5 Best Ways to Use Facebook Ads for a Local Business

Written by Brant Bell@codeimprov9 years ago

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It’s no secret that Facebook has increasingly become a pay to play arena for businesses. Much has been made over just how far organic reach has plummeted the past couple years as more businesses crowd the platform and compete for consumer’s attention. Facebook’s own advertising options offer a suitable and cost effective (if optimized properly) solution.

Let’s take a look at 5 of the best ways to utilize Facebook Ads for a local business by delving into the opportunities available to us. Whether you’re just starting out with Facebook Ads Manager for ad creation or you’re taking advantage of the more advanced Facebook Power Editor, this list will cross over for both sets of users.

1. Targeting, Targeting, Targeting

If you don’t know or understand your audience how can you target them? Simple answer: you can’t.

It’s best to optimize your targeting based on what matters most to you and your business. This can include targeting based on location, demographics, interests, behaviors and/or combinations of all the above.

Local businesses can narrow their ads to run to an audience within a one-mile (and in increments up to 50 miles) radius of their exact address. Talk about powerful! Jon Loomer is a Facebook ad guru and recently wrote a post about location targeting in more detail.

The good news is once your targeting is in place you can save each “audience” you create for future ads. Depending on your business, targeting an audience close to you will be more beneficial than going as widespread as possible. For example, if you’re a pizza shop with one location in Dublin, Ohio it doesn’t make sense to advertise to another state because a potential ROI is almost non-existent.

2. Run a “Likes” Campaign

This is typically a good first step to take if you’re a new business or new to FB ads. Why is this exactly? You can’t overcomplicate things during the setup. You’re restricted to one image and a small amount of characters to use for the description.

The message and image are your only two concerns with a likes campaign. Since likes are considered a vanity metric it helps provide instant satisfaction when you can watch your Facebook fan numbers grow. You also can’t spread your business’s reach or gain engagement on your page without fans and people liking your page.

3. Use Native Video to Attract Attention

Posting native videos on Facebook needs to be a must for current advertising agendas. I stress native because you have to upload your video to Facebook itself to enable it to play within the newsfeed as opposed to linking to another platform (YouTube, Vimeo) or website – which Facebook frowns upon.

Video ads are being given a high priority on the FB newsfeed in order to better compete with the likes of YouTube. Keep videos as relevant and brief as possible while still ensuring you get your message across.

Think of :30 second commercials and brief attention spans and your own audience’s viewing habits when creating your video ad. This Social Media Examiner’s post highlights different ways to make Facebook videos even more effective.

4. Create and Promote an Upcoming Event

If your business hosts gatherings, meetings, seminars, conferences, celebrations, grand openings, etc. Facebook will let you advertise and promote these events.

Events on Facebook are easy to setup and if you target to your fans (highly recommended) you strengthen your chances of having the biggest proponents of your brand show up to partake in the festivities.

Local business’s events are breeding grounds for generating strong word-of-mouth and spreading brand awareness. Offering prizes, raffles, coupons and/or gift cards might bring in more casual fans, but be sure to use in moderation to avoid coming off as overly gimmicky.

5. Use the Multi-Image Ad Display to Stand Out

This is a type of ad that is highly effective and seldom seen in the newsfeed. Instead of looking like other ads that display one main image (which mirrors everything else in the newsfeed) these ads can get broken down into as many as 5(!) images that appear as a horizontal slider underneath the main text.

Facebook has a great page dedicated to this relatively new ad format. You can create different headlines and short descriptions for each image as well as link to different pages on your website if you choose. These are things you can’t do under any other Facebook ad format.

For businesses with multiple service offerings or products this ad’s potential is a huge benefit. Instead of relying on one main image to promote your local business you can have as many as 5 AND send them to different pages on any website/s you want.

Facebook advertising is growing with new features being unveiled on a near constant basis. It can make for an overwhelming learning curve if you’re a local business, but the good news is you can spend as little as $5-10 per day to get a better indication of what works and doesn’t work for your purposes.

Have you had success running Facebook ads for your business?

With an already strong background in web development & graphic design, Brant started Code Improv because he found a true passion for helping businesses better utilize social media to meet their goals. Whether it's creating a content strategy plan from scratch or refocusing an already existing one, he loves the thrill of helping a client achieve the success they deserve.