By Tom O Brien
Local Business Advertising
"I don't need the Internet to advertise - I'm a local business!"
Okay...
If you could spend £0.04 (or $0.05 in the US) and have a newcustomer - what would you do with your local businessadvertising budget?
I hope you would spend that money again and again!
Granted this is the ideal example and you are likely to pay muchmore then £0.04 per customer you acquire, BUT - herein lies therub for local businesses:
An internet presence announces your business to the world.
When you are online, you have little control about where trafficis coming to you from (if you are not actively driving trafficthat is), but what if you could make sure that people who livedin your area, who buy your goods and would make ideal customerscould be targeted!
Google Adwords can help you target local people, not people fromNew Zealand if you live in the UK - but people close to you.
Pinpoint geographic targeting of prospects is an optimum use ofyour local business advertising budget.
Is it 100% foolproof?
Alas no, but it's a good start.
How do I do it?
Well the easiest way to do this is as follows:
Create a national campaign with your search terms and yourlocation terms - eg: If you're a plumber in Poole then "plumberpoole" would be a good keyword.
Create a geo-targeted campaign (this can be done in a couple ofways - I'll leave the nitty gritty details out for now) whichmeans your ads are served to local people when they search foryour keywords.
So in the plumber example if a local person types in "plumber"and doesn't mention anything else, your advert will be shown.
So goes the theory anyway.
Does it work all the time?
Like I said - Not always very well.
This is because Google uses IP addresses to determine locationand this method is somewhat of a cleaver when a scalpel isrequired.
It all depends how diligent ISP's are when allocating IPaddresses to their customers, the only way you can know isthrough empirical means.
What if the regional targeting is producing no results?
If this is the case then a national campaign with location termsincluded (as mentioned above) is your best bet.
If you were to run a national campaign on the same keywordswithout the location terms, you will be competing with otherplayers who have a national presence for your particularproduct/service which could prove very expensive.
Your local business advertising budget spend should at the veryleast give Adwords and PPC advertising in general a tryout.Remember there are an infinite number of keywords in any targetmarket.
Just because the big boys may have a stranglehold on the'obvious' terms does not mean your market is saturated
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
