Facebook has recently announced three innovations that will revolutionize the way to promote local businesses and analyze the return on investment in Facebook Ads.
A year ago I spoke at the Web Marketing Festival about the possibilities of offline conversion tracking . At the time Facebook was already experimenting with advanced methods, but only with large investors (rumors report from a minimum of € 100,000 / month). All the others had to settle for the good old coupon or Facebook Offers, hoping that the store manager had been informed, collect them without losing them, there is the possibility to count them, etc. etc.
A few days ago (just as I was making the slides for this year’s speech, but that’s another story) Facebook announced three important news dedicated to local businesses.
Store visits is a new metric, soon available in Facebook Ads reports, that allows advertisers to know how many people have visited the store after seeing the Facebook ad. In reality, not all types of ads, but only those dedicated to local activities: Local Awareness Ads .
Thanks to this data it will be possible to optimize the creativity, the target and the timing of the campaigns, analyze the results obtained and plan all subsequent campaigns in the light of these.
According to an eMarketer study , 90% of purchases happen in-store and marketers often have a hard time quantifying the impact of their online ads. However, “people spend more time on mobile devices than any channel” as stated by Maz Sharafi, director of monetization product marketing at Facebook, and ” smartphones are now used in 45% of shopping experiences “. The most important challenge is therefore not only to lead people to the store, but above all to measure real business results .
The Facebook Offline Conversions API , the second novelty announced, will allow advertisers to establish a direct connection between in-store sales and Facebook Ads .
These APIs will allow commercial activities to match transaction data, monitored through the customer database (fidelity card) or through the POS, to the Ads Reporting tool. This will give you an even better understanding of how effective your ads are in real time.
User data , both in the first case and in this case, will be anonymous and aggregated , but will allow advertisers to monitor the drive-to-store and the results of transactions in the store in real time, as well as acquire demographic insights regarding the type of buyers (such as gender, age group, etc.).
The latest novelty, unlike the first two, is already usable: it is an opportunity offered to chain stores that use Facebook Locations . By activating a Local Awareness Ads campaign, it is possible to create a “neutral” ad and have the data automatically taken from the store pages to dynamically manage targets, copy and call to action. This is nothing new, it is possible to do it from November, in fact you will find all the information in this article .
The novelty lies in the fact that by selecting the ” Carousel ” ad mode it is now possible to add a ” Map ” element that will dynamically show the store closest to the person who is looking at the ad , with the call to action “Get directions” .
I will talk about this and other tactics to increase the drive-to-store through social media on Saturday 9 July in Rimini during the 2016 edition of the Web Marketing Festival.
If, on the other hand, you have no way of coming to Rimini , fill out the form , we will contact you as soon as possible.
