The "Store Visits" Objective

Introduction 

The Store Visit objective allows you to create dynamic local ads for multiple store locations so you can drive store visits and in-store sales. This objective also lets you target people within a set distance of one or many of your store locations with ads designed to help people navigate to or contact the location closest to them. Driving people into a store, restaurant, dealership or other place of business is an important marketing objective for any business with physical locations.

Destinations For Store Visit Ads 

When creating ads with the Store Visit objective using the Bulk Creator workflow, you can choose from various options as the destination for your ad. Currently, you can pick from:

  • URL: A specific URL you provide, such as a website with more information about your store. 
  • Store Location: Rich information about your store, including opening hours, location, telephone number, and website. Each of these options is actionable by the user. 
  • Facebook Page: A link to the Facebook Page for your store. 

Geographical Targeting For Store Visit Ads 

With Geographical Targeting, you can also promote your business locations to users within a chosen geographical area when using the Store Visits objective. 

You're able to promote your business locations to all Facebook users within a certain geographical area -- for example, New York City -- and Facebook users within this area will be shown ads which promote the closest one of your locations to them.

How To Set Up Geographical Targeting 

During the standard creation workflow, you'll be given a choice for your targeting options. In the Business Targeting Locations section, you'll be able to pick either Business Location or Geographical Targeting.

If you choose Geographical Targeting, you'll be able to set up geographical locations using the same geo-location interface you may have used in other areas of Marin Social. You'll be able to either include or exclude addresses using a general search, an exact address, or even dropping a pin. You can also choose either miles or kilometers for your unit of measurement. 

Mass Editor Support For Geographical Targeting 

You can also make changes to your Geographical Targeting settings within the Mass Editor using the same interface as you would during the creation workflow.

Please note that, if you're using Business Location, you won't be able to use the Mass Editor to make changes. 

Map Cards 

Marin Social offers support for creating a dynamic Map Card within the carousel ad unit. A dynamic map card is useful to you as an advertiser because it can show users the exact location of the nearest store based on their phone's GPS location. Firstly, please note that you are only able to create Map Cards within Marin Social -- but not edit them. As per Facebook's guidelines, the Map Card itself is not editable or customizable. We'll explain more about this in the section below. 

When creating ads in Marin Social using the Store Visit objective, you'll be able to activate Map Cards using the On/Off switch within the carousel ad unit. You can also choose the card's position by dragging the card within the carousel ad unit, similar to how carousel ads work in Marin Social. 

Map Cards are also supported for creation by the Bulk Creator, allowing you to turn the Map Card on or off for each ad unit, as well as dragging to reposition it. 

Important Notes About Map Cards 

If you are considering importing campaigns which contain ad units that use the dynamic Map Card, please bear in mind the following notes:

  • Campaign, ad sets, ads and reporting metrics will be imported into Marin Social.
  • While the reporting metrics mentioned above can be imported, the Map Card units themselves are not supported for import. This is due to a design limitation implemented by Facebook itself. 
  • Campaigns that you have synced from the publisher which contain a Map Card will not display the Map Card in the Mass Editor, or in any generated ad previews.
  • You cannot make any changes to creative or targeting settings for an imported campaign which ads featuring a Map Card. If you do alter these settings, the Map Card will be removed the next time you re-sync.
  • If you decide to make any changes to an ad on the publisher's side, please remember that any ads with Map Cards will not be downloaded when you next sync with Marin Social. 

As always, we recommend that you exercise caution when making changes to campaigns and ad units which have been imported or downloaded from publisher to Marin Social.

Written by Marketing @ Marin Software

Last published at: June 1st, 2023