December 26, 2015

Facebook’s New Local Insights For Business

There has been a plethora of new and exciting innovations on social media platforms recently.  Twitter got rid of its Favorite icon in exchange for a Heart icon, and Google+ has a new user interface.  The one digital marketing update we are most excited about for businesses is Facebook’s new Local Insights.  If you rely on local consumers to shop at your location, you can now review metrics on the type of consumer in your local area to help make marketing decisions that increase traffic. 

Great for retail shops, restaurants, or any small business, Facebook Local Insights allows you to view the trend of nearby people from a past week, month or quarter.  It also allows you to toggle between geographic ranges to view information containing the following:

  1. Advertising performance from a local standpoint
  2. Demographic information on people nearby
  3. Dates when most consumers are in your area

In Facebook’s standard insight metrics, you can find the Local tab on the left hand navigation.  Let’s talk about some of the metrics you can find there. 

Advertising Performance

The ad performance section is a great way to review the percentage of local individuals who have seen your Facebook advertisement based on a selected radius and date range.  The top graph shows the amount spent vs. the bottom graph depicting the amount of consumers who saw the ad.

Social Media Advertising Performance

What’s great about this chart? We feel it can help you review trends to find a correlation between how much you spend on local advertising and increasing in-store sales.

Demographic Information – Gender & Age

Targeting by gender and age has become the norm for online marketing and social media advertising.  It’s one of its strongest targeting capabilities.  Organizations who have an ideal consumer can view this graph to review the most popular demographics closest to you. 

Social Media Demographics

Once you start to see a trend in the top demographics, you will then be able to pattern the amount of advertising dollars spent to reach the ideal person.  The graph above depicts 10% of the local population being 18-24 years old.  A business who wants to target this age range wouldn’t need to spend as much money as a business wanting to target the 25-34 or 35-44 age ranges. 

Demographic Information – Local vs Tourist

We were pretty excited to see this graph and it’s something new amongst internet marketing metrics.  Facebook now allows you to view metrics based on local vs. out-of-town consumers. 

Understanding how many new people are in your area helps you pattern not only your digital marketing, but also helps you pattern traditional advertising messages. 

Facebook Metrics For Local Consumers

We think reviewing this month to month and over a year allows a business to see patterns when tourists are closest.  This should help with seasonal sales and tailoring your marketing dollars to that segment of the market.

When Are People The Closest

Probably the most powerful of the local insights, you can select a date range to view trends in the amount of local traffic near your store.  Viewing this month to month, you can start to see patterns in the days more people are near you. 

Facebook Social Media Platform

This line chart should help a business validate when to run your online marketing campaigns to drive individuals into your store, when to hold in-store promotions, etc.  It might be a stretch, but the case could be made that a business could follow these metrics to decide when to open and close their stores or when to open early or stay late in hopes more consumers will walk into the door.   

Why Businesses Should Pay Attention To Facebook Local Insights

The greatest idea around these new insights is the ability to understand who is close to you and when and who you should target.  Couple these metrics with Facebook’s Local Awareness ads, and you could deliver a powerful way to get your message in front of local consumers at exactly the right time.

This functionality isn’t available to every business yet.  Most of our clients have access, but a few don’t.  Check often to see if you have access and let us know how you find success using this new social media functionality. 

Do you know a small or local business looking for new ways to market their products or services?  Share this post with them or on your favorite social media site.  Thanks!

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