Samsung Ties-Up With Facebook To Digitise Retailers, Increase Sales

South Korean tech giant Samsung has partnered with Facebook to train brick-and-mortar stores in India with digital marketing techniques to help them grow their business digitally across social media platforms owned by Facebook.

With this programme, Samsung and Facebook plan to boost sales of offline retailers who are witnessing a massive slump in businesses as buyers are afraid to step out of their homes.

Moreover, there has been an increased usage of digital platforms as a result of the ongoing lockdown. This can help local businesses increase their digital presence while also increasing their sales.

Vertical head of technology, telecom, automotive and new business at Facebook India Prasanjeet Dutta Baruah said that the social media company is helping the businesses of retailers to adapt to the new normal.

As part of this initiative, they have already trained over 800 retailers, according to a report by the Economic Times. The tech duo has also aligned more training sessions in the coming weeks.

In these modules, retailers are being trained on how to sell products while building their digital presence across Facebook platforms including Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook is helping them create business pages and accounts on its platforms.

Mohandeep Singh, senior vice-president of mobile business at Samsung India, said that the partnership with Facebook is helping a large number of retail-partners go digital in a big way. “By leveraging Facebook training, our retail partners will be able to discover and target local consumers digitally,” Singh added.

He also noted that consumers will also benefit from the programme as they can now access product information and purchase smartphones through social media pages of local retailers. Local stores can now send e-catalogues of available Samsung phones through social media platforms.

Buyers can place their orders via WhatsApp by connecting to retailers on WhatsApp Business application. Retailers can also facilitate home delivery of smartphones to ensure that the customers don’t have to step out of their homes.

What’s There For Samsung And Facebook?

In the last two months, smartphone sales have hit a new low as most of the retail outlets were closed while the government restricted ecommerce to deliver only essentials. As a result, companies like Samsung have witnessed a major drop in their revenues. However, this partnership with Facebook can increase the sales of their smartphones as retailers will now be selling their products online as well.

For Facebook, digital advertising revenues are a major source of revenue. During the pandemic, deep-pocketed advertisers have already withdrawn their advertisement run, leading to a downfall in the revenues of the social media giant.

To overcome this revenue fall, Facebook recently launched the ‘Shop’ category, a platform to help businesses open their online stores on the social media platform and Instagram. Facebook is also planning to launch this platform on WhatsApp and Messenger as well to increase the increase through digital advertisements. So, this partnership with Samsung will clearly help retailers to sell smartphones online, but will also help Facebook to earn more revenues through advertising.