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 new
customer - what would you do with your local business
advertising budget?

I hope you would spend that money again and again!

Granted this is the ideal example and you are likely to pay
much more then £0.04 per customer you acquire, BUT - herein
lies the rub for local businesses:

An internet presence announces your business
to the world.

When you are online, you have little control
about where traffic is coming to you from (if you are not
actively driving traffic that is), but what if you could
make sure that people who lived in your area, who buy your
goods and would make ideal customers could be targeted!

Google Adwords can help you target local people, not
people from New Zealand if you live in the UK - but people
close to you.

Pinpoint geographic targeting of prospects is an optimum
use of your 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 your location terms - eg:
If you're a plumber in Poole then "plumber poole" would
be a good keyword.

Create a geo-targeted campaign (this can be done in a
couple of ways - I'll leave the nitty gritty details out for
now) which means your ads are served to local people when
they search for your 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 location and this method is somewhat of a cleaver
when a scalpel is required.

It all depends how diligent ISP's are when allocating IP
addresses to their customers, the only way you can know is
through empirical means.

What if the regional targeting is producing no results?

If this is the case then a national campaign with
location terms included (as mentioned above) is your best
bet.

If you were to run a national campaign on the same keywords
without the location terms, you will be competing with other
players who have a national presence for your particular
product/service which could prove very expensive.

Your local business advertising budget spend should at the
very least give Adwords and PPC advertising in general a
tryout. Remember there are an infinite number of keywords
in any target market.

Just because the big boys may have a stranglehold on the
'obvious' terms does not mean your market is saturated.