01 Nov How to Implement Local Awareness Ads on Facebook
Are you looking for a way to draw awareness to your many store locations? Do you want to use social media to drive customers in store to purchase? If so, Facebook offers a solution to your meet your needs – Local Awareness ads.
First things first, in order to create Local Awareness ads, you must have a Locations structure set up. Check out my recent blog post on this topic to get the scoop! Once you have location Pages set up, you’ll need to link them to Business Manager. The location Pages are not automatically claimed, so a Page admin will need to do so.
Now you’re ready to create Local Awareness ads!
Here is a rundown on everything you need to know when creating Local Awareness ads on Facebook.
User-friendly, efficient ad creation
Advertisers can create Local Awareness ads for some or all of their locations at once. You will set a single creative template for all of your locations! By default, all locations are selected and grouped by region. You can remove or add locations and set the radius around each store that you would like to target. You can also update the radius for all stores at once. The radius defaults to an audience of approximately 50,000 people per location. This is based on population density.
Dynamic creative featuring text tokens
The dynamic creative template allows the advertiser to create one ad that is customized for each audience near their stores. Facebook will serve ad creative featuring information specific to the nearest store location to a user. Text tokens within the copy of an ad pull in applicable business location information nearest to the person being served the ad. Check out the options in the image below:
Local awareness ads support single image, video, and carousel ad units.
For carousel ad units, you have the option of adding a map card anywhere in the carousel. The map card dynamically shows the location nearest the user as well as opening hours and distance from current location.
With Local Awareness ads you have the option of two different ad voices.
Main Page
The ads appear as though they come from the main brand Page. All activity and comments will be aggregated to a single post on that Page for moderation.
Local Pages
If you have published Pages for all of your business locations you may select Local Page voice. Moderation will be at the local Page level.
Exclusive Calls-to-Action
‘Get Directions’ and ‘Call Now’ buttons are exclusive to Local Awareness ads. As always, you also have the option of selecting ‘Learn More’, ‘Send Message’ and ‘Like Page’.
Standard and exclusive Facebook targeting
All standard Facebook targeting options are available: age, gender, interests, custom audiences. You can also limit your targeting to travelers (people who are in a location but do not live there), people recently in this location, or everyone.
Detailed geographic ads insights
You can pull insights on each location’s ads. This is the first sub-regional geographic ads reporting capabilities offered by Facebook. For other ad solutions, reporting is limited to the state or region level.
Mobile-centric ads
Local awareness ads require accurate location data so are they nearly always delivered to mobile. Facebook will only serve Local Awareness ads to desktop if they are certain of the location of that desktop computer. In 2016, 86% of total Facebook users are doing so from mobile so the reach of Local Awareness campaigns should be amplified by this feature. As always, make sure the objective of your campaign is in line with your target audience.
Ready to get started?
Local Awareness ads are an efficient way to target audiences near a company’s brick and mortar storefronts. Whether you’re an existing brand with 40 locations or a new concept trying to garner awareness, this ad solution could work for you. If you’re looking for more information, feel free to reach out anytime. We’re always here to help with your social media needs!
