Social media has become an integral touchpoint in the strategy of most businesses - offering a chance to engage with customers and clients on a personal level, to be seen getting involved in conversations around topics that matter, and to position marketing collateral right where potential new customers are looking for inspiration.

Facebook may be just one of a collection of available social platforms, but its ad campaign building tool is virtually unrivalled and offers an opportunity for global and local business success alike.

In this blog post, we’re taking you through the basics of Facebook ads and how to leverage them for local success.

Understanding Facebook Ads

Facebook ads invite businesses to build campaigns and share them among a targeted collection of users, using various filters to target users based on their location, age, demographic, or other details.

There are a series of different ad types available to businesses, with everything from carousel posts to videos, single images, and offer ads available. Choosing the right ad type will depend on the call to action that you want to advertise, and the audience that you want to attract - with Facebook Ads Manager designed to help make the process quick and easy.

This Ads Manager is a building tool which lets you select your audience, create a headline, upload the graphic, and attach a CTA - connecting each ad with a backend insight page that lets you track and monitor its performance.

But of course, to monitor performance, you first need to know what it is you want to achieve.

Setting Clear Marketing Objectives

Before you start building Facebook ads, you need to identify your end goal.

Some businesses want to increase traffic to their website, letting their landing pages do the rest of the heavy lifting in terms of conversion.

Some want to directly boost online sales, while others want to encourage potential customers to join a mailing list.

And then we have the local businesses that might want to drive physical foot traffic to a location or boost visibility and knowledge of an upcoming local event. Let’s take a closer look at this particular style of ad and how small businesses can use Facebook to boost local visibility.

Targeting Your Local Audience

Think back to a decade or so ago, when businesses might create a Facebook event and hope that it makes the rounds among the local community. We’ve all heard horror stories about Facebook house parties going viral and trashing houses - so how can we learn from this and use targeted ads to entice the genuinely interested customers as opposed to time wasters?

It all comes down to Facebook’s targeting tools, which allow businesses to create ad campaigns that use location and geo-targeting as part of the audience filter. With options which include a nearby radius, showing the ad to those whose devices are in the local area, and an option to filter by interest and affinity to a local area, businesses can get their ads in front of those who are in a physical location and those who are searching for other attractions in that area.

Make no mistake, this is perhaps the most important part of building a Facebook ad as a local business. Why? Because no matter how good the copy and design, if you are a local business, you will not draw custom from a global or even a national audience. Location and targeting is crucial to success.

Crafting Compelling Ad Content

Now that we’ve covered the importance of filters and targeting the right audience as a local business, what exactly should your ad say and look like?

First thing’s first, the visual should be clear and concise.

The copy needs to be relevant and localised, and designed to attract your chosen audience in that area. It could be tourists, or it could be locals. Either way, copy needs to consider the target audience’s motivation and speak to a need that they have.

Budgeting and Scheduling

Once you’re happy with your ad’s copy and design, it’s time to set a budget and release schedule.

This is the stage where you need to be realistic, acknowledging how the budget works against Facebook ads and what your competition is like from the local market. The budget that you assign to your ad is dependent on whether you want it to run on a daily rate or for a specific period.

Using research into the best time to schedule and release ads for your audience, set the start and end time for your ad and then assign the level of budget you need to reach your goal. Entering different amounts will present different levels of reach, giving you some insight into what is possible with your ad.

Measuring and Analysing Performance

Facebook Ads and the Ad Manager tool aren’t just good for creating and sharing ads - they are also beneficial in measuring performance and analysing the success of an ad in terms of its reach and conversion.

With each campaign assigned a direct goal, analytics tools enable you to track success over time and measure the spread of your ads - determining which types of ad work best for the local audience and which CTAs they are most engaged with.

Using this data and performance insight, you can tweak your strategy and create ads which get better every time.

For more insight into the power of Facebook ads, and for support in developing and delivering a strategy for long term success in your local market, the Social Loop team are here to help.

Get in touch with us to book a discovery call and to learn more about our social media marketing services.