What would be your strategy to bring partners onto the Facebook platform for Black Friday?

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What would be your strategy to bring partners onto the Facebook platform for Black Friday?

Asked at Meta (Facebook) over a year ago

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productmanager1644 · Answer 1 · 2021-02-06T02:46:14+0000

CLARIFY:
1. Are we temporarily trying to bring partners onto the platform for Black Friday or are we trying to bring them on permanently? You choose.
2. Given its Black Friday, can we assume the market is the US? Yes.
3. Do you have a specific definition of "partner"? Is it a business? Yes.
FACEBOOK BACKGROUND: Facebook is a social media platform that focuses on building a community. It allows individuals and businesses to create accounts. In regards to the business account, businesses can create public pgs that the public can follow. The business can create events and host a shop inside the Facebook platform to sell goods.
GOAL: In regard to the goal, the goal of the strategy for Black Friday is to get businesses to sell items for Black Friday on Facebook to increase engagement on the platform and drive revenue for Facebook. Facebook gets a portion of the sale for items sold on its platform. Ideally, Facebook keeps businesses engaged on the platform after Black Friday.
USER: There are two users we can focus on. In this instance, I'd like to focus on businesses with no Facebook presence, as they represent a good opportunity to bring new users to the platform / grow the Facebook community in line with its business goal.
1. Businesses with no Facebook presence
2. Businesses with a Facebook presence
SUB USER: There are three types of businesses within the "Business with no Facebook presence". Given the growing size of a business and the importance of a digital presence, I would guess the larger the company, the greater the likelihood they have a Facebook presence. Small businesses represent a big opportunity for Facebook with over 30M small businesses in the US, which account for the majority of businesses in the US.
1. Small Business: $1-20M in revenue. May have 1-10 employees.
2. Medium Business: $20M - $50M in revenue. Have 10-50 employees.
3. Large Business: $50M+ in revenue. 50+ employees.

USER PAIN POINTS: Below are a few user pain points for businesses that do not use Facebook. Based on the assessment, I'd like to focus on small businesses that do not see the value in Facebook.

Painpoint	Description	Impact to User
Awareness	Business does not know Facebook exists.	Low: Unlikely, given Facebook's dominant present.
Usability	Business does not know how to set up Facebook account.	Medium: May be older users that do not know how to set up an account. Younger business owners more likely to figure it out.
Value	Business does not see value in Facebook account.	High: Many businesses may not see Facebook as a way to drive sales. May be more focused on traditionally focused commerce platforms (like Amazon, Shopify, etc.)
Management	Business has no time to set up / manage account.	Medium: Lack of resources to set up account. May not have enough employees.

STRATEGIES: With a focus on enhancing the small business understanding of the value that Facebook can drive, I propose the following strategies.
1. Reduced Fee Campaign: Facebook targets small businesses in email / marketing campaign offering a reduced fee for sales conducted on Black Friday if the small business sets up their account by certain date. Facebook includes reasoning as to why Facebook be of value to the business (ex. grow sales, grow customer base with Facebook users, etc.)
2. Marketing Resources / Page Set Up: Facebook offers low cost marketing resources to small businesses to help set up Facebook page for Black Friday. Demonstrates that Facebook pgs are shown to large user base.
3. Small Business Event: Facebook hosts a live Facebook event (virtual) open to small businesses on the value of Facebook presence with statistics on businesses that use Facebook for sales v. businesses that don't. Emphasizes how much more likely users are to engage in Facebook Shops on Black Friday.
4. Advertisements: Facebook offers to increase advertisements to users for Black Friday in partnership with small businesses in marketing campaign. Cost of advertisements is lower for small business if they create account before Black Friday. Ads could link to Facebook Shop for that small business.
5. Facebook Notifications: Facebook sends targetted advertisements to individual / personal account users they believe may have a small business to encourage them to set up an account. Facebook emphasizes users should set up the account before Black Friday to increase Black Friday sales.

EVALUATE STRATEGIES:

Strategy	Impact to Business	Cost to Facebook
Reduced Fee Campaign	Low: Business may not read the email. Likelihood of conversion is unknown.	Low: May be difficult to find target list but running the campaign should not be difficult. Email could contain button to start account application, etc.
Marketing Resources	High: Small businesses may not have marketing resources. Likely strained for resources / time.	High: Cost / time to provide marketing resources
Small Business Event	Medium: May find more value in open forum where questions are available.	Medium: Likely can use internal resources and potentially bring in existing small business partners.
Advertisements	High: Small businesses rely on advertisements to boost sales. As small business owner, being able to reach a large base for a low cost is a big win.	Low: Already advertises on platform. Shop capabilities already exist.
Facebook Notifications	Low: May be difficult to target right people. Individuals may have poor experience if they aren't business owners / receive notification.	Low: Already has mobile / web applications and sends notifications.

RECOMMENDATION: Based on the analysis, I recommend we run a marketing campaign a few weeks before Black Friday to small businesses with no Facebook presence explaining the value of a Facebook presence / Facebook shop. Facebook offers to increase the number of advertisements for that small business if they create an account before a certain deadline. The advertisement is shown to Facebook's base, which likely increases purchases made on the Facebook Shop and the number of companies with a Facebook presence. Facebook grows its community and drives revenue.

PM Team · Answer 2 · 2019-08-04T06:02:34+0000

First, what is our goal? Why do we want to bring partners on the platform specifically on black friday and what do we want them to do?

Are we trying to recruit new partners to the platform or encourage existing partners to increase their advertising spend on the platform? for black friday, or just If our - advertising campaigns? Is our priority to increase profit, increase revenue, to sign up new advertising partners, or otherwise?

If the goal is to increase revenue and/or bring new partners, I would offer "Black Friday" advertising deals to encourage existing advertising partners to spend on campaigns.

If the goal is to bring on new advertising partners, the offering could be targeted to business pages that have not yet engaged in paid advertising, If the goal is to bring on partners, who might potentially convert into paid advertising partners, then the offering could be advertised on outside platforms and mediums to reach customers outside of Facebook's orbit.

Surbhis · Answer 3 · 2022-06-07T16:42:32+0000

What would be your strategy to bring partners onto the Facebook platform for Black Friday?

Some of the clarifying assumptions to start with-

1) What is the purpose? Is it to increase the user base of seller partners or promote Facebook as a unique selling and buying platform? I will assume to increase seller partners # on Black Friday.

2) What is geography? I'll assume India based on my mutual agreement with the interviewer. My thought is around Facebook using "Make in India" aspects to promote and leverage the foundation of small and mid businesses like other competitors Amazon.

3) Partner seller personas: I will take small, and mid-size sellers' partners.

4) Target seller types: Daily active user who takes some action to engage buyers at least 3+ times in a day), mid active users ( once in a day), average active users ( weekly once ) inactive ( monthly once) and future account holders.

I will define the Objective of the strategies and would define the success measures around them.

Objective 1: Promote and advertise black Friday as one of a kind event of the year.

Strategy:

1) Actively endorse black Friday on different channels- offline & online

2) Design a theme for black Friday e.g. promoting small and mid-size businesses of certain product categories etc.

3) Promote, and advertise potential sellers and partners through compelling stories.

4) Partnering with local and offline business promoters such as NGOs who help Meta to bring more community business on board for black Friday ( e.g. Delhi hat bazaar, Turkish flee market theme, artesian bakers, top 100 designers entrepreneurs etc. ). Currently, on other e-comm platforms, these sellers are accessible through third-party merchandisers with lesser-known facts, brands and lack of marketing.

5) Promote certain types of business that were untouched so far through their online presence as exclusive on Meta Blackfriday. e.g Geographical indication(GI) tag products exclusive for import and exclusive places.

Success measures-

DAU sellers

Retention

sellers page likes & followers Week on week

impression/rating/ranking on the sellers' advertisements

sellers referral onboarding

volume of active sellers MoM

sellers lead pipeline growth

Objective 2: Promote Meta shopping as a virtual fair unlike the common definition of Black Friday.

Strategy:

1) Curtain raiser of Black Friday on metaverse platform as a virtual fair.

Success measures:

active users on black Friday ( buyers & Sellers both)

average basket size,

volume of transactions,

NPS of black Friday. CSAT, Dsat,

bounce rate

Average user/seller spends time on the platform

Objective 3: Activate, nurture and enable more active sellers

Strategy:

1) quick and efficient onboarding of the businesses through curated seller onboarding programs. Meta can start a prestigious & unique seller onboard program to educate small and mid-size businesses to learn D2C or ongoing selling techniques through meta platform, e.g. connecting with users, advertising, market segmenting, catalogue creation, blogging, or via meta pop kiosk. This ongoing program will help to onboard more and more seller partners at a time. It also helps to filter out non-resilient business sellers at a much early stage.

2) Use meta Offline popup kiosks to promote top Facebook seller partners throughout the years through awareness and recognization.

3) Promote Meta as the most desirable platform for such small-mid business sellers from onboarding to scaling up.

Success measures :

sellers enrollment,

sellers onboarding turnaround time

Average revenue

ads revenue growth in this segment

To make these strategy work, Facebook have to solve certain pain points of the sellers -

1-accessibility: Seemless onboarding experience for sellers who don't even have enough knowledge of the online business.

2-knowledge: Curated onboarding and educating programs for the sellers.

3-referral: Desing referral so that one business generates leads for another.

4-buyers and seller experience: Oustanding experience from product exploration, demo, customization, shopping, and payment, pricing checkouts through metaverse platform, unlike any other web/mob e-comm platforms.

Finally, I will pick objectives 1 and 2 in the short term as they are easy to deliver and high business impact. And, objective 3 can be long term as it is a mid effort and high business impact.

Madhavi Jha · Answer 4 · 2022-04-03T02:11:11+0000

Clarifying question -

1. What fb platform are we talking about - fb shop or fb marketplace or ads? Since its partner assuming its shop.

2. Is it fb and instagram both?- Assume both

3. Is the objective to increase sales on black friday competing with amazon, etc? Assume yes

4. is this temporary strategy or is it permanent?- assuming permanent and black friday is just to expedite getting partners on fb platform.

Overall objective is to get partners on fb before black friday to boost sales and compete with other e-commerce sites.

Following strategy could be used -

FB could leverage its huge user base (DAU,MAU), number of listings or ads shown, views per ad/items, conversion rate. FB could also use the average time people spend on its account. The partners would be missing by not leveraging the social media with huge online presence.
FB could encourage partners leverage influencers on instagram to convert their sales better as people tend to trust views from the influencer and friends /family better than the generic product review overall.
FB has very easy & simplified tools for listing the products which makes doing business very easy. The partners have more control compared to Amazon/otehr retailers which keeps tighter control over suppliers.
With the features like like, share, quick commenting its easy to get a general perception/interests on the product from the users without having to actually buy the product.

We can run campaigns few months before black friday to get partners enough time for onboarding.