Wilmington is heating up! With the fast-approaching annual beach season just around the corner and the PGA Tour Wells Fargo Championship in May, it’s shaping up to be a busy start to summer.

With so many people poised to arrive, local businesses will be competing for a chance to capture some of that traffic. One of the most cost-effective ways of achieving this is by advertising on Facebook.

An important factor to consider when spending any advertising dollars on Facebook is establishing your business goals for your ad campaign.

Common goals for local business include:

• Drive more customers into your physical store
• Gain more exposure for products or services you offer
• Create an event specific offer or discount
• Build-out a client email list

Without a concrete goal in place, your campaign and creative ideas will fall short of success. Once you have a goal in mind, consider boosting your campaign post on Facebook. When a boosted post is clicked, more people will see the post in their news feeds. Boosted posts are typically used when the goal is to achieve audience engagement such as post likes, shares and comments.

A Boosted Post

While boosting a post is the most common form of Facebook advertising, it is often used arbitrarily.
Here are two ways to optimize your boosted post:

Speak directly to your audience. Example: “Are you here for the PGA tournament and want to do some local shopping? Take a look at Sue’s Dresses on Floral Ave! Mention this post and receive an additional 10% off.”

Target your audience. Use the target audience feature to hone in on the exact audience you want to capture with location, age, and gender targets being the most important metrics.


For even more in-depth targeting, look to use Facebook Ads Manager to access all of your custom audiences. Facebook ads offer the greatest number of options for advertisers, and the type of ad you choose will depend on the goal of your campaign. These options include: clicks to website; website conversions; offer claims; video views; and a call-to-action button promoting actions, such as “shop now,” “download,” “sign up” or “contact us.”

Business Ad Manager

Another benefit to running ads over boosted posts is the ability to use geo-targeting. Facebook lets you target users based on a specific address or geographic location and targets users who are around that area.

Within geo-targeting, there’s a dropdown menu. The drop-down menu allows you the ability to target Facebook users who are merely traveling into Wilmington. This feature allows you to cater ad copy directly to those who are in town for special events.

Below are a few geo-targeting options:

People recently in this location. This targeting option allows you to advertise only to users whose most recent location falls within a selected area, including people who live there or may be traveling there (You might want to advertise time sensitive sales to people recently in a location).

People traveling in this location. This option is better for directly targeting travelers. It includes only those whose most recent location is more than 125 miles from home and within your selected area (This could be used to advertise rental cars to users traveling in your area).

Through careful planning and execution, a coordinated Facebook advertising campaign has the ability to attract an abundance of new business. With all the upcoming events happening here in Wilmington, there’s no better time than now to test them out!

Need help with your Facebook Ads? Our Social Media Specialist at Wilmington Design Company can help you perfectly target the right audience. Contact us at [email protected] or 910-395-9997.

Bill Hunter and the WDC team believe that honest business and innovative design go hand-in-hand. Their talented team of designers, marketers and developers are as diverse as our work. They offer a range of services, including marketing strategy, branding and creative web and application development, as well as digital marketing solutions specific to your business. Contact Bill at [email protected] or visit  www.wilmingtondesignco.com.