New Ways for Businesses to Get Discovered and Connect with Customers This Holiday Season

With the holiday season upon us, we’re announcing new products, like audio and video calling in Business Inbox in Messenger, Live Audio Rooms and expanded access to appointment bookings that can help reach customers online and help good ideas be discovered.

Announcing Video and Audio Calling on Messenger

People’s preferences for how they want to talk with companies are evolving. To provide small businesses with a convenient way to communicate with customers in a private setting and enjoy the benefits of phone, video calling, and messaging all in one app, we’re testing business audio and video calling with select small and medium businesses using Business Inbox in Messenger. This feature allows them to seamlessly connect and transact with their customers using audio and video communications right from the platform.

Bringing Live Audio Rooms to Small Businesses

Today, we’re expanding the ability to create Live Audio Rooms to select small businesses as part of our plans to bring social audio experiences to Facebook.

With Live Audio Rooms on Facebook, small businesses can host live conversations on topics relevant to their customers, and people can discover them across Facebook. Small businesses can invite friends, followers, creators or any listeners in the room to be a speaker. The host can invite speakers in advance or during the conversation.

We're excited to see how SMBs use Live Audio Rooms to connect with their community and support their business.

Supporting Small Business With Personalized Ads

Earlier this year, we introduced the Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found campaign; showing people how the personalized ads they see help them discover new things they love and support small businesses. Now, we're testing more ways to let people know they're supporting a small business when they engage with a personalized ad. Soon, people may see an informational message in their feed when they 'like' or 'love' an ad from a small business. The message explains how engaging with an ad from a small business can help the business continue to find new customers and grow.

72% of US small businesses who use personalized ads say it’s important to their success,¹ so we’ll continue to test more ways to highlight how personalized ads are an important way people discover small businesses on Facebook and Instagram and help small businesses grow from an idea into a livelihood.

Making Shopping Easier with WhatsApp Collections

People can now view a business’ products directly in its business profile, and we’re rolling out catalog collections to small businesses around the world. Collections allow businesses to organize items in their catalogs by category so customers no longer have to scroll through long lists of items to find what they’re looking for.

For example, a restaurant can create collections featuring appetizers, entrees and desserts, and a clothing store could add collections for men’s clothes, women’s clothes, shirts, pants and more. Once people choose what to buy, they can add it to their cart and send the order to the business.

Businesses interested in creating a collection can learn how here.