Facebook Ads Aimed at a Radius Around the Shop

Ads for the people down the street

Most of a shop's customers live or work a short distance from its door. Many more walk or drive past every week without coming in, and some have never noticed it.

Facebook's local awareness ads show only to people near a chosen address: those who live within a set radius, those who have recently been there, or both.

For a shop, cafe or anything with a counter, that is a different kind of advertising from search. Nobody is looking for you, so the ad has to give a nearby person a reason to come in.

Done well, it is modest in cost and closely aimed. Done carelessly, it shows the same vague ad to the same few thousand people until they stop seeing it.

Who sees a radius ad

In Facebook's ad tools, a location can be an address with a radius around it, and you choose whom it means: people who live there, people recently there, or everyone in the area.

People who live there are residents, judged from their profiles and where they usually are. People recently there include anyone whose phone has been in the area lately: workers, commuters, shoppers, visitors.

The tools estimate how many people the settings reach. For a small radius it may be a few thousand, which is plenty for a shop that needs dozens of new regulars, not thousands.

Choosing the radius

• Dense neighbourhoods: two or three kilometres around a walk-in shop.
• Suburbs and towns: the distance customers already drive to you.
• Recently nearby: people who work or shop in the area.
• Residents only: for offers that suit weekends or home life.
• Natural barriers: a river or highway customers will not cross.

The last is the one a circle on a map ignores. Customers think in routes rather than distances, and a radius that reaches across a bridge nobody uses for errands spends money on people who will never come.

Offers that suit a radius ad

The person seeing the ad was not looking for you. They are scrolling past photographs from friends, and the ad has a moment to catch them.

What works is simple and immediate: a reason to drop in this week. A new item, a seasonal special, an event in the shop, a small welcome for a first visit.

What works badly is anything that needs explaining, anything weeks away, and requests to like the page, which ask a favour without offering anything back.

Show them where you are

A nearby person already knows the area, so use that. Show the storefront or the sign, so they recognise it next time they pass.

Name the street and a landmark in the text: across from the library, beside the pharmacy. Add the hours, since not knowing when you are open is a common reason not to try.

Keep words on the image short. Facebook limits how much text an ad image can carry, and a photograph of the shop says more than a sentence laid over it.

A worked example

A bagel shop in an older residential neighbourhood, two blocks from a hospital, bakes from early morning and sells by the bagel and the dozen. On weekends the line reaches the sidewalk.

Its first Facebook ads were boosted posts about new flavours, shown to people across the whole city who were interested in food. They collected likes, mostly from people who lived nowhere near it.

The second attempt used a radius of about two kilometres, aimed at people living in or recently in the area, which reached the neighbours and hospital staff coming off early shifts.

The ad showed the shop front with the sign clearly visible, named the street and the hospital, and offered something easy: a weekday breakfast special before ten, in the shop's quietest hours.

Its button led to a page on the shop's own site with the menu, the hours, the special, the side entrance from the parking lot, and a line on phoning ahead for a weekend dozen.

Send people somewhere useful

Many radius ads link to the business's Facebook page, which shows recent posts, perhaps weeks old, and leaves the visitor hunting for the hours.

A page on your own website can show exactly what the ad promised: the offer, the hours, a map, parking, and what else is worth coming in for.

Add campaign tags to the link, a few extra words appended to the address, so Analytics knows the visit came from this ad. The campaign's visits then appear by name in your reports.

Small audiences tire quickly

A small radius means a small audience, and a daily budget that would suit a city-wide campaign shows the same ad to the same people over and over.

Facebook reports this as frequency: how many times, on average, the people reached have been shown the ad. Once it rises well past a handful, swap the photograph or the offer, or spend less.

Ads can also run only at certain hours, which suits a morning trade, though Facebook allows that only with a lifetime budget rather than a daily one.

Counting what the ads did

The hardest part is knowing whether anyone came in because of the ad. A visit to the counter leaves no trail back to a phone.

The tagged link counts website visits. Beyond that, ask at the counter, or make the offer something people mention, such as a word to say when ordering.

Compare the weeks the ads run with the weeks they do not, and keep notes. Over a few rounds, a pattern either shows or it does not.

The counter-case

Radius ads suit businesses that people visit. A service that travels to customers, or a shop drawing buyers from across the region, will find a small circle too small.

They also depend on a sound website and listing. An ad that sends people to a page with the wrong hours pays for disappointment.

For a counter business with neighbours who have never come in, though, a modest radius ad with a simple offer and a useful page behind it is a sensible, inexpensive experiment.

Before the first ad

1. Draw the radius around where customers really come from.
2. Choose residents, recent visitors or both.
3. Photograph the storefront so people recognise it.
4. Pick one simple offer for this week.
5. Build a page on your site for the ad.
6. Tag the link for Analytics.
7. Watch frequency and refresh the ad.

Step five decides whether the money was well spent. The ad earns a tap; the page has to turn that tap into a visit, and a Facebook page was never built for that.

Ads shown to people who are already searching are covered in longer text ads are coming to AdWords.

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West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.