ℹ️ Note: this article describes Local Ads, a Facebook's campaign type that helps you promote your services and outlets locally. Smartly.io also has a lot of solutions for localizing your ads in other ways, for example with Automated Ads. A newer addition to this family is the Store Visits campaign type. Read more here.

Local Reach Ads let you:

• Connect with people near multiple business locations
• Avoid ad spend on people who don't live in your target area
• Drive specific actions with call-to-action buttons

To create a Local Ads campaign in Smartly.io, the following conditions must be met:

• The Facebook Campaign Objective must be Reach
• The billing event must be Impressions
• The targeting has to include any combination of geolocations, with the exclusion of countries
• All locations in the ad set must be in the same country

A specialty of this campaign type is that you can create ads with special call-to-actions that encourage people to contact you via telephone, or get directions to your nearest outlet directly on their phone.

"Call Now" call-to-action (Click-to-Call)

ℹ️ Note: We're aware that in this latest version of the Smartly.io Tool we are not supporting this Call to Action as of now and are working to hopefully enable this again in the future.
 

How-to: For this call to action, you need to use a special formatting in the Link URL field of the creative. The phone number should include the country code — example below:

tel:<phone number>
tel:+1418193645

Clicking or tapping the call-to-action will prompt the user to make the call directly on their mobile device. Make sure to only target mobile devices capable of making calls.

Limitations:

• Call Now should be used only with mobile targeting to ensure device capability to make a telephone call.
• Targeted ages should not include users younger than 18 years
• If your ad set geo-targeting includes multiple locations, they should all be in the same country
• Premium-rate phone numbers are not allowed.
• The phone number in your ad must be from the same country with respect to your ad set target locations.

"Get Directions" call-to-action

ℹ️ Note: We're aware that in this latest version of the Smartly.io Tool we are not supporting this Call to Action as of now except for the "Single Video" Ad Format and are working to hopefully enable this more more ad formats in the future. We can also confirm that the "Get Directions" Call-to-Action only works for Single Video or Image Ad Format on Ads Manager.

How-to: For this call to action, you need to use the following format in the link URL field for the creative (example below):

fbgeo://<latitude>,<longitude>,"address line here"
fbgeo://1.286735,103.849553,"42 Boat Quay, Singapore"

Clicking or tapping the call-to-action, users see a map with directions to the business as listed on your Facebook Page. Clicks on other parts of the ad go to your Facebook Page.

"Send Message" call-to-action

How-to: Just choose the "Send Message" call-to-action from the drop-down menu, and use your regular domain as the URL.

Clicking or tapping the call-to-action button launches the Messenger to send a message to your Page. The message includes the ad photo and headline as an attachment. The user can type, send and cancel the operation if they wish. Clicking or tapping on other parts of the ad brings the user to your page.

Reporting on Local Ads

To get reports on how many times users clicked on these call-to-action buttons, use the "Link Clicks" column — it includes all clicks on "any area of the ad that links to destinations or experiences, including Call Now, Message Now and Get Directions call-to-actions.

Source: Ads Manager, info on reporting columns (click thumbnail to expand): 

Read more about Local Reach Ads on Facebook: How Facebook Reach Ads Work