately sales. The key takeaways from this guide are;

Update each listings description and title to reflect holiday keywords
Leverage buyers holiday promotions of 20% off and free shipping on eligible items.
Reach more buyers with boosted listings
Implement the trending in-demand products from third-party research and apply the strategy towards your Marketplace listings.

The Facebook Marketplace Holiday Guide for sellers is worth a look and is free to download here.