Geotargeting Pay-Per-Click: narrowing focus for lasting results

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We have some good and bad news about narrowed geotargeting strategies and your pay-per-click ad campaign. Trust us, the good news is about to make your marketing plans not only simpler but noticeably more cost-effective and successful.

First, the bad news: despite billions upon billions of people worldwide roaming the Internet every day, there’s very little that you can do to guarantee that most of them will ever know your business exists, let alone that your ad will be the one that sticks freshly in the majority of their minds.

Unless you already own and operate a national or even global leader in your industry, that might stick a pin into your world-business-domination plan’s balloon. That brings us to the good news: your most valuable clicks will come from the potential customer that’s already right by your side.

Intro to geotargeting

The Google AdWords geotargeting tool maximizes the traffic that your ad budget – no matter how great or small – runs straight to your door. If you run the florist that’s standing on the corner in Winslow, AZ, whether or not a shopper in Poughkeepsie, NY, stumbles across your ad makes little difference. Your optimum prospective client probably lives with a few square blocks of your location.

The geotargeting feature narrows the area to which AdWords delivers your ad down to a single location of set of them where people who can partake of your products or services will see it.

Look to this real-world Scottsdale, AZ, business as a proof-positive example: you can receive more clicks at lower rates when you concentrate locally. Let’s take a long look at some decision-making that will help your geo targeting make the most of AdWords through a smaller target audience.

  • Where are your customers? Be there

Particularly if your business is a type that lives or dies by proximity, foot traffic or making local deliveries, you know whence the people who give you their patronage are coming. Zappos and Amazon can target worldwide consumers, but if you run a Chicago street-corner record store or shoe boutique, you need a physically local focus.

Just as importantly, don’t waste your time treading where your customers aren’t. If you can’t ship internationally or outside the contiguous United States, then don’t spend your advertising budget where you can’t gather new customers.

  • Follow trends

Know where your customers are? Great. Now, go forth and learn more about them.

Geo targeting through AdWords goes better with an additional tool such as Google Trends that will gather intel on your client base.  This particular utility will lay out plainly who takes an interest in your products, and where you can find them. The data for the keywords you track is broken out and visualized first by country of origin, then the sub-region such as state or province, metropolitan area and city.

This way, you won’t be trying to sell snow blowers in Miami.

  • Show them where you are

Finally, never underestimate the value of advertising that stresses your local convenience explicitly. If at all possible, your ad’s title should specifically include your target area. Even more than directing Google crawlers toward it as explicitly as possible, it will boldface the relevant text, making it jump out more distinctly to a searcher’s eye. While you’re at it, enable the location extensions that display your business’s complete address and the call extension that flashes your phone number. That makes a lot of crucial information readily available before the user even clicks to learn more about your products and services.

Last Updated on March 28, 2022 by Hitesh Lamba

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