3 Ways to Market your Crafts on Facebook

Have you ever considered selling your craft items on Facebook? If you’re a casual Facebook user, you may glance at Facebook Marketplace from time to time only to find second-hand vehicles and used furniture, and dismiss it as a place to sell your carefully crafted wares. However, there are plenty of craft businesses using Facebook to reach new customers, and Facebook can be a viable option for your craft business, too.

How can Facebook build your craft business?

Everyone (and their grandma) uses Facebook

With 2.91 billion monthly active users on Facebook (as of February 2022), there’s really no escaping just how many people it may be possible to reach on the platform. Will every user be interested in what you have to offer? No, but if even 0.5% of all FB users were interested, that’s a worldwide customer base of 14,550,000. Do you need 14.5 million people to become customers to make your business a success? Probably not! But the fact of the matter is, there are plenty of opportunities to reach your ideal customer base on Facebook.

You can drive traffic to another site

Do you feel trapped selling through platforms you don’t have control over? It’s common for craft businesses to build up a customer base on Etsy and other marketplaces, but feel unable to direct traffic to their own store. If you’ve built your own store on Shopify (or another platform) and you want to start serving customers without paying 10%+ in fees, you can use Facebook to drive traffic to another website.

You’re not limited in ways to sell

Facebook presents a wide range of ways to reach your customers and sell to them. We’ll get into 3 of the best ways to market below, but know you can reach customers in the following ways:

• Facebook Marketplace
• Facebook Ads
• Groups
• Your Business Page

3 Ways to Market Handmade Items on Facebook

1. With Your Facebook Page

You don’t hear a lot of buzz around Facebook pages since Facebook made organic engagement more difficult, but what marketing gurus don’t tell you is that some businesses do really well on Facebook solely with their page. Why? Because they share content their customers actually want in their feed and encourage engagement.

Setting up a business page is quick and easy, and then you can interact with your customers “as” your page, even in some Facebook groups. Here are a few ways we recommend you optimize your Facebook page:

• Showcase your items - make sure people know what you offer when they land on your page. You have the space for a large banner at the top of your page, so rather than using it for just another logo (which you probably have as the page’s profile picture) showcase some of your best and/or most popular products. Share posts that showcase your products, too - if you show how you use/style them, all the better. Try to spark a conversation with your audience about how they use them, too, to increase engagement.

• Use Facebook Shops - in 2020 when so many businesses were struggling, Facebook introduced its “shops” feature, which allowed businesses to set up a storefront directly on Facebook or Instagram. You can now set up a storefront that is integrated with your business page if you’re in the US. To learn more about setting up your own storefront, see these resources:

  • How to Sell Your Handmade Products with Facebook Checkout
  • What are Facebook Shops?

• Share with your community - use your page to share news and fun posts with your audience. Anything you would post about on social media can go on your Facebook page. If you’re comfortable, let them know more about you - sharing images of your pets and the behind-the-scenes of how you make your products will help you develop a connection. If your product fits into a bigger passion, consider starting a Facebook group where your customers (both present and potential) can go to discuss ideas.

• Link to your site -you can set up your page to have a contact button in the right top corner of your page’s content. This allows you to link to your website, so customers can buy directly from you. Alternatively, you could link to your Facebook Marketplace profile so people can buy from you directly, but without the need for another website.

2. Use Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace, is an often under-utilized tool that’s available to craft sellers. Facebook Marketplace allows you to sell to local people within 100mi of your location and is generally easy to use and navigate. Here are a few best practices we recommend if you try selling on Facebook Marketplace:

• Create a commerce account - you can sell with your personal profile, but we recommend creating a commerce account so you’ll be recognized as a legitimate business (it’s not currently possible to link a commerce account and your business page, but that may come in the future).
• Focus on product pictures, headlines, and descriptions - like on any other marketplace, your photos here count! Your photos are what will make someone click on your listing or scroll past, so make sure you focus on well-lit pictures that show clearly what your product is and does. Once you’ve got an attention-grabbing picture, write a headline that accurately describes your product, with any keywords you can think of. All you need to do after that is write an accurate product description that describes the best features of your product and addresses any thoughts your ideal customer may be having, such as how big it is or where they could put it. If you’re not good at writing product descriptions, it can be well worth paying a professional to write them for you.

3. Utilize Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are incredibly beneficial - you can pay to reach potential customers with your offers. They’re also a_huge_topic. There are entire courses out there on learning how to create effective Facebook Ads, and it certainly can be daunting to make a start, and a lot of people try them for a few days, get frustrated, and never try them again.

Know that you_can_make your ads effective and once you learn how you can calculate dollars in and dollars out reliably; meaning if you spend $5 on ads, you may get $50 back in sales. Who doesn’t want that? Here are some best practices to get you moving in the right direction:

• Research SEO keywords - Many businesses think keywords don’t matter when it comes to FB ads, but that’s not the case! You can use FB ads keyword targeting to bypass interest-based campaigns, which can be hit and miss, especially when so many people are trying to refine what shows up in their feeds.
• Slip on your audience’s shoes - consider what your audience wants to see when they’re scrolling that may make them stop to find out more about what you have to offer. It’s important to remember that most people aren’t actively looking to buy when they’re scrolling on Facebook, so you need to show them an ad that stops them in their tracks. Slip on their shoes, think about what they want to see, and test-test-test!
• Get granular with your targeting - Facebook offers one of the best ads platforms not just because they help you reach a huge number of potential customers, but also because they offer plenty of targeting options. You can target based on life events (that’s great news for your wedding decor business), buying behavior, or a combination of them all. Don’t be afraid to keep niching down.

How are you going to manage the growth you experience when you implement these strategies? You need the right support system behind you to help you manage your inventory and for that, you need Craftybase. For less than $20 a month, you can run your small business like the big businesses, giving you back your time, ensuring you’re getting the most profit, and giving your customers the best experience possible. Find out more about Craftybase here.

Marketing is key to any business, but often marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon allow us to rest on our laurels. While these platforms certainly make reaching customers easier, they eat into your profits. Doing your own marketing and selling your products direct to your customers will help you make more and protect you in the event something goes wrong with one of those platforms.