Models for Leveraging Local Marketing On Facebook

Now that we've covered the basics, how does one target audiences.  If one has a diverse following, how do they ensure that all audiences are appropriately addressed, without fragmenting the population or feeding their followers unnecessary information?  Ryan Rudd in his article,  Three Models for Leveraging Local in an Enterprise Social Media Strategy, speaks to strategies on how to avoid these problems.

The first model Rudd brings up is Geo-Targeting.  This tool provided by Facebook, enables someone posting on a page to localize who sees the post.  The poster can limit who sees the post based on either language or country.  Targeting your Asian followers?  Simply limit language to Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, or whatever other languages you care to add.  Additionally you can limit viewership of the post to those countries. You can even do both if you're trying to strictly target a certain audience.  Doing this is quite simple, all it takes is changing a single permission in the page settings.

Rudd also suggests the potential of Central Management of local Facebook pages.  By gaining admin control of each local Facebook page one can ensure that there is a consistent message and strategy coming from headquarters.  This would allow you to push centralized campaigns out through each local page.

However, this strategy risks confusing the local audience.  Take a centralized page that wants to be local over several cities in the US.  Though the Geo-Targeting feature enables access to specific cities, doing so could be negative if the language used, or message sent is posted by someone ignorant of that cities culture or recent events could be additionally alienating.  So be aware the risks and advantages associated with this strategy.

Rudd's third model is leading locally.  By sharing localities marketing strategies across local branches content, ideas, tips, and tricks the local branches can become powerful marketers utilizing information about posts brand wide.  Again however I find that if there is a lack of coordination or communication this model quickly falls apart.

These models provide room for experimentation within brands, playing with local and centralized strategies and seeing consumer response will demonstrate how this local approach can be utilized for your brand.  This furthers into social media's key trait which is that striving for interaction with the consumer.