by Jeff Finkelstein
1. Local Search Engine Advertising
For businesses that serve specific geographic regions (i.e. Denver, Colorado),
you can create search engine ads in Google and Yahoo that only appear to people
in your area.
How does this work? A search engine like Google uses a computer's
IP address and other information to discover where someone is searching (including
city and state).
Why does Google care where a person is located? Google's mission
is to give their end users the best search results possible. So, if I need someone
to walk my dog in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, it does me little good to receive a paid
search result from Arizona. This is a real example
— my brother has a petsitting business, and I've used local Google search
engine advertising to drive new clients to his organization.
Thus Google (and the others) tries to match search results to the geographic
location of the person searching.
How does Google make money? Google gives businesses and organizations
the ability to display paid advertisements (sponsored results) on search results
pages. These ads are triggered by keywords you choose (more on this in a different
strategy).
You don't have to pay for your ad to display; you pay Google only when someone
clicks on your ad. The technical term is Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising. The more
relevant your ad (more on this later), the less you have to pay for specific keywords,
and the higher up you will appear in the sponsored advertising results.
Local Search CPC Ads. In Google Adwords, you can create an advertising
campaign that will target someone in a specific city or state. You can even specify
a 5, 10 or 25 mile radius from a specific location (like your retail showroom or
office). Below your local ad, Google will place the name of your local area (i.e.
Denver, Colorado)... making it more likely that someone searching in your area will
choose your organization vs. an out-of-town competitor.
Local CPC Ads are usually a more cost effective option than a national
search engine advertising campaign. As a general rule of thumb, the more
geographically targeted and specific you can be, the less money you'll need to
pay to acquire new customers. And make sure you have conversion tracking code placed
on your site, so you can measure and track how much you're paying for each new
customer via local search engine advertising.
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