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Facebook Local - more customers for local businesses?

Social media marketing \ Organic marketing on social media \ Facebook marketing \ Facebook Local - more customers for local businesses?

How would you like to find all the restaurants in your area in one app? How about a daily curated list of things to do and events in your area? For example, the ability to search for “Thai food” or get tips on the best Thai restaurants in your area?

All this is combined with recommendations and reviews from your friends. All this is possible with the Facebook Local app!

Local competes with Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.

Facebook Local allows users to search for nearby places and events. As the app requires a Facebook login, Local also brings a social aspect to the table: it lets you see which nearby events your friends are attending and possibly also which shops and places they’ve visited.

With Local, users can find the opening hours of places, recommendations from friends, ratings of places, distance and location, popular words used to describe places on Facebook, and pictures of places and events added by users.

Facebook is directly competing with Google, TripAdvisor, and Yelp for user popularity with its revamped app. It’s easy to imagine a user searching for a restaurant, for example, using an app that also gives them a convenient way to see their friends’ recommendations.

Are you interested in starting marketing on Facebook, or maximize the profits from your current marketing?

We can only speculate about the possibility of advertising

So far, there is no information on whether advertising will be possible on Local. Still, judging Facebook’s financial thinking, we are hopeful that advertising on the app will be possible in the future. This could be a game-changer, especially for restaurants, if Facebook Local manages to establish itself as the app people use every day.

What is certain is that Local will give places with good user ratings a strong organic presence. Small businesses and events in particular, whose marketing efforts may otherwise be small, will benefit.

So far, Local has not really taken off, but if it does, it would again diversify Facebook’s offerings and bring interesting added value to both users and businesses.

Article updated 27.11.2020