Localized creative has proven to be extremely effective with strong performance gains, driving up to a 50% decrease in Cost Per Conversion on social media.

Shakr Local enables advertisers to create localized campaigns at scale; for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations. Finally, you can achieve local relevance on a national scale.

Why We built Shakr Local

Last year, we introduced a powerful video automation feature called Shakr Batch. With batch creation, we have enabled advertisers to create dozens, hundreds and thousands of videos. Simply by uploading a spreadsheet with text and assets (like image and video assets), you can automate the creation of virtually unlimited number of creative variations.

We noticed a substantial portion of our clients using the batch feature to customize creatives for different locations, either in areas where they were physically operating, or to highlight a specific offer relevant to people living in a certain city or zip code. As a result, we decide to build an end-to-end solution for locally relevant campaigns, making relevance at scale a breeze.

During the beta rollout we have seen tremendous performance gains for advertisers who have customized creatives for different locations, and we are now ready to roll out the solution to a wider audience.

What Shakr Local Is

There are two steps to create a geo-localized campaign with Shakr Local.

1. Creating videos for all locations you want to target.
2. Create and activate your localized campaign on Facebook and Instagram.

Step 1: Create dozens, hundreds, or thousands of localized creatives for different geographical areas. This can range from different states, cities, or even zip code level creatives.

In order to scale out creative for every single location, you need to start with a “base template”. The base template can be designed by your internal motion graphics designer or by the Shakr Creative Lab team based on your brand design guidelines.

Uploading Your Own Video Template

If you, or anyone on your team are proficient in Adobe After Effects, you can easily create your own video template and upload it to your Shakr account.

Once your template is uploaded, it turns into a dynamic and modular template that can be used as the basis of your scaled campaign.

Ordering a Custom Template from The Shakr Creative Labs Team

If you don’t have internal creative staff working with you, the Shakr Creative Lab team would be happy to create a bespoke template for your brand/client, optimized for social media and geo-localization.

Step 2: Once your template is ready and you have created your localized creatives, it is time to publish the campaign on Facebook and Instagram. Doing this manually would take hours of tedious and complex work, but with the Shakr Local campaign wizard, you are minutes away from having your campaign activated at scale.

Who Shakr Local Is For

Shakr Local is the perfect solution for brands who strive to have a local relevance in people’s lives. It could be that your brand or client operate in certain areas. Or it can be used to increase the relevance of your ad creative, even if you are running an online-only business.

Not sure if your brand or client can benefit from Shakr Local? Schedule a discovery call and we will walk you through relevant use cases and learnings from your industry.

Localization vs Optimization & Delivery

Advertisers often have to navigate the tradeoff between localization and optimal delivery. Normally, if you want to serve localized creatives you need to segment your audience into multiple smaller audience groups, which is not ideal for optimal delivery. Essentially you give Facebook less data to optimize from, resulting in sub-optimal delivery, leading to higher CPAs.

With Shakr Local you get the best of both worlds, unlimited creative localization, and optimal delivery. We ensure this by intelligently grouping multiple ad creatives for multiple locations, in the same ad set and ad. Thus you can have one ad set and one ad, serving many different locations. If person A is in zip code X, and person B is in zip code Y, they will be served different creatives/ads, even though they are in the same ad set.

Localization Learnings & Best Practices

Over the last couple of months we have helped leading brands and agencies create geo-localized campaigns, ranging from dozens to hundreds of locations in many different industries. Now, we have consolidated our experience into five key learning. Let’s dig in!

1. More/Deeper is better:

We have found that the more granular you are able to go, the better results you can get. Initially, you might be considering to localize your creatives based on states/regions or cities. However, we recommend you to consider going as granular as zip codes, as we have seen amazing results with hyper-local creative. During your kickoff call, we will help you navigate how granular you should go in your campaign based on your business, budget, and campaign goals.

2. KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid

It’s tempting to incorporate complex aspects when planning your localized campaign. But whilst being able to incorporate first party data or other complex aspects is always great, it is not necessarily needed. We’ve seen advertisers get strong performance results by layering in simple localization messages, like calling out the zip code (e.g “Attention Homeowners in {ZIPCODE}”. We will help you figure out what approach to take during your kickoff call.

3. A Holistic Personalization Experience Drives Results

By adding localization throughout the customer journey you are very likely to get better campaign performance. If you can, match copy, creative and post-click experience! For example, we have seen great results when advertisers are able to use the same localization (e.g “Best home loan rates for {POSTCODE} residents”) on their landing pages as they have in their ad creatives. If you have the ability to localize your post-click experience, do not hesitate to make that investment.

4. Localization is broadly applicable

It is easy to think that localization is only applicable to advertisers who promote physical visits, but that’s not the case. A wide range of industries can benefit from localization, even online-first businesses that have a local relevance. Let’s say that you are advertising a solar panel installation company operating throughout a certain state; you are still likely to get campaign performance gains by localizing your creative for hundreds of zip codes within that state. When your audience becomes aware that you are offering your service in their exact zip code (or better yet, saying that X people in zip code Y have installed solar panels with your business), they are more likely to interact with your business. You can even experiment with adding customer testimonials or quotes from the area you’re localizing for.

5. Consolidate ad sets

As mentioned earlier, localization normally comes with the potential pitfall of having to split your audience into smaller ad sets, which may hurt delivery and performance. With Shakr Local you can consolidate ad sets into larger audience groups, whilst still enjoying the benefits of localization and creative personalization.

How To Get Started

If you’re interested in learning more about Shakr Local and achieving Local Relevance at Scale, contact us today! We’ll take you all the way from ideation to campaign launch.

Book your discovery call today and achieve local relevance at scale!

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Also published on Medium.