Hyper-Local Targeting on Facebook

Facebook rolls out a very effective advertising tool and it just shows you how far we have come in social media advertising. Marketers now have the ability to target customers in very defined target ares.

Targeting on Facebook

In the past, you only had the option of targeting customers that were fans, friends of fans, and maybe just include people living in a zip code. If you were more advanced, you could use behavioral advertising for people intending to travel and/or have opened a travel app in the past two weeks if you’re a hot destination place. But what if you’re a restaurant? Wouldn’t you love the ability to advertise to people who have checked in at your location? I’m sure you get notifications on Facebook Pages on your phone that says someone checked in…but because of privacy settings, it’s rare that you can ever engage with that person. Now you can, sorta.

I’m going to use a restaurant as an example for the following:

Everyone in this location:  You can target anyone living or recently around your store. Be more detailed and filter by Fans or Friends of Fans. Test out how many people living or have been in your store location that are fans, are not fans, should be fans ect

People who live in this location: These are people who should know about you. If your focus is being apart of the community, and it should be, this is a great opportunity to engage with your neighbors.

People recently in this location: Once people check-in to your restaurant, how do you place ads in front of them?  How cool would it be to communicate directly with your audience as they are dining. “How’s your meal today at Joe’s Taco Shack?”

People traveling in this location: My personal favorite. Let’s say that your city is home to a hot music festival bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to your area. As out-of-towners visit your store, you now have the ability to target them with ads. This is for anyone who was recently traveling in this area but has a home over 100 miles away. Now you can make lasting connections with these people so the next time they’re in town, they’ll be back!

We are going to test out each of these over the next few weeks and report back with our results.

In what ways would this be useful to you?