Choose the objective that matches the outcome, such as clicks to your website or an offer, not page likes. Aim the ad at people near the shop, and link it to a page that answers their questions.

Hundreds of new fans, few of them nearby

A cafe owner spends a small Facebook budget on the option promising page likes, and the fan count climbs by several hundred in a week.

Page Insights then shows where those fans live: other provinces, other countries. The regulars who come in every morning are now a small part of the list.

Posts about the new pastry case collect fewer likes than before. The ad did what it was set up for, and that was never visits.

The objective is an instruction

Facebook's ad tool begins by asking what kind of result you want. It looks like a label for your own records, but it decides who sees the ad.

Facebook shows each ad to the people in your audience it judges likeliest to take the chosen action. Choose page likes, and it finds whoever clicks Like most readily.

Those people need not be nearby, or interested in coffee. If the audience is the whole country, they can live anywhere in it.

The results you can ask for

The objectives on offer this spring include these:

For a cafe that needs people at the counter, the second and fourth sit closest to the outcome, each one step from a visit.

Fans who dilute every later post

A page's posts do not reach every fan. Facebook chooses what appears in each news feed, and how people respond to a post affects how widely it travels.

Distant fans seldom respond to a post about today's soup, so the post looks weaker than it is and reaches fewer of the regulars who would have liked it.

Those fans stay. Every later post, and every figure in Page Insights, is blended with people who will never come through the door.

Where the ad is shown

The objective decides whom Facebook looks for. The audience settings decide where, and the default is far too wide for a business people walk into.

Set the location to your town or a small radius around the shop. Add an age range only when the business has a real reason for one.

The connections setting can limit an ad to people who already like the page, or to those who do not, so regulars and newcomers each get their own message.

A tight local audience will look small in the tool. For a shop that depends on people nearby, that is the right size.

Paying to show a single post

The button under each post that pays to show it more widely lets you pick the audience, such as fans and their friends, or people you choose by location and interests.

The second choice lets a post about Saturday's market stall reach people in town who have never heard of the cafe.

Promote posts that give people something to do: an offer, an event, or a new menu with the hours beside it.

A worked example

A gelato shop near the beach in a small coastal town makes its gelato and sorbet in a kitchen behind the counter, and opens from April to the end of September.

In early May the owner spent $60 on a page likes ad, leaving the location at the default, the whole country. Within ten days the page had several hundred new fans.

Most lived in cities hundreds of kilometres away, and posts announcing new flavours drew fewer likes and comments than in April.

The objective had asked for likes from anyone in Canada, and that is what it found. Nothing in the setup mentioned the town or a visit.

For June, a clicks to website ad reaches people within a short drive and opens a page with the day's flavours, the hours and a map. A small offer ad gives nearby people a free waffle cone.

The people reached can now walk in, and the page they land on answers what they need to know before they leave the beach.

A page worth arriving on

An ad for visits is only as good as the page it opens. On a phone, that page has to load quickly and show the hours, the address and a reason to come, all in the first screen.

A home page with a slider and a welcome message makes the visitor hunt. Add campaign tags to the link, so that Analytics files those visits under the ad.

Judging the ad by its result

Facebook's ad reports show results for the objective you chose, plus how many people saw the ad and how often. Compare campaigns by that result, never by fans gained.

Analytics shows the visits that arrived from the ad and what those visitors read, and an offer shown at the counter confirms a visit the ad brought in.

The counter-case

A new page with almost no fans has a real problem: its posts reach nobody, and a dozen likes makes a page look abandoned.

A modest likes campaign aimed only at people in town can give it a starting audience of neighbours, and a lodge may reasonably want fans in the cities its guests come from.

Neither case argues for likes from anyone, anywhere. The objective and the audience still have to describe the people the business needs, checked by someone who knows the ad tool.

Setting up the next campaign

  1. Open Page Insights and see where your fans live.
  2. Decide what the ad is for: a visit, an order or a booking.
  3. Choose the objective that matches that outcome.
  4. Set the location to the town or a small radius.
  5. Link to a page that keeps the ad's promise on a phone.
  6. Tag the link so that Analytics records the visits.
  7. Judge the ad by the result you asked for.

Step three is where the money goes right or wrong. Everything Facebook does with the budget follows from it, so settle it before the picture, the words or the audience.

Why posts reach only some of the fans, and why the parts a business owns outright, its website and email list, deserve more attention than the fan count, has its own post: why fewer fans see your Facebook posts.

Frequently asked questions

Why did a page likes ad bring fans from far away?

The objective told Facebook to find people likely to like the page, and with the location left wide, those people could live anywhere in the country.

Which objective suits a cafe or shop?

Usually clicks to website, sending people to a page with the menu, hours and map, or offer claims, which gives people nearby a reason to come in.

How do distant fans hurt later posts?

Facebook shows posts more widely when people respond to them. Fans who will never visit rarely respond, so each post looks weaker and reaches fewer of your regulars.

How should the location be set?

To your town, or a small radius around the shop, rather than the default country. A small local audience is right for a business people walk into.

Should I ever pay for page likes?

A brand-new page with almost no fans may need a starting audience, but aim the ad only at people in your town, never at the whole country.

How do I know whether a visit ad worked?

Compare the result Facebook reports for the objective, the visits Analytics records from the tagged link, and offers redeemed at the counter, rather than the number of fans.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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