A common and consistent goal for most local businesses is building brand awareness. Many business owners, however, don’t know which marketing channel is best for top results and overall cost efficiency to achieve significant brand awareness in their local communities.
It is important to think about where your ideal customers are spending their time so they will recall your business when they need your services. In other words, meet your customers where they are. Local businesses also need to choose a marketing channel that can cast a wide net to a large audience but at a reasonable cost and with real results.
Facebook advertising can efficiently achieve the goals above, making it the perfect match for boosting brand awareness. Keep reading below to learn exactly why local businesses should use Facebook ads as a marketing channel to build brand awareness:
1. Consumers are paying attention to Facebook
Overall, people spend a great deal of time scrolling through social media. It has become a habit for people to pull out their smartphones whenever they have downtime - during television commercials, when sitting in waiting rooms, even when sitting at stoplights. People nowadays always seem to be on their phones. That’s why social media is a great place for businesses to advertise.
When it comes to Facebook specifically, seven out of ten adults in the U.S. claim that they use Facebook.
Image Source: Pew Research Center
Because the majority of Americans have a Facebook account, the chances your ideal customer is on Facebook are extremely high. By running ads on this channel, you can spread brand awareness across your entire community instead of small audiences like people who see a billboard driving down the same street every day or the readers of a community magazine.
2. Audience targeting options are endless
Facebook offers a huge array of audience targeting options so it is easy for all types of businesses to narrow down their specific audience.
Image Source: Facebook
These options are broken down into many categories including demographics, interests, behavior (both online and offline), connections and more. With Facebook ads, it is easy to narrow down your exact ideal audience, unlike traditional advertising options that are extremely limited in targeting. In other words, you can feel confident knowing your ad is being shown to a quality audience of your ideal prospects.
3. It is easy to narrow down a specific location
Targeting the correct location is crucial for local business advertising. Facebook advertising makes it easy to set up your ads to show only to your local community. You can do this by narrowing down your location to certain states, cities or even ZIP codes.
Image Source: Facebook
Facebook even allows advertisers to set a radius around a specific address and target people who either live in this location, were recently in this location or are traveling in this location.
For example, if you are a personal injury firm, you can set a location radius around a hospital and target “people recently in this location.” This will show your ad to people whose most recent location is within the selected area - or for this example, people who are just showing up to the hospital (potentially for a personal injury).
Keep in mind that the people seeing your ad could be the injured person or a family member or friend who is at the hospital with the victim and scrolling through their phones and Facebook pages, potentially searching for a injury lawyer to help out. While yes, not everyone who visits the hospital and sees your ad will be in need of a personal injury lawyer, the chances of your ad being shown to someone who is in immediate need are very high in comparison to something like a billboard.
As a local business owner, it is important to be creative when thinking about your ideal customers, who they actually are and what they like to do. Depending on your business, there could be some very unique ways to target your audience, and you may find that there are other parties who influence your prospects’ buying decisions. Think creatively!
4. Costs can be customized to fit any marketing budget
Facebook ads can be extremely low cost in comparison to traditional brand awareness methods like billboards, print advertisements and television commercials.
The average cost-per-click on Facebook is $1.72. This is significant because advertisers can spend less than $2 for someone interested to click on the ad. In other words, you get real results at a low cost!
Image Source: WordStream
In comparison, traditional brand awareness advertising costs can be unreasonably high. For example, billboard advertising in the U.S. costs an average $250 per month in rural areas, $1,500-$4,000 in small to midsize cities and $14,000 and up in larger markets. Aside from the expensive costs, with billboard advertising there is no real way to attribute a new customer to the advertisement.
5. ROI is visible in real-time
Image Source: Facebook
Unlike traditional brand awareness methods, Facebook advertising allows you to see real-time data on your ad’s performance. For brand awareness, it is important to track metrics like reach, impressions, clicks and frequency. By looking at these numbers, you’ll be able to evaluate your brand awareness ad’s ROI. You’ll also be able to make educated decisions on how to best optimize your ad based on your budget, ad creative, audience and more.
6. You can track how many times someone sees your ad
In marketing, there is a “Rule of 7” that says that a customer or client needs to interact with your brand seven times before deciding to hire you. In other words, your ideal client won’t make a buying decision the first time they see your ad. You need to increase the amount of times that your prospects see your ad in order for them to remember you.
Facebook advertising allows you to track how many times someone sees your ad using the “frequency” metric in the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard.
Image Source: Facebook
This number will give you an estimated average number of times someone has seen your ad. While you want people to see your ad multiple times, you also want to make sure they don’t see it too many times as that can be annoying to the viewer. This is an important metric to track as it can make or break your brand awareness ad’s success.
Conclusion
Facebook ads are a great way to spread a business’s name in a local community. While they are similar to traditional brand awareness marketing methods because they cast a wide net, they are way more effective for many reasons.
No matter the size or industry, Facebook ads are great for all local businesses because of their distinct targeting capabilities as well as varying budget options. If that’s not enough, Facebook’s user base contains a majority of the adult population throughout the U.S. - and even better, these users are engaged with the platform! For local businesses today, it is crucial to meet your ideal customers where they are, which is why Facebook advertising and boosting brand awareness are the perfect pair!
