Leverage Marketing

How to Use A Localized Paid Search Strategy to Drive Foot Traffic

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As Paid Search becomes more and more competitive, advertisers are forced to become smarter about their PPC strategies to attain their goals.  One of the most difficult transitions can be for Brick and Mortar stores to compete online against bigger rivals who have vast budgets and resources, optimized websites and other bells and whistles.  This can be overwhelming for business owners who want to compete at a local level online. How do you compete?

You are local!

Local PPC Strategies can be an effective strategy that focuses your efforts on users who are looking online for brick and mortar stores  to physically see the products they are going to purchase, talk to a salesperson to have questions answered and be sure the product is the right fit.  To implement a localized PPC campaign, there are three easy steps to follow to get your account moving in the right direction.

  • Target the right terms– find search queries to target that include the City, State, Zip or even part of town your business is located.  An example is if you own a shop that sells surf boards located in North Austin.  Use keyword tools like Google’s to find what amount of traffic is localized.  Add additional qualifiers like Austin, 78756, North Austin and others to your terms to target those who are searching for your product in your area of business.  The use of the qualifier focuses your budget on the right type of traffic and weed out those who are looking to purchase online.
  • Ad Copy (use of Local Business Extension)-once your keyword list is ready to go, the next piece of the buy is to use ad copy to highlight that your are a local business.  Google’s LOCAL BUSINESS EXTENSION allows you to create a 5th line of text that includes you business address with a clickable link to Google Maps to see where you are located.  The use of local business extension makes your ad pop out to users who are searching for a local business by adding this 5th line of text.  Google also allows you to track how many clicks the link to Google Maps gets to see how effective this strategy can be.
  • Landing Page- The final piece of the puzzle is to add landing pages that highlight your products, location and send an encouraging message to drive traffic into your stores.  Some ways to track the effectiveness of the landing page is to have a coupon that users can bring into your stores for a 10% discount.  The biggest thing many advertisers overlook is keeping the user experience level from start to finish.  You have targeted the right traffic with your keyword list, sent the right message with your ad copy…be sure to keep that message constant with your landing page.

As you see your efforts improve through the use of a localized strategy, you can grow this strategy by adding the use of mobile targeted paid ads.  Mobile ads are even more targeted to local traffic as most searches on smart phones are visitors who are en route to find your products or services.  We will have more on Local Mobile PPC to follow…