Geotargeting is a great way to get the most out of your PPC budget. Many businesses have to make some consideration to location for the service or product they provide. If this is the case then advertising their product to everyone, everywhere is a waste of resources. So what is Geotargeting?
Geotargeting comes in a few different forms. From targeting people who are searching about a specific area, to people searching in a specific area. There’s a good tutorial to get you started with the mechanics of geotargeting on Adwords here.
If you’re a car rental business in Bristol then turning up in a search for ‘airport car hire’ in Edinburgh isn’t too likely to land you a sale. The first part of your geotargeting strategy should be to make sure you only show up in searches not containing the words like ‘Bristol’ or ‘South West’ if the search originates in or near your area of service. You can also set your ad not to appear in certain areas, for instance in and around Bristol, Alabama.
With all that in mind, plenty of people who aren’t directly in your area may still want services in that area at some time. This is where it’s important to target your keywords and make location based ads. Use exact match keywords, or require at least a few keywords together for your ad to show. For instance, make a global ad that follows this form
Car + Hire + Bristol + Airport
These things seem obvious on their own, but there is another layer to it. It’s not only having these ads targeted in the right places, but allocating your budget to them correctly. If you’ve found your ads get more traffic at certain times in certain places then increase the budget at those times in those places. Whether that means the bids for keywords or allowing for more clicks in your budget. Equally if you find certain areas result in a lot of clicks but few conversions decrease the budget there.
You might consider tailoring Landing Pages depending on where and when they were searched for. If you’re running a restaurant in Bristol you might want to make your landing page a 10% off offer for people that search for ‘Italian in Bristol’ around lunchtime. Maybe 20% off if they are outside of the city. ‘Near me’ searches on smartphones are rising at an incredible rate.
Target the right place and time to take advantage of this. We never go offline anymore!
If you’re running a Paid Search campaign in a very competitive area you can use geotargeting to lower your costs. For instance identify the time and areas that your clicks are most likely to result in conversions. Say city centres around lunch time for office workers on their lunch break. Boost your bids for clicks in these areas during that time period and let it drop off afterwards.
The advances in geotargeting are coming thick and fast. For instance, if a customer has your app and walks into an area you’ve defined as that of a competitor you can have your app send them a reminder of where your nearest store is. This is called geo-conquesting and is at the forefront of location based marketing.
Measures like that are beyond the needs of most people, but properly implementing geotargeting can help you reduce your ad spend and better qualify clicks, leading to a better all round return on investment.
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[…] rise of ‘near-me’ search terms have been well documented but even without them local searches make up a huge portion of product/service based search terms. […]
[…] Did you know that over 20% of Google searches are for local products, services or places? If you aren’t utilising Location Extensions then there’s a good chance you’re missing out on the full potential of this traffic. […]