Local Advertising Options in Social Media

As the quest to drive from online to offline is ever present for brands, especially in the retail space, how do we as advertisers push the envelope? Better yet, where do we start when it comes to building a localized advertising strategy? There are a few different local-based advertising options within the social realm that brands can and should be testing to find out what works best for them.

First and foremost stick to your audience. If it is mostly males ages 45 and higher, FourSquare may not be your play. If your audience is women ages 18-35 interested in shopping, Yelp might be your space. Make sure the platform audience is a match to your target audience. Below is a breakdown of different advertising options that incorporate local.

Geo-targeted Facebook Ads. You can run any Facebook ad unit and simply adjust the targeting to be geo-specific, along with your specific audience targeting, such as demographic, interests, etc. You can go as broad as country to as granular as ZIP codes.

Facebook Local Awareness Ads. This is a mobile-only unit and you can target a specific mile radius around each store. Store location will determine the radius utilized based on local behavior. An example being a New York City store would have a much smaller radius compared to a store in Fort Worth, Texas. The challenge here is that you can’t add any additional targeting outside of age, gender and mile radius.

Yelp Search Ads. Ads are delivered above the organic search results and on competitive listings within Yelp and drive users to local Yelp listings which showcase all of the store information, i.e. hours of operation, directions, phone number, etc. Targeting is based on user searches in the category of the business and by geography, with the option to run across desktop and mobile.

FourSquare Promoted Places. This ad unit allows you to promote your location to a user based on a user search and location. FourSquare touts itself for it’s Pinpoint solution which takes their first-party data and place shape technology to interpret user behavior. Foursquare also offers custom rich media units based on specific brand needs.

Geo-targeted Twitter campaigns. Just as you can with Facebook simply adjust the targeting to be geo-specific, along with your specific audience targeting, such as demographic, interests, etc. You can go as broad as country to as granular as ZIP codes, but reach is definitely smaller on Twitter compared to Facebook.

Are you as an agency or brand currently running any localized advertising campaigns? What are you doing? And do you feel it is working?