We’re seeing a number of sectors where Facebook stores are finding their niche. Events and ticketing is just one and the success of the Smackfest Beach Volley registration shop on Facebook is a great example.

Dublin, Ireland July 31, 2012

The Smackfest Beach Volleyball festival held in Hermosa Beach California, the largest of its kind in the US, was a success in more than one way. This year teams were able to register via their VendorShoppowered Facebook page. It proved a hit with team registrations for the festival, the largest of its kind in the US sold out in just 20 days.

“We’re seeing a number of sectors where Facebook stores are finding their niche. Events and ticketing is just one and the success of the Smackfest Beach Volley registration shop on Facebook is a great example”, said Chris Small, CEO at VendorShop Social .

Another example is the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland. They started off testing the water with a Facebook store a few months ago. They promote and sell their acting classes through it. So far they are generating sales on average of more than €1 per fan per month.

Unlike Smackfest and the Gaiety School of Acting, many businesses are yet to get to grips with how to deliver a return on investment from their Facebook activities. Chris Small believes that is in part because businesses try to apply the same thinking and sales strategies as they would to their e-commerce store, to their Facebook store and that simply doesn’t work.

“Facebook is all about encouraging fans to interact with your page and by virtue of that to generate stories that are shared with their friends. So ensuring that you provide a compelling reason to that is critical and simply duplicating an e-commerce experience is not usually compelling enough.”

So for the guys at Smackfest, they offered their fans an exclusive discount on their registration, while the Gaiety offer discounts for liking and sharing content.

But as Chris Small says, “it doesn’t have to be a discount. In fact value-added offers can often be more effective than a straight discount. Showing fans they are valued through ‘Fan first and fan only’ offers and rewards is extremely powerful in not only in driving lots of liking, commenting and sharing, but it also drives sales across multiple channels, not just within Facebook.” said Small.

Facebook is inherently a marketing channel, an inherently powerful one at that. Unfortunately many businesses see a store and immediately think sales where they should be thinking about how they can turn their fans into advocates and get them socially active on behalf of their brand.