Direct sales on Facebook are the center of Social Media commerce since Facebook is the most used social network (with more than one billion users). That is why it is quite possible that your objective-audience is present on this platform!
On the other hand, online sales parties are the place where your clients and prospects interact with your proposal and decide if they are interested in buying. That is why you must take advantage of the duration of the event! And here, we´ll show you how.
STEP 1: Choose the best place for your Sales Facebook Party and Achieve a Perfect Attendance
Let’s start from the beginning. Before anything else, you must choose your space or format for the location of your direct sales Facebook party. So, according to your needs, you can choose between:
- Creating an Event on Facebook: This is a practical alternative since you can send out invitations, determine the duration of your party, schedule posts, to keep a high engagement and show notifications to your guests each time you publish.
- Creating a Closed Group on Facebook: This is another option for creating sales parties, offering discretion, the ability to publish automatically and send private messages to all the participants.
In this post we will use an explanatory reference as a second option, meaning, create your direct sales party on Facebook through a closed group.
Arrangements: How to Get Everything Ready to Make Your Direct Sales Facebook Party a Success
a- Create a Group
The first thing you must do in the process when you organize an online direct sales Facebook party is to go on Facebook and create a group with the name of your proposal. Then you must set the desired privacy settings (we suggest you choose a Closed Group).
b- Optimize your profile with information
Right away you must add a profile picture or attractive banner and reference so that it informs your attendees about the proposal.
Note: I recommend that you use tools such as ArtStudio that is a free, image creator. This type of tool allows you to design the banner for your Facebook party quite easily; making sure that it has the correct dimensions, and therefore, allowing you to upload it to Facebook so it can be displayed on any device used by your guests.
You also have to enter a description about your sales party and the objectives of the group.
Note: if you have a website, remember to add the link in the description of your party.
c- Ask your participants for permission
It is very recommended (we insist!) that you ask those individuals for permission so you can add them to the Group. This will help you rest assured that the participants are really interested in your proposal.
To do this, you can send private messages to future attendees. This way you avoid sending a spammer message, while you increase your chances of selling your products to people who are openly interested in participating in your party.
d- Invite up to 50 people
Finally, we suggest that you invite a maximum of 50 people to your Facebook party. Why? Because this will allow you to establish quality interactions with the attention that each participant needs.
e- Inform your participants about leaving the Group and disable notifications
Finally, we suggest that you tell your guests about leaving the group and disable notifications with a post explaining this at the beginning of each party. This will help you reduce significantly the chances to be reported as spam and you avoid Facebook from blocking your account (if you want to learn more about this topic, I recommend that you read about what is Facebook Jail and how to avoid it).
STEP 2: Add Dynamic and Interesting Posts to the Development of Your Event
Once your direct sales party on Facebook has begun, we suggest that you share the following contents to maintain a high engagement:
- Promotional games: Propose challenges so your users visit your product catalog or your website and give an award to the winners. For example, you can show images with product details and ask for the name of the model or how many products are in stock, etc.
The idea is that these activities entertain your audience and bring them closer to your sales proposal. Therefore you can invite people to visit your online store through fun instructions as the one mentioned and reward with prizes.
- Information about your Products or Services: It is recommended that you stagger game posts with publications where you offer information about your products or services (though computer graphics, images with text, videos, etc.).
The idea is to stimulate sales, showing your audience the advantages of your products and why they should buy them, how they can take advantage of them, how they can be used, etc.
- Winner Announcements: Stagger the previous contents with posts to announce the winners of each game and offer them prizes based on your products (such as a free kit). Remember to add images of each prize!
The objective of handing out prizes is double: on the one hand, it encourages audience participation during the sales party, and on the other, it promotes the use of your products and its dissemination.
3 Tips to Consider During the Development of Your Facebook Party
You must consider 3 key points to ensure that you have a successful party and they are the following:
a- Offer Sales Incentives
Since this is a sales party, we suggest that you offer buying incentives to your guests. Offer free shipping for purchases over a certain amount, or promotions such as “Buy 3 and get 1 free”, this will help you encourage your buyers.
b- Don´t tag users in your Images
Avoid being penalized by Facebook! To avoid this the best thing is to avoid tagging people in your images, but do so in the comments. Facebook happens to mark images that don´t belong to users as spam and have people tagged in them.
c- Do not publish the URL of your website in every post
It is recommended that you share the URL of your website in the Group information section and only do so in posts that are extremely necessary. Or if you paste the same link several times in different texts, this can also be considered spam.
STEP 3: When the lights go out
Once your sales party is finished, it is ideal to get people to keep talking about your event and generate expectations for your next Direct Sales on Facebook. There are several strategies you can put in place:
- Post the winners: If you haven´t done so before, once your event has concluded, a good idea is to create a post to announce the winners of your games, so your guests are aware of the prizes they can win the next time.
- Raffle something amongst participants: It is advised that you give an incentive to your guests to show them that their participation made a difference. That way you can give away one of your products and personalize the packaging with the name of your Sales Party.
- Post ads: The day after you hold your sales party, share with the Group ads about your next event, discount days, special promotions, contact details and much more.
- Invite your audience to subscribe to your Newsletter with a Private Message: Create a post to invite users to share their emails by private message so you can send them email marketing campaigns and advertising on Facebook.
- Publish the rewards of your hosts: If you work with hosts or Group administrators, it is recommended that you publish rewards won by achieved sales. This will encourage others to join your sales proposal.
- Send private messages thanking their participation: Alternatively, you can send thank you messages to your attendees, to thank them for participating and to invite them to stay in touch.
- Invite others to send suggestions: Another constructive way to maintain interest and generate interactions is to invite those who attended your party to give you suggestions about what they would like to happen during the next event.
These are some of the possibilities you have in order to keep an interest in your proposal, once the party has finished. In all cases, we recommend that you do not abuse private messages or group publications, so you do not tire your audience.
It is also suggested that you create a spreadsheet on Google Sheets or Excel in order to register the number of people you have invited to your Sales Parties and distinguish between how many of them have actually attended your events. This will help you recognize and care for your clients.
In the same spreadsheet, you can add personal information you´ve collected from each user in order to create your own database. This will not only serve for marketing campaigns but will also allow you to measure the extent of your broadcast.
Finally, if you have the time and the money, it is a good idea to create, personalized merchandising with the name of each Sales Facebook Party (Examples: pen drives, calendars, etc.), so you can deliver with each product sold.
That is all in this section! I hope you find useful this information and if you want to read complete “The Ultimate Sales Guide for Direct Sellers” click on the banner below and download the complete ebook!
