PMG Digital Made for Humans

Local Advertising Options in Social Media

3 MINUTE READ | February 24, 2016

Local Advertising Options in Social Media

Author's headshot

Lauren-Ashton Shepheard

Lauren-Ashton Shepheard has written this article. More details coming soon.

As the quest to drive from online to offline is ever present for brands, especially in the retail space, how do we as advertisers push the envelope? Better yet, where do we start when it comes to building a localized advertising strategy? There are a few different local-based advertising options within the social realm that brands can and should be testing to find out what works best for them.

First and foremost stick to your audience. If it is mostly males ages 45 and higher, FourSquare may not be your play. If your audience is women ages 18-35 interested in shopping, Yelp might be your space. Make sure the platform audience is a match to your target audience. Below is a breakdown of different advertising options that incorporate local.

Geo-targeted Facebook Ads. You can run any Facebook ad unit and simply adjust the targeting to be geo-specific, along with your specific audience targeting, such as demographic, interests, etc. You can go as broad as country to as granular as ZIP codes.

Facebook Local Awareness Ads. This is a mobile-only unit and you can target a specific mile radius around each store. Store location will determine the radius utilized based on local behavior. An example being a New York City store would have a much smaller radius compared to a store in Fort Worth, Texas. The challenge here is that you can’t add any additional targeting outside of age, gender and mile radius.

Facebook Local Awareness Ads

Yelp Search Ads. Ads are delivered above the organic search results and on competitive listings within Yelp and drive users to local Yelp listings which showcase all of the store information, i.e. hours of operation, directions, phone number, etc. Targeting is based on user searches in the category of the business and by geography, with the option to run across desktop and mobile.

Yelp Search Ads

FourSquare Promoted Places. This ad unit allows you to promote your location to a user based on a user search and location. FourSquare touts itself for it’s Pinpoint solution which takes their first-party data and place shape technology to interpret user behavior. Foursquare also offers custom rich media units based on specific brand needs.

FourSquare Promoted Places

Geo-targeted Twitter campaigns. Just as you can with Facebook simply adjust the targeting to be geo-specific, along with your specific audience targeting, such as demographic, interests, etc. You can go as broad as country to as granular as ZIP codes, but reach is definitely smaller on Twitter compared to Facebook.

Stay in touch

Bringing news to you

Subscribe to our newsletter

By clicking and subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Are you as an agency or brand currently running any localized advertising campaigns? What are you doing? And do you feel it is working?


Related Content

thumbnail image

Marketing to Experiential Travelers

5 MINUTES READ | April 11, 2019

thumbnail image

High Impact Testing – Waze App

4 MINUTES READ | January 23, 2017

thumbnail image

Facebook Introduces Local Dynamic Product Ads (DAR)

3 MINUTES READ | September 27, 2016

thumbnail image

How to make your own Snapchat Geofilters

3 MINUTES READ | May 13, 2016

ALL POSTS