As advertising platforms increase the targeting options they provide, we need to be more creative in how we find and appeal to our customer bases.
In the past, targeting a specific geographic region was an easy way to improve relevance and reach. But times have changed, and so have the stakes.
There are improved advertising tactics that can help those of us who are selling goods and services that are not in a traditional retail space.
There are six ways to improve your digital marketing strategies through geographic targeting. The assumption for those with brick-and-mortar businesses is that you target a surrounding area of a certain radius around your store locations. This should be square one.
If you are a moderate or advanced advertiser, you should target your most successful geographic areas with location-specific campaigns or by adding geo bids. There is more that can be done to increase your visibility to your existing or potential customer base.
1. National vs. Hyper-Targeted Campaigns
An example of a hyper-targeted campaign is one where a car rental company targets ads to people who have recently searched for car rental companies. When providing services in Denver, Colorado, it is assumed that you will be targeting this region. You are likely to have entire campaigns dedicated to rental cars in the Denver area.
You should next target those who are located outside of Denver and have an interest in renting cars. This is targeting all of the US except for Denver.
The concept behind this is that your service may be something a traveler is planning to need, even though they’re not in the area at the time. You can use segmentation to target your ads to specific groups of people, customize your pricing and ad copy for each group, and send them to landing pages that are relevant to their interests.
- Example Campaign 1: Denver — Car Rental Interest
- Example Campaign 2: National — Denver Car Rental Interest
It’s important to note that your new national campaign should include a qualifier for Denver so you don’t waste your budget on areas you can’t serve.
- Example Denver campaign — Car Rental Interest Keyword: +car +rental
- Example National campaign — Denver Car Rental Interest Keyword: +car +rental +Denver +area
The approach was to target certain city hubs across the US. The data showed that the National campaigns had lower volume due to conservative budget usage, but engagement was higher.
Reach was effectively improved to those outside target markets, while ROAS was generated relatively similarly, despite slightly lower conversion rate.
2. Average Household Income
You can target areas with high or low presumed average household incomes on Google.
There are advantages and disadvantages associated with excessive reliance on information that is suggested by the text, such as “My customer base is disproportionately composed of people with high economic status, so I should strictly focus on the upper 20 percent.”
According to the data, what should you do? This targeting type is beneficial to various types of businesses, including those that focus on lead generation and e-commerce, as well as businesses-to-businesses.
targeting people based on their income is a way to either improve advertising reach or reduce wasteful spending.
It is important to revisit your optimizations regularly and reintroduce any removed audiences every year or so to make sure that traffic hasn’t changed so much that you are no longer able to reach your target customers.
Using the AdWords location targeting of “location groups,” apply all average income levels to your campaigns at a 0% bid adjustment:
Once you’ve created these targets, allow the data to populate in your campaigns:
If you are confident in the amount of traffic you are receiving at your target levels, you may choose to adjust your goals to make more or less money. You have the option to create a campaign that is separate from the other groups or to entirely exclude one group.
In the test, we targeted income levels, state-level locations, and ZIP codes for one specific state.
The results show that over 15,000 people were reached through the ad campaign, with a strong click-through rate for both income- and state-level targeting.
This is more interesting because it shows that people in the income-level target are more likely to convert.
From here, our next step is deciding whether to focus mostly on the income brackets that are doing well in the existing campaign, or to break them out entirely to make sure the campaign always has enough money.
3. Target Competitors
Competitor analysis can be a strong strategy for prospecting in markets where there are a lot of competitors. Keeping track of customers who are considering your competitors can help you stay ahead. This means that you need to know which companies are your biggest competitors and where they are situated.
These campaigns are designed to attract new customers who are showing an interest in your product or service, and who are located near a competitor who could make you lose that sale.
A study by DMI found that 80 percent of shoppers use their mobile phone while inside a physical store to review products, compare prices, or find store locations.
As you develop your own strategy for locating competitors, you are seeking to satisfy the latter two searches.
You’re more likely to appear to your competitors when they are lower in your search funnel if you place a radius target on their addresses.
Choose keywords for this campaign that are related to the terms that have been most successful in the past, and use advertising copy that promotes either special pricing or competition. This audience is specifically the one that should be appealed to if you have online coupons.
4. High-Competition Cities and Regions
If you don’t want to be too aggressive, you can focus on targeting cities or regions where your competitors are and include your branded terms as well as general, non-branded terms.
This approach may appeal to:
- those customers who have brand awareness of your competitors (and not you);
- customers who know you, but are inundated with competitor awareness; and/or
- customers who are searching for products/services you offer, but due to the competitor’s close range, may just as easily turn to them instead of you.
Conduct your own market research to determine where your competition is the strongest. If you’re looking at numbers that come from multiple sources, it’s a good idea to trust them, as they probably contain data from more than just paid search.
Even if you don’t usually analyze your campaigns by geographic targets, you can still use this method. For example, if you have a campaign specifically for searches in New York, that campaign can be used as an example.
Auction insights reports show you which competitors are potentially stealing your customers in a particular region. This will allow you to prioritize the areas where you want to increase the number of articles with your brand mentioned, as well as the areas where you want more general coverage.
5. Double-Check your Location Options
There is one thing to pay attention to when you are setting up your geotargeting. When you click on the blue “Location” tab, you can target your audience by their location (people who are physically present in your targeted locations), their search interest (people who are searching for your targeted locations), or both.
Google can be sneaky by defaulting to the top option of showing people in, regularly in, or showing interest in your targeting locations.
For some businesses, this is ideal. A senior living facility can, for example, target ads to adults who don’t live in the area, but who frequently visit the area to see their parents.
This can lead to locations being selected that don’t correspond to the desired target.
If, for example, you only want to target residents of Miami, If the first option is chosen, your ad may appear for individuals located in Boston who are often looking up tourist destinations in Miami.
6. Keep an Eye on Granular Location Metrics
The most trafficked locations can be seen by clicking on the Locations tab in the second navigation column.
You can see how many clicks, impressions, the average cost-per-click, and the average position your ad has gotten in each location you’ve specified.
It is important to know where you will get the best return on your investment.
7. Seek out and Implement Location-Based Negatives
Search Terms Report: The Search Terms Report lets you see which keyword searches triggered your ads. If you notice that keywords from outside your target locations are triggering your ads, you can exclude them by clicking the check box next to them and then selecting Add as a negative keyword.
If you want to avoid having your ads triggered by a certain keyword, you can add that keyword to your negative keyword list.
To bring up the Search Terms Report, go to the Campaigns tab, click Keywords, then Details, and select “All” from the drop-down menu to bring up the report for all keywords in the campaign.
8. Use Bid Adjustments to Lower CPA
If you’re using a manual bidding strategy, you can apply bid adjustments to increase or decrease the amount you’re willing to pay per click when your ad appears to a user in a specific location.
The section titled “Locations” has a column for bid adjustments. You can use this to increase or decrease your bids for the selected area by a percentage.
If you are more likely to get a high return from consumers in a specific area, the clicks coming from those areas could be of more value to you.
Bid adjustments let you change your original keyword bid to better suit your needs.
This means that you will be able to get more conversions for less money by targeting the areas that are most popular with your customers and making sure that your business appears in those areas.
9. Don’t be Afraid to Be Picky
While it’s important to be mindful of how much money you’re spending on PPC campaigns, it’s also important to remember that this money is coming from your own pocket. Put forth paid efforts with that always in mind.
If you ship products all over the country, but you only see sales coming from a few select cities, you should only target those places with your advertising, and let your organic listings take care of the areas that are not selling as well.
It may be tempting to try to reach a large number of people, but you will actually save money and get more conversions by focusing on your top-performing locations.
10. Don’t Forget to Exclude Certain Locations
You shouldn’t go overboard when excluding locations that you’re not targeting- that would go against the purpose!
You will want to exclude any specific locations that may be close to your target or that may be seen as a red flag if you were to show up there. This will help you protect yourself.
Be sure to know the ins and outs of Google’s new three-strikes policy program!
11. Use Google Trends to Inform your Geotargeting Strategy
Google search interests change constantly. In addition, the pandemic has caused a major shift in consumer priorities and needs.
Google Trends is a tool that can show you how popular a keyword or topic is within a particular geographic area. This will allow you to see which keywords might be most effective in combination with your geographic targeting.
12. Include Regional Terms in Your Keyword Lists
Think of this as icing on the geotargeting cake. Adding location-based keywords to your existing geotargeting will help ensure that you show up for relevant searches. This text is saying that your ad copy and the searcher’s query are likely to go together.
This means that using regional terms in your keywords could help improve your quality score.
If you want to be found by locals, include your location in your keywords. For example, try out a term like “contractors in Boston” instead of just “best contractors.”
13. Include the Name of Your Target Location in Your Ad Copy
One way to make your local PPC more effective is by ensuring that your viewers know that you cater to their location. If you can summarize the text in a headline, that would be a bonus because the matching ad text will appear in bold. The ad is more likely to be noticed by locals if it is friendly to them.
Odds are, the people who are searching up queries including your targeted location are looking for something specific.
If you use geotargeted keywords and include them in your headline, your ad will be more relevant. A more relevant ad will help it to rank higher in SERP listings.
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