What is and how to create a product catalog on Facebook?

Everyone who advertises products on Facebook has come across a catalogue. Just like Google Merchant Center for Google Ads, a product catalogue for Facebook is essential when creating ads using a product file. Whether there are ten or a thousand products in your store, you should know what it is, how to create and how to use a product catalog for Facebook. The following article will answer all these questions, as well as outline the many advantages of using a catalogue.

What is a product catalogue?

A catalogue is where you can find all the information about the products you sell on Facebook and Instagram. Whether your product is clothing, airline tickets or take-out meals, you need to use the catalog. It’s from here that your campaigns will retrieve information about which products to display on ads and what their name, price, photo, etc. 

To find the catalogue, go to the sales manager after logging into your Facebook business account. One of the tabs on the left menu will be just „Catalog”. After expanding it, you will see a list of options to choose from:

• Items is the place where all previously added products available for advertising are displayed. In addition to the product name, we will see its photo, possible variants, and availability. We can also filter them by attributes, which will make it easier, for example, to plan a campaign.
• Sets – the products we have added to the catalog can be divided into sets. This is done because we rarely advertise all products in one ad. More about sets in the following section.
• Problems—This tab contains all the problems concerning our catalogue and the possibilities for solving them. The most common problems are missing product attributes, low-quality photos, or products rejected due to Facebook regulations. The „Possibilities” tab also shows ways to improve the quality of our catalogue.
• Sources of data—Just like in Google Merchant Center, we can add products manually or with the help of various sources. Here, we will choose the method we are interested in and configure the product information. I will write more about adding products in a separate paragraph.
• Events—a segment linked to event sources. Here, we will indicate the meta pixel or Facebook SDK from which the catalogue should retrieve product information.

How to create a product catalogue?

If you already have a Facebook page and a business manager account, then you can create a product catalogue. To do this, go to the sales manager and then to the „Resources” menu. When you do this, you will see a screen divided into several segments, including „Sales Accounts” or „Catalogs.” In the „Catalogs” segment, select the blue button that says „Add Catalog.” This will activate a wizard that will guide you through the process.

The first step will be to indicate the type of catalogue that fits our company. Depending on the industry, we will indicate one of six types:

• Electronic commerce
• Local trade and delivery
• Travel
• Real estate
• Motorization
• Entertainment and media

Creating a catalogue for each type differs by individual options. Since e-commerce is the most commonly chosen option, the following steps will cover this path.

When we have already indicated „e-commerce”, the next step will be to configure the catalogue settings. We must choose between uploading product information or linking the catalogue to a partner platform. If our store uses platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce (or another partner platform), we will choose the linking option. In other cases, we will want to upload product information ourselves. In addition to indicating the upload method, we still need to indicate the owner of the product catalogue and name it. Once this is done, the catalogue will be ready. 

How to add products to the catalogue?

If you have created a catalogue without integration with an affiliate platform, it will be initially empty. For it to start fulfilling its basic functions, we need to add the products we want to offer our customers.

We will do this by going to the „Data Sources” tab and indicating our preferred method for adding products.

Manual upload

This option allows us to fill in product data using a form manually. Manual upload is rarely used, mainly if we have a small assortment that is not changed often. By selecting this option, we will have to upload the product photo and enter all its attributes manually:

• title (up to 200 characters),
• description,
• link to a product on a website,
• currency and price,
• price on sale (optional),
• category of the product according to Facebook (selection from the list),
• state of the product,
• availability,
• status,
• brand (optional),
• content identifier (optional),

The list of products added manually can be as long as you want, but the more we want to add, the more time-consuming it will be.

Data set

If your store has many products, and you manage the assortment using Excel or Google Sheets, then „Data Summary” will be a good choice. You only need to pay attention to the correct naming of columns and their contents. This won’t be difficult, as Facebook provides a template and an example of how a product data statement file should look. Once we prepare such a file, all we need to do is upload it in one of three ways:

• Submit a file from your computer: a file in CSV, TSV or XML extension with a size of up to 100 MB. After uploading, all products will be verified, and any errors will be found on the summary screen.
• Using the URL: This is a method often used in Google Merchant Center. Just paste the link to the properly prepared product feed into the text box and then accept. The link can lead to any hosting service or to your website. The limitation is extensions, as in the case of uploading a file from a computer, and a maximum size of 8 GB.
• Submit a link to Google Sheet: Use a combination of the above two methods—paste here a link to a Google Sheet prepared according to the template. Remember the appropriate permissions when copying the link from the Sheets.

If we choose to use the URL or Google Sheets, we must set a schedule for downloading the file’s contents. We will choose hourly or daily, depending on how fast our merchandise rotates in the store. It is worth considering that the hour our store system generates the feed, the more recent the content refreshed by Facebook is. For example, if our system finishes generating the product feed at 2:00 a.m., we will set the time to 2:30 a.m. 

When the schedule is set, you can proceed to fill in the formalities, such as the name of the data file or the currency. 

The columns in our file can be named differently than in the template. Facebook will notify us of this and allow us to indicate which column corresponds to which one from the template. 

Template.

Now, just click the „Submit” button and check any errors that appear in the „Problems” section.

Partner Platform

Facebook allows direct directory connection to some e-commerce systems. For the most part, the setup is done in the client’s domain, where the connection wizard requires different actions depending on the platform. To create a connection, indicate the platform of our store and then click on the link, which will take us to detailed instructions. This is the most convenient way – the data is refreshed in real-time, so there are no differences between Facebook and the store. 

Pixel

Facebook Pixel tracks and saves changes to our site. If configured correctly, it can also automatically add items from your site to the directory. This option is recommended if we use dynamic ads.

Product-sets-in-catalog 

While we’ve added all the products to the catalogue, we won’t always want to use them all simultaneously. When running a clothing store, some ads will be for sweaters only, specific collections or products with a particular price, for example. You need to create the appropriate product sets to use such a division in ads. This is done by going to the „Sets” tab, and then selecting the „Create Set” button. 

Products in a given set can be indicated manually (if there are few of them) or we can use filters. If we choose the second option, Facebook will ask us to indicate the filtered attribute of the products (e.g. brand, color, category or price). There can be several conditions – the set can include, for example, all sweaters (attribute: product category) with a price lower than PLN 100 (attribute: price). It is also possible to use other logical operators, such as:

• any of those listed
• is other than
• contains
• does not contain
• beginning:

When creating a set, we indicate whether the product should meet all listed conditions or if only one is enough.

When the kits are already created, we can select them for advertising campaigns.

What does the catalogue allow?

As I mentioned at the beginning – a catalog is a staple when it comes to selling products on Facebook In addition to just being able to display products on Facebook, it allows you to, among other things:

• Create dynamic ads that independently retrieve product data from the catalogue and display it as a carousel or collection.
• Create ads with product tags.
• Creating ads as a remarketing dynamic so that users who viewed a product but did not buy it will see it again in the form of an ad.
• Displaying products on Marketplace and Facebook stores.
• Create shared ads (for example, when you run a store with products from different manufacturers). The manufacturer can provide your company with a part of its catalogue, which you can use when creating ads.

The catalogue is not a complicated tool. It’s much simpler and doesn’t provide as many options as Google Merchant Center. Ads using products on Facebook are not yet as elaborate as their Google counterparts, so this is perfectly understandable. However, it allows us to easily add and share products, which we can use in ads. At this point, other options, such as editing the feed, are unnecessary – we can easily do this from the store management system. 

Summary

It is certain that Facebook sellers will always be exposed to a directory. However, you don’t have to catch yourself in the head when you need to look into it to fix errors that Facebook’s algorithms catch. The tool is simple enough that anyone can handle the most basic functions of the directory after reading this article. However, if you run into any problems that you won’t know how to fix on your own, it’s worth contacting Facebook support or digital marketing agency

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