It’s Time to Take Facebook Seriously for Location Marketing. What’s your location marketing strategy for Facebook? For many businesses, the answers are, “I don’t have one,” and, “Whenever we can.” If you are one of those businesses, it’s time to take local presence on Facebook more seriously, because Facebook is taking some big steps to make itself a stronger platform for location marketing, especially on-demand commerce at a local level. Facebook also improved ad targeting at a local level by sharing (anonymous) insights about who is visiting local pages and responding to ads. In October, Facebook added more tools that will capitalize on its scale to make the social media platform an even stronger location marketing hub, especially for on-demand ecommerce. These include functions that enable ordering food, requesting appointments, getting quotes for services and getting tickets for movies and events. But as interesting as those social features are, the on-demand tools really jump out at me. The availability of local awareness ads should definitely get you thinking seriously of using Facebook more for paid media locally. Get your Facebook pages in order. The organization relies on local awareness ads to share customize content, such as online wait times, to people who live in each market.
What’s your location marketing strategy for Facebook? How often do you update your pages? For many businesses, the answers are, “I don’t have one,” and, “Whenever we can.”
If you are one of those businesses, it’s time to take local presence on Facebook more seriously, because Facebook is taking some big steps to make itself a stronger platform for location marketing, especially on-demand commerce at a local level. Even better, Facebook is giving you tools to succeed on the world’s largest social network. You have to start using them.
Like clockwork, Facebook has been signaling a very clear move toward local marketing year after year. Let’s take a look at two prominent examples:
A little more than two years ago, Facebook rolled out local awareness ads to help businesses create customized ads locally through Facebook.
One year later, Facebook upped the ante with two enhancements. First, Facebook made it easier for businesses with multiple locations to customize Facebook ad copy for different markets–a boon to any brand that needs to manage several local Facebook pages, whether you’re Nordstrom or Starbucks. Facebook also improved ad targeting at a local level by sharing (anonymous) insights about who is visiting local pages and responding to ads.
In October, Facebook added more tools that will capitalize on its scale to make the social media platform an even stronger location marketing hub, especially for on-demand ecommerce.
These include functions that enable ordering food, requesting appointments, getting quotes for services and getting tickets for movies and events. For instance, customers of businesses that require appointments, such as physicians and hair salons, can request times from the businesses’ Facebook pages and have their appointment confirmed via Messenger.
Meanwhile, you can order food from restaurants by clicking “Start Order” on a restaurant’s Facebook page (so long as the establishment uses Delivery.com or Slice to fulfill orders).
And one of my personal favorite on-demand tools is the ability to get movie tickets from the films’ Facebook pages thanks to a partnership between Facebook and Fandango.
Incidentally, as part…
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