Geotargeting has been around for well over a decade, but its recent developments have made it a game-changer in helping marketers reach the right audience and boost online traffic.
Companies all over the world use geotargeting for their pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns to strengthen their strategy and drive new leads. Large corporations like Target and Walmart use geotargeted campaigns to contest against competing establishments.
In this article, we’ll explain what geotargeting is, what it means for your business, and how you can implement a successful strategy.
What is geotargeting?
Geotargeting refers to the practice of pinpointing specific locations within paid search advertising. This approach enables brands to home in on specific users, based on certain attributes and demographics, leading to a more personalized user experience, while avoiding wasted clicks for your business.
The Importance of Geotargeting in PPC Campaigns
Say you’ve burst a tire. Geotargeted advertising allows you to search for tire companies relevant and convenient to your location, instead of suggesting the No. 1 tire provider in the United States. This strategy enables local businesses to grow and proposes direct solutions for consumers.
Geotargeting is important for all business types but B2C organizations are likely to benefit the most. Google’s enhanced map search means consumers can discover local businesses in the area, raising brand awareness and generating new trade opportunities.
For B2B companies, location-based marketing allows them to geotarget city areas with a high volume of established organizations, such as business parks. This avoids wasting advertising budget in nonessential areas. SaaS businesses, on the other hand, should consider geotargeting with a focus on countries as opposed to specific locations.
It’s important to have some sort of geotargeting in place to avoid reaching irrelevant customers and wasting your budget.
Key Benefits of Geotargeted Advertising
Geotargeted advertising is the key to a strong PPC marketing campaign as it has many advantages to offer businesses. Some of the plusses include:
Enhanced Personalization
Ads perform better if they resonate with consumers. The precise nature of geotargeting means businesses can market to hyper-specific audiences and tap into the culture of a locale. According to McKinsey’s Next in Personalization report, 76% of consumers say they’re more likely to purchase from brands that personalize their content. By customizing geotargeted copy to consumers from various locations, you can achieve better click-through rates, cheaper cost per click and gain more relevance on your ad rank, which plays a significant factor in how Google determines your search engine results rank.
Cost-Effectiveness
PPC advertising can be expensive. Every time an irrelevant consumer clicks on your ad, it eats into your budget. Geotargeting allows you to control costs and stay within cost parameters. If your business only provides services within your region, you won’t benefit from promoting your brand elsewhere. With this location-based marketing solution, you can save money and ensure you reach the right customers.
Map Feature Perks
Geotargeting your ads is the only way to gain relevance on map applications. When local neighborhood or city consumers conduct a map search, geotargeting allows you to show up as an option for popular mobile apps, such as Google Maps and Yelp.
Setting Up Geotargeted Advertising in Google Ads
Thinking of implementing geotargeting into your PPC campaign? Here’s how you get started:
Step 1: Define Your Budget and Target Audience
The first step to creating a PPC geotargeting strategy is to set your spending boundaries and identify your intended audience. When breaking down the key aspects of your brand’s ideal consumer, don’t stop at “who.” Consider:
- Occupation: What industries are they likely to work in?
- Age: What age range are your ideal consumers?
- Lifestyle: Are they married adults, parents, students or someone else?
- Online activity: What time of day do they tend to be online?
Breaking down your target audience will help you segment your audience and identify common attributes towards which you can focus your efforts.
Step 2: Identify Relevant Locations
Use your own data to determine which locations are the strongest for your brand. You can then target regions that achieve the highest basket value (for e-commerce companies), or the areas that produce the strongest leads.
Step 3: Use Google Ads Targeting Features
Before Google’s ad targeting features entered the picture, businesses would target generic locations, like downtown areas. With Google’s advancements, marketers can refine their strategy to reach consumers with specific attributes. There are multiple audience-targeting features you can use for a successful PPC campaign:
Location targeting options: Filter by state, country, city, zip code, DMA and language. It’s always recommended to use a geofilter for campaigns.
Advanced targeting techniques: Filter by income, parenthood, education, business size, hobbies and interests.
Step 4: Customize Ad Content for Various Locations
Make sure to tailor your ad collateral where possible. Adapt your campaign’s copy and imagery to align with the values of the locale you’re targeting. For example, you might mention the Cubs when addressing Chicago audiences. Region-specific references will help endear consumers for better conversion.
Step 5: Track and Measure Performance
It’s essential to note that geotargeting isn’t simply the silver bullet to generating leads. It’s an incredibly effective tool that’s leveraged through careful customer analysis, thorough strategic insight and unification of the content, keywords and geography.
Aim to check in and make adjustments to your campaign on a daily or weekly basis. If you’re spending less than $1k per month, then weekly will suffice. Any more than that, you should consider checking daily. Only by being proactive can you expect to receive exceptional results from your PPC campaign.
Integration Within Your Overall Marketing Strategy
Geomarketing complements other marketing channels, like email, social media and SEO landing pages. SEO and PPC helps to boost traffic and gain more attention to high-value content. PPC ads, when run alongside social media and email channels, helps to run a broad campaign around a particular trend or holiday.
Geotargeted PPC content lets users follow up on your promotions online after seeing them advertised elsewhere. Making your content easy to find will help build customer engagement on your site.
Best Practices for Geotargeted PPC Advertising
You don’t need to learn geotargeting the hard way. Some helpful tips to get you off on the right foot include:
- Start With Geotargeting — Then Expand
If you’re getting started with geotargeting, try to avoid overcomplicating things. Stick to areas with the highest sales interaction before expanding. Say you’re planning to promote your services across the U.S.; consider beginning with the top 10 highest-performing states based on your company’s sales and engagement insights to set the foundations. - Translate Your Content
If you want to target audiences in Germany, you may want your copy to undergo German localisation before launching your marketing campaign — and better sooner than later. Although English is a shared language among many countries in the world, copy and keywords in your target audience’s first language makes your content more likely to reach consumers through the search engine. It also allows you to convert local audiences by connecting with them on a first-language basis. - Pick 3 Key Audience Attributes
Once you’ve created a clear geotargeting strategy, the next step in optimizing your search engine outreach is to segment your customer base into 3-5 common attributes. You might expect your audience to be in higher education, have children or work at a large-scale company. Identifying these features enables you to target specific types of individuals that match your brand’s vision of the ideal customer.
Major Takeaways
Geotargeting is the number one way to optimize your PPC campaign, regardless of whether you’re working with a six-figure monthly budget or a thousand-dollar one. It saves wasted clicks and valuable budget, ensuring your business attracts consumers that successfully convert sales.
Whether you’re looking to reduce costs, stop overspending, or want to stretch your limited budget further, this location-based marketing approach provides an all-encompassing solution for your PPC initiatives.
Eric Bush is director of Paid Search at Brafton
