Learn the Local Facebook Advertising Strategy

3 Level Local Facebook Advertising Strategy

You can plan your Facebook advertising content in three levels:

Level 1: Education and brand awareness - Build audience (custom audience) who engages with your ads

Level 2: Conversions - Present an offer to the audiences built in level 1

Level 3: Retarget ads

Level 1 - Advertising to Top of the Funnel Audience

In level 1 ads, you should focus on reaching a larger audience. Here, your aim is to educate and build an audience, and increase engagement.

In a given market, usually around 3% of people are in the ready-to-buy segment, who look for your product/services. However, there are also 15% of people who are your potential customers. They need what you sell but do not know it yet.

Often, local businesses target only the low-hanging fruits, those who are ready to buy. Most of the time, the list of such customers always dries up. So, the idea is to focus on that 15% of people who can bring you sustainable business. Level 1 is created for this audience group - to engage and nurture them for the long term.

At level 1, you educate audiences about your products, services, and topics related to your business.

Let's take an example of a local music class to understand the process.

Step 1: Identify the Buyer Persona

To promote the music class, you need to first identify the different personas of the business. For instance, parents.

Step 2: Group potential customers by identifying the driving factor

Here you define why parents would want their children to learn music. Examples of such groups can be:

1. parents who want their kid to learn music,
2. parents who want their child to do an extracurricular activity
3. parents who care about their child's well-being, activity levels, etc.

Focus on educating the customers for the long run through valuable content. Let us now see the content types for ad level 1: video, blog, and engaging social posts.

Different types of ad content for local businesses

Video ad content

• Advantages of video content: least expensive, most effective, more engaging
• Campaign Objective: video views
• Metric to focus on: cost per thruplay

For example, the three groups of parents we discussed may not watch the same type of video.

Parents who care about their child’s mindset may like to watch a video on “How to boost your child’s well-being through music”. Parents who watch this video do care about their child’s well-being. Now they are also aware that learning music improves their child’s well-being.

Similarly, for parents who want their child to do some activity, you can create a video explaining why learning music is the ideal activity, and how it improves mental health. This video will target parents who were not really considering music for their children, but now they might do.

Finally, for parents who know about music, it is best to differentiate your business in terms of processes and why you are the best if someone wants to learn music.

Create custom audiences based on the type of video ads someone watches and how long they watch them. This audience will be needed in level 2 and 3.

Usually, most customers of local businesses come from neighborhoods. Our objective is to reduce competition by increasing the influence of our business to a larger area. To do it, you need to create a good follower base. You must create engaging and helpful content that increases your brand value. This increases the potential pool of prospects, letting them drive to our store.

Blog ad content:

It can be used to identify which blog someone has clicked on. You can create a custom audience of the people who click your blog. To do that, you must set up Facebook Pixels on your website. So that, when people land on your website, you can collect their Pixel data and retarget ads to them. However, the cost per click is more expensive than cost per view (video).

• Advantages of blog content: people who click on the blog shows us that they have an interest in that topic; good for people who prefer to read than watch
• Campaign Objective: traffic/clicks
• Metric to focus on: cost per click

Engaging ad posts:

This type of post helps build engagement through likes, comments, and shares. They are not educational posts and are relatively expensive.

Examples of such posts are: "before and after", and "what would you prefer" posts.

• Advantage of social posts: increases brand engagement
• Campaign Objective: engagement
• Metric to focus on: cost per engagement

Note: All these ads are not designed to generate money but to create maximum impact.

Let us now move on to LEVEL 2!

Level 2 - Focusing on Conversion with Offers

At this stage, it is all about the offer. Target your offer ads to the custom audience built in level 1. Focus on getting people to opt-in, take a trial of your product and get them to convert. You can give offers like “Exclusive 1-free month of music training”.

• Campaign Objectives: lead generation, conversions, traffic, messages
• Metrics to focus on: cost per lead, cost per event (someone scheduling a free class)

At this stage too, we gather pixel event data based on the actions taken by these audiences on your website. We use this event data to retarget ads in level 3.

Here, an important thing is that the ads you create should be according to the content you created in level 1.

For instance, the well-being type of parent needs to be shown an ad that talks about their child’s well-being along with the offer. Since these parents have already seen your ad at level 1, they know your business. An offer increases their chances of getting converted. Similarly, for people who are already interested in learning music, an offer is just the thing they are looking for to start the classes.

So, you need to understand that one message doesn’t fit all. The ad creative and copy must appeal to the specific needs of your audience.

Level 3 - Retargeting Ads

Level 3, it is all about reminding people of your brand.

Retarget ads to people who have previously visited your website and engaged with your page on Facebook and Instagram.

Based on the actions (pixel event data) they have taken, you can target them with specific ads, such as “You were one step away from your 1-free month of music class, why not sign up?”.

The ad message must express a sense of urgency, personalization, and validation - reassuring the audience that enrolling in your music class will be a good choice for them.

That’s it.

These are the three levels of planning your Facebook advertising strategy for your local business.

Finally, we have a template you can follow before starting your advertising campaign.

Download it by clicking here.