How to target people that are near you on Facebook

How do you catch potential customers that are near you? How do you target people according to their location?

Do you have a house to sell and you want to find a buyer in your area? Or do you run a small hot dog stand and want to sell more of your delicious repast? Try to target the people that are near your business!

Is your stock full of T-shirts that say, “I ♥ Boston” and you want to sell them? Target the real Bostonians!

Facebook simply allows you to target people according to their geographic locations. You can sort your audience broadly or very specifically. That means you can target the whole country, state or region, city, zip/postal code, and if you have a store, you can use the option for your very own business address that is to be set on your Business Manager page.

It is possible to target people by typing the location and dropping the pin within a given radius, or you can target multiple locations within a single target group.

One interesting feature is that Facebook sorts the audience into four sections:

1) Everyone in this location: People whose current city on their FB profile is the location you choose, as well as anyone determined to be in that location via mobile device.

2) People who live in this location: People whose current city from their FB profile is within that location. This is also validated by IP address and their FB friends’ stated locations.

3) Recently in this location: People whose most recent location is the selected area, as determined only via mobile device. This includes people who live there or who may be traveling there. (You probably won’t sell them anything anymore).

4) People traveling in this location: People whose most recent location is the selected area, as determined via mobile device, and are greater than 100 miles from their stated home location on their Facebook profiles. (They might fall in love with your house for rent, or with your hot dogs, or even with the whole city, so they buy the t-shirt!)

You can also exclude specific locations from targeting. Why would you do that? If there is a neighborhood whose inhabitants are your daily diners, you don’t have to push them to come to your hot dog stand. Spend your money on those who don’t know your tasty dish!

Having questions? Feel free to reach out to me! Want to know more? Great!