What are the benefits of Facebook ads for a retail chain?

Due to the many existing features, a platform like Facebook Business Manager can quickly become complex in the organization of digital campaigns. For store owners or brand networks, it is difficult to find time to become familiar with platforms of this kind. That is why Facebook offers them the possibility to easily create local “ads Facebook”, a format that meets their needs.

Indeed, this format of publicité digital allows physical stores to promote their services and products to potential customers located in a nearby géographic area. Local campaigns répond to the needs of physical stores à bring the customer on site.

In this article, discover:

1. The specificity of local Facebook campaigns
2. The different Facebook 'local' advertising formats
3. Building a local Facebook campaign
4. Our recommendations

1. The specificity of local Facebook ads campaigns

Comme expliqué plus haut, Facebook propose une fonctionnalité “Trafic en point de vente" dans ses objectifs de campagne. En identifiant ce but de campagne, les ads Facebook apparaîtront chez des personnes ayant un profil intéressant pour l’enseigne et qui se trouvent proches du point de vente. Cela permet d’attirer l’attention du prospect de la présence et des services et produits qui sont proposés au point de vente. 

A local campaign is très useful to enable d’reach potential customers because it increases visibilité online for the point(s) of sale. Reaching new customers is généralement difficult. C’est why it is intéressant to be on a platform like Facebook which représents about 2.7 billion d’active users in 2020 (Statista, 2020 ). Moreover, it should not be forgotten that Facebook is also propriétaire d’Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp! The réseau Facebook has réussi à récolter a more than important number of données d’users, which allows to créer campaigns très ciblées.

Indeed, the real power of Facebook is to be able refine the’audience of your local campaign based on l'âge, gender and other variables such as intérêts or specific behaviors. C’est therefore a tool extrêmement intéressant when l’on knows well the profile of potential customers. It is also advisable not to be excessively specific in demographic parameters at the risk of reducing your audience. 

Furthermore, the Facebook Ads Manager platform provides an extrêmely comprehensive report of the visibility of your campaign. In addition to information such as CPR (“cost per rating point”), CPM (“cost per mille”), CPC (“cost per click”) and average daily coûts, the platform also indicates the réactivité rate by demographic section such as gender, l'âge or location. To learn more, see Facebook Business.

2. The different Facebook ads formats

Facebook offers many different ad formats depending on the type of message you want to convey. However, with the “Store traffic” option as the campaign objective, the options are limited to Facebook and Instagram Feed (the basic interface of these two networks) or Stories (special interface with zoom on the posted content).

For these 4 options, it is possible to publish:

• A image: the simplest format with an image and a direct link to invite à découvrir l’address, the products or services, etc…

• A vidéo: a more interactive format that helps attract the eye. It is useful for detailing the message more in depth. It also contains a link to bring the client to a digital interface providing the useful information to get to the location.

• A carousel: a set of photos that will allow showing a set of products, a series of messages or others. It is très useful if l’enseigne has the volonté to show new products or a new campaign, for example.

• A collection: This format includes a cover image or video and product images (4 product images for Facebook and 3 for Instagram). Note that the carousel format isn't possible in Facebook stories with the store-visit objective! A "instant experience" link allows this format to redirect to a full-screen landing page when the ad is clicked. This enables communicating a collection launch or promoting a set of products belonging to the same collection.

In addition to the generic formats described above, Facebook offers other more specific formats. Two specific formats stand out for retail chains:

• Dynamic Facebook Advertising: This format automatically presents products to people who have shown interest in your brand online. The campaign setup and resource registration is required only once. Facebook will then ensure to find the product matching the prospect. To learn more, see this Facebook article
• Facebook Form Advertising: This format allows collecting information about prospects using instant forms. A person interested in your services or products can directly fill out the form where they can fill in their name, email address, phone number and others. There is the possibility to include customized questions that are more specific to your industry or your commercial objectives. To learn more, see this other Facebook article.

3. Building a local Facebook campaign

To build a Facebook campaign you must d’first have a Facebook Places page (local page for businesses). It is important d’have your local Facebook page properly intégréed into Facebook Business Manager to be able to link it à your campaign. If this is déjà done, you can go directly to Facebook ads Manager to créate its local campaign.

In general, the simplest way to create a campaign is to sponsor a post already existing on the store's page. To do this you simply select the ’option “boost the post” of the post you wish to promote. Then you will go through the steps of campaign creation: objective, audience, budget, duration and placement. This ad format is very useful for promote organic content that brings you closer to your audience. Indeed, this type of advertising is often used for sharing immersive daily content of your brand. This also allows you to increase your visibility beyond your already existing followers.

1. Choose your campaign objective: 

In Facebook Ads Manager, click on “create” in the ’tab “campaign”. Facebook offers you 11 different campaign objectives. Consult this article to learn more about these different objectives. In the case of networks of brands, the point‑of‑sale objective will be “Store traffic”

2. Define your audience:

The next step is to define your audience by placing fairly general demographic variables: in the “locations” section, it is interesting for retail chains to use the “People recently in this place” option to target people who are close to the point of sale. It is possible to widen the targeting radius around the store.

Furthermore, if your target is more specific, you can also refine the audience using the “advanced targeting”. This tab provides a multitude of specific variables that are worth exploring. 

The power of Facebook is that the platform is extremely comprehensive thanks to its massive collection of user data. It's a very interesting tool because it allows companies to refine their audiences as best they can. We advise you to browse the entire local campaign creation interface to see all the possible variables. 

Initially, we advise you to analyze your target with the tool “Facebook Audience Insight” which is a real gold mine to know its audience. In this tool, it is possible to associate a type of brand resembling your brand or to see the pages visited for a specific audience.

3. Choose the locations of your campaigns

Then, you will need to choose the locations where the ad will be displayed. As explained previously, for the "in-store traffic" campaign objective, placements are limited to Facebook feed and stories and Instagram feed and stories. You will then need to upload the image and/or video content and the text prepared in advance. 

4. Specify your budget and schedule:

You have two choices for the campaign budget: choose a daily budget or a total budget for l'entièreté of the campaign. Keep à ’mind that it is more économical to set a total budget because the campaign will be éplaced only when your target audience is most likely to ’êbe on Facebook. èAfter choosing the budget, you can then set a éstart and end date for the campaign. If you do not wish to have a time limit, it is also possible not to éset a date.

5. Choose the campaign format:

Finally, it is time to select the format used for your campaign. As explained previously, you will have the possibility to use different formats depending on your campaign objective.

4. Our recommendations 

• Keep in mind the format sizes: When creating content such as your images, text and videos, it is important to keep in mind the size, quality and other variables. For more information, this article which will give you all the necessary measurements

• Test different types of content and audience: We advise you to test different types of content for your campaigns. Indeed, a more formal language, for example, can yield lower results than a more accessible language. On the other hand, an audience that is too narrowly targeted reduces the conversion rate. Make sure to identify the content that best reaches your audience by installing A/B testing. Here is an article that discusses it in more detail.

• Follow Facebook ads trends: we also advise you to follow the trend of digital campaigns. To learn more, here is an article with 2021 trends!

• Use Facebook Pixel: It is recommended to use Facebook pixel; a piece of code to insert into your site that allows tracking online conversions and analyzing in detail the audience that shows interest. You can compare the online visit rate with the on‑site rate. More information, here.

• Track and optimize your campaign: It is possible that’a campaign performs less well than’ another. In this caseà, try to identify which variables were the cause. If you are starting, it is interesting to run several campaignsà small budgets to see which works best for you.

Facebook is a very comprehensive and interesting tool overall for businesses that know their target well. For this tool, it is therefore important to work in advance on a strategy of local Facebook campaign. When one is familiar with the platform, this intuitive tool is very useful for targeting precision.