While the Internet is a powerful tool for reaching a worldwide audience, one of the best ways for businesses to leverage digital advertising is to think locally. As the use of mobile devices becomes more prevalent, the ability to serve location-specific PPC ads is more relevant and beneficial to your business than ever. Google searches that include the phrase“near me” has nearly doubled since last year, and increased 34 times over since 2011. Most of these location-focused searches for goods and services come from mobile devices, making locally-focused, mobile-optimized PPC ad campaigns a great bet for businesses looking to grow their lead pool and reach a more focused audience. Whether you’re looking to boost business in a specific geographic area, or you simply want to take advantage of the browsing habits that many mobile searchers have adopted, running local search campaigns can be an effective way to increase your lead funnel.
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The Benefits of Optimizing for Local Search
By optimizing your ads for “near me” searches, you’ll be able to improve the overall performance of your PPC ad campaigns. As many as 78% of local mobile searches result in an offline purchase. By focusing in on this highly active segment of PPC traffic, you’ll be able to decrease your wasted ad spend by reaching searchers who are primed for a purchase, and increase your CTR and conversion rate significantly. You’ll also be able to gauge where your business is most in-demand based on ad performance. This information allows you to hone in on specific markets and optimize your advertising efforts to where they’ll make the most significant impact. Convinced that it’s time to start honing in on local searches with your PPC campaigns? Here are some of our top tips for optimizing your PPC ads for local search.
How to Optimize Ads for Local Search
Use a Custom Blend of Localized and Nationwide Campaigns
If you’re using AdWords, setting up ad campaigns to target specific geographic locations is a relatively quick and simple process. However, the exact techniques you use to set up your campaigns may differ depending on your goals and how you want to manage your campaigns. The simplest way is to set up straightforward location-based ad campaigns. This type of campaign allows you to pinpoint very specific locations — such as neighborhoods and zip codes– but their granularity also requires a larger time investment and more careful maintenance. For businesses who are targeting a single location or small set of locations, this can be a very effective method. But if you want to cast a larger geographic net, managing a multitude of local campaigns may be overwhelming, especially if you’re managing your own campaigns. Another option is running nationwide ad campaigns and using location-based bid modifiers to adjust when and where your ads show up. However, this method gives advertisers far less specific control over their campaigns overall. For some businesses, a combination of both techniques can provide a good mix of granular and more generalized ad campaigns.
Be Precise with Location-Based Keywords
Your keywords should reflect the location you want to target, which can be as specific as you like. For instance, “Manhattan legal services” will help you hone in on an even more targeted audience and “New York legal services” would. Experiment with city and neighborhood names (and variations) to find what searchers are looking for. Additionally, make sure that your location information is correct and consistent. One study showed that having mismatched or incorrect location information for your business online can negatively affect the performance of your campaign overall.
Leverage Multiple Landing Pages for Multiple Locations
If you’re focusing in on more than one location, make sure that your landing pages are customized for the correct location. Customizing your landing pages by location helps to reinforce and confirm your brand’s relevance people searching for local businesses. Even simply swapping out bits of landing page copy to reflect the viewer’s location can have a big impact on your conversion rate — and going the extra mile and offering even more geographically specialized content can help improve ad performance even further.
Optimize Your Advertising Assets for Mobile Search
With over three-fourths of all location-based searches being conducted on mobile devices, optimizing your landing pages to be mobile-friendly is a critical part of ensuring that you don’t just get clicks, but conversions. Up to 40% of mobile browsers are likely to bounce if they land on pages that take more than just a few seconds to load, so your assets absolutely must be mobile-ready if you want them to perform well. Take the time to mobile-optimize your ads, landing pages, and any other assets that are a part of your digital marketing funnel to help keep prospects interested and moving towards a conversion.
Take Advantage of Location-Based AdWords Extensions
Be sure to take advantage of mobile ad extensions for AdWords — Google’s location–based ad extensions allow you to display your business’s address, phone number, and map location and lets viewers see how close your business is to their location. Google reports that these extensions can give your ads as much as a 10% boost in CTR.
Getting from “Near Me” Searches to Conversion with Webrageous
Maintaining local search ad campaigns can be time-intensive, but running effective location-based PPC campaigns will help you attract more local business and take advantage of the growing trends in the mobile search habits of consumers. Webrageous can help you get the best results from your local search campaigns by setting up and maintaining your geotargeted campaigns. Our team of PPC experts has years of experience optimizing digital ad campaigns across a variety of industries and can help you hone in on potential customers that are searching for businesses like yours online. Contact us for a PPC consultation and we’ll get you started on the path to better advertising results today.
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