Earlier this month, Facebook announced a new type of advertising available to businesses: Local Awareness. This new advertising medium is aimed at targeting local small business owners, much like independent insurance agencies. According to Facebook, there is one main objective behind this: to “help [small business owners] create ads that will reach [their] local audience at the lowest possible cost.” The social media network is working to make advertising simple and affordable for small businesses.
How Local Awareness Works
Local Awareness ads work to help small business owners connect with more customers. While Facebook will pre-select an area for you based on your agency’s physical location, you have the option to customize the area (as small as a 1 mile radius). For those of you interested in targeting hyper-local opportunities, this type of ad would be perfect. Facebook will also provide you with estimates on how many individuals you can reach with your budget, so you can see beforehand if it is worth it to increase your spending. With these ads, the network is not requiring any minimum investment and you can determine the date range of when they will run. It is important, however, to advertise with a purpose. As a local business, it’s crucial to connect with your audience in a way that shows them you’re the agency to work with. When you compose your ad, make sure to include a picture from the agency, perhaps a picture of the staff or your building if it’s recognizable in the community. Also make sure to write a message with your ad that will engage users. Appeal to your local community and surrounding areas with information that you know would be important to them, as it pertains to insurance coverage and working with your agency.
Why Your Agency Should Try It Out
Rather than targeting individual Facebook users, with Local Awareness ads, your agency will have the ability to target entire areas near your brick and mortar locations. According to Facebook, these ads will help local businesses, like your agency, reach the most people possible in a specific area. How many of you are still advertising in the local newspaper? Yellow Pages? Typically, Facebook advertising is low-cost, and could be more effective in reaching your target audience than the more traditional methods. Not only will you be helping grow your agency’s network, but you’ll also help users discover your business, which they may not have known existed before. If Local Awareness ads are not available for your agency yet, hang tight. Facebook has stated that the ads will be available across the U.S. over the coming weeks. You can read more and get started via Facebook’s website.