Using Facebook to Advertise in Your Neighbourhood

If you are looking to get your business out there, you need to use Facebook. It's simple - nearly 2 billion users visit Facebook every day, so your audience is bound to be in there somewhere. With social media advertising and user-generated content growing, Facebook is the optimal choice for advertising your local business.

There are some crucial steps to take to promote your business through Facebook ads, and this guide will run you through all of the best ways to ensure pure advertising success.

Creating Your Facebook Page

Once you are ready to begin creating Facebook ads, you must create a page for your business. Different Facebook pages will differ depending on your business and brand, but the basics will be the same.

First of all, you should make sure to include basic information about your business, including:

The geographic location of your business (street address, postcode, town, etc.)

Opening or active hours

Contact information for people to get in touch

An 'About' section that briefly describes the business

Once you have the basics, you can add additional information about your business or brand, such as any products you sell, news, or something else relevant.

Joining Local Facebook Groups

After you have established your page, you should begin to join two types of different Facebook groups. The first type is local groups that you can find in your community. The second type is groups with a similar topic or focus to your business. For example, if your business is food-related, you should join a food-related Facebook group.

It is crucial to be part of local neighbourhood groups, as they will make up a large portion of your target audience - we will come to this later. By joining local groups, you can understand more about your neighbourhood, as well as keep track of local events and businesses. Some of these businesses may even be your competitors.

Creating A Facebook Marketing Strategy

Before you jump head-first into advertising, you should create a solid marketing strategy. This will be different depending on the type of business you have, but the outline will be the same.

Target Audiences

As we mentioned earlier, you need to establish a target audience - this is the base of your marketing strategy. This is probably the easiest step (especially if you're a people person!), as it's simply identifying who you want your customers to be.

We say simple, but there are a few things you need to consider when identifying your audience. Imagine the perfect customer for your business and answer the following questions:

What demographic do they fall in (age, gender, location, job, hobbies?)

For what purpose do they use Facebook?

How would your business benefit them?

Meta also has an 'Insights' feature, so you can use this once you begin building your Facebook page. This will let you know if you are on the right track with your Facebook marketing.

Understanding Your Goals

If you are in this for the long run, you need to know your personal and business goals. Are you looking for customers? Do you want to spread awareness about your business or brand? Are you doing this for specific, personal reasons?

Before you dive into the world of social media marketing, you need to know why you are doing it in the first place. You should also be interested in and passionate about your business or product, otherwise, you will have a hard time selling it to someone else.

Choosing Your Content

Facebook marketing can consist of many different things. It can and should include a range of videos, photos, text and more. Unlike a personal profile, your business page should have a range of content that covers both interest AND information that is targeted towards your customers and audience.

Your content should be moulded to fit your style. Checking out similar local businesses and competitors is a great way to gauge the type of content you should be posting. Most businesses on Facebook will consist of entirely user-generated content, so you have to come up with ways to personalise your content, to stand out from your competition.

Advertising To Your Neighbourhood

Now you should have the basics of your Facebook page and marketing strategy. It's time to start getting your Facebook ads out there. This will not only spread the word about your business, but it will also attract potential customers.

Before you just throw a bunch of ads out there, you should carefully select the best way to target Facebook ads. Once you have an audience, you can find out what time and which day of the week are the best to post your ads.

Meta Insights will help you figure out the times your audience is most active, so you can begin by sharing content during these optimal times. As your page audience grows, you can change the time you post to fit the mould of your growing audience, targeting them directly.

Finding Your Neighbourhood Online

Joining a range of different Facebook pages within your local community is a great segue for reaching your neighbourhood. Your target audience is likely going to be part of these pages, so you don't even need to seek them out yourself.

Meta has recently added a feature to Facebook that helps you connect with your neighbourhoods and community. This feature is (very creatively) called Facebook Neighbourhoods. It is a dedicated space within the Facebook app that encourages Facebook users to connect with neighbours in the local community, participate in local events and discover new nearby places.

This is a great way to get your business page out into the open, invite people to explore it and make your community aware of your business.

Creating The Adverts

We've reached one of the most crucial parts of this process - creating the Facebook ads themselves. It is important to make sure that you have a business location on your page, otherwise, you won't be able to promote locally.

On your Facebook page, you can find under the "promote" button, a section that will allow you to "promote your business locally".

Then, you can set your chosen audience preferences.

Next, you choose your "ad creative", where you can add any image, text, or information that you want to appear in your advert. Here, you should include as many relevant keywords to your business as you can.

On the same page, you choose your "call to action", which will direct customers to interact with your business - an example of this would be to 'like' the page.

You then can set your budget and the duration that the ad will run for. This feature also gives you an indication of how many people the ad can reach with the chosen budget.

Finally, after choosing a payment method, your advert is complete, and all you have to do is submit it!

What To Do Next

If this all sounds simple and too easy, you can go even further with your Facebook marketing by using the Facebook pixel, which is an additional way to target Facebook ads towards your audience, measure your engagement, and further optimise your audience as a whole.

This extra tool can use data from your audience to give you more insight and information on how to create better Facebook ads, allowing you to engage with your audience more, enhance your marketing skills, and grow your business overall.