Local PPC is an adver­tis­ing tech­nique that uses local key­words to tar­get poten­tial cus­tomers with­in a par­tic­u­lar area. The strat­e­gy also includes geo-tar­get­ing and the use of Google Map ads. The aim is to tar­get peo­ple local­ly and dri­ve them to a phys­i­cal place of business.

Retail and ser­vice-area busi­ness­es can ben­e­fit great­ly from local PPC. It helps to tar­get prospects based on their data which can then be used to opti­mize ads and improve ROI. Know­ing your neigh­bor­hood and the local mar­ket can put you ahead of big com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, you have to do it right.

Here are 8 tips that will put you ahead and ensure you win with your local PPC cam­paigns:

1. Utilize Google My Business (GMB)

Google My Busi­ness (GMB) allows you to respond to and mon­i­tor reviews left by your cus­tomers, push pro­mo­tions, and open ad place­ments on the result page. The info pro­vid­ed by GMB comes in handy when putting up ad place­ments. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can­not add your P.O. Box. GMB requires busi­ness own­ers to key in their phys­i­cal address­es. Those with­out a phys­i­cal premise can use their main office or home address. Claim­ing a par­tic­u­lar loca­tion requires you to request for a post-card. It arrives in 10 to 15 days and car­ries a unique code that is used to claim a location.

2. Localize the landing page

Your land­ing page is a vir­tu­al store that poten­tial cus­tomers vis­it when look­ing for some­thing. Just like the phys­i­cal store, they’ll need to feel at home. For suc­cess, a land­ing page should facil­i­tate easy con­ver­sions, uti­lize a form-fill, and have rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion for vis­i­tors. For a local land­ing page, con­sid­er adding local images that relate to the local cus­tomers, a local phone num­ber for easy com­mu­ni­ca­tion, local awards, and a copy that shows the busi­ness’ local knowl­edge. When it comes to cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent loca­tions, you may need to have dif­fer­ent pages on your site or have a domain per loca­tion. For the lat­ter, you forego local­ized URL and the ease of attribut­ing leads. For the for­mer, how­ev­er, you lose domain equi­ty when it comes to SEO, the ease of test­ing land­ing pages, and the sim­plic­i­ty that comes with con­ver­sion tracking.

3. Pay attention to your budget

Every busi­ness has a lim­it as to how much it’s will­ing to spend on PPC. For a small and local busi­ness, this lim­it can be achieved fast. It’s impor­tant to pay atten­tion to how much goes into a local PPC cam­paign. For small bud­gets, it may be wise to spend mon­ey on the most prof­itable prod­ucts and ser­vices. Most busi­ness­es focus on pro­mot­ing every­thing. This may not be very pro­duc­tive as you might spend way more get­ting under­per­form­ing prod­ucts to do well.

Pay attention to your budget

4. Service vs location campaigns 

If the loca­tions tar­get­ed rep­re­sent total­ly dif­fer­ent mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties, you may need to make your cam­paigns loca­tion-focused. Some of the fac­tors that may cause dras­tic dif­fer­ences to include changes in demand and afflu­ence. If your ser­vices hap­pen to be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed in terms of vol­ume, mar­gin, and oth­er fac­tors, you’ll need to design cam­paigns that are ser­vice-focused. This ensures that your abil­i­ty to deliv­er isn’t affected.

5. Make use of insider knowledge

This may appear obvi­ous, but very few busi­ness­es make use of their local knowl­edge and rela­tion­ships for ads. Some of the ways in which busi­ness­es can tap into local knowl­edge and make their ads suc­cess­ful include using local high­ways and land­marks to ori­ent prospects, using local lan­guages for head­lines and exten­sions, incor­po­rat­ing local activ­i­ties that take place sea­son­al­ly, and pro­vid­ing details about local commutes.

6. Ad groups and copy designed for cities

There are sev­er­al ways in which busi­ness­es can orga­nize PPC cam­paigns. For local busi­ness­es, the more local­ly rel­e­vant they are, the bet­ter. If you run a busi­ness in a par­tic­u­lar coun­ty, cre­ate a cam­paign for that coun­ty to achieve the biggest impact on mon­ey spent. Cre­ate an ad group for all sets of key­words as you focus on the entire coun­ty. If you car­ry out your busi­ness in dif­fer­ent cities, make a cam­paign for each city and an ad group with key­words per­tain­ing to each city. The aim is to be local­ly rel­e­vant. As a result, you get high­er con­ver­sion, high­er click-through, and high­er qual­i­ty scores.

7. Target location by profit center

Each loca­tion is priced dif­fer­ent­ly. Accord­ing to the Google Ads Bench­mark report pre­pared by Word­Stream, loca­tions could vary by as much as $2-$3 more/less per click. Few dif­fer­ences in prices may not direct­ly hurt a cam­paign. How­ev­er, large dif­fer­ences with hun­dreds and thou­sands of clicks may dras­ti­cal­ly raise costs. Not all loca­tions deserve a bud­get allo­ca­tion. Some may already be per­form­ing well and may not need any addi­tion­al invest­ments. Oth­ers may have high­er prices for leads com­pared to con­ver­sion rates. Com­bin­ing a loca­tion that has high vol­ume and low-qual­i­ty leads and one that has a high aver­age CPC may lead to impres­sion share loss­es. Some­times, it’s bet­ter to com­bine loca­tions that are close togeth­er. Oth­er times, it may be about hav­ing prof­it tiers. The lat­ter allows you to bud­get for mar­kets depend­ing on their val­ue, which then leads to stronger campaigns.

8. Choose your competitors wisely

In some indus­tries, com­peti­tors may be too many to active­ly focus on. For your com­peti­tor cam­paign, take note of how your com­peti­tors price their prod­ucts, where they lack, what kind of cus­tomers they go after, their pop­u­lar­i­ty, and the key­words used. It may be tempt­ing for Joel House Search Media to go after each com­peti­tor, but this may lead to bud­get con­straints. Some com­peti­tors may end up miss­ing out on bud­get allo­ca­tion but SEO Prices Joel House won’t. This will even­tu­al­ly derail an entire ad cam­paign. On the oth­er hand, going after none at all means los­ing valu­able SERPs. Pick about 7 com­peti­tors that are a direct oppor­tu­ni­ty or threat for your busi­ness and cre­ate an ad group for each. A spe­cif­ic ad group for each com­peti­tor allows you to craft unique mes­sages say­ing why you’re bet­ter. The idea is to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on the gains cus­tomers get from going with you with­out putting your com­peti­tors down.

SOURCE: Enter­prise Pod­cast Network