Facebook launches two dynamic traffic tools

Facebook is launching two new tools that help in leveraging location & providing insight in to consumer behavior both online and offline. These two related products include one analytics tool and an update to a previous tool. The analytics tool named “Local Insights” which helps the small businesses to keep tabs on the traffic to their stores. The other one is an update for the Local Awareness Ads. Businesses having at least 5 locations can use this tool for making their Facebook campaigns more relevant based on locality. This tool thus helps the multi-location businesses and brands in leveraging the already existing data in their location pages and feed the store location related info in to the Local Awareness Ads. This also serves as a reason for creating location pages if they don’t exist. The tools are similar to AdWord’s call and location extensions.

As far as mobile users are concerned, majority of the locally driven conversions will take place offline. Presently 80% of the ad revenue of Facebook comes from its mobile users. However, there is no direct tie-up between the Local Awareness Ads and Local Insights. The latter one is useful for the single – location businesses to see who’s around. Bottom line is both the tools will enable the Facebook advertisers to establish a connection between their foot traffic and online ads.

The Local Insights tool can be accessed from Page Insights. There is a tab that shows data about nearby Facebook users. Though the in-store visits are not tracked by the tool, it gives you “aggregate demographics and trends associated with the people nearby.” There are many things to learn from this tool. For example, what types of users are nearby and at what time. The business owners and advertisers can although have implications related to staffing and targeting. This tool combined with the Local Awareness Ads can help you to understand if your ads are reaching your prospects and affecting store visits.

Facebook has stated that the data will be reported anonymously. Also the data will be collected only from the users who have enabled the location services in the Facebook app. The update to the Local Awareness Ad will be made available from API and via Power Editor too. The Local Insights tool will be made available in the coming weeks.

Image Source: marketingland.com