What is Facebook Catalogue, and how do you set it up?

What is Facebook Catalogue?

Facebook Catalogue is a tool online companies can use to store a catalogue of their products, generally for use in social media adverts.

Facebook describes it as “a container that holds information about all the items you want to advertise or sell on Facebook and Instagram. You can use your catalogue with different types of ads and sales channels to promote your items, including Meta Advantage+ catalogue ads, Shops on Facebook and Instagram, and more.”

After you create a Facebook Catalogue, you can connect it to different channels to show people your products, including Instagram Shopping, dynamic ads, collection ads, Page shops and many more.

Why should I use Facebook Catalogue?

Despite pressure from relative newcomers like TikTok, Facebook still reigns supreme; Facebook has an astonishing 2.9 billion monthly active users.

Instagram isn’t far behind, with a massive 2 billion monthly active users.

As a result, both social media giants can give your online company unprecedented access to many potential customers.

Another great reason you should use Facebook Catalogue is the ability to create dynamic ads.

Dynamic ads automatically promote your inventory to people who have expressed interest on your website.

Dynamic ads look exactly like other single-image, carousel, or collection ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network. 

You’ll have experienced these before; you may have been on a website viewing products and then spotted the exact same products on your Facebook Newsfeed; those are dynamic ads at work.

How do I set it up Facebook Catalogue?

Before you begin:

1. If you don’t have a Facebook Page for your business, set one up.
2. If you don’t have a Facebook Business Manager account, set one up and ensure you are a business admin.

Good to know: Business Manager is a fantastic tool that every business should have set up no matter what sector you are in.

Business Manager allows you to create ads in more detail and gives you essential analytics to help you better understand what’s working and what’s not working.

Create a Facebook Catalogue in 9 easy steps:

1. Visit the Commerce Manager page. If you haven’t already got one set up, install your Facebook Pixels. If you’re struggling, ask your web developer or digital marketing executive to set it up by following these instructions. From here, they’ll be able to create the codes needed to create Dynamic Ads etc.
2. If you have previously created a Catalogue, you’ll see them listed. If it’s your first time creating a Catalogue, click on ‘Get Started’.
3. Click on ‘Create a catalogue’ and then click the ‘Get Started’ button.
4. Click on + Add Catalogue to create a new Facebook Catalogue.
5. Click on the type of products you want to sell or advertise, then click on the ‘Next’ button.
6. Choose how you want to add the products to your Catalogue.

Option a: If you want to add the products yourself in Commerce Manager, then click on the ‘Upload product info’ button.

Option b: If you host your products on a partner platform with Facebook integration (such as Shopify, Magento and OpenCart), click on ‘Connect a partner platform’.

Choose your platform and follow the link to that platform’s website to finish the setup and import all your products to Facebook.

If you need extra help with this stage, find it here: importing items from a partner platform.

7. Select whichever Business Manager account your Facebook Catalogue is part of.

As Facebook explains, this “unlocks more ways to use your catalogue than selecting a personal account and enables you to assign other people permission to work on the catalogue”.

Don’t forget, though, to be able to select a Business Manager account, you need to be a business admin first.

8. Enter a name for your Facebook Catalogue and click the ‘Create’ button. You now have a Facebook Catalogue.
9. From here, it’s just a matter of adding your products.

There are various ways to add your products, so pick whichever option you think is the most suitable.

Adding products to Facebook Catalogue:

Manually adding products: While it’s possible to upload a Facebook Catalogue for all your products manually, it’s better to connect it with your e-commerce platform if it has a Facebook integration plug-in.

This means all your stock and products are automatically updated to reflect the hour-by-hour changes to stock levels, prices and availability.

Scheduled feed: If you’ve connected to your e-commerce platform like Shopify, Magento etc., things are a lot more streamlined, giving you an actual omnichannel sales presence.

That’s because manually uploaded catalogues are only accurate at the time of the upload and won’t change to reflect product sales unless you manually update them.

In contrast, a scheduled feed is essentially a live, accurate inventory catalogue that is constantly updated as you sell products.

That means when you update pricing, stock levels, imagery etc., on your e-commerce platform, these changes will automatically be updated on your Facebook Catalogue, ideal for Facebook’s dynamic adverts.

Let’s take one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms as an example.

On Shopify, you’ll already have access to a product feed URL.

It might look something like www.companynames.com/collections/all.atom.

From your product feed, you can update your product information to advertise on the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads.

Your product feed will have editable things such as your product’s title, price, imagery, description, and even your product identifier codes.

Once you update your product feed, those changes will be automatically updated on your Facebook Catalogue and dynamic ads.

Conclusion

Using Facebook Catalogue is a fantastic way to showcase your products to a vast online audience.

Whether to manually upload your products or use your e-commerce platform’s Facebook-integrated scheduled feed depends on your needs.

For example, if you only have several products, manually uploading them might be quicker and more effective.

However, if multiple products frequently change, a scheduled feed is much better for creating dynamic ads.

Need help setting up and running an effective Facebook Catalogue?

Our e-commerce experts are here to help you drive more sales through Facebook ads. Call us on 028 9073 1190 or email us at info@thewebbureau.com.