Local Marketing with Facebook

The following is a guest post done by Tom, a UK entrepreneur from Wongawise.com. You can visit his blog at http://www.wongawise.com and follow @wongawise on Twitter. If you’re looking for a guide to advertising on Facebook, you should check out Jonathan Volk’s Fb Ads Guide.
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With over 500 million members, Facebook is fast becoming one of the preferred platforms for online advertisers. With the ability to target users by age, sex, interests, location and more; small businesses are replacing shop window and local magazine advertisements with a simple Facebook ad. Last year it was reported that online marketing is bigger than TV, radio and print for the 1st time ever.

As an online marketer, I have seen a massive increase in local businesses marketing online from orthodontists to estate agents to local gyms. Facebook ads are not only easy to setup, but with the right targeting they perform great with VERY little optimization needed. Creating and managing campaigns for local businesses is a fantastic way for online marketers to earn additional income. A lot of small businesses frankly won’t have a clue when it comes to setting up an online ad campaign. If you have the knowledge and experience with such platforms, businesses will be willing to pay you.

I wanted to show you an example of a very simple campaign I set up for a local boxing club here in London, UK which is still running on Facebook. They had a very small budget and were not prepared to pay $x,xxx per month for local newspaper or magazine advertisements.

Facebook provides the perfect platform for local marketing. Not only is quick and easy to set up, but you can target users by location and interests. 2 VERY important aspects when promoting local businesses online. Without location targeting, local marketing does not work for obvious reasons.

We decided upon a daily budget and I set up 4 ads targeting the following users:

who live in the United Kingdom
who live within 40 kilometres of London (Boxing club is in London and people won’t travel much further)
aged 13-40
male and female (they cater for both)
who like boxing (important!)

(We could expand on this and target users interested in other sports or women trying to lose weight.)

We used the following ad title and description:

title: Boxing Classes in London

desc: Interested in Boxing classes in London?
Click here for more info.

(Users were sent directly to the boxing club’s website – no need to create a landing page).

I let the campaign run for 1 month without split testing or changing 1 single aspect and these are the following stats:

659,279 impressions
577 clicks
Avg. CPC = $0.10 (We use GBP in the UK, so this was JUST 6p per click!)
Avg. CTR = 0.088%

As you can see, the ad is simple, direct and to the point and more importantly it’s costing the company just $0.10 per click. Not bad from an ad without any optimization and only showing to a small group of targeted users!

If the CTR begins to drop (as it will with most campaigns after some time), changing the image or title will help to increase it again. Adding further interests to target new users is also a great way to increase CTR and reach a new audience.

So… you may be wondering whether theses ads actually converted to bookings or made the boxing gym any money?!

To be honest I don’t know as of yet, but they have requested to continue running the campaign for the foreseeable future so they must be pleased with the results thus far. In most cases, you will find that local businesses are willing to pay such rates simply for brand awareness and additional exposure. At the end of the day you are being paid for your knowledge and experience to drive cheap and targeted traffic to their products and services. If you deliver this then you’re holding up your end of the bargain and there can be no complaints; especially when it’s costing them just a fraction of what it would cost/is costing them for print, radio or tv advertising.

To manage an online advertising campaign for a local business, you can charge anywhere from $100 per month PLUS their advertising budget. Now I know this may sound incredibly low and in some cases it will be, but the amount you charge simply depends on their budget, your current situation, knowledge and experience as well as how much you’re prepared to work for. This is an example for a very small business with a low budget. When I started managing campaigns for businesses I was more interested in building a list of clients than making thousands of dollars. I knew over time I would earn more once I began managing campaigns for larger companies.

Nevertheless, an additional $100 per month was still well worth having for spending a few minutes each week checking over their campaign. I will be on Facebook managing my own campaigns anyway, so I may as well manage a few others whilst I’m there and get paid for it!

Generally, the budgets will be much greater and you can charge $1,000+ per month to manage a campaign. Just 5 or 10 clients could pocket you an extra $5,000 – $10,000+ per month.

PS. Don’t be shy to charge them a one off setup fee as well as a monthly management fee. A lot of clients will expect it.

So, why is local marketing a great thing to get into?

- You can approach ANY local business. I can assure you that those currently paying for advertising in a local magazine or similar will be interested.

- You can charge a monthly fee to manage their campaign. This provides you with regular, re-occuring revenue.

- There is no limit on how many clients you can take on.

- Word of mouth advertising will increase your list of clients after securing as few as 4 or 5.

- If you’re already promoting your own campaigns on Facebook, managing a handful of campaigns for your clients will be effortless and extremely rewarding without the worry of checking conversions and sales daily.

- There are still a LOT of local businesses not advertising online.

- HUGE potential!!

I hope this post has given you a few ideas and will help you earn a little extra $$$. Good Luck!