Business owners and digital marketers spend hours trying to come up with the perfect PPC ad campaigns. However, they often struggle to understand why their efforts did not deliver the ROI they had hoped to achieve.
One of the biggest mistakes that companies often make is trying to go too big too soon. They all want to capture the national market thinking everyone in the country needs their products or services.
They often come to their senses when their budget starts to shrink, and they no longer have the capital to spend thousands of dollars on national PPC ads. But a few of them realize that they can still compete with larger companies at the local level because they know the neighborhood and the little things that make their area special.
We contacted some of the SEO experts at Digital Broiler for specific insights. Digital Broiler is a St Louis, Missouri SEO company with a lot of national and local clients. These guys have helped many local businesses in St Louis achieve their desired business goals through strategic SEO strategies. These are some of their insightful tips to win big with local PPC.
Hyper-Local Targeting
If your business depends on local traffic, you must use hyper-local targeting for your PPC ad campaigns. Google ads allow you to use Geo-targeting features for your local PPC campaigns. These features can limit the display of your PPC ads to your target customers in your locality.
For example, if you have a business in St Louis, you can create PPC ad campaigns that target potential customers in and around St Louis. You can use ZIP Code, neighborhoods, and city boundaries to target your ads for consumers in specific locations.
Some people also use city name variations like Saint Louis or STL for St Louis, so make sure you include them in location specifications. You can even draw a custom size radius around your store’s address for PPC ad campaigns.
Mobile Preference
It is no news that most people prefer using their smartphones over computers for Google searches these days. Local PPC ads are helpful for people who are looking for businesses on the go.
People sitting in their homes also use their mobile phones to search for products or services since it saves them from the hassle of switching on their computers. So make sure that your website and PPC ads get optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices. You can also include a mobile preferred ad that has a shorter headline for smartphone display.
Call Extensions
Call extensions will also ensure better success for your PPC ads since they add to the convenience of calling directly from mobile phones. Your phone number will get displayed below the text of your ad on the search engine result page, which allows the user to tap on it and call the number to get some quick information.
You can track the number of phone calls you receive through the Google ads by generating a forwarding number and set parameters for them to qualify as conversions. Call extensions are not only convenient for potential customers but are also useful for your ad campaign metrics.
Location Extensions
Location extensions use your Google My Business listing to increase relevant traffic through your PPC ads by displaying your location on SERP. You can also check whenever a PPC ad gets a reaction through these extensions. Google does not guarantee that it will display location extensions every time, but having them on board can often create winning impressions.
Your Google My Business and Google Ads accounts must be linked before you activate location extensions. If you wish to use PPC ads on other search engines like Bing, its editor tool allows you to import your location extensions from Google ads.
Google Search Console
Before you start running a local SEO campaign, take a closer look at some of your best-performing keywords. Try using them on a Google search and see what response you get from them. You can identify your best-performing keywords using the Google search console.
Some of the keywords might be creating the right impression for your business and could link to a profitable product or service. But if you are not getting enough local clicks for those keywords, you can create an ad group specifically for them. Remember that it is about search engine ranking and not just optimization.
Yelp Enhanced Profiles
Yelp can be a great way to attract local customers lower down in the marketing funnel and thus more likely to visit your physical or virtual store. However, it is unlikely that you can attract those customers using a free Yelp listing.
Therefore, invest in yelp’s pay channels like Enhanced Profiles to take advantage of better controls and add features like slideshows, videos, and a call to action button. Enhanced Profiles will also ensure that your competitors cannot buy ad space on your Yelp page.
So if you have been struggling with getting the maximum ROI from your PPC ad campaigns, maybe it is time to harness the power of local ads. We hope that these tips come in handy while creating your local ad campaigns.