What is Facebook Live shopping

 

Facebook is one of the oldest and best-known social networks today. With over 3 billion monthly active users from all over the world, Facebook is also one of the most popular platforms out there.

 

But in the highly competitive and ever-changing world of social media, being established and popular today doesn’t guarantee the same level of success tomorrow. This is why Facebook has to keep up with current trends and evolve to keep meeting (and exceeding?) its users’ expectations.

 

Like live shopping.

 

 

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Facebook Live in a nutshell

Similarly to other social media platforms, Facebook offers live streaming to its users where content creators can connect and interact with subscribers via a live-streamed video. If this event allows viewers to purchase a product during the streaming, we call it live shopping. (This feature is currently only available to select Facebook shop operators.)

 

Fully rolled out in 2016, Facebook Live videos collected over 2 billion views until 2018. Today, 20% of all videos available on the platform are live streams. When it comes to engagement, live videos are three times more effective than traditional, pre-recorded ones. Consequently, live streams get ten times as many comments as their traditional counterparts.

 

64% of marketers claim that Facebook Live is their most important video channel. No wonder: when it comes to brand content, 82% of shoppers prefer to see live videos to text-based posts. Armed with such knowledge, brands can unleash their creativity and publish engaging videos to strengthen their connections with customers.

 

For example, Starbucks is great at publishing humorous and engaging video-based content.

 

 

Still image from a Starbucks video on Facebook.com

 

 

Brands like cosmetics manufacturer Benefits and food network Tastemade regularly connect with their target audience via live videos. Benefit’s weekly live tutorial shows are highly interactive; no wonder that over a thousand viewers tune in every week. Similarly, Tastemade regularly creates food-art and cooking tutorial videos.

 

 

Still image from a Tastemade cooking tutorial on facebook.com/

 

 

The live shopping industry

Live shopping started its victory march in China, where the industry is already worth 5.86 trillion yuan (ca. $807.6 billion). In contrast, the total live streaming sales in the US are currently valued at $50 billion, with projections seeing a 36% rise by 2026.

 

As seen above, Facebook and its sister company Instagram are amongst the most popular live streaming platforms worldwide. In China, Douyin is the dominant player in this segment with a whopping 1.5 trillion yuan generated by live shopping. Douyin’s international counterpart, TikTok is also doing fairly well, especially amongst younger consumers.

 

While social media platforms are definitely at the forefront of the live shopping revolution, traditional online marketplaces are also trying to hop on the trend. For instance, Amazon has recently launched its newest venture in the industry, a live shopping TV channel.

 

 

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How to sell on Facebook Live

The social media giant provides a detailed guide for Facebook’s business users wishing to get started with selling on Facebook Live.

 

First of all, you have to possess a working Facebook shop complete with a product catalogue to get started. If you have all that, log in to your Commerce Manager and select Promotions, then Live Shopping. (Please note that currently not all shops have this option. If you don’t see this menu item, your shop is probably not equipped to go live right now.)

 

Choose Create Playlist. Here you can click on items in your product catalogue that you wish to feature in your live stream session, and arrange them in any particular order. Facebook recommends that you don’t choose more than 15 products per stream to allow consumers to spend time with each chosen item.

 

However, this number may vary depending on your customers’ preferences and the planned length of your session. The average industry rate is 3 minutes of screen time per product.

 

After you’ve saved your playlist with a chosen name, you’ll have to select the “venue” of your live session: the Facebook website or the app, as well as the starting time of your stream.

 

Besides the setup guide, Facebook also provides tutorials and tips about various other necessities of live streaming. These include a seamless checkout process, the best ways to drive engagement, as well as case studies that display the best practices of Facebook Live shopping.

 

 

Screenshot of https://www.facebook.com/business/tools/live-shopping/case-studies displaying case studies of live shopping best practices

 

 

Online brand protection on Facebook Live

While live shopping is a great opportunity to connect with customers, it also has some inherent risks to your brand’s IP rights you need to be aware of.

 

Since millions of sellers active on various social media platforms have the option to sell live, the sheer amount of content generated this way is enormous. This allows for fraudsters to hide in plain sight and promote products that infringe on your IP rights. Besides, watching hours of video feed to check for potential infringements can be much more tedious than sifting through simple product listings.

 

Luckily, we at globaleyez have developed excellent methods to detect potential IP infringements in live shopping as well.

 

Our social media monitoring service detects infringing content including ads, posts and product listings on major social media platforms. Since fraudsters tend to steal or copy product pictures from brands for their ads, we’d recommend a round of image monitoring as well to uncover potential connections between seemingly independent fraudulent sellers.

 

Once we have rounded up all infringing content, we can enforce your rights and demand their removal from circulation, including Facebook, Amazon, domain registries and all other corners of the internet.

 

 

Conclusion

Live shopping is one of the most exciting opportunities offered by social commerce. However, this increasingly popular form of selling is not without its dangers to your brand’s IP rights.

 

Don’t let the cons outweigh the pros: contact us and let’s discuss how we can protect your brand!