Trying to get people from Facebook to visit a brick-and-mortar store is one of the main reasons businesses use their ads. While quite effective, Facebook is looking to further improve their ad options by taking the opposite approach. A new ad option they are testing will trigger ads to be displayed specifically to people who physically visited a real-world location.
This ‘offline-to-online’ retargeting option is setup to try to encourage people to either go back to the store to make purchases, or make an online purchase. Another benefit to this type of ad is improving customer engagement with a company, which is a great way to build brand loyalty.
The option requires a brand to have multiple locations enabled so they can create Custom Audiences for store visitors. The system can then be used to target people who have visited the specific location within the last 30 days (at most).
It is clear how effective this type of advertising can be in certain industries. For example, a restaurant might want to try to lure someone back who enjoyed a meal a few weeks before. While certainly not for every marketer, it is a great option to have available.
