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
Tom O Brien
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/local-business-advertising-google-adwords-320.html
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Question about Adwords google?
I had an onsite-PC Repair biz last year and I advertised on adwords google spent a LOT of money with only clicks no conversion. I want to start a new business related to PC repair. What do you guys will suggest? Local newspaper ad? adwords again with a better website? I can’t afford yellow pages too expensive. Thanks for your suggestions.
Go for SEO, not PPC. Get on a few quality link directory sites, some free classifieds, blog comments, and adding new Digg stories, or commenting on existing ones.
If you’re going to spend money on advertising, buy some linkbacks from PR6 or PR7 sites. Or, write a brief review about John Chow’s blog, and link to him – he’ll link back for free.
Do search engine optimisation, design your site for SEO – links, keywords in title and H1′s, etc. You’ll get ranked high on the search engines after a few months in the sandbox. It just takes time and some effort… not a lot of cash.
References :
One of the big issues with pay-per-click advertising is to get the conversion. PPC is like trawl fishing where you pick up a whole heap of sea-creatures only some of which are fish.
PPC is also really difficult for any business who works in a localised area because a lot of traffic may come but you’re out of area and therefore not relevant to their needs.
Once you have the people coming to your site it’s important to build trust. Your site really needs to build trust with your potential customers quickly. I use articles which give away a few secrets, but not all, up front. It allows people to ‘test’ your abilities and see whether you’re worthwhile.
Your contact details need to be plentiful and readily available with multiple modes, email, business address and telephone numbers as well.
Local newspapers are great to bring people to your site, but again you need to have content that will hold them and a call to action.
One of the things that I have used effectively in the past is to allow people to sign up for a mailing list so they can get regular hints and tips. This is another way to open an ongoing communication with your customers, and to keep you and your business in front of them every month or so.
That way – when trouble strikes – they’ve got you in mind to help them out.
You may also want to think about who actually needs your services. Is it students, families, or even small businesses? What services do you have that specifically meet the needs of these target groups?
By working on your targetting of these groups, you will know better how to reach them. Perhaps it’s even on the noticeboard in your community somewhere?
Here are a few ideas. I hope they help.
References :
Unfortunately, Adwords subscriptions do not take the place of effective search engine optimization (SEO) of your website and more particularly, webpage(s) .
Even though you recently published your domain name on major major search engines/directories, you may want to consider some simple algorithms which, when observed and committed in designing of a website and placing various critical metatags can surely achieve a high search engine presence and placement.
Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based website, make sure to fill-in the property entries such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can be readily indexed by search robots.
A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text, is far easier to be indexed by search robots.
Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots are unable to properly classify textual material.
Placement of Metatags:
A ranking or search order does take place with Google and Yahoo and it begins with the Title metag which should consist of no more than 65 characters separated by commas. The Title should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the Title is not appropriate, unless your domain name is a major recognizable brand name.
The second metatag is the Description which is usually 25-30 words to form a complete sentence which best describes the goods and services.
And the very last category – Keywords are also somewhat limited to 15-16 words which can be plural and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which is defined as the loading, and submission of repetitive words into a particular metatag category. "Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported to Google’s spamreport.com can result in the elimination of your website from their search directory.
Here’s an example of a very highly-placed website on Yahoo.com: Begin with the search query "pizza downtown los angeles." It will bring up some 1.4 million+ websites as results. Check out where "Pizza Next Door" is ranked. It’s in the Top Five! Again, Pizza Next Door’s high web presence was achieved by proper web design and placement of relevant metatags according to Yahoo’s publication guidelines.
Good luck!
References :