One of the reasons why businesses go online is to attract customers from all around the world. Most of us think that the farther your reach, the better profit you’ll make. Well, there is certainly some truth in the last statement, although online businesses often forget that they are within reach of a sleeping dragon—the local market.
One reason to engage the local market is that you can save on shipping costs and can even have your goods picked up at your store. You can also save on advertising—local community centers and bulletin boards are great places to post ads. If you don’t have the time to do the legwork, you can reign in local clientele with these PPC management tips and tricks.
You can start by using geographic qualifiers in your keywords. For example, instead of just ‘cupcakes’, you can modify that to ‘Fort Lee cupcakes’. This way, you can cater to someone who lives six blocks away from you—beneficial to both you and your client because the client is ensured that the cupcakes are freshly baked and you don’t have to drive to another state to make a sale. Set a radius that you can realistically service; you can use geographic reports to locate areas that generate the most clicks.
By now, PPC management shouldn’t appear as troublesome as it did a few paragraphs ago.
Include words like ‘local’ and ‘neighborhood’ in your ads to let clients know you’re locally based. Also, take advantage of PPC ad scheduling by ensuring that they appear strategically; not when you’re about to close or sleep.
Lastly, avoid sending your money to waste by maximizing the use of negative keywords. Add every state that you aren’t servicing to your PPC campaign’s negative keywords list. This way, you can avoid entertaining out of state clientele. It is also wise to include services you do not offer to avoid unnecessary traffic.
Remember that there is profit in the local market—use the tips above to improve your business performance by localizing your PPC marketing strategy.