Saturday, October 25, 2008

You Can Target Your PPC Campaign To Reach Customers In Your Area

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.

Geotargeting is about a whole lot more than just isolating city areas, though. If someone is traveling to your area soon, you want them to be able to search for you on a regional scan. This is easily done as well, this type of geotargeting is very useful if you're promoting a tourist destination.

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.

Using a targeted keyword campaign like this one also means that you can use the other systems out there (Google AdWords isn't the only one), though Google really are the big name of the market. Good PPC systems can use geotargeted keywords to ensure you're only directing your advertising dollars in the area that will make you sales. Many advertisers use both techniques together with great effectiveness and reap the rewards of concentrating on specific markets and regions.

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 choosing locally targeted keywords, it's important to begin with a phrase that receives a large number of results. That way, when you restrict your results by adding in a specific local area, you'll be assured of still getting some visitors. Check and track the effectiveness of every ad and every keyword or phrase to make sure your campaign is working as well as possible. A locally targeted PPC campaign could be just the thing your small business needs to expand. - 15615

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