3 Reasons Your Local Business Should Advertise on Facebook
As a local business, your options for reaching your audience can seem overwhelming. Local papers? Local magazines? Local flyers?
I would like to suggest that you advertise with a company based in Menlo Park, CA.
Yep. Facebook.
Sure, Facebook can boast over 1.3 billion users, but what good does that do you when you are looking to reach people within 20 miles of the location you are at right now?
I’ll give you three reasons why:
1. Targeting
Or should I say, hypertargeting? Your local newspaper can reach people who live in your area, but can they reach women 18-45 who got engaged today?
Facebook can.
What about reaching workers within 5 miles of your restaurant at precisely 11am on Tuesday?
Facebook can.
2. The Newsfeed
People go to Facebook to unwind and have fun. They don’t want to be marketed to. So why am I suggesting that you do precisely that?
Because it doesn’t FEEL like advertising when it’s in the newsfeed. When the proper targeting is done, your ad will only show in the newsfeeds of people who would be most likely to be interested in your product or service. Men won’t be shown advertising about getting a mammogram and single women won’t need to see ads about weddings.
The ads in the Facebook newsfeed look like content so people are more likely to pay attention and not feel like they are being sold.
3. Sharing
Last week, I had a video in my feed from Microsoft where they talked about the importance of girls learning to code. I shared it. So did over 8,000 other people.
No, you probably won’t get anything close to 8,000 shares on your ad, but you could get 5 or 10. When one person shares your ad with their friends, you are expanding your reach at no extra cost to you.
Speaking of cost….Facebook is cheap.
There is no minimum budget for advertising on Facebook. If you have a $20 bill hanging out in your wallet, you can send that money to Facebook and see if it can drive some business.
Give it a shot. What do you have to lose?
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
