In the process of providing social media services to a number of local businesses, I have found one strategy that works brilliantly – Facebook Advertising.
While social media marketing generally takes time to produce results, and does so slowly at best, Facebook’s local business advertising options can give you instant results.
Facebook ads can help create awareness, generate leads, boost your blog’s reach and readership and more. In a competitive social media landscape, Facebook ads can help your local business get off the ground, and boost its sales and profits.
Here are 6 reasons why your local business can’t ignore Facebook advertising.
Organic reach on Facebook has hit rock bottom
According to FastCompany, customer engagement rates on Facebook have declined to the point where only paid promoted posts can create meaningful results.
In fact, top brands on Facebook and Twitter are reaching only 2% of their fans, and only 0.07% of followers actually interact with each post. Even worse, the larger your fan base, the lower your reach.
(Image source: https://www.socialbakers.com/edgerankchecker/blog/2014/04/providing-stats-metrics-to-the-eat24-facebook-discussion/)
The only way that businesses on Facebook can get any traction, in terms of building a fan base and boosting the reach of their posts, is through Facebook’s advertising options.
Some might argue that decreasing organic reach is a deliberate move by Facebook to encourage advertisers, and as a public company, one understands their need to focus on profits.
However, this has resulted in a rather gloomy outlook for businesses that have adopted Facebook as one of their primary customer outreach channels. In this scenario, the only option for them is to use Facebook ads to boost their post reach and grow their fan base.
Facebook is wooing local businesses with new products
With the demise of Google+, and the fact that the Google Places API has stopped delivering Google+ Local page URLs, local businesses have started to look to Facebook as the hub of their local business presence.
In fact, Facebook is currently wooing local businesses big time. Here are a few of their offerings for local businesses:
- Local Pages
- Local Awareness ads
- Facebook Events
- Facebook Place Tips
- Facebook Professional Services (a local business directory inside Facebook)
As Nick Steeves notes, “to drive in-store sales with online ads, you need to be able to both target the right people in your local area, and reach them somewhere that they’ll see it. The one website that allows you to do both of these things is Facebook.”
Facebook ads are easy for even beginners to setup
While setting up an ad campaign on Google Adwords is a complicated and, often overwhelming, process, the advantage of using Facebook ads is that they don’t require any special training to setup.
Unless you’re using the Power Editor, Facebook advertising is so simple and intuitive that even a beginner can easily setup and run ads for their business.
There’s no fear of exceeding your advertising budget, either. You can set it so your ad stops showing, when it’s reached the limit you’ve decided – and choose to increase your budget in increments, should you wish to continue your campaign.
Facebook’s targeting prowess is unmatched
According to Alfredo Ramos, on average, online ads can target users with an accuracy of about 50%. But Facebook gives you an unmatched targeting accuracy closer to 90%.
This is because of its ability to use interest-based data and social connections to target ads to the right users. This also results in immense cost savings. In fact, a report by eMarketer graded Facebook ads the highest for ROI.
Facebook’s Custom Audience targeting option also allows you to target people whose email address or phone number you have collected. For local businesses that offer loyalty programs, this is an opportunity to stay front and center in your customer’s newsfeed, and to advertise your latest deals and offers to those who have already expressed an interest in your products or services.
If you track visits to your local business website, you can also use Facebook’s Retargeting option to target your website visitors when they’re browsing Facebook. You can also use Facebook ads to promote an event that you’re hosting for local customers.
Facebook’s Local Awareness Ads are very cost effective
Facebook’s Local Awareness ads allow you advertise cheaply by hyper-targeting people in a certain radius around your business.
Although their targeting options are limited to age and gender, Local Awareness ads work out to be much cheaper than promoted posts or page like ads, because you’re paying for impressions and are only targeting people close to your business address.
However, the CPM model can also be a disadvantage, in the sense that it can lead to irrelevant impressions for businesses in a very niche market.
Despite their limitations, Local Awareness Ads are perfect for businesses that depend on walk-in customers, such as restaurants, retail stores and hospitals, as well as professionals, like dentists, lawyers and accountants.
Other businesses that can benefit from Local Awareness ads are gymnasiums, yoga classes and dance classes. For that matter, any business that depends on customers who live within a certain radius can benefit from this advertising option.
Facebook ads are optimized for mobile visitors
Unlike banner ads, which are not always mobile-friendly, and can easily be blocked using ad blocker apps, Facebook’s ads are optimized for the mobile user experience.
Local Awareness ads offer various Calls To Action buttons that mobile users can easily click on to perform an action. The “Send Message” Call-To-Action button lets your customers start private conversations directly from Newsfeed ads.
You can also use the “Get Directions” button to give your customers directions to your business location or the “Call Now” button to let them call you instantly from the newsfeed.
With all these benefits, there’s no way local business owners can ignore Facebook’s local advertising options, especially if they’re looking to social media to bring them new clients or customers.
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