The Secrets to Unlocking Facebook Marketplace

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 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 McKinney are cities that have similar demographics and similar population sizes that just happen to be right next to Plano. So McKinney has 215,000 people and 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 X, y 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 only want to know which ones are in Plano, 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 we deliver to Plano. I'm trying to save time here and be efficient and get the 8020 of this research without spending four 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 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 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 five minutes of research, it's telling me what I need to know. 21 listings in Frisco, and then McKinney will be our last market. 28. Okay. For some reason, these are all multiples of seven. We go to McKinney and it looks even more competitive than Frisco. Now, this is why launching a business in your home area is so critical. Because it's. If I were not native to 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, McKinney 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. 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 McKinney. 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, there are less direct competitors nearby. B, they're closer to Dallas, where there's 2 or 3 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 McKinney, one in every 7,600 people. So this is interesting because I've done this research for a tree trimming business already, and I know that 1 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 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, 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 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, that the diminishing returns happen after 24 photos. And it also means that the most optimal amount of photos 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 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, 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 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. 18 cord or 14 chord. Pickup or delivery. 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 yourself a disservice if you try to circumvent Facebook. You, you want to work with Facebook, not against them. Remember, they're a $1 trillion 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 know 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 because 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 tkopod.com go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week. Very tactical. 1500 words per email. And then go to my audio podcast. Three episodes a week. Stuff like this, you're gonna love it. All free. No sleazy sales pitch tkopod.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 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 ten 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 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 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, Devin and Cade. I put the first names in there for a reason. These are real people. I'm not making them up. You can meet them, 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 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 people. I want to play on that. I want them to know that they are helping a real person see, save for a real education, instead of just another businessman that I'm competing against. And then I say what the pricing is. And I said, you can buy wood from anyone, but don't you want to support young, aspiring American entrepreneurs? Free delivery within 30 miles. 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. And you can see I put a picture in here of the young men that I'm helping, Devin and Kade. So they can see these are real people. And when they come to drop off the firewood, they're going to see these two guys. One of the most untapped 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 per 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, sell, trade. A Spanish Plano group, Plano, Texas job hunting. These groups are critical because it is people that live in Plano. 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 and start asking engagement bait questions such as, hey, I own a tree trimming 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 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. Thanks for answering all my questions. I own a 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 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.