Ready for an effective, engaging digital advertising campaign for your local business? Small and medium-sized business owners likely understand the value of online advertisements as part of a comprehensive digital marketing initiative. But with all of the available options, a robust online marketing strategy can be expensive and complicated.
That’s where local PPC, or pay-per-click, ads come in. These types of ads are paid, online advertisements that directly target a specific geographic audience. They are affordable and effective. Let’s dive deeper into why local PPC is a crucial element of any local business marketing strategy.
What is Local PPC (Pay-Per-Click)?
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a method of digital advertising that uses online ads to bring traffic to business websites. Business owners only pay when someone actually clicks on the ad. When they are used on search engines, you’ll bid on a particular keyword or keyword phrase to determine costs.
Most business owners target customers who are living in the region that surrounds them. Whether or not you’ve got a physical storefront, the majority of your customers aren’t far away. Being close to your potential customers adds a level of trustworthiness that other, more distantly based businesses lack. The close proximity makes advertising easier, too.
With local PPC advertising, you are able to target only people living in a specific region. They’ll be the only ones to see your ads. That’s not the only thing that makes these types of ads affordable. You only pay for those people who actually click on your ad.
What are the Marketing Benefits?
As a business owner, you never want to run ads that aren’t relevant. Irrelevant ads cost money from your marketing budget but never result in leads. Local PPC advertisements are always relevant. By design, your business will be in front of only the people who are most likely to be in need of your products or services. You can determine the reach with an in-depth understanding of your target audience and your budget.
By localizing your ads, you will be able to hyper-target only the audiences most likely to buy your product or request your service. Instead, you’ll be able to increase your brand awareness in an effective way in your community.
Pay-per-click ads are also a proven method for lead generation—something we specialize in here at Speedsquare. By placing advertisements on search engine ranking pages or social media, you’ll be visible exactly where your customers already are. You can offer a solution to their problem with a properly designed, optimized ad.
These modern ads offer flexibility in terms of budget that many other marketing strategies lack. If you’re not seeing a return on your investment, you can change direction by targeting your audience with new and different keywords. If it’s working, you can increase your budget to scale up. The same is true geographically if your target audience is dynamic.
How Can You Get Clicks?
It’s easy to track the success of digital marketing campaigns if you work with a firm that can provide clear, transparent reporting. And, with a trustworthy agency that specializes in PPC, like Speedsquare, you can avoid the steep DIY learning curve involved with understanding the backend of complicated ad-buying platforms. What can you do to get more clicks? Here are some recommendations:
- Work with a local digital agency: Digital marketing may have a potentially global reach, but local knowledge of your target audience will maximize your success. A local marketing agency will understand how to target a local search better than marketing professionals located farther from your business.
- Use the right keywords: You know how your potential customers talk, so make sure your local lingo is used in your advertisements. Digital marketers often use keyword search tools to match the words used in searches. A combination of search terms and local expressions will increase the likelihood of leads converting into sales.
- Refine your location: Because you are paying for each click on the ad, you want to make sure the people who are seeing the ads are exactly who you want. The smaller the region, the quicker you will reach your target. For example, if a body of water separates your community, try targeting one side only.
- Determine measurable objectives: You’ll need to continually test your ads, so you can try another strategy if necessary. Set realistic goals for the number of generated leads and track the activity behind the scenes. If you’re using more than one platform to run your ads, be prepared to shift spending to a better-performing method quickly.
Refine Your Website Site
If successful, this marketing strategy will end with a potential customer deciding to purchase your products or services or request more information. To get there, they’ll need to visit your website. And to have the best chance at generating a lead or a conversion, your website should be designed in a way that employs today’s best practices.
A common error that small and medium-sized businesses make is having a website or landing page that is not user-friendly or isn’t ready to capture a lead or set-up to measure goals. When someone arrives at your online presence through the PPC ad, make sure you can engage them with an experience that uses clear, compelling copy, keeps action “above the fold,” and includes authentic social proof.
Your website or landing page is your opportunity to prove to these potential customers how well you understand the audience’s need and how you can address it with a solution. With the right PPC campaign and a well-designed website or landing page, you can attract new business from consumers who routinely turn to Google in search or a product or service your business provides.
