Thanks to Facebook’s plethora of ad targeting options, you can target almost anyone, whether that person is a single cat lady who lives in the suburbs, an affluent married man with children, or a local business owner.
If you’re in the B2B industry and you want to target local businesses, you must set your location and carefully define your target audience. Here’s how you do it.
Set Your Location
If you want to target a local business rather than all businesses in the United States, you must provide your business address and set your radius. In the example below, I entered AdvertiseMint’s address and set the radius to 10 miles. This lets Facebook know that I want to target only those who are within 10 miles of AdvertiseMint. Of course, you can adjust the radius to the figure that meets your needs. You can make your range as small as 5 miles or as big as 20. However, if you want to target locally, you must keep your range small.
Above your location, you will see a default option that says “Everyone in this location.” This is your best option because it will target those who live and frequent your chosen location. Remember that you want to target business owners whose businesses are within your radius. If you target only those who live within your radius, you will exclude owners who live outside of your radius but who commute to their businesses within your radius. If you target only owners who frequent your location, you will exclude owners who are traveling.
Now you’re probably thinking, “Hold on, if I’m targeting everyone, wouldn’t I also target people who aren’t business owners?” Yes, unless you specify under detailed targeting who qualifies as “everyone.” Under detailed targeting, you can specify your target audience’s job title, industry, and salary, among numerous others.
Set Your Targeting
Now that you’ve set your location, handling the “local” part of your target, you need to complete part two, which is defining your target audience.
First, you must specify the industry you want to target. Do you want to target restaurants, retail stores, or movie theaters? In my example, I chose retail. In doing so, my ad will target local retail businesses.
After you’ve specified your target industry, you must specify your target audience. If you’re in the B2B industry and you want to target local businesses, you probably want to target business owners and CEOs. You want to target individuals who run the business, who make executive decisions, who have the power to decide whether or not to work with you. In my example, keeping in mind that my company is an advertising agency, I target small business owners, CEOs, founders, and store owners.
For good measure, I also target specific business owners within a certain income bracket.
If you’re in the B2B industry and you want to target local businesses, you must complete two steps: you must set your location’s radius and you must define your audience. It’s that easy.
Who else do you want to target? Comment below, and I will write a how-to article. If you liked this post, please share the link to friends.
