Targeting

Customers With
Facebook and
Instagram
Step by Step Guide
The following guide will teach you step by step how to launch Ad campaigns targeting visitors
of specific radius around your business in Facebook and Instagram. We are launching ads for
a restaurant in this guide however it will be useful for any local business. Let’s go!
Create your Local Business Page
on Facebook
If you don’t have a business page, go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ to create one.
Choose the type for your business (restaurant/cafe, beauty business, fitness center, etc). Fill in the name
and contact details - telephone number and address. Click “Get Started”.
Next step Facebook will ask you to add the category for your business (beauty/cosmetics company, fast
food restaurant, family therapist, etc.), put a few sentences of description, add the website address and
choose the Facebook address as well. Let’s scroll down now.
If you are a business, venture or real establishment, check “Yes” in the bottom. If you are official
representative of this business on Facebook, you should also put “Yes”. (If you are not, you can
connect your page to the official representation).
Our next step we will be adding the profile picture to our business page. You could upload your logo or
any other photo that best represents your business.
 Now we are ready to click “Next”.
We recommend to add this page you’ve created to your Favorites so it’s easy for you to access it any
time. Click “Add to Favorites”
Next step Facebook will show you if there are other pages with the same business name. If it’s not your
business, click “Skip”. If it is, you can claim these pages and merge them together.
Next we will choose our preferred audience. As Facebook mentions, they will do their best to put your
business in front of the audience you choose.

In our example we’ve created a family restaurant in

Zurich, Switzerland. The audience we want to attract
are family oriented people from Zurich, so we’ve
chosen Zurich as geo location, age 27- 65 as people of
this age are likely to be interested in a family
restaurant and also both men and women.

When you scroll down (see the next slide), you will be
able to choose the interests of your audience.

Facebook is well known for its in-depth audience

segmentation based on interests. You can choose
anything from your audience’s food preferences,
hobbies and activities to their job title and favorite
sports.
In our example we’ve chosen people who
like pasta and european cuisine and also
express interest in family, parenting and
motherhood/fatherhood to target those
family oriented potential customers.

In our example restaurant we are mostly

interested in German speaking customers.

Analyze your existing clients, think of what

their interests might be and put this
Facebook audience settings according to
this analysis.

Click “Save”.
Now you’ve created your business page. You will be able to access it from your favorite pages in
Facebook or by typing the url into your browser. You can customize this page by adding cover photo,
putting CTA (call-to-action) button and start posting your local business news. However, in this guide
we’ll skip this as our goal is to learn how to target local customers with Facebook ads.
Setting up Ad campaign
Click the arrow icon at the top right corner and choose “Create Ads”.
 We are going to choose the “Send people to website” campaign objective as
“Local awareness” objective is still not available for majority of countries. You can
still set up geo location targeting of your local business using “Send people to
website” objective.
Name your campaign and click “Create Ad Account”
Next step we will set up the Account Country, Currency and Time Zone.
Click “Continue”.
Now we are going to create our
audience. In the “Add location” field we
have typed in our restaurant address.
Then we’ve chosen the radius of 1
mile. Now Facebook will target
everyone in the radius of 1 mile from
our restaurant.

Let’s scroll down and narrow our

audience.
We’ve chosen both men and women as our
targeting audience, the language is German.

Then we’ve included interests of our potential

customers. This is an important part - when
you choose several interests in one section,
Facebook sets an alternative rule for them.

E.g. we want our target audience to have

interest in restaurants, pasta and be family
oriented. To receive an audience that
matches ALL of these three parameters you
need to continue narrowing your audience
with new blocks of interests. Otherwise,
Facebook will show your ads to ANY of these
groups.
We recommend to edit placements and
instead of including all of them as
Facebook recommends, choose only
Facebook feeds and Instagram (if your
target audience uses Instagram).

The right column tends to have a lower

CTR (click through rate) therefore the
clicks will be more expensive and overall
campaign not so efficient.
The bigger budget you set, the more people you will reach. That’s what Facebook will tell you. However,
we strongly recommend to experiment first and find your well performing audience before you start
investing in a particular campaign. Start with as low as €5-10 for a daily budget.

Another thing to consider is schedule.

Set up the dates and timing when you
think it’s best for your potential audience
to see and engage. E.g. if it’s an ad for a
bar, try Friday/Saturday nights. In a
family restaurant like in our example,
we’ve chosen to run our ad during
Saturday and Sunday.

For a more detailed scheduling (e.g. ads

that run from 8 to 12 AM every Tuesday
and Wednesday) Facebook requires to
choose Lifetime budget instead of Daily
Budget. The minimum Lifetime budget
Facebook allows you to set is €150.
We set optimization for Ad Delivery at
“Link Clicks”. We don’t recommend to
set it for impressions unless your main
goal is brand awareness.

You can set the Bid Amount to

automatic. This way Facebook helps
you to get clicks at the best price.

We’ve checked the “Run ads all the

time” for now. As we mentioned before,
if you want your schedule to be more
specific and run ads for less than 24
hours a day, you will need to set up
lifetime budget.

Choose Standard Delivery type not to

keep your potential customers
frustrated by too many ads from your
business in their feed. Click “Continue”.
You can choose from different ad formats. In our example we’ll cover the simple single image ad.
However, you should know that video ads work great in Facebook. The carousel and the slideshow ad
formats are also worth considering and experimenting with.
Next step we’ll browse through Facebook Free Stock images to choose an image for our ad.
In our example business our
goal is to bring people to lunch
at our restaurant so we choose
the juicy image of food.
Scroll down and choose your Facebook local business page
we’ve created earlier to represent your business in ads.

Now it’s important to understand where your customers will

land after clicking the ad. For restaurants and cafes in US
and Canada Facebook has an option of uploading your pdf
menu to your Facebook business page.

Since we are operating from Switzerland, we will have to link

to the website page. Make sure you have an attractive
landing page with a call to action that engages your
customers. If you are a small retail business, you can create
your webshop fast and easy with Paymash webshop and
drive your customers to the product pages.
Now it’s time to fill in the Headline and Text. Think of an
attractive headline or even a special offer from your
business that would encourage your potential customers
to click through.

You can choose the call to action button text from several
Facebook options.

Type in the link description, just keep in mind that it won’t

be displayed on all devices.

You can keep your homepage url as the display link.

So that’s the ad we’ve just created. Looks
yummy? Think critically if you’d click
through. Show to your friends/colleagues
and constantly experiment with the
images/headlines/texts till you find the
combination that performs best with your
audience.

You can also create several ads within one

ad group, so use your imagination and
creativity.

Headline tip: you can also increase your ad

engagement by specifying the distance
separating your business and your potential
customers. You can use phrases like: “5
minutes walk”, “nearby”, “2 minutes drive” to
emphasize how easy you are to reach.
Here’s a few more optional settings to cover:
- URL parameters. If you use analytics tool for your
website (like Google Analytics), you can set up url
parameters to be able to track where your visitors come
from (which particular ad). You can find more info on
setting this up here.
- Offline tracking. You can also enable offline tracking of
your ads. E.g. someone who saw your ad and made a
call to book a table. You can find more info on setting this
up here.
- Facebook Pixel. You can retarget people who visit your
website with Facebook by putting Facebook pixel (it’s
actually a code) to all pages of your website. Facebook
creates a custom audience based on this and you can
show Facebook ads to people who visited your website.
You can click “Create a Pixel” and Facebook will guide
you through the process.

You can also skip these steps and get back to them later
if needed.
When you have everything ready, click “Place Order”
Next step is selecting a payment method.
You can pay with Paypal or a bank card.
 Now you have everything set up and your campaign will start on the dates
you’ve specified. You can track its performance in Facebook Ads Manager.
Don’t get upset if the clicks are too expensive in the beginning. Experiment
with the audiences you target and the ads you show them to increase the
click through rate. The higher CTR your ads will have, the less you’ll have to
pay for a click.

Good luck promoting your small business!