Business as unusual: How Facebook is helping retailers navigate COVID-19’s new abnormal

With most of the population staying at home, businesses have seen the importance of communicating with customers online during this unprecedented time. 

Facebook, one of the most popular social networking platforms in terms of users, visits and searches, is helping brick and mortar retailers to keep their customers up to date by adding some critical information features for Facebook Business pages such as, temporary opening hours, and the types of services provided. 

Haven’t updated your customers yet? Let’s go through the basic tweaks you can easily make to ensure your Facebook page is keeping your customers informed with the latest information.

Opening hours

In addition to being able to change your usual business hours, Facebook now offers the option to appear as “Temporarily closed”. This allows you to show your customers at a glance that your physical business is not open.
What about encouraging them to go to your online store? 

Update your services

Is your business still open? You might have to make some changes to your service offering. If so, you can update your Facebook page by selecting “Open with service changes”. 

Here you will be able to select between the following options: 

• Online services
• Delivery
• Pick-up
• Other changes

If you are updating your services on Facebook, don’t forget to do the same in Google. Check out how to update your GMB attributes during COVID-19. 

Be specific: Communicate with specific customers, communicate specific news

Are you opening early for the elderly or vulnerable customers? Are you offering voucher codes for your service? Are you postponing a physical event for the future? Facebook encourages businesses to communicate with specific actions you might taking due to COVID-19.

How? Simply select ‘Other changes’ under the ‘Update your service’ section, and write your post in there. 

Wait…Where can my customers find my updated information? 

Facebook has included these changes in all the formats a customer can find your business. That’s why these updates are going to be reflected in: 

• Your Facebook Page
• Page preview
• Regular Facebook search
• List of local resources

If you have a business with multiple locations then you have a number of options when setting up your Facebook pages. Look at five different ways in which using Facebook pages can help you grow your community.  

Bonus tip: New TripAdvisor feature

TripAdvisor now allows you to show a notification that your business is temporarily closed with your anticipated re-open date also being added to your TripAdvisor listing. Just select “Manage Listing” and choose “Hours”. From here, you’ll be given the option to switch the toggle to “Mark your property as temporarily closed” – and that’s it! 

You can update these changes in bulk through Localistico or manually directly on the platforms.

We are helping retailers by optimizing the time their local marketers are spending on it and avoiding manual mistakes. Would you like to know how it works? Request a free demo now.