| Facebook for Local Businesses: 4 essential practices to succeed in your city

Facebook for Local Businesses: 4 essential practices to succeed in your city

Currently, Facebook is essential to reach your audience online. Now, what are the best practices to spread your small business and increase your sales? The answer is: applying specific and proven effective Facebook strategies for local businesses.

That is what we will talk about in this blog post! Today we will share with you 4 infallible practices to make your business a success in the Social Network, and also in your city. Take note and remember to share this post with your team to make the most of these tips.

Facebook for local businesses: 4 fundamental practices to be successful in your city

According to global Internet statistics, Facebook penetration in Latin America is 57.3%, while in Europe it is 41.7% and in North America, it is 72.4%. These data only confirm that the bulk of the target audience and the average consumer use this Social Network.

That is why your business must be there! But to reach your audience and increase your sales is not enough to have a Facebook page and publish. That is why we share with you the 4 practices that will allow you to effectively spread your business in your city.

1- Promote a post about your business to spread it in your city, know what its effective reach and get data from your audience

So that people know that your business is on Facebook and know the reasons why they should follow you on that platform, the idea is to create a post and promote it through the services of Facebook Ads. Why do we recommend this? Let’s look at the advantages of promoting on Facebook:

Facebook promotions for local businesses are optimized to reach as many people as possible.
They give you refined targeting tools, so you can define specifically who your ad should be shown to.
Once you activate your promotion, you get detailed statistics to know how many people you have reached with your promotional messages.

Now, when promoting on Facebook, we advise you to create a post with the content you wish to diffuse (e.g., a promotion about a specific product or an event of your business). Another possibility is to choose an existing publication on your Fan Page with the information you wish to diffuse.

So, once you have created and published the post you want to promote (or have chosen), here are the steps you must follow to activate Facebook promotion:

Situate yourself in the publication you want to spread on Facebook and press the “Boost post” button.
Target your audience: choose the age range, the city of origin and the interests you want to apply as a filter (e.g., “Pets and Animals”). Then review the other options shown in the image below, according to the specific objectives of your business.
Determine the maximum budget that you will allocate to the promotion and select the number of days you want to remain active (we recommend establishing a deadline, as shown below). Then choose the type of currency with which you wish to make the payment and press “Boost” to continue.
Note: if you don’t have a payment method associative you will have to add it. Choose your country and decide if you are going to pay by credit card, PayPal, online banking or cash.
When the promotion has come to an end you will be able to access information that will allow you to know more about your audience and what is the effective reach that your commercial proposals have in the segment you have defined (e.g., people from 20 to 65 years old belonging to your city).
Click on the “View Promotion” button that appears below the post that you have promoted once the announcement time has ended. This will allow you to access statistics regarding the scope of your content, the characteristics of your audience and the type of interactions you have obtained during the promotion (see image below).

In conclusion, promoting a publication on Facebook is an indispensable practice for your local business, since it will allow you to:

Diffuse your commercial proposals in your city.
Obtain data from your audience.
Know the effective scope you have in a certain geographical area.

In short, promoting on Facebook is the ideal practice to generate a solid base of audience and dissemination for your Fan Page.

2- Create a chatbot on Facebook to maximize the quality of your service and provide attention to your customers 24/7

Among the most notable advances of Facebook for local businesses are the chatbots via Facebook Messenger. But what is a Facebook chatbot? It is a tool that allows you to configure predesigned dialogs to answer your audience’s queries automatically on your Fan Page.

That way you maximize the usefulness of your Facebook Page from the point of view of the users and give them a real reason to follow you: the possibility of getting online customer service, 24/7. And best of all: it is free!

For example, you can configure your chatbot on Facebook to sell specific products, to answer frequently asked questions, so that people can make reservations, request shifts, make purchases online or whatever you decide.

Visit the following article on our blog to learn how to create chatbots on Facebook, step by step and in a safe and freeway.

3- Create strategic alliances with local businesses and develop an action plan that suits both parties

Another practice of enormous benefit about Facebook for local businesses is the opportunity to establish strategic alliances with other businesses in your city, which are not your competitors but share an audience similar to yours.

At this point, the idea is to join efforts on Facebook, to expand the audience of each trade, maximize the dissemination of content and collaborate mutually with the dissemination of each company involved.

So for example, if you have a house selling plumbing products, toilets, faucets, etc., a good ally could be a painter of your city, since they share a target audience (people who are remodeling their house) without competing (on the contrary, they complement each other).

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To get the most out of this strategy, we advise you to analyze the shops in your city and choose the most convenient option (e.g. check if you have a good fan base, if you have a good reputation, if your brand image can benefit yours).

At the end of this process, you can take advantage of your alliance to:

Share publications mutually, on selected days of the week, to expand the scope of the contents of both parties.
Conduct events jointly and promote them on Facebook (e.g., webinars via Google Hangouts or workshops organized by both brands/businesses).
Support your content strategies to achieve a greater impact, making comments in the posts, liking and recommending the publications of your ally.
Invite users to participate in Facebook contests organized by both stores and create events to promote them (as a reward they can deliver a kit of products, vouchers, purchase orders, etc.).
Reserve the cover of each page to promote the allied brand (offers, links, videos, etc.) on specific days previously agreed. In this way, they not only expand their disuse but also take advantage of the audiences of each brand to benefit each other.

4. Take advantage of Facebook Stories to maximize the exposure of your content and spread your location

As you may know, recently Facebook enabled the creation of stories by commercial pages in the Social Network. In case you did not know, a story is a content that lasts, by default, only 24 hours from the moment of its publication, before being deleted automatically.

This quality enables the publication of more informal and daily content by brands and businesses. Now, how can publishing your stories help your business? Very easy! It helps you to increase your visibility on Facebook thanks to the strategic location of these publications.

In fact, Facebook stories are the first thing that users see when they enter the application since they are located at the top of the home screen, as shown in the image below.

So, we recommend you take advantage of this format of publication in Facebook to talk about your offers of the day, to promote your recent posts, to announce winners of contests, spread links, new products and all kinds of communication that you want to reinforce your business.

In all cases remember to include a geotag in your Facebook Stories (create a label with your location, either your city or your business) to address directly to people living in your region.

Take a look at the following article to learn how to take advantage of Facebook Stories to the fullest.

To conclude this article, we can say that if you want to be successful with your Facebook strategies for local businesses, you need to generate a solid base to reach your audience. And for this, the practices cited here (promote on Facebook, create chatbots, make alliances and take advantage of the stories) are fundamental.

Incorporate them into your strategies and then tell us!

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