How to set up location-based ads on Facebook and Instagram

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Use simple and flexible customization tools to only serve ads to users within your target audience.

One of the first points when submitting ads (in the ad groups section) is choosing a location where, in fact, ads will be displayed. These can be countries, cities and individual points. The main problem for advertisers is that they don't understand what works best. Let's try to figure it out.

Setting by country of residence

The easiest way is to ask yourself where, in fact, your target audience lives. If, for example, you have an online store and you can send products to all Russian-speaking countries, then select them.

But this is actually the least efficient way. After all, if you analyze a little deeper, it becomes clear that in some country sales are better, and in another - worse. In any case, the purchasing power cannot be exactly the same.

Therefore, it is advisable to divide countries into different ad groups in order to see where the conversion and purchase frequency is the most optimal.

Customization by cities with a certain population

Then we focus on one country, but question number two arises: are sales equally high in metropolitan areas and in small cities? The answer is obviously no.

For example, we believe that our product sells best in cities with populations ranging from 100,000 to 250,000. But the problem is that in Russia alone there are a lot of such cities and it is a very, very long process to write them down one by one.

And here the ability to select these cities automatically comes to the rescue. First, we enter the country of interest to us, select the down arrow on the right and click "Include only cities."

After that, we select the population of the cities, the display of which we want to see.

The advertising algorithm selected 77 cities for us with populations ranging from 100,000 to 250,000. In fact, according to the census, there are more such cities in Russia, but this quick selection tool is relatively new, and the accuracy of the setting will surely increase with its development.

Geotagging

Small business owners, especially offline ones, can quite reasonably declare that it is unprofitable for them to advertise in cities and even more so in countries. Why should the owner of a small coffee shop advertise all over Moscow or Kiev, if his competitive advantage is a location in a residential or business area. Let's be objective, no one will go across the city for a cup of coffee.

For you, dear small business owners, there is the possibility of advertising within a radius. What does it mean? Your ad will be seen by people who are within a certain radius from the geo point that you put. To do this, you need to enter the city you are interested in, zoom in on the map to the area that you are interested in for advertising, and select the Pin tool.

Then you need to set the desired radius. The minimum is 1 km, the maximum is 16 km.

If you have several outlets, then you do not need to create ads for each of them. You can choose any number of pins you need.

Advertising will be seen not only by people who are currently in this radius and sitting on social networks, but also by those who have been there in the last 24–48 hours. This will allow you to promote your business to a wider target audience.

By the way, this also works well for an online business: for example, you can advertise an online bedding store in residential areas, and not in the entire city.

What I like about targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, and what many dislike about it, is the lack of definitive answers. It is impossible to say in which city or in which radius it will be better to buy from you.

If you already have an online customer base by city and country, then it’s clear to you in which direction to move. If not, then test it. When my agency works with online stores, often the customer's initial hypotheses like “our client is a person with higher education and income over a thousand dollars, living in a million-plus city” turns out to be false. And people from small towns, where the competition is much lower and the demand for the product is high, buy the best.

So try different options. In a few weeks, you will definitely find the habitat of your target audience, and then setting up advertising will not take much time and will begin to bring good income.

Thank you for reading this article to the end. I hope it was helpful to you.