Finding customers local to your business is essential to making it a success. Without customers you cannot make a profit and stay in business. I will explore how to use Facebook ads to target local customers. I do this every day for a number of local service based businesses.
TL;DR
Target locals
Facebook Ads Manager is a powerful tool that will allow you to target residents and visitors to your local area. If you are not using Ads Manager and you are just boosting posts, stop and take the time to set up Ads Manager. It is worth it for the targeting tools alone.
Location – define your service area by setting a radius around your business location. You can choose the radius, so for example, if you are a food service delivering locally within an 8 mile radius, you can set this up.
Geotargeting – target specific cities or neighbourhoods within a city, for example a London borough. Geolocation uses location data from your ISP, IP address, GPS signals or device data.
Residential status – Facebook allows you to choose between people who live in the area (residents) and those who recently visited or are planning to travel to your area. This is useful if you are a hospitality venue and want to target people who are already planning to travel.
Targeting improves the relevance of the ad to the audience, increasing conversion.
Define your audience
This is a critical step in marketing that is often overlooked. Knowing who you serve and why they buy from you is the first step in a) knowing whether your business is viable and b) running successful ads.
Market research – talk to potential customers and existing customers to find out more about them. Why do they buy from you? For a local takeaway this could be convenience. For a health clinic, this could be trust or the ability to heal a specific health complaint.
Demographics – go beyond the basic demographics of location, age, gender, marital status, financial status, etc.
Facebook audience insights – brings insight into behaviours and interests. Facebook knows a lot about their audience and it is worth tapping into that knowledge. It can tell you where they shop, what they read, who they follow.
Customer personas – creating customer personas is one way to bring your customer to mind when you are creating content and copy for ads. You can ‘talk’ to them in a way that you know they will appreciate and address their concerns and desires.
Combine targeting options – once you have a refined audience you can start to pinpoint the people who are potential customers with all the information you have gathered. Test defined interest based audience with broad Advantage+ audiences to see which performs the best.
A vague idea of a broad audience will not help your messaging. A defined audience will improve your conversion rate.
Localise your ad content
Position your brand in your local area by using localised content.
Local area – include local references in your content that your potential customers will recognise. This can be local landmarks, buildings, parks, structures, art, trees, markets, etc.
Local services – remember to include information about your delivery area or your service area. This provides the opportunity to mention local locations in your copy that are familiar to potential customers.
Optimise your ad copy
Using your customer personas you can address potential customer pain points and desires. Remember to include a call to action. What do you want the person to do next? You might want them to visit the store, call the office, order online, request a quote, etc. Make it clear and easy to take action.
Choose the right campaign format
Facebook has a plethora of campaign types to choose from. They target people that they know will take the action that is chosen.
So, if you want in-store visits, choose a store location objective. If you want to build brand recognition, choose brand awareness. If you want engagement, choose engagement. If you want website visitors, choose traffic. If you want conversions, choose conversions.
There are multiple ways to combine campaign types and campaign objectives and conversion locations to achieve the objective that you are looking for and drive down ad costs.
Choose effective ad formats
Experiment with different ad formats including image ads, video ads, carousels. Different ad formats work best with different campaign types.
More importantly, find out what resonates with your local audience and encourages them to interact with the ads. And don’t forget your brand personality.
Engage with your potential customers using Messenger and chatbots.
Use Facebook’s tracking
Running ads without measuring their effectiveness is throwing money away.
Facebook pixel – install the Facebook pixel and the conversions API (cAPI) to accurately track the visitor from Facebook when they are on your website.
Lookalike audiences – once you have some audience data available, you can target people who are similar to your existing customers.
Monitor and review ads
Facebook ads need regular review. They are not a set it and forget it advertising option.
Regularly review the ads performance and frequency, adjust targeting, refresh content, and scale budgets, as needed. Use A/B testing to identify which ads attract more customers. Monitor the click-through-rate and conversion rates of different ads.
Using Facebook ads to target local customers
As you can see, there is a lot involved in targeting local customers with Facebook ads. Done badly, they can cost you a lot of money with little result. Done right, they can be instrumental in your business growth.
Use geographical targeting to reach the people who are local to your business. This makes your ads more relevant and more likely to convert.
Put your customer first. Find out everything you can about them through market research and customer surveys. Use this knowledge to fine tune your messaging and answer their pain points or appeal to their desires.
Choose the right mix of campaign types and conversion objectives to optimise your campaigns. Experiment and test ad formats and copy styles to make the ads engaging.
Measure ad effectiveness using Facebook’s conversion API and pixel. This will help you to track your visitors from Facebook on your website.
If you need help with Facebook ads, let’s talk.
