A few years ago, when you chose a location target on Facebook, you naturally assumed you were targeting people by where they lived. That worked for local businesses and nearly anyone except travel-related companies.
But if you were selling rooms for a Las Vegas hotel, knowing where they live or where they currently are doesn’t help you much. By the time the prospect is in Vegas, they’ve already made their travel arrangements. And targeting people who like Las Vegas wasn’t helpful, either.
In the last year, mobile traffic on Facebook has exploded.
Nearly 70% of the Facebook traffic for the Golden State Warriors is from mobile.
And that’s made location super important, yet super confusing.
You see, somebody might live in San Francisco, but work in Menlo Park (at Facebook headquarters).
They might be traveling to New York on business.
They could be at the SFO or OAK airports.
In each situation, they’re in a different state of mind (trying to check into the flight, chilling on a Sunday afternoon, busy at work, etc…)
And each of these is driven by location, largely on mobile.
Dayparting, the ability to turn ads on and off at certain hours or days of the week, isn’t enough.
So now Facebook has significantly enhanced location targeting, especially if you’re targeting audiences in the United States.
And you can use most of these features without needing to request special access.
You can even use them in combination with your custom audiences, interest targets, and so forth.
If you’re a retailer or local store, you better be paying attention here.
This new location targeting applies across all ad objectives– website conversions, boosting posts, check-ins, video views, etc…
You can target a country, state/region, DMA, city, ZIP or postal code or a specific business address.
And you can even exclude a particular state/region, city, zip or postal code
Apply radius from a business address or from the center of a city.
Just be careful when you’re doing this in a major metro, like NYC, where another mile could add in a few million people.
According to Facebook directly, there are four ways advertisers can choose to reach people within a location:
- (Default in FB Interfaces) Everyone in a location: People who live in that location as stated on their Facebook profile (“current city”) as well as people who have that location as their most recent, based on information from their mobile device.
- Recently in a location: People whose most recent location as is the selected area, as determined by information from their mobile device. This includes people who live there or who may be traveling there.
- People who live in a location: People whose stated location from their Facebook profile “current city” is within that location. This is also validated by IP address and aggregate information about their friends’ stated profile locations.
- People traveling in a location: People whose most recent location is the selected area, as determined by information from their mobile device, and are greater than 100 miles from their stated current city from their Facebook profiles.
Grab their two page guide here.
If you’re not in the United States, international postcode targeting is rolling out in 31 other countries, so hang tight.
Consider the kinds of stuff you can now do:
- Golden State Warriors fans who check in at the Oracle Area, but live in San Francisco– make them proud of the new arena being built in Mission Bay.
- Alcatraz tours and other sightseeing companies targeting people who have just landed at the airport (zip code plus 1 mile radius).
- T-Mobile targeting Verizon in areas where their service is weak, with different messaging for business travelers, casual tourists, and residents.
- Hillary Clinton targeting people who are on the fence about her, have made political contributions in the past, but just live in zip codes that matter to her.
- You’re moving your store to a new location and want to advertise to people who live and work there.
- Downtown food trucks in Portland, Oregon or cruise ships in Fort Lauderdale want to attract the tourists who have have excess cash, but not waste money on residents.
Are you thinking about the possibilities beyond just the default?
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- Facebook location targeting demystified - February 4, 2015
Nick— thanks!
And even more powerful is geo-ip targeting combined with custom audiences and lookalikes! Have you looked into the store visit objective and the new Facebook offers tool?
Awesome share Dennis.. I’m a true believer that without geo location advertising is worthless on Facebook or any other platform. Geo targeting is what’s up for local marketers.
Thanks for sharing the precious information.I definitely implement this in my blog.Keep it up!Hoping for more useful articles.
Nick would love you to read ..Facebook custom audience from email marketing segments
Great Post Dennis Yu, good advice going to use this to get more people to my page.
hi………Very awesome and encouraging Blog post. sure I am going to implement these in my blogging journey.The information you provided is very help full for Facebook users. thank you for sharing. happy blogging.
Hi Dennis,
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Hello Dennis Yu
Well Explained
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Hey Dennis This blog of yours is very informative and i learn something from it, I’ve already read it several times .You’ve given me such useful ideas and increased my interest ..You have mentioned the most significant points in this post. Well written. Thanks for sharing! Hope to hear more from you!
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This is really good article. I felt like reading it again, because as I learn more,. The information you provided is very helpful. thank for your information that you shared
Hey Dennis,
Thank you for the information. I’m new to having a website and I’m looking into setting up facebook Ads in the UK. I will be Setting my first Ad today and Target my local area. Hopefully I get some success from this. Thanks again.
Hello Denis,
This is really nice article. I felt like reading it again, because as I learn more, my interest increases . The information you provided is very helpfull.
Marcie– thanks. Gail is nothing but awesome!
I first met her perhaps 10 years ago and was impressed with her knowledge and genuineness to help. It’s caused me to focus more on what’s important, instead of being at every conference. Much easier to share online like this!
Dennis Yu would love you to read ..Yes and No on guest posting.
Dennis, this is great. I only considered geo-targeting after an e-mail from Gail. But as I learn more, my interest increases because I have a community site and the information you provided is SUPER helpful. Thanks for sharing.
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