Facebook Advertising Objectives: Store Traffic
The beauty of Facebook advertising is that there are a variety of options in advertising your brand and driving results that matter to you. With 11 different advertising objectives, opportunities are endless for growing your business. But what happens if your ads are not directly resulting in correlated business at your physical storefront? It‘s not only confusing but frustrating to see that your money was spent and drove no legitimate foot traffic. If this sounds familiar, it’s time to start re-thinking your objective options.
You read in our first lesson that the Brand Awareness objective can help build recognition for your brand and deliver to those who could recall it, but what objective do you apply when you want to drive people legitimately into your physical place of business? Store Traffic.
Store Traffic is the one Facebook objective designed to increase the foot traffic that comes through your door. This objective is only available for use if you have multiple locations, so that’s something important to keep in mind. The Store Traffic objective optimizes ad delivery to drive Facebook users into one of your locations that’s likely to convert into sales.
Store Traffic ads provide the option to deliver the ad to a market within a set distance of each location you own. It’s a great way to target people in a variety of locations with the same ad while tailoring to the specifics of their locale.
As you learned in the Brand Awareness objective lesson, CTAs prompt the viewer to respond or engage with the ad and its focus. Like many other objectives, the Store Traffic objective is also home to a few specific call-to-action buttons. There are four available: Get Directions (which is the default), Learn More, Order Now, and Shop Now.
How does Store Traffic Differ from Another Objective with a CTA of “Get Directions?”
The advantage of the Store Traffic objective is that it solely optimizes for driving your target market into one of your locations. The purpose is to leverage specific characteristics of the foot traffic you’re receiving and aim to increase it. Although there are similar CTAs available for Store Traffic, this objective does differ from other objectives with a CTA of “Get Directions.”
The only other objective with a “Get Directions” CTA is the Reach objective (which we will cover in the coming weeks). Store Traffic differs from using Reach with a “Get Directions” CTA because the trained Facebook algorithm optimizes the delivery for each objective differently and as a result, Store Traffic ads tend to be a lot cheaper.
The purpose of Store Traffic with a “Get Directions” button is to drive people you geotarget based on location proximity to one of your stores, whereas the purpose of Reach with a “Get Directions” button is to reach the most amount of people within your target market and encourage them to get the directions themselves and make their way to the store.
The Store Traffic ads, by default, are individualized in a way that allows you to consolidate to one Ad Set but send the viewer to the location nearest to them, regardless of the number of locations your company has. The ad copy dynamically changes based on geolocation. The geo-targeting aspect is unique to the objective and it allows you to specifically reach a user within a particular radius of your stores.
For example, Company XYZ has two locations. One in Minneapolis, MN, one in Duluth, MN. If you’re traveling through Minneapolis and you see the ad, it’ll populate the Minneapolis address to the advertisement’s caption and CTA button (if you have one). Then say a few hours later you happen to be up in Duluth, the address would change on the ad to the Duluth location. It’s a great way to target markets in multiple locations and have Facebook easily change the address for you by default. Below is an example of how the addresses auto-populate to show the one nearest to you.
Whereas, if you’re running a Reach ad with a “Get Directions” button, you must insert an address that will be available to the viewer when they click the button. If you own multiple locations, it would require that each location has its own Ad Set because each individual address would need to be inserted due to the fact that Facebook does not auto-populate for this objective. Each individual ad would also need to be attached to its appropriate page, which would mean spending a lot more money to achieve your goal.
Why Business Owners Should Use the Store Traffic Objective:
Because the Store Traffic objective has its own unique features, there are many reasons business owners should use it.
Foremost, if you have multiple locations and want to drive foot traffic into one of your physical stores, this is the best route to take. It’s the cheapest, it optimizes specifically for visits, and it has the potential to produce great ROAS (return on advertising spend).
If you are a business owner with multiple locations and really want to test which location is giving you the best results, Store Traffic is a great objective to test. The breakdown options in the ad level give you a considerable understanding of which location is attracting more of your market per ad, and how much each location is spending per your allotted budget. This aspect of Store Traffic ads can be exceptionally helpful when you are looking to pay attention to how much each location is spending because that knowledge can be put forth in future ads when strategizing budget/objectives/etc. per location.
Another reason business owners with multiple locations use the Store Traffic objective is because overall, there’s less risk for error. Because of the unique feature that auto-populates per location, Facebook’s algorithm really does it all for you. When running a different campaign (such as the Reach we discussed above) with the same goal in mind, there are more aspects left up to you–the Advertiser–to handle. The Store Sets in the Ad Set level and the auto-populated results in the creative level of a Store Traffic campaign gives the advertiser more leeway to see how a simple ad works.
Is Store Traffic the Best Option for Me?
The Store Traffic objective is very diverse in the sense that you can cover a lot of ground in a rather simple way. If you’re a business owner with multiple locations and are looking to save money, this would be one of the best options for you.
There are many ways to go when it comes to increasing foot traffic to your physical place of business so it’s important to be smart with your objective choices, budget, and whatever other aspects you need for your ads to succeed.
