Boosting your local business with Facebook

The great thing about Facebook is that they know a lot more about their users than other marketing platforms. (It explains why Facebook’s valuation was so high.) In particular Facebook are very aware of their users location. So if your business relies on local customers then Facebook can be a great place to advertise your products and services.

Facebooks advertising platform offers great targeting opportunities too, so if you are mainly selling to “women of a certain age” (for example) you can just show your Ads to those local women. It may not be huge volumes (and therefore modest costs) but the quality of the targeting makes it more likely to convert those people to customers.

Social media advertising is however a little bit of an art and requires a certain amount of seduction when it comes to finding new customers and getting them to follow or like your business. It’s not usually about the direct sales pitch - though it can be. In some ways it’s more of a PR exercise.

People searching for products or services to buy on Google are usually doing so with intent to purchase. Whereas those on Facebook are usually just catching up with what their friends are doing, hanging out in Facebook Groups engaging with people interested in a particular subject or hobby, or reading news and other items shared by their friends. In short, they are not usually in a “buying” mode.

Even so, as a local business, if you can make local people aware of your existence and your business’s “personality” that might just tip the balance the next time they are in the market to buy your kind of products or services locally. For example, they may have passed by your hairdressers shop a hundred times, but if they have seen your quirky posts on Facebook they might just pop in next time they pass by when they need a haircut.
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If you are a local business trying to reach local customers we can help set up and run your Facebook page and Facebook advertising. Get in touch.