Facebook are upping the game for consumer to consumer selling with the expansion of their marketplace to 17 countries across Europe
Facebook Marketplace is already available in six countries (Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand and the UK) but will now roll out to: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Whether you’re a new parent looking for baby clothes or a collector looking for a rare find, you can feel good about buying and selling on Marketplace because it’s easy to view the public profiles of buyers and sellers, your mutual friends, and how long they’ve been on Facebook.
You can create a listing for basically anything, and you can easily track your connections to other people in Marketplace. This means that the next time you want to buy something, you can ask a mutual friend of the seller if she is the type to scratch CDs or let the cat have free reign over the sofa bed. As always, you have complete control over your privacy and the privacy of your listings.
Facebook haven’t as yet made any significant progress in ecommerce, their marketplace is generally only used by consumers mainly for selling second hand unwanted items. Buyers can specify how far they are willing to travel to collect an item, but generally it’s akin to putting an ad (albeit free on Facebook) in your local paper’s classified section. In any case searches are restricted to your local country which Facebook says it to avoid language difficulties.
If you’ve tested Facebook Marketplace for business to consumer sales we’d love to hear from you. Do you get any sales at all? Are you pestered with ridiculously low offers for new boxed items? In your opinion, is it worth other online sellers investing time listing to Facebook Marketplace?
Facebook have revealed that in May of this year more than 18 million new items posted for sale in Marketplace in the US, and that number continues to grow. However no one has any idea how successful Facebook Marketplace is as a venue as it’s impossible to track sales – the majority of deals are closed offline in person.
One Response
Seems that that this largely ignored by the people I interact with on Facebook. The layout of what is for sale is very UNappealing but with the number of people on Facebook they need to improve this facility.
BUT does it help sell stuff in the USA for pro sellers?
It should do but at the moment it is now attracting me even to look further into it