How a PPC Pro Drives Conversions for Multi-Location Businesses

One of the most often overlooked aspects of a paid search campaign is geo targeting. Many businesses that have multiple locations may often waste a portion of their paid search budget by needlessly using broader targeting than required.

Imagine a restaurant chain that only exists in New Jersey. It would be a pretty inefficient use of budget to run ads nationwide when such ads couldn’t possibly be relevant to the majority of the country.

When creating campaigns, take the businesses reach into consideration. Are you a nationwide chain of sports bars, or are you a smaller chain only in the northeast? When deciding on where to target campaigns, remember that you’re just wasting money on any traffic you attract that is too far beyond any area you can possibly cater to.

At the end of the day, it’s not enough to get clicks; you’re after clicks that lead to conversions. Proper targeting can help in several ways including:

• Increased CTR – people are much more likely to click on your ads if your copy makes it clear that not only do you provide what their looking for, but that you’re in the area


• Increased Conversion Rate – This would naturally go hand in hand with the increased CTR. It can be further assisted because separating campaigns by location allows you to use location themed ad copy.


• Increased control over budget – If each location has its own budget, you have more control over how much is allotted to each location, allowing you to only funnel the larger portion of your budget to the better performing areas.


• Decreased Cost Per Conversion – Again, this would go hand in hand with the increased CTR and Conversion rates. Remember though, sometimes your CPC will go up because of the increased competition in the area you target.

The bottom line is, when running ads for a business that has multiple locations; it may be worthwhile to get much more granular with your targeting. If only several locations are present, perhaps 1 per city or town in a small, well defined region, it may be best to create a separate campaign for each location. If running paid ads for a business with many locations in a more concentrated area, then you could run campaigns by region.

In either case, the idea is to get as targeted as possible with campaigns as opposed to letting ads meant to reach a specific audience run well outside of that audience’s geo area. If you’re running ads for a used car lot chain New York State, you’re not going to need to reach all of New Jersey.

Next, be sure to take advantage of any extensions. If you have multiple locations, it may be a good idea to either have centralized numbers to use with a call extension, or a separate call extension per campaign if running one for each location. Also don’t underestimate how useful the location extensions on platforms such as AdWords of bing, especially if your campaigns aim to drive foot traffic. Be sure to use one per location to ensure you leverage every possible opportunity to convert users.

The last, and one of the most important tips I can offer is not to be afraid to exclude areas providing less ROI. If an area tends to be an important source of foot traffic, but just doesn’t provide as much ROI as far as your paid search campaigns (even after all other optimization options have been exhausted), it may be best to decrease bids or exclude the campaign altogether.

Don’t forget to be afraid to eliminate areas that are costing you conversions in favor of more productive areas – especially if you have your campaign covering a region served by several locations. In this case, all of these locations are still represented, you’re just eliminating or bidding down in one or more less worthwhile locations.

In conclusion, just don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty when running a paid search campaign for you multi-location business. Google in particular provides great tools for marketers looking to bring in traffic to businesses with more than one location. As long as you’re willing to give them the attention they need, paid search can be an extremely cost effective way to get localized branding messages out there, and attract some quality leads in the process. Until next time, good luck!

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1i8CE5a