Facebook has unveiled their latest plans to provide marketers with even more in-depth data than ever before. Their latest venture is to provide advertisers with greater insights on their target audiences and their subsequent in-person shop visits and purchases.
Precise Data for Offline Businesses
Facebook has teamed up with various point-of-sale systems including Marketo, IBM, LiveRamp and Square to be able to confirm who bought what or who visited a shop after they’d seen a Facebook ad. This new data sourcing will make advertising data for brick-and-mortar businesses much less abstract. With the new data, businesses will have access to real-time results based on in-store or over the phone sales and key demographic information which will make it possible to further improve future advertising efforts from copy and creative to targeting.
Local Awareness
Facebook’s Local Awareness ads will serve to bypass the often incompatible or problematic store locator feature on business’ websites. Sophisticated shop locators will be featured within the ads themselves and Facebook users will be able to find the physical shops closest to their locations with useful calls-to-action such as “Get Directions”. This, in addition to the ability for businesses to create custom advertisements for each shop location all within a single campaign (a feature that was released last year), spells plenty of reasons for physical shop owners to get serious about Facebook advertising.
Mobile Merging with Reality
Facebook’s new focus is based on the fact that many people use their mobile devices before making real-world purchases in brick-and-mortar shops. They use their phones and other devices to discover what to buy, where to buy and to perform other related research. While many marketers are very excited by Facebook’s latest offerings, the latest from the largest social media platform in the world comes with a healthy dose of controversy. Data for brick-and-mortar, offline activity will be captured via GPS and other means. While Facebook insists the data it will provide to marketers will be anonymous, there are still many questions and concerns surrounding the privacy of Facebook users (including the question if the data is anonymous on Facebook’s end or not). Facebook users with privacy concerns will be able to block some of their data when they turn off location services.
Have you been advertising with Facebook for your brick-and-mortar shops? If so, will these new updates to Facebook advertising entice you to allot a greater advertising budget to be used on the social media platform? Why or why not? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
