The social network launched Marketplace in the USA last October, before adding Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand and the UK. It says more than 18 million items were posted for sale in the USA in May of this year. It has now started to roll out to 17 European countries (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland).
Facebook says this expansion will give more users a single destination to buy, sell and find goods for sale within their local communities via the Marketplace platform.
In addition to the new country roll out, the peer-to-peer sales platform which many likened to Craigslist, is being extended to encompass business listings too, with content and product published in Pages eligible for a Marketplace listing.
Facebook says it has expanded the scope and content of Marketplace to better respond to user demands. Part of this means ‘professional’ listings from business users will now sit alongside items listed for sale by individuals. A number of new categories will also be added to the Marketplace classifieds, many of which are more business friendly. Within each category, filters will allow users to navigate to the product they are specifically looking for. Once a product is found, users can send the seller a direct message to make an offer. Facebook won’t handle the transaction part of the sale.
The new categories are jobs, daily deals – which is currently being tested with eBay- tickets and shops. Not all regions currently have all of the new categories; the Jobs category is only available in the US, Canada and Mexico currently and daily deals is being tested with eBay only.
How to list your products on Marketplace as a business seller
To upload products to Marketplace, you will first need to upload content and product information to Shops within your Facebook Business Page. Simply go to your Page, click Shops, then select add product. Input the product information and an image or video then click save. You’ll need to do this for each product you wish to list as a business seller on Marketplace.
Marketplace will then pull that content from your Page into the Marketplace classified listings.
If you sell online with a platform such as Shopify, inventory will need to be uploaded to Pages as outlined above before it can be pulled into Marketplace.
