It’s been said that the three most important factors influencing the value of a property are location, location, and location. The same applies to brick-and-mortar businesses and their advertising, except now we can add a new factor: hyperlocation. It’s long been important to reach customers in the mobile space, but it can be difficult to make sure your advertisements are targeted at the right geography. Facebook just introduced a new type of ad objective that will let you target mobile users based on their phone’s geo-location abilities.
Get Started
To create one of these ads, you’ll need a business with a physical address and a Facebook page. When choosing your advertising objective, you’ll select “Local Awareness”.
The remainder of the process is similar to setting up a page post ad but the targeting is much more specific. Instead of selecting cities, states, zip codes, or entire countries you’ll just be selecting a radius around your physical location.
The remainder of the options are a more streamlined version of Facebook’s other ad types. For now, you can only narrow the audience by age and gender. But I think it’s safe to assume that they’ll likely expand that option set in the future. The ads will be presented in the news feed, and will include a headline, descriptive text, an image, and an optional call to action like “Get Directions” or “Like”.
Hyperlocal Targeting
According to Facebook’s Q2 2014 earnings reports, their mobile traffic has gone up 40% over the last year and shows no signs of receding. This new advertising option gives local business an opportunity to capitalize on those users, catering only to a select audience that is guaranteed to be very close to their store. If you position your ads properly, it should provide a boost from those who might not otherwise drop in.
