The Secrets to Unlocking Facebook Marketplace

0:00 I have made millions of dollars on Facebook Marketplace eBay and other marketplaces by reverse engineering and growth hacking my way to success so I just sat down to teach you every single thing I know about validating a market size optimizing listing pictures videos keywords headlines titles and everything I know about marketplaces to make more money you will learn today so let's dive into [Music] it so before I start any business that might rely on Facebook Marketplace for leads I want to do some competitive market research I need to know is there more demand than there is Supply in both my market and Benchmark markets that have similar demographics and similar similar population sizes so I'm doing research for Plano Texas which has about 290,000 people in it Frisco and mckin

0:48 are cities that have similar demographics and similar population sizes that just happen to be right next to Plano so mckin has 215,000 people and Frisco has 225,000 people they're similar with race age income demographics so it's a perfect barometer to know how many competitors am I going to have if I start XY or Z business that has to rely on Facebook Marketplace for leads so I'm going to make a very simple Google spreadsheet here to keep track of these listings in competitive markets then when I set a radius on Facebook Marketplace I'm going to make it a tight radius because I don't want to account for firewood companies an hour away that might deliver to Plano Texas I I only want to know which ones are in Plano

1:34 Texas because that's the only way I can keep my variables constant Facebook is going to show me some listings that have firewood in the title some that have it in the description so I'm going to have to use my common sense to know before clicking if this is a relevant listing to me or not so when I search firewood Plano Texas within five miles here are the listings that I see that have Plano listed in the title I don't want to see Richardson and then click into it and see deliver to Plano I'm trying to save time here and be efficient and get the 8020 of This research without spending 4 hours so I'm just going to look at the title so I'm not going to worry about prices yet because some people list it as free or as $1 just to get more clicks I just want to see listings so right off the bat in Plano I see one two three four five six

2:23 7 I see 14 I don't want to keep scrolling I don't want to go to page two because I'm just going to see listings that are less relevant to what I'm looking for so I'm going to go back to my spreadsheet I'm going to put 14 under number of listings and then I'm going to do the same search in Frisco if I go to Frisco I see 21 listings very interesting because Frisco is smaller than Plano yet it has 50% more competition so already after 5 minutes of research it's telling me what I need to know 21 listings in Frisco and then mckin will be our last Market 28 okay for some reason these are all multiples of seven we go to mckin and it looks even more competitive than Frisco now this is why launching a business in your home area is so critical because if I were not native to

3:11 the Dallas Fort Worth area I've been here for 10 years then I might look at this and say oh wow it's so obvious I need to launch in Plano because there's no one doing this in Plano but since I'm a local I know things like okay mckin has a huge surface area there's a lot of rural areas it's further from Dallas so homes are cheaper there's more vacant acreage there's more room for someone to start and run a firewood business Plano is right up against Dallas it's a little more urban the lots are much smaller um there's more infill there's just there's not a lot left to build in Plano so the likelihood of someone starting a firewood business in Plano is much smaller than someone starting a firewood business in Frisco or mckin but this is a good thing if I'm in Plano this means that there's an opportunity for someone in Plano to start a business a they're

3:56 Less Direct competitors nearby B they're closer to Dallas where there's two or three million more people so I'm going to do some quick division here and see what we're working with okay so there's one firewood business for every 10,700 people in Frisco Plano one in every 20,700 people and in mckin one in every 7,600 people so this is is interesting because I've done this research for a tree trimming business already and I know that one in 10,000 is a pretty good Benchmark if I launch in Allen Texas which has about 100,000 people I can expect there to be

4:42 about nine competitors 100,000 divided by 10 equals 10,000 so it is kind of curious seeing that the numbers for firewood businesses are very similar and perhaps that's because a lot of the tree trimming businesses are vertically integrated and they're selling firewood as well so right off the bat I know that if I'm in Plano I'm I'm just going to have an easier time selling this firewood it doesn't mean I'm I'm going to be more likely to make the business work it just means I'm going to have less competitors and all else equal I would prefer to have less competitors now I'm going to talk about listing strategies not just for Facebook Marketplace but this applies to any Marketplace maybe you're selling on Airbnb or on eBay all of these principles apply to any Marketplace the three most important things you can ever do when listing

5:27 anything for sale or rent on Facebook Marketplace or anywhere are these number one pictures you have to take high quality pictures you don't need a professional photographer but you need professional looking pictures even if it's with your iPhone take note of whatever Marketplace you're on how many pictures or videos do they allow you to upload keep in mind that these companies are a lot smarter than us if eBay allows us to upload 24 photos then they know that the diminishing returns happen after 24 photos and it also means that the most optimal amount of photo phot or videos to upload is about 24 so don't upload three even if a lot of your photos look about the same just the angles are slightly different upload all of them because it does you no harm also it's called multimedia for a reason you

6:13 don't only want to upload a picture or a video or multiple pictures or multiple videos upload everything pictures and videos from multiple angles especially because the algorithms will prioritize specifically Facebook Marketplace will prioritize listings that lead with a video because it will stop the scroll all of these companies want us to stop scrolling and if we're scrolling and we see a bunch of pictures and then a video even if a one second loop we're going to stop there so a the algorithm will prioritize it B people will prioritize it because it looks better so if Facebook Marketplace enables us to upload 12 pictures of videos then upload two videos and 10 pictures or six and six take advantage of everything that Facebook allows us to do number two

7:00 description you've got to nail as many keywords as you can so I want to put in my listing Hickory Oak Post Oak scrub Oak Ash American ash Elm everything even if it's not firewood that I sell I still want it in the listing so I can get more visibility on my listing and the third most important thing is responsiveness the quickest to respond will win if your notifications aren't completely blowing up you up on your watch or your phone or everywhere then you're going to miss out on not just leads but money you have to respond to these guys quickly the Facebook audience is more impatient and more finicky than any other audience so take advantage of that because the people you're competing against I guarantee you are not going to be as

7:46 responsive as you so let's go into some of these listings here and I'll critique some of my competitors I click on one and I can already see it's a blurry photo like I can barely see it's firewood he only has three photos this is taken in the dark the lighting is terrible his description firewood for sale in Plano 1/8 chord or 1/4 chord pickup or delivered call text Matt for pricing hidden information here's what hidden information means it means that Matt the guy who posted this put his phone number in there not knowing that you shouldn't do that Facebook doesn't want to pull people away from Facebook so if you put your phone number in there even if you kind of put weird line breaks in there they can detect it and they will suppress not just your actual phone number but they'll suppress your listing so it doesn't appear as often for as many people so you're doing

8:31 yourself a disservice if you try to circumvent Facebook you want to work with Facebook not against them remember there're are one trillion doll company so what I want to do is encourage people to DM me on Facebook and then have all my notifications set up because the algorithm will also know that I'm trying to keep people on the Facebook platform and they're going to prioritize my listings as a result I also want to I want to list all of my prices okay this means you're going to get less clicks but you're going to get higher intent clicks there's always a push pull happening between friction and the intent of a potential lead or a customer so video is cool but you know what's better long form audio via podcast and my newsletter TKO pod.com go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter it's one email a week very tactical 1500

9:17 words per email and then go to my audio podcast three episodes a week stuff like this you're going to love it all free no sleazy sales TKO pod.com if I put hardly any info in here it will lead to more leads but those leads will be much more weak they're going to be less intent they're not going to want to spend money with me and I'm going to spin my wheels and waste my time so put enough relevant information in there to trigger all the keywords that people are searching for and to incentivize someone to reach out to you to close the sale but don't put too much in there to where there's nothing left up to the imagination now I'm going to show you what I did with my listing so and kind of walk you through what I was thinking as I did it so you'll notice that a lot of the other listings just said firewood

10:05 in the title that is wasted real estate that's like owning a block of Manhattan and grazing cows on it it makes no sense you want to put a skyscraper there take advantage of it I want to use every character I can in the title because those characters are 10 times more valuable than your description they don't have to click to read it so I put cheap firewood free delivery help us save for college that's the name of the business college fund firewood I broke every rule in my naming criteria when I named it that I usually like to have short easy to remember easy to spell three syllable or less uh names but this I wanted to sell the story in the name what is the story the fact that I'm helping two high school kids save money for college the whole story is told

10:51 simply in the three-word name of the business so if you look at the description I say exactly what I'm doing I'm helping two boys at church Devon and Cade I put the first names in there for a reason these are real people I'm not making them up um you can meet them um start a firewood and barbecue wood business now I'm not just describing what I'm doing here these are just keywords I'm looking for more search traffic so they can learn about business and save for college they split and stack firewood in my backyard and I help them learn about business I also help them sell it which is why I'm posting it here now if I were an orthodontist I don't want to tell people that I'm I'm doing it out of my backyard or out of my house or that I just got my degree that's a completely different strategy but this is a home service business people are good they want to help other

11:38 people I want to play on that I want them to know that they are helping a real person save for a real education instead of just another businessman that I'm competing against and then I say what the pricing is um and I said you can buy wood from anyone but don't you want to support young aspiring American entrepreneurs free delivery within 30 mil please let me know if you have any question we can deliver only oak or pecan if you only need it for barbecue smoking wood and then the picture I put in here is a picture of the actual wood it's not pulled from Google Images this tells people that we're actually doing this um and you can see I put a picture in here of the young men that I'm helping uh Devon and Cade so they can see these are real people and when they

12:24 come to drop off the firewood they're going to see these two guys one of the most UNT marketing channels is also on Facebook but it's not Marketplace it's Facebook groups most people have no idea how many different Niche Facebook groups there are on a geographic perm Market basis if you take Plano Texas for example all I did was search Plano Texas under groups and I see dozens of groups Plano Foodies Buy sale trade a Spanish Plano Group Plano Texas job hunting these groups are critical because it is people that live in Plano they're there's a high likelihood that these people are your future customers the quality of these groups will depend on how strict the moderating is the best thing you can do is join these groups

13:10 and start asking engagement bait questions such as hey I own a tree triming business and I want to take my guys out for tacos what are the best tacos in Plano you'll get a ton of responses because food is very opinionated and polarizing or you can go in there and say hey what are the best neighborhoods in Plano to raise a family where are the best neighborhoods for school districts in Plano what happens when you ask these questions is that the Facebook algorithm will eventually it usually only takes about a week tag your account as a top contributor and give you a badge which means after you earn that Badge Of Trust from Facebook you can start posting more deliberate salesy questions such as hey I've been in here for a little while um thanks for answering all my questions I own a

13:55 firewood business trying to support my family I'm a school teacher I'm saving for college whatever your actual story is tell it and people will want to support you and the algorithm will support you because you've already been adding value to the group without asking anything in return for the first week or two