Whether the goal is increasing visitors to your brick and mortar business, receiving more phone calls or generating more leads on your website, chances are your business is constantly looking for innovative ways to create more traffic. While there are unlimited methods for gaining your customers’ attention – from putting on costumes and dancing outside your storefront to flying banners behind jets – only a few are truly effective in developing quality interest that will lead to eventual sales.

Facebook advertising is one of those tried and true tactics. All you need to utilize Facebook’s enormous advertising platform is a Facebook page (which we hope you already have and are using to its fullest potential) and a Facebook ad account. If you don’t already have an ad account, you can set one up using this easy step by step process.

Once you have the basic set up, these simple steps can help your local business reach its customers:

Use Specific Targeting to Reach Your Desired Customers

While many promotional efforts wait for the customer’s attention, Facebook’s ads put your information directly in front of your target audience – making it a fast, easy and cost-effective to promote your business to users that are likely to purchase from your business.

Do you know the demographic makeup of your key customers? Most small businesses owners do. Maybe the majority of your customers are middle-class mothers that work part-time or young couples that recently purchased their first homes. Whatever the case may be, Facebook makes it easy to target a specific audience. By using its targeting tools, you can set up the exact demographics of your user base, ensuring that only the customers that are actually interested in your products/services are seeing your ad.

If you’re a physical store, try setting up a targeting parameter based on geography. Facebook allows you to target users within a radius from an exact point on a map. Start with the address of your business, and build a radius you think is appropriate from there. That way you’re only targeting visitors that have the means to visit your shop, and users from the other side of the country. If your focus is more online, try placing a Facebook pixel on your business’s website. Facebook provides an easy step-by-step process for doing this. Once the pixel is in place, you can create ads that target your website’s recent visitors, reminding them to revisit pages or complete a purchase.

Designate Calls-To-Action

Calls to Action (CTA) are one of the most important components of any ad. On Facebook, the CTA dictates the user’s next step, whether it’s contacting your business, visiting your website or purchasing your product. When setting up your Facebook ad, be sure to create a CTA that is most in line with your business objectives. Here are some examples:

• If you’re a restaurant that wants to increase carry-out orders, create a “Call Now” or “Order Now” call to action for mobile ads.
• If you’re a brick and mortar store that is trying to increase its exposure, set up a “Get Directions” CTA that shows users how to drive or walk to your shop.
• If you operate an online store and want to increase sales, use a “Shop Now” CTA that takes users directly to your products.

These are just a few options to consider. Facebook offers 15 different CTA buttons for its traffic based ad formats.

Create Facebook Offers to Encourage Sales

In the same way a sale or promotion helps generate more business, a Facebook Offer creates buzz around your product or store. Facebook Offers are discounts you can share with your customers to encourage them shop on your website, at your physical store, or both. You can advertise these offers and target them to a specific audience using Facebook ads.

In Facebook Ads Manager, you will have the option to turn offers, which will then prompt you to set up the conditions of the promotion, including its timeframe, the number of promotions available from redemption, and the title and details associated with the offer.

Offers are easily accessible on mobile, so customers have the offer with them no matter where they are. Users who claim an offer will be notified when the deal is about to expire, so they will be reminded to visit your store/website.

Use Ad Formats that Fit with Your Objectives

You can choose from a variety of ad formats – including image, video and carousel – when setting up a Facebook ad. Your campaign objective may impact the format needed for your ad.

For example, a store locator widget is available for the carousel ad format, which builds your contact information and openings hours directly into the creative of the ad. If you’re wanting to increase store visits, this may be the perfect ad format for you.

Promote Your Ads on Instagram

Facebook and Instagram play well together – largely because Facebook owns Instagram. If it meets specific criteria, your ad may be eligible to promote on Instagram as well as Facebook – even if you don’t have an Instagram account for your business. Instagram is one of the fastest growing social networks, with over 800 million active daily users. Promoting your business to its users, in addition to Facebook’s users, could greatly increase the scope of your advertising efforts, with little to no additional work from you.

Select “automatic placements” when setting up the targeting parameters of your ad. This will give Facebook permission to place your ad where it feels it will perform best – which may include Instagram. If your ad is eligible for Instagram, more options to define how the ad will be displayed on the social network may be available as you select the creatives/visuals of your ad.

These are just some of the methods your business can use to effectively reach more customers using Facebook advertising. We’re happy to discuss more options that are tailored to your needs at any time. Feel free to contact us, we’re always willing to chat!