How to integrate Oleoshop with Facebook Catalog

Something that should be almost mandatory for anyone who has an eCommerce is to create a Facebook catalog. It has so many interesting applications that not doing so is simply a strategic waste. Moreover, without it, you cannot have shoppable tags on Instagram, a major sales source for many brands.

As we said in the introduction, Facebook and Instagram are more than just a site where you can see pictures of dogs and other people's vacations. They are real social media marketing tools thanks to features like the one we are going to talk about.

For some time now, Facebook has allowed us to upload, through its business manager, a list of the products we sell in our online store. 

The fact is that it should be called catalogs in plural, since, really, we can create multiple different catalogs by collections or any other commercial and business criteria.

As we said before, the really important thing about Facebook Catalog is that it will allow you to tag products both on Facebook and on Instagram. As you know, these product tags are "buyable", that is, they link to a URL that in turn links to the online store where the purchase of the product can be completed.

Among all the advantages that Oleoshop offers you, there is the easy integration with your Facebook Catalog. This means that you do not have to upload each product in your Facebook Catalog, but you can synchronize both catalogs with just one click. 

As in any recipe, it is important to have all the ingredients. The first thing is, obviously, an online store created in Oleoshop and then have an account in Facebook Business Manager with the permissions to manage it.

In order to manage the catalog, we need to give administrator permissions to a user. We can also grant the power exclusively for the creation of ads. This already depends on the role we want to assign to each user.

By doing this, we have completed the first steps of the configuration of the Facebook Catalog with Oleoshop. Now we have to create the catalog itself.

You simply have to click on the "open the catalog manager" button that appears in the upper right-hand side of the screen when you choose the user who will be the admin.

It is the simplest, but most laborious way. It is ideal when you have few products in your Oleoshop. Basically, you have to fill in the fields that the form asks for:

- Image: photographs of at least 500x500 pixels. They can be the same ones you use in your store.

- Title (product name)

- Description (it can be short)

- Content identifier (this is not required, but if you use SKUs, this is the space for you to enter it)

- Link to the website or, what is the same, the product URL inside your Oleoshop store.

 - Price and currency.

If you do not have a huge amount of products, the manual process of registration is relatively fast. You can have everything ready in a while.

But... what if we had a huge amount of references, and if they were changed regularly? It would simply be crazy to go product by product.

In that case, you can choose to use one of the 3 bulk upload methods:

 - Manual upload: we have to create a spreadsheet with the columns corresponding to the fields we enter manually. Then we save it as CSV, TSV, RSS or ATOM XML and upload it from this section.

 
- Scheduled list: if your product list is frequently changed. Basically what we do is offer the system a URL where the product feed is hosted in our server, this way it is updated as we modify the values. 

 - With Google Sheets: it is very similar to the programmed list but it happens practically in real time. As the document is updated, so will our Facebook catalog.

In fact, everything can be summarized in one great advantage: we turn a channel that works as a reference into a complementary tool to our eCommerce, with which you can close the sale in a more direct way. This means, of course, a higher profitability of our presence in Facebook and Instagram. 

Thanks to Facebook Catalog a store can be implemented to support our eCommerce within the Facebook profile. Just being able to show the products with their prices and features would be worth it.

The good thing is that it does not stop there; it also allows us to access other interesting actions, such as product tagging that we mentioned before in both Facebook and Instagram post. The result is great because the user can directly access the product shown in a post. Perfect for stimulating impulse buying.

Finally, we must add to all this the creaction of campaigns with dynamic ads. We especially like the possibility of showing each client the product they have seen before.

If you want to have some extra tips to make your Facebook catalog more effective, I recommend you to take a look at this post.