Facebook product catalogs are necessary for taking advantage of multiple Facebook advertising features such as running dynamic product ads or creating your Facebook or Instagram shops. In this guide, we are going to show everything you how to set up Facebook product catalogs and everything related to Facebook Product Catalogs.
Main topics covered that are covered in this guide:
- How to set up a Facebook product catalog
- Which eCommerce platforms are supported by Facebook to upload products
- 3 ways how you can add items to your Facebook catalog yourself
- How to use Bulk Upload to add items to your Facebook catalog
- How to use the Facebook Pixel to add items to your Facebook Catalog
- How to add items to your Catalog manually
- Required fields for product catalogs
We have a separate beginner guide about Facebook Catalog where we cover everything not closely related to setting up the Facebook catalog like why it is important to create the Facebook catalog, how to troubleshoot errors or warnings of Facebook catalog, how to delete items from your catalog, etc.
At the end of this guide, we are also going to answer some of the most frequently asked questions related to how to set up Facebook Product Catalogs.
How to set up a Facebook Product catalog?
Setting up the Facebook Catalog is a very simple process, the difficulty starts when you need to add the products or other items to the Facebook Catalog. But the catalog setup process is really easy, all you have to do is:
- Navigate to the Catalog Manager from your Facebook Business Manager, or click on this following link: https://business.facebook.com/products
2. You can see all of the Facebook Catalogs you have access to. Click on the ‘+Create Catalog’ button to create a new one.
3. First, select the type of Facebook Catalog you want to create. As explained in our beginner guide, there are four main types of Facebook Catalogs: eCommerce, Travel, Real Estate and Auto. As E-commerce is the most frequent type, we choose E-commerce and click on the ‘Next’ button.
4. Next, we have to configure our catalog settings. We have to choose if we want to connect to our eCommerce platform or upload the product info manually. If our website is run on a supported e-commerce platform (see the list in the next paragraph) choose that option, then click on ‘Upload Product Info’
5. If you selected ‘Ecommerce platform’ then choose the ‘ecommerce platform” then the Business Manager Account you want to own the Facebook catalog. If you selected ‘Upload Product Info’ then choose the Catalog Owner then add a name to the Product Catalog.
6. Make sure you selected the right options, then click on the ‘Create’ button.
Ecommerce platforms supported by Facebook for Product Catalogs
Currently, Facebook supports importing products directly from five ecommerce platform:
These e-commerce platforms provide more or less help in importing your products to Facebook and uploading them to Facebook catalogs. As these platforms are very different from each other, the process is different for each of these platforms.
You can learn more about the specific process of importing and uploading the products by clicking on the links above.
Three ways to add products to your Facebook Catalog
Besides adding products with your e-commerce platform or using the Facebook API, there are three manual ways how you can add products to your catalog:
- Add them manually
- Use Bulk Upload
- Use the Facebook Pixel
At the end of this article, we will show you step by step how to add products manually to your Facebook Catalog. But first, let us explain how all these methods work, what are the advantages and disadvantages you have to keep in mind when you decide to choose any of these upload methods.
Use Bulk Upload to add products to your Catalog
When you have a huge e-commerce site with thousands of products or your product attributes (like price) change often then one of the best options you have is to choose the ‘Bulk Upload’ option.
When you select this upload method, you have to create a data feed that can have three types of formats:
- You can either upload a file in the following format: CSV, TSV, RSS or ATOM XML
- You can select the Schedule feed option when you can create a data feed and add it to your website that updates the product data once per day
- You can also choose Google Sheets that you can use
This upload method can be used for any type of product catalogs: Products, Flights, Hotels, Destinations, Vehicles, Home Listings.
Use Facebook Pixel to upload products to Facebook Catalog
If for some reason, you can’t implement the Bulk Upload method, you can also try to implement the product upload with Facebook Pixel as this solution also works for websites with huge product sets and where the prices and other product attributes change frequently.
For the Facebook Pixel upload method to work, you need to have the following things completed:
- Have a Facebook Pixel installed on your website
- Have the required metadata tags installed on the product pages that you want to upload to the Facebook Catalog. (Check out this official FB article for more info)
One of the disadvantages of this method that it only works with e-commerce products. (so it can’t be used with flight, hotels, destinations Facebook catalogs).
Add items to your Facebook Catalog manually
The third option you have is to add items to your Facebook catalog manually. This is the simplest option as you don’t need any tools or complex technical setup as you have to manually add each product attributes to be able to create an item in the Facebook Product Catalog.
This product upload method is obviously recommended when you are running a very small e-commerce website and you only have a couple of products in your webshop. This upload method works for Products, Flights, Hotels, Destinations, Vehicles Facebook catalogs.
As this is a beginner guide, we will show how you can use the manual way to add products to your Facebook Catalog.
How to add items manually to your Facebook Catalog?
- If you have just created your new Facebook Catalog, click on ‘View Catalog’. Or you can just go to the https://business.facebook.com/products link and click on the catalog where you want to add the products
- In the Catalog sidebar, click on Data Sources on the left
3. Next, click on ‘Add products’ then choose the ‘Add Manually’ Upload option and click ‘Next’
4. Here you will be able to add all the necessary product attributes of one item in your catalog
5. First, upload at least one product image, then add a product name, a product description, a content ID (optional, but recommended), a website link of the product, a price and a currency.
6. Once you filled all the field, you can finalize it by clicking on the ‘Add Product’ button
For some more explanation, check out this video tutorial on Facebook product catalogs as well:
Supported fields you can add to your Facebook Catalog
Before we would wrap up one more thing we would like to add. When you are setting up a data feed, if you chose the Bulk Upload method it is important to know what fields Facebook will accept in the catalog and what fields are required to add.
Currently, e-commerce advertisers the list of required fields are the following:
- id
- title
- description
- availability
- condition
- price
- Link
- image_link
- brand, mpn or gtin (include at least one)
There are many optional fields and there are different requirements based on the type of your catalog. You can get more information about this by checking out this link.
Frequently Asked Questions – How to set up a Facebook Product Catalog?
How can you add items to a Facebook Product Catalog?
There are three ways how you can add items to a Facebook Product Catalog: You can use the Facebook Pixel if you have also set up Microdata tags on your product pages, you can create a data feed that will bulk upload and update the items on a regular basis, or the simplest option you have is to upload the product manually by adding all products attribute one by one.
What kind of Facebook catalogs can you create?
There are four types of Facebook catalogs that are a little bit different from each other: E-commerce Travel, Real Estate and Auto.
Can you retarget people who checked products in your Facebook Catalog?
Yes, if you have set up On-Facebook Listings Custom Audience, you can retarget people who viewed products in your catalog or messaged you about one of the products via your catalog.
