Local Awareness Ads on Facebook Effectively Target Local Customers; Comes with “Get Directions” and “Like” Buttons

Facebook has just presented a new advertising scheme for small businesses called “Local Awareness” ads. It aims to help small business owners create ads that will reach local customers who are living nearby or visiting the community based on the business’ address. [See Figure 1]

Using this method, advertisers will be able to create ads that will target customers around the area “at the lowest possible cost.” [See Figure 2] Facebook determines the local audience for the created ads based on “a flexible radius around [the] business based on population density.” It also relies on the users’ current location in their profile, IP address, mobile data, as well as accumulated information about the location from the users’ friends.

Local Awareness ads include default features such as photos, messages, and Like buttons. Facebook has also added “Get Directions” buttons to help users find their way to a store. Advertisers can discard that option by selecting “No Button” in the “Call To Action” option. [See Figure 3]

Advertisers often experience difficulty reaching local customers. For instance, a newspaper ad is not always seen by its target audience. Aside from being costly, being visible in the traditional sense can hardly be considered practical anymore.

If a business has more than one location, separate Local Awareness ads must be created one at a time via the ads API to target local customers for each area. A Facebook page for each location must also be created because the site depends on the Page’s business address.

As for those who question the efficiency of Local Awareness ads, Gannett’s G/O Digital released a new study which revealed that 62% of customers research a product or service first via Facebook before making an in-store purchase. Additionally, offer ads are more efficient compared to promoted posts based on the majority of respondents.

Consequently, the figures suggest that small businesses should have an active Facebook presence to be effectively visible to target customers. To date, there are 30 million small businesses with an active Facebook page. The social network encourages these businesses to start promoting themselves as Facebook advertisers. Facebook says that Local Awareness ads are “the best way to reach people in [the] community and help them keep [the] business in mind while saving time and money, compared to traditional advertising.”

What do you think of Facebook’s new Local Awareness ads? Will it effectively boost the online presence of SMBs? Hit us up with a comment!

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