Do you ever wonder if your Facebook ads are reaching the right people? You spend so much time researching your customers and trying to craft just the right message for your advertisements. With the aim that business will soon be booming, you finally start a campaign, then hope for the best. “Maybe I’ll get some likes,” you think to yourself. You assume that the ad will drive the right visitors to your business; maybe they will even buy your products. Unfortunately, in spite of all the in-depth analytic tools that Facebook has given us over the years, it has been difficult to evaluate whether or not your ads were actually delivering those desired results. However, all of that is about to change.
Introducing the new Local Insights tool. The task of targeting your ideal customer just became so much easier. Here’s why:
New Ways to Research
Brick-and-mortar businesses can really benefit from Facebook Local Insights. This new ad feature is a small business owner’s dream. Based on the preferences and public data pulled from its users, Facebook can now identify key characteristics of the average person who walks past your business. What does this mean? Imagine you’re a restaurant owner who wants to attract more customers during the dinner rush. With Local Insights, you have the ability to pull up the data on people walking within a block of your restaurant between 5pm and 7pm to see if there are any demographic trends. You may find that the attributes of the people in your area are different than you expected. Based on this information, you can adjust your campaigns to better suit your potential customers. Using these invaluable research capabilities, you can attract new business that you would have otherwise missed.
Custom Ads
The new Local Insights tool has a whole set of features to make the social media marketing process as efficient as possible for local businesses. One of our favorites is the local awareness ads that can be generated to utilize the metrics you need to determine if a potential customer is a good fit. Automatically, Facebook sorts through its users, finds your ideal target customers, and caters just the right ad for them…based on their location. For example, if you have a storefront in Boulder and another one in Denver, you can now create the same ad for both, but include some dynamic text that changes according to the store location that’s closest to your customers. Let’s say someone from Denver sees an ad for your business – Facebook can now automatically place the ad that directs people to your Denver location, rather than for your Boulder location. One thing to note – this advertising works in real time, and can serve the right ad based off of where an individual’s physical location is at any given time. This method of streamlining is a game changer. You no longer need to create the same ad multiple times. Facebook will look at the market segment you’re after, and adjust the content to fit the preferences of that demographic.
Analyzing Effectiveness
The last Local Insights feature that you should know about is the ability to evaluate your ad’s performance in real time. Using the restaurant example again, let’s assume that you have just launched a Facebook ad that’s targeted to 30 – 40 year old females with an interest in Italian food. In the past, you would only have been able to see data on who was viewing your ad and its overall performance. To most of us, however, that’s not the most important piece of data. What we want to know is what percentage of the people viewing our ads actually come near our businesses. That’s where this new tool really shines. In real time, Local Insights delivers your analytics based on the percentage of people nearby who have seen your ad. This is great for identifying whether or not your efforts are effectively bringing the right people into the area around your business. You’ll now actually be able to see how many individuals have been exposed to your advertising who are also physically nearby, which is a phenomenal new feature, to say the least.
Overall, Facebook’s Local Insights tool is going to help marketers and businesses take their efforts to the next level. The key to a great campaign is to use the data to your advantage. Advanced targeting, paired with revolutionary evaluation tools make this new offering something that all of us can really appreciate. Whether you own multiple store locations or are just looking for a way to penetrate a new demographic, we highly recommend the Local Insights suite. Contact a member of our team today to learn more about putting Facebook Local Insights to work for your business.