How to Market Your Local Business on Facebook

First off, I just want to say that I am not an expert at Facebook and don’t want to induce you to go spend all your marketing budget on Facebook Ads.  This is also a beginners guide to local advertising on Facebook.  I do however think that it is a great way to drive local people to your local business.  Facebook is nearing 600 Million people that have joined their site.  If you aren’t looking at Facebook as a major source of potential traffic then you are missing out on millions of people that could be making your money.  Last year Facebook passed Google as the biggest traffic source in the US.  They now dominate them by over 15 Million people a month as you can see by the image below by Compete.  They are getting huge numbers.  So what’s so great about this?  Facebook has mad an advertising platform where you can target only local people.  They target people down to your local city.  You can target and only pay for a couple hundred people.  You can target them by their interests, hobbies, likes.  Pretty much anything.

Facebook vs Google Website Visitors Jan 2011

How can my local business make money through Facebook?

How much money are you spending on local mailers?  How much on putting ads in your local Yellow Pages or Newspaper.  Think if you could only target people in your local area how much that could help you.  You can do that with Facebook Ads.  Keep in mind that $.34 is the lowest that Facebook will ever take on a CPC campaign, if you are doing local stuff it’s going to be a bit more.  I would say around $.76 per click in the US.  Driving targeted people to your business can help you to get more people buying your product, you’ll get more sales, and people will know all about your business.  Facebook is great for targeting local people!

Steps to setting up my local business on Facebook:

First thing you will need is a Facebook account.  To do this you will need to go to Facebook and set one up.  Once you have set that up you will go to the bottom of the page where you will click on advertising or the following link. Click on Create an Ad.

Create a Facebook Ad

Next you will begin to set up your Facebook ad.  It’s very important when you select the text that you follow the Facebook Guidelines.  Make sure that you test the content that you are putting in there.  If you are trying to drive people to your local car dealership, you don’t want to put information that doesn’t relate to you.  Put information that people will be excited about and cause them to click.
Tips for a better conversion her would be to ask a question.  You will see a 40% increase in conversion if you do this.  Also, the picture that you use is very important.  Sex Sells, we all know it.  Using a sexy picture of a female will always convert better than a male.  Add boobs to the equation and you will get even more.  In a study by Jeremy Shoemaker “Shoemoney” he found that people are 70% more likely to click on a picture with very attractive woman showing boobs than a man.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you should have a woman with everything hanging out on your ad but remember that sex sells.  you will have to weigh this with what kind of an image your local business wants to have online.  Sometimes it’s not worth it.
Do not run multiple versions of the same ad at the same time to see which one is converting the best.  Run one of the local advertising long enough to get some data.  Then run the other ones.  Then figure out which one of the two or three converts best and then switch the ad to the one that wins.  I’m guessing that the same person that clicks on one of your ads will click on another ad and that’s not what we want.  Facebook tells us that people that click on whatever ad won’t be shown the same ad again but I have proved that wrong over and over again.

Local Advertising Targeting Options on Facebook

Now that you have put your ad together for your local business you will need to target  your future customers.  With Facebook, local advertising is made very easy.  You can select where you would like to show the ad.  You can even specifically target only local people in your small city of 200 people. You can target people by:

• Location – the city, state, province, or country that they live in
• Demographics – by age range, gender or a specific language that they speak
• Likes and interests – What are your customers’ hobbies or passions? Unlike search advertising where you target the words people search for, on Facebook you can target people by their interests. For example, if you sell cameras, you could specify that you want your ad displayed to people interested in photography.
• Education and work – you can direct your campaign to students in a specific college or people with a particular level of education.

Do you even know who to target for your ad?  A great way to find out more about yourself is to go to Quantcast and figure it out.. This is the quick and easiest way to figure out what demographic will be your best bet.  Knowing this can save you tons of time and money.  Using Quantcast you’ll see an index number next to each website stat. The index number is comparing it with other websites on the internet. Anything over 100 is above average for that demographic, under 100 is below average.  Another valuable resource is Google AdPlanner although it’s very complicated and will take a while to learn.
All of these targeting preferences will take down a counter on the right hand side of your screen.  It will tell you exactly how many people will see your ads.  For the best impact you should target your local ad to a small, focused audience.  Make sure that the ad is targeted to a large enough group that you can actually see results.
Choosing how much you pay is the next task.  I always recommend for local guys that you should ALWAYS start with PPC. Test your ad out and make sure it’s converting.  They also offer CPM marketing.  Facebook is trying to maximize revenue so you need to be careful of CPM marketing. If Facebook can get an advertiser to promise to pay a set dollar amount regardless of clicks for 1000 impressions, they reduce the majority of their own risk. What does this mean for you?  It means that if you have a good ad that is converting well,  you should consider switching to CPM advertising.
Setting a daily budget next.  Don’t overdue it, but don’t spend so little that you never give yourself time to get results. Local marketing on Facebook takes time and patience.  I would start off with $10-$20 a day.  That should give you around 15-20 clicks a day.  Facebook with give you what they think should be your max bid for a click.  I usually take what they give me.  Keep in mind, they won’t go below $.34 per click for anything, that’s like their break even.

Tips to making your Local Facebook Ads work

Don’t drive people to your main page of your website, it’s tacky and won’t convert near what even a crappy landing page would convert.  Design a landing page that has a specific action on the page.  If you want someone to fill out a form, have that be the only thing on the page for the to actually do.  I see so many landing pages with so much clutter and links to other things.  Drive people to a landing page with only a form.  Take off all the social media clutter, get rid of it.  Have all the links you want on the “Thanks You” page, but don’t have it on the landing page.  Have your landing page match your copy and picture on your Facebook ad.  This will cause people to recognize what they are looking at and lower a barrier between you and your goal!
Local ads get approved fast, almost all local ads will be instantly approved with Facebook.  This is a really good things because if you are doing a national or world ad it can take a day or two to get approved.  Stick to local and you’ll get ads approved fast.
Change ads every couple weeks.  This will help revamp your CTR (click through ratio) which will help people come to your website.  No one like staring at the same ad for months and months at a time.  They like to see new things, you never know if you change something up if it will spark new interest.  Try adding boarders, putting in new content, and new images.  This will help improve CTR over the long run
Don’t read into the numbers too fast, give yourself some data to work with.  If an ad isn’t converting, change things up a little bit until you find something that works well and gets you the results you want.  Local advertising will take time to figure out.  Facebook is a great place to find local people that are interested in your business.  They just may not know it yet!

If You Like This. Please! Drop a Comment And Share This...