One of the most unique things about Facebook Ads is the ability to target users based on their location behavior.
In this article I’m going to show you all the ways you can target users based on their location behavior and how to use it as part of your marketing strategy.
How to use Facebook Location Targeting
There are four ways you can target users based on their location behavior at the ad-set level. They are as follows:
Everyone in this location – Facebook will serve ads to everyone in your chosen area.
People who live in this location – Facebook will serve ads to everyone who lives in this location. It discovers who lives in a specific location by their IP address.
People recently in this location – Facebook will serve ads to anyone whose last location was in your selected area. This is done by IP address and location services if they’re turned on.
People traveling in this location – Facebook will serve ads to users who they believe are traveling to your chosen location. This is calculated by their recent IP address and when their home is more than 125km away.
When choosing the right location targeting, think carefully about your audience and products to find the right fit.
For example, if you need to deliver a product, you don’t want to target people who have recently been in this location or people traveling to this location as they don’t have a fixed address, and if there’s a 2-3 day shipping period it may not be ready for delivery.
If you run a bricks and mortar business, you may want to test all four ways of targeting users to see which one brings you the best results. For example, a restaurant would be applicable to all four location groups.
Facebook’s location targeting option is a feature often ignored, but it can seriously improve your ROI when you figure out the right location targeting method to apply.
Make your creatives and offers more personalized
By utilizing any of the four location targeting options, you can target a state, city, or town to further personalize your message.
For example, if you own a restaurant and a portion of your customer base is tourists, you can target ‘people traveling to this location’ and copy target them within your ad by offering a special deal for tourists.
If you run an e-commerce business and are doing your first trade show, target all people who are within a 6km radius of the event and ask them to visit.
Location targeting becomes a little less relevant when you target an entire country and is best suited when targeting by state, city, or town.
Are you using location targeting on Facebook?
Check your Facebook ad campaigns today and see if you’re using any of Facebook’s location targeting objectives.
By default, the option selected will be ‘everyone in this location.’ Even if 10% of your audience doesn’t live in that area or if they are traveling, you may be burning a lot of ad spend each day on traffic that won’t convert.
If you’re struggling to maintain a good CPA/CPL or your secondary metrics aren’t where you want them to be, consider testing location targeting to get your numbers lower.