When franchisees are ready to grow their local businesses, many choose Facebook advertising because ads are extremely affordable and allow specific targeting. Franchisors often work with their preferred marketing vendors to create local marketing packages using Facebook ads for that very reason.
There’s more to building an ad for your target audience than knowing demographics, however. You also need to know where your customers fall in the buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey typically passes through three distinct stages: the awareness stage, the consideration stage and the decision stage. Essentially, you want to let your customer know about your product or service and how it can help them solve their problems.
Facebook offers ads that address all three stages and that work well for local marketing:
The Awareness Stage
Have your potential customers ever heard of your brand or product? Are you new in town? If you answered “yes,” then you likely would choose a Facebook “Reach” campaign.
Reach ads are ideally suited for brand awareness. Because the messaging is broad and designed to reach the largest number of people in your demographic, reach ads are the most affordable.
You can run these ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and throughout the Facebook Audience Network.
The Consideration Stage
Do your potential customers know who you are but need more specifics about what sort of solutions you can offer them? Then you might opt to run a “Traffic” campaign.
Traffic campaigns are designed for a narrower audience. They cost a little more than Reach campaigns, and they encourage users to click on the ad and visit your website. Facebook helps to ensure these ads are served to users in your target demographic who are most likely to click through.
You can run Traffic ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and throughout the Facebook Audience Network.
The Decision Stage
Have you engaged with users who are ready to sign or purchase? If so, then a “Conversion” campaign can help you close the deal by spurring an interested buyer to make a decision.
In a Conversion campaign, Facebook’s algorithm targets users in your set demographic who are most likely to buy from your online store or submit information through a landing page form. Because this campaign is very specifically targeted, it is typically one of the most expensive campaign options. Facebook reporting will help you track exactly how many conversions can be attributed to your ad campaign and determine the price-per-conversion.
These campaigns perform best when set up to run for an extended period of time and require a larger monthly ad budget.
You can run Conversion ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and throughout the Facebook Audience Network.
Of course, your advertising budget will play a critical role in helping you determine which ad campaign is right for you. The farther you move along the buyer’s journey, the more expensive ads will be. Franchisors can help their franchisees by creating local packages that bundle a combination of ad campaigns to reach users at various stages. Knowing your potential customers — and how well they know you — will give you an advantage in choosing which Facebook ad campaign is best for your franchise location.
Lora Kellogg, CFE, is president and CEO of Curious Jane, an ad agency specialising in franchises. With more than 15 years of experience and a portfolio of top brands, she and her team work with established and emerging franchises to grow sales, increase traffic, build brand awareness and generate leads.