Monday, October 13, 2008

Reaching Local Customers by Targeted PPC

By Brian Basch

Target your pay per click for more value for your dollar. Advertising campaigns can be specific to your area if you desire, this means you can promote your business in your city using the internet. There are lots of options, but one of the best systems for geotargeting PPC campaigns is Google's AdWords.

If you want your ads only to be seen by people in your area, geographical targeting comes in to the picture as a valuable tool. Use Google AdWords to focus on a specific city. That way, only people searching Google in that city or area that you specified will see your ads. Keywords don't matter here, if the person searching the internet isn't in the city you have targeted, your ad won't come up.

Why would you want to keep your ads from being seen by people outside the correct area? If you only do business locally, clicks from outside the area cost you money without bringing in a return. Confining your ads to the pool of possible customers means that each click has a much higher chance of turning into a sale.

Of course, there's more to geotargeting than just restricting to searchers currently in an area. For instance, if someone who's traveling to your area is searching for the product or service you offer, you'd like to be able to help them. However, if you target only one area, they'll miss your ad, even though they could be a potential customer.

The way to deal with this problem is to use a locally targeted keyword list. This will help you include your ad in searches done by people who aren't in town now, but want to know about the local situation where you are. You can modify the same types of keywords that would normally be used as part of a global PPC campaign to suit your local marketing plan. Just ad the area to the keyword phrase. That means that "car rental" becomes "car rental in St. Louis" or any other area you'd like to target.

This gives you a choice about targeting. Using a locally targeted keyword campaign also means that you can use other systems than Google AdWords, though they're still a big sector of the market. Just about any good PPC system can use geotargeted keywords to make it clear who and where you want to market. Use both techniques together for greater effectiveness. You'll find people who are more likely to become your customers.

There are a few things to pay attention to when you start to market like this. There's no use promoting your goods to areas you can't deliver them to, so stick to your original plan and don't try to get too clever with it. Choose your keywords (and the areas you promote them in) wisely and satisfaction is almost guaranteed.

When you do choose your targeted keywords, it's important that your words or phrases receive a large number of results. That way you won't completely isolate yourself, which is easily done if you try to get too specific. Check and track the statistics of your ads and see what keywords or phrases work best for you. Targeting a local area with a PPC campaign could spark the surge in sales your small business needs.

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