Facebook Aims to Elevate Home Shopping with Live Demos for Sellers

Facebook Live has been a hot topic of conversation for digital marketers and in the IMPACT office for quite some time now.

If you don’t already know, the general consensus is that it is an awesome tool to connect and engage your audience on a variety of levels, but is about to get a huge eCommerce upgrade.

Facebook Live Infomercials?

Facebook is now testing a new Live video feature that allows merchants to demo and sell products directly through the app.

Think modern-day QVC or online infomercials, except instead of phone calls, viewers of live streams will be able to screenshot of the product they want to purchase and send it to the merchant via Facebook Messenger.

Then the merchant can request and submit payment right through the app.

As of right now, the details are thin and it is unclear how it will collect on sales made through Live video. What is clear, however, is that Facebook is seeking revenue opportunities beyond the increasingly oversaturated News Feed.

Seeking to monetize features and services has been, and will always be, the biggest point of friction for social networks.

Although News Feed ads have been historically lucrative for both merchants and Facebook, many verticals require a pretty good sized budget to compete and, let’s be honest, all of our feeds are getting pretty cluttered and Stories are rising in the ranks of most engaged media.

And, As a Marketer, I Care Because?

We’ve preached the importance of video in any sales & marketing strategy for a long time now. We’ve also preached the importance of being the best educator in your space.

Live selling, or product demonstrations, is the convergence of both of these schools of thought and on a platform as popular and powerful as Facebook, it could be a valuable opportunity.

This is just one more reason it is critical to get your team comfortable in front of the camera and ready to teach your audience.

It is yet to be seen how powerful this feature will be, but if Facebook’s existing ad networks success is any indicator, the sky's the limit.

So, When Can You Start Selling?

As of right now, it is unknown.  It doesn’t appear that Facebook has plans to expand the feature, but we’re hoping it does. This feature is currently only available to a very limited set of Pages in Thailand. Why? Thailand is one of Facebook’s most active marketplace communities.

However, if the feature does well, it is likely to make its way to other countries.

Until then, live product demos are certainly something you can consider doing on your Page on your own. Schedule a time and promote it like you would any other live event and see how your audience responds! If this feature does roll out, your previous experience will help you determine if its something worth investing in or not.