Facebook Advertising: Here’s how local businesses can succeed as well

Facebook advertising is not only useful for online stores. Marketing via Facebook can help your local business if you know how to use the platform’s features right. That is because you can target Facebook users in your area that qualify as your target group.

Facebook is still the largest of all social networks and is used by almost all relevant age groups. In Germany alone, around 23 million people log onto it every day. That’s why there’s a good chance that you’ll find your target group there. Regardless if you run a restaurant, a service company, or a retail store. The first step to increasing your company’s visibility on Facebook is to set up your own Facebook business page.

Besides the main category “Company” you can choose other subcategories that describe your business. Information such as an address, phone number, and opening hours can be entered free of charge and the location can be marked on a map.

The second step is to launch your local campaign. Even with a limited financial investment, great results can be achieved. Due to the targeting, potential customers from the surrounding area can be reached with little loss of coverage.

Your marketing goal: “Store Traffic”

Facebook offers it’s business customers various marketing goals and makes suggestions on how to achieve them.

“Reach more customers close to your business” is the way to go for local small businesses that want to do just that. On the one hand, you’ll be alerted to useful features that you can use to optimize your Facebook page, for example, buttons that your customers can use to book appointments or order food.

But there is also a special ad format for offers, so-called Offer Ads. These can be used, for example, to post discounts or coupons that can be saved on the smartphone and redeemed in the store.

Source: WordStream

The target group of the advertisement may be limited to the direct environment. Therefore, only those who are in your area and could be interested will see the advertisement. You can also use Facebook to inform your customers about changes in your offer due to Covid 19 rules.

How to create local ads on Facebook

There are many leads to the local ad – you can create it directly from your site or through the Ads Manager.

If you have the desired images or videos for the ad ready, it is a quick setup. This is how you create an ad for your local business with the ad manager: 

Go to “Create” and select “Store Traffic” as your marketing goal. 

Name your campaign.

Select the page of the store you want to promote.

In the next step you select or create a store set. Here you select the business you want to draw attention to. If you want to advertise several stores, this is also possible.

You define the area in which the ad will be played. You have the choice between the automatic radius and fixed radius.

With “Automatic radius”, Facebook calculates a radius based on the population density. With “Fixed radius”, you can define yourself what you think would be useful for your business. After all, you know your region best!

Facebook also gives you an estimate of how many people can be reached. However, no targeting is set here yet.

Now confirm your store set. If you save it for the future, you will have less work next time. Of course, you can always make changes to it.

Now you can specify the target group: If you don’t want to address everyone in your environment, you can narrow down the recipient group even more.

A men’s hairdresser will not want to advertise to women, for others, age or a certain interest is more likely to be the deciding factor. But you should not let the group become too small.

In the next steps you choose placement, budget and schedule.

You can choose between different ad formats: Carousel, a single image or video, and Collection. Then you can add text, images, videos, and other information.

Furthermore, you can add specific call-to-action buttons such as “Plan route”. The system accesses the stored location information. This way, your future customers will find their way.

With review, you can look at the ad again. If you confirm, it will be played out according to your specifications.

Local Facebook advertising pays off

Local ads have a high success rate because they can be played out specifically to potential customers: high effectiveness, but low cost. Digital and analog worlds are optimally linked here. However, ads in the region are not only good for attracting new customers to the store. You can easily keep your regular customers up to date and thus build customer loyalty. This is always useful, but even more so in pandemic times when the rules change frequently. 

Conclusion: Facebook advertising is profitable for local businesses, too. Many useful functions of the business account are also free of charge. However, it is important that the Facebook presence is regularly maintained and kept up to date. Outdated entries make Facebook users doubt that the business still exists. You can counteract this impression with regular postings. And there is always something interesting to report from your company, right?