Help centre Marketing Product portals Showcase your products on Instagram and Facebook Incorporating Facebook and Instagram into your e-commerce business can increase your sales and the visibility of your shop, making these platforms important for you as an online merchant. One of the main advantages of this type of advertising is that potential customers are targeted where they probably already are - on a social media platform. If they see something they like while browsing, they can easily access more information about the product without having to leave the platform. To be able to offer your products via Instagram and Facebook, all products you want to promote must be exported to a catalogue in Meta Commerce Manager. You can either export your products via the Meta Pixel or as a data feed. Once you're ready you can use the catalogue to tag and promote the exported products via Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about the different terms Especially in the beginning, all the different terms related to Meta can be a bit confusing. Below you will find a short glossary with the most important terms: Meta Business SuiteThe Meta Business Suite (or former Meta Business Manager) is the top-level tool for managing your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Here you can view all activities on your accounts like comments and new messages, view insights, but also publish or schedule new posts and stories. Commerce ManagerThe Commerce Manager focuses on all your sales activities on Facebook and Instagram. It is part of the Meta Business Suite. There you can manage your product catalogues, set up new shops and get insights about your customers and popular products. CatalogueA catalogue is a container that holds information about all the products you want to promote on Facebook and Instagram. You can use your catalogue to run ads, display your products in a shop, and more. To fill your catalogue, you'll need to export your products as described below. Facebook/Instagram Shops A shop on Facebook or Instagram is like a storefront for your shop, but within the respective social media platform. When creating your shop you can make various settings, for example, regarding the checkout process and the different sales channels. Via the Commerce Manager, you can also customize the layout and style to truly reflect your brand. Facebook MarketplaceFacebook Marketplace is a classified ads section within the Facebook platform but different to Facebook shops. Originally it was built for people to sell and buy locally in their community. However, businesses can also use it to offer their products. You can't use your catalogue to upload products there, though. Before you start Before you start the export, make sure that your business matches Meta’s commerce eligibility requirements. Note that there might be additional requirements for selling in certain countries. Additionally, your products also need to meet other requirements. For example, adding a name and a description. For more information on the required fields for products in your catalogue, visit the Meta Business Help Centre. How to set up your product export Log in to Meta Business Suite or create an account. Open the Commerce Manager and create a catalogue. You don’t need to create a separate account for the Commerce Manager. For more information, refer to the Meta Business Help Centre. In the sidebar of the administration, navigate to Marketing → Instagram & Facebook. Select one of the options under Product export to add products to your catalogue. You can: Export via Meta Pixel:Recommended if you want to use a pixel for dynamic ads and/or your product inventory is updated several times a day. Via Meta Pixel you can only export all of your products. Export via data feed:Recommended if you only want to export selected products and your product inventory is updated once a day or less frequently. You have set up the product export and can now carry out the export with the option you selected. How to export your products All settings regarding the product export can be made in your administration under Marketing → Instagram & Facebook. Export your products via Meta Pixel The Meta Pixel is a small code snippet that you can use to connect your Commerce Manager and your shop. This is how you export your products via the Meta Pixel: In Commerce Manager, set the data source for your catalogue to "Pixel". Select the Meta Pixel for your shop. If you haven’t created a Meta Pixel yet, do so first, and follow the steps to set it up. After a while, the pixel will appear as an option. For further information regarding setting up and installing a Meta pixel, refer to the Meta Business Help Centre. Copy the displayed Pixel ID, go back to the Instagram & Facebook settings page in your shop administration, and paste it into the field Pixel ID at the bottom of the page. Every time someone interacts with products in your shop, e.g. views one of your products, the pixel will fill your catalogue. You can also do this yourself. Note that it may take up to 24 hours until your pixel is ready. You have exported your products via Meta Pixel. Once your catalogue is filled, you can start to showcase your products on Facebook and Instagram by creating a shop via the Commerce Manager. Export your products via data feed The data feed allows you to bulk update and manage products in your catalogue using a spreadsheet file. Before you can start the export, you'll need to make some additional settings for this file. This is how you export all products via a data feed file: Select Yes under Export all products. Select the desired delivery method in the drop-down menu Delivery method.This delivery method will be displayed for all exported products in your catalogue. Caution Be sure that the delivery method you select here is available for all products you want to export. If not, the delivery method for the respective products will not be displayed in the Facebook/Instagram shop. You can adjust this in your product or delivery settings. Select Export (All). If you have previously only assigned a few products for the export, you might need to select Save before you are able to export all products. A new page will open with a progress bar to show you the progress of your product export. Once the export is done you will automatically return to your shop's administration. Under Export (data feed) you can now see the date and time of the last export and view the feed file URL. Select the Copy URL link on the right-hand side.If you want to view your feed file you can download it as a .csv by selecting the link Open feed file. Open the Commerce Manager. To upload your products, set the data source for your catalogue to “data feed” and paste the feed file URL you have copied earlier. For more information, refer to the Meta Business Help Centre. The feed file is updated automatically on a daily basis. You can update it manually at any time by selecting Export (All) again. This is how you only export selected products via a data feed file: Select No under Export all products. Select the desired delivery method in the drop-down menu Delivery method.This delivery method will be displayed for all exported products in your catalogue. Caution Be sure that the delivery method you select here is available for all products you want to export. If not, the delivery method for the respective products will not be displayed in the Facebook/Instagram shop. You can adjust this in your product or delivery settings. Select Save. Open the tab Products. Select + Assign products.The view Assign products appears. Select the products you want to assign for the export by activating the corresponding checkboxes. If you want to assign variation products, select the name of the main product. For products with variations, the product name will be a link. A sub-page opens. Activate the respective checkbox for all variations you want to export. To return to all products, select Products highlighted in blue in the heading.On the tab Selected elements, you can review your assigned products. Once you are done, select Apply. Return to the tab General. Select Export (Number of assigned products).A new page will open with a progress bar to show you the progress of your product export. Once the export is done you will automatically return to your shop's administration. Under Export (data feed) you can now see the date and time of the last export and view the feed file URL. Select the Copy URL link on the right-hand side.If you want to view your feed file you can download it as a .csv by selecting the link Open feed file. Open the Commerce Manager. To upload your products, set the data source for your catalogue to “data feed” and paste the feed file URL you have copied earlier. For more information, refer to the Meta Business Help Centre. The export file is updated automatically on a daily basis. You can update it manually at any time by selecting Export (Number of assigned products) again. To assign more products to the export file, select + Assign products again. You have exported the products and created your catalogue. If you want to unassign products in order to remove them from your export file, activate the respective checkboxes and select Unassign. If you want to remove all products, select Unassign all. To also remove the products from your Meta catalogue, you might need to take additional steps. For more information, refer to the Meta Business Help Centre. How to remove products from your catalogue When you delete products, they're permanently removed from your catalogue and won't appear in any connected ads, shops or other channels any more. You'll need to delete products via the same method that you used to add them to your catalogue. For example, if you added products using a data feed file, delete them via a data feed file. For more information, refer to the Meta Business Help Centre. What you can do with the catalogue Once you have set everything up you can use your catalogue to advertise your products across Facebook and Instagram. On top, you can set up a shop on Facebook or Instagram that is based on your catalogue. For more information about catalogues in Commerce Manager, refer to the Meta Business Help Centre. Was this article helpful?