Keys to Black Friday (part 2): Use mobile to go local

While the value of online purchases during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping weekend is growing (rising 14.4% last year to US$13.03 billion), online shopping has by no means taken over. In fact, over 90% of annual retail sales in the US still happen in brick-and-mortar stores!

A major role of smartphones, apart from actually purchasing goods online, is their use in researching and finding physical stores to shop in. When deciding where to shop and what to buy, people are increasingly relying on their smartphones to research products, compare prices and then find their way in-store.

Use ads to drive your customers in-store this holiday sales season

The ‘Store Visit’ objective from Facebook gives retailers the ability to bridge the gap between the digital and the physical, driving consumers to their brick-and-mortar stores. Choosing this campaign objective means the Facebook algorithm will show your ads to people most likely to make an in-store purchase.

The Store Visits objective can be used with Facebook ad formats like image, video and carousel ads.

It’s an effective way of allowing consumers to action their inspiration, by guiding them to your closest store location. If used with the Facebook Carousel ad format, a native store locator is available, which will display a map as one of the cards in the carousel. The store locator makes ads more useful for consumers by putting contact information and opening hours of nearby stores only one tap away.

Users can then get directions, call or message your business in just a few seconds.

Add offline conversion tracking

If you’re a retail business with physical stores, you’ll know the importance of integrated tracking for your campaigns.

The problem is that, compared to an online purchase, physical purchases in-store can be a little harder to attribute to a specific Facebook ad campaign. But retailers need to know whether their Facebook ads made a difference to in-store purchases – and thankfully Facebook has a tool for that.

Facebook’s offline conversion measurement tool helps retailers understand which offline events can be attributed to the success of your Facebook ads. By matching offline event data from your retail system to people who saw and clicked on your Facebook ads, you can better understand the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and return on your ad spend.

A step-by-step guide to your Black Friday campaigns

We’ve just released a new eBook that will provide you with a step-by-step guide to making the most of your advertising campaigns around Black Friday and Cyber Monday! Featuring more tips and tricks like the above, the guide is your one-stop-shop for ensuring Black Friday 2018 is a success!

DOWNLOAD OUR GUIDE AND LEARN:

• Why this holiday sales season is so important for retail & e-commerce businesses
• How to do an audit of your technical integrations before you launch your campaigns
• Why starting your campaigns early is a good idea
• How to build the right audience and leverage retargeting closer to the big sales dates
• How innovative Facebook ads options can help you use mobile to ‘go local’
• Why creativity is crucial
• How to further optimize your campaigns, while they’re running, to ensure you beat the competition!