Facebook continues it’s push for expanded eCommerce capability. It’s latest addition is a range of new shopping and product discovery options in Groups, in an effort to capitalize on niche targeting and community engagement.
Perhaps the biggest among these additions is ‘Shops’ within Groups. The update adds a dedicated ‘Shop’ option within your Group display. When a shop is available, a new ‘Shop’ tab appears within the group navigation options, with items featured separately on another panel in the Group feed. It adds better discovery for specific products, potentially improving engagement among various Group members.
As an added bonus, each purchase from a Group shop can also help support that community; “For example, members of OctoNation, an octopus fan group, can now buy stickers, mugs and apparel to show their love of octopuses.”
Facebook Groups Shop Tycoon
While it does sound exciting, Facebook notes that there are no specified revenue cuts or percent-allocations to the group/merchant. As such, the shop is really just more of an option rather than a defined process. However, it does allow Group admins to allocate funds towards related causes/movements should they choose. Likewise, admins can also advertise Group-branded and/or Group-related items, further aligning with community interest/s.
To add, Facebook is also including product recommendations within Groups in order to tap into community expertise, thus better helping members to find more relevant items. The entire thing is similar to copy-pasting an URL in a comment post, with the new format making it easier to go over recommendations added in response to queries. Recommended products will also be displayed within the ‘Shops’ tab.
These new Groups ‘Shops’ interactions will also be presented in a new Top-Product Mentions alert within the main News Feed. The alerts will be displayed to people who are members of related groups.
In short, it’s basic influencer marketing, but with Facebook Live. This is actually a logical move, considering that the most popular Facebook creators have respectably-sized followings. This will no doubt have more brands seeking new collaborations as they look to raise awareness on their own offers.
Live-stream shopping events have become a key focus for most social platforms lately, with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook all running their own versions of live shopping broadcasts in order to help drive higher purchase behaviors.
The Wrap
Live-stream shopping has been a big hit in China, and live-commerce within the region is expected to be a $423 billion market by the end of 2022. Facebook hopes that western consumers also lean towards the same trend, which would only further aid its broader push and ambition towards eCommerce .
The pandemic has brought about increased consumer-interests towards online shopping, perhaps as a viable substitute for physical shopping, and has led to a significant shift. This shift opens up a range of new opportunities for social platforms to capitalize on consumer behaviors to boost in-app activity. So while the process remains loosely-defined as of now, there’s much hope associated to when it does become fully available.
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