Guest Post by Claire Grayston, Digital Content Marketer at Wishpond
Think that just because you run an offline business that you can forget about digital marketing?
Think again.
Yes, you can communicate with potential and current customers face-to-face, but your marketing efforts should not end when they step out your front door.
Billboards, print ads, TV and radio commercials are all great ways to spread awareness and bring in new business, but ask most marketers and they will tell you that all of those platforms are all pretty ancient. Consider this fact: reaching 1,000 people with a newspaper ad is $32.00, a radio ad $8.00 and a Facebook Ad only 25 cents.
As a modern brick and mortar business, you need to be utilizing Facebook Advertising.
Facebook Advertising allows you to target your desired audience in your own geographic area. In addition, they also show the ad that you want to the people you want in the location you want.
What could be better?
Read on to learn how you can use Facebook Ads to promote and drive traffic to your brick and mortar business.
Facebook Ad Targeting
Facebook Advertising allows you to select exactly who you want your ad shown to. For example, your target customer might be a 40-60 year old woman in the Seattle area interested in becoming fitter and healthier. To reach her, you can target your Facebook Ads based on gender, age, location and interest to show your ad to the users who meet these exact specifications.
For a brick and mortar business, location targeting is the most important factor to consider when creating Facebook Ads. Showing a local business ad to Facebook users who don’t live or work in that particular geographic area is a waste of valuable marketing dollars.
As a local business, not using the Facebook Advertising location targeting is the equivalent of paying for a huge billboard ad above the freeway within your city. Anyone from outside of your target market who sees that billboard is taking your hard-earned cash with no chance of returning it. Facebook Advertising targeting maximizes your ad spend by ensuring you’re not wasting a dime of it on people unlikely to engage.
A sample of Facebook Ads for a local business in Vancouver can be seen below:
These Facebook Ads grab Vancouver residents’ attention, targeting them by mentioning their city name and the current weather. Using the relevant temperatures is something unique and currently relevant to all Facebook users in the city.
Using location-targeted copy (like the Vancouver ads above) is the perfect way to target local customers for your brick and mortar business with a promotion that is time-sensitive and relatable to all users.
In the Facebook Advertising Editor, make sure you set the geographic location to just your city (as seen below); this allows your Facebook Ad to only be shown in that specific area and makes sure you are not wasting money on people who aren’t in your local target audience.
Once you have fine-tuned your location, you can then craft your ad copy in a way that shows (and taps into) local pride and interests to grab your audience’s attention.
Never one to be happy with the status quo, Facebook actually created something better than basic location targeting.
Facebook Local Awareness Advertising now lets local businesses just like yours target users that are entering or already inside a certain geographic radius.
This means you can target potential customers when they enter your specific community.
So how exactly does this radius targeting work?
It all starts with your address. In the Facebook Advertising platform, choose “Local Awareness” as your objective. This option is available to businesses who have selected “Local Business or Place” when setting up their Facebook Page.
Enter your address and select the distance around your business in which you want your ad to be shown. You can start as small as one mile, with a range of up to 50 miles.
You can also exclude locations from targeting, such as certain ZIP codes, if you feel that it would be wasteful to include certain areas.
Next, you can choose how much you want to spend. When you select your budget, Facebook will tell you your estimated reach and how many people your ad is likely to reach in your area each day.
After that the setup is just like an ordinary Facebook Ad where you select your localized message and image to capture the attention of potential customers.
A cool new feature within the Facebook Advertising Manager is the ability to personalize the call-to-action (CTA) button on your ad. You can choose your CTA button to read “Get Directions,” so when an individual clicks your ad a map will appear on their device, giving them directions to the business from where they are as long (as long as they have their Facebook App’s location services turned on, as most people do automatically).
Depending on the distance you choose, your ad will appear on the mobile devices of consumers that enter that specific area. A perfect example of a Facebook Local Advertising Awareness ad can be seen below:
This particular ad is for a restaurant in Chicago’s Loop business district neighborhood that is advertising their post-work happy hour. By setting the distance to within 10 miles of the restaurant’s physical location, their ad will appear on the News Feed of users within that radius.
Something to consider:
This ad uses bright colors to grab the attention of users and a headline and text that show it’s a nearby restaurant with a promotion that’s relevant to those in the business district. The image conveys the message simply and is eye-catching, but I would recommend they also try testing an image of business professionals enjoying cocktails to see which ad converts better.
I would also be interested to see if the dollar value of the happy hour deal increases click-through more than the phrase “half-price cocktails and local beer on tap.”
Incorporating A/B testing into your ads is simple with Facebook Ads. There’s no reason not to test every idea you have and see which works best.
The same type of Facebook Local Awareness Ad could be done for a local deli over lunch time or a walk-in yoga studio having a week-long promotion.
Custom Audience Targeting
If you have an existing contact list of emails and phone numbers for your business, you should be using Facebook’s Custom Audience tool.
Targeting your Facebook Ad to existing contacts allows you to communicate with people who have already engaged with your brand and encourage them to do so again.
There are many different ways your local business can generate a list of email addresses.
A few ideas are:
Have a weekly or monthly email newsletter updating customers on new promotions or products
Create a loyalty program for frequent purchasers, capturing their personal information in return for special deals or discounts
Run a contest for visitors to your business, capturing their information in return for entry into a sweepstakes
You can import your email list from your own CRM tool. You can choose to upload a file, copy and paste your list, or import from your email deployment system.
The same can be done for your list of phone numbers and your ads tool will track down those individuals whose phone numbers you list.
Of course you can also create a lookalike audience, which is exactly what it sounds like. It lets Facebook select an audience for you of individuals matching your existing list.
If your current customers love your business, it’s likely that others, with the same demographic, geographic information and interests, will too. All you have to do is select your country and optimize for similarity, and Facebook will do the hard work for you.
Conclusion
Facebook Ads are the most efficient and cost-effective way to digitally drive traffic to your brick and mortar business. They give you the chance to micro-target potential and current customers and get them in the door by using an ad that is relevant to their specific needs.
You get to hand select what your ad will look like, who will see it, when they will see it and how much you want to spend. Start utilizing Facebook Ads today and see the effect they can have on your local business.
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