What is PPC?

Also commonly referred to as local pay-per-click, Local PPC is a digital marketing strategy designed to target potential customers in the areas where the business operates and who have recently shown interest in the products or services.

One aspect that distinguishes it from conventional PPC campaigns is that local PPC campaigns target customers in specific areas. It does not randomly cast a net out hoping to draw in customers.

This is one of the primary reasons why PPC marketing is more effective in generating leads than other digital marketing strategies.
Now that you know what is local PPC marketing, let’s shift gears and discuss how it works and why you need local PPC management services.

How To Increase Sales By Running Local PPC Campaign?

Have you ever wondered why top brands continue to generate sales while small brands struggle to get a firm footing?

It seems like they always get the audience and product/service offering right. Well, that’s true but to be successful and consistently attract customers, they use modern digital marketing strategies.

One such strategy that has been proven effective in helping small businesses scale up is local PPC marketing. Recent reports show that a well-structured PPC campaign can hit up to a 200% ROI and PPC traffic generates 50% more sales than organic advertising.

Based on these statistics, it’s not difficult to see why brands are now willing to spend thousands of dollars on local PPC campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook and search engines like Google.

Let’s dive in and look at the nitty-gritty details of running a successful local business PPC campaign.

Targeted Advertising By Location

Local PPC agencies heavily rely on geo-targeting advertising to connect brands with customers looking for online information about their products and services. To do this accurately, the local PPC agency uses data from search engines to know the keyword phrases commonly used to look up a particular product or service.

Platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising curate this data and provide it to local PPC marketing agencies to help them create geo-specific marketing campaigns.

Through their Google Ads or Microsoft advertising account, the agency can specify the city, zip code, and even the radius around the business locale where the ad should be displayed, increasing the chances of potential customers seeing and responding to it.

Focus on Targeted Keywords

The success of local PPC services is hinged on the target keywords used to customize the campaigns. The keywords give advertisers more details about the searcher and help them to know if they should be targeted for ads.

For instance, a bakery might use phrases like ” cupcakes ” “birthday cake shop in Los Angeles” or “Los Angeles gluten-free baked goods” to show ads only to potential customers who use this keyword and live in Los Angeles.

Target Customers With High Purchase Intent

High purchase intent is an important factor to consider when doing digital marketing. You don’t want to show ads to people with little or no interest in your business.

The best local business PPC management service providers have mastered customizing PPC campaigns to display ads only to potential customers with high purchase intent.

For example, when someone searches for a “plumber near me,” they are interested in the service and are almost ready to convert.  It gets even better if the search query is more specific, like “HVAC plumber Los Angeles.”

With this information, the local PPC company can customize the campaign only to show the prospect ads related to HVAC plumbing in Los Angeles.

Conventional digital marketing agencies cannot achieve such high precision, which explains why well-structured and managed local PPC campaigns achieve up to $2 ROI for every dollar spent on Google Ads.

Incorporating Local Information

With everyone competing for visibility online, local business PPC service providers use ingenious ways of making their ads pop out.

One of the ways they achieve this goal is by adding more information in the ads to give potential customers a clearer perspective of the product. This may include a business address, contact number, and call link to help them submit inquiries and place orders effortlessly.

Some platforms even offer the option to display customer reviews and star ratings from Yelp and other review websites as part of the ad.

Advantages of Local PPC Advertising

Competition for visibility online is cutthroat. You need robust branding and advertising strategies to get a firm footing and consistently generate revenue.

Local PPC advertising has proven to be the more cost-effective and reliable way of generating leads.

Here are five advantages of investing in a local PPC marketing campaign.

Enhanced Visibility

Local PPC is designed to display ads on top of the search results. This increases the likelihood of a potential customer seeing the ad and clicking on it to visit your website. The more eyeballs on your ads, the higher the chances of getting sales from your local PPC advertising campaign.

Targeted Audience

Local PPC lets you focus your advertising budget on potential customers interested in your products or services.

Measurable Outcomes

Local PPC campaigns offer analytics, enabling you to monitor clicks, website visits, and even phone calls generated by your ads. This information will assist in fine-tuning local PPC marketing campaigns for optimal return on investment (ROI).

Cost Effective

Local PPC targets specific audiences based on your campaign preferences and settings. You only pay for clicks from customers nearby. This aspect makes it a cost-effective marketing approach for businesses of all sizes.

Also, you will benefit from exposure – if a customer sees the ad but doesn’t buy it immediately, they may visit your website directly later and purchase.

Boosting Sales and Leads

Local PPC is designed to convert regular website visitors into buying customers. Focusing on high-intent leads and highlighting your selling points helps increase sales, generate leads, and attract people to your business.

Local Business PPC Management: How to Get Started

There are two ways to start a local PPC campaign, namely:

Collaborate with a Reputable Local PPC Marketing Agency

You can team up with a local PPC agency specializing in the locations you’re eying to benefit from their knowledge and resources. The agency will manage everything from keyword research to ad creation, and campaign optimization.

Use Local PPC Management Services

Many advertising platforms provide tools and support for creating and managing PPC campaigns. While this may be ideal for most brands, there is a learning curve and continuous monitoring is needed to get value for money.

How Effective is Geo-Targeting?

Geo-targeted advertising is a strategy PPC agencies use to help brands generate more sales through ad targeting. It focuses on users looking for information about your brand using specific keywords in your geographic area.

Compared to other generalized PPC campaigns, geo-targeting advertising generates more leads and sales.

Here’s why geo-targeting is effective in generating qualified leads and sales.

Enhanced Relevance

Geo-targeting ensures that your ads reach people interested in your offerings within your service regions.

Think of a potential customer searching for “restaurants near me.” By geo-targeting, your local restaurant ad can feature prominently in your search results, highlighting offers and menu.

Cost Savings

Traditional PPC campaigns often waste resources by targeting audiences outside the targeted service areas. Geo-targeting addresses this challenge by directing your budget toward potential customers within your location.

This helps you maximize your return on investment (ROI) by connecting with an audience likely to convert.

Increase Local Brand Recognition

PPC ads boost brand awareness among locals. Displaying your ads to potential customers in your service areas enhances your branding efforts.

Customers are likelier to buy from a business they know than a new brand they haven’t heard about or interacted with before.

A strong presence helps build trust and recognition in the community, which translates into more customers and increased competitiveness.

Enhanced Conversion Rates

When you target users actively looking for products or services in your area through PPC campaigns, you naturally attract leads who are likely to make a purchase.

This results in a high conversion rate — more clicks on your ads lead to more website visits, phone calls, or purchases at your store than conventional PPC approaches.

Measurable Outcomes with PPC Management

Managing PPC campaigns allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your geo-targeting advertising strategies.

Using analytics reports provided by advertising platforms like Google Ads, you can track the number of potential customers who viewed your ads, clicked on them, and eventually purchased or contacted the support team. You can also use it as a blueprint for optimizing your local PPC marketing campaigns for performance.

How Examples of Successful Geo-Targeting Advertising Campaigns

A local plumber can use geo-targeting to focus on users searching for “emergency plumbing repairs” within a zip code. This ensures that their ad reaches individuals actively seeking such services, increasing the likelihood of customers seeing it to book service calls.

A local bakery could use geo-targeting advertising to reach users searching for “birthday cakes, near me” during birthday seasons. This focused strategy enables them to take advantage of the high demand for cakes during these periods, thereby increasing orders.

How Do Ads Know My Location?

Have you ever wondered how local business ads magically appear when you search for a product/service/ or information related to them online?

The answer lies in a combination of technologies used by local PPC agencies and advertising platforms to know your location and deliver highly relevant and targeted ads.

Here’s a breakdown of how ads know your location.

IP Address

Your device’s IP address, assigned by your internet service provider (ISP), provides a general indication of your location. While it may not always be accurate, it can tell advertisers you’re in a particular city or region.

This location data is used to optimize local PPC campaigns targeting a broad geographic area and determine which ad copies to display to prospects.

GPS

Mobile devices with GPS enabled provide precise location data to advertising platforms. This allows local business PPC management services agencies to target ads based on your exact location. However, users often disable location services for privacy reasons, limiting the reach of GPS-based targeting to users who have opted in.

Wi-Fi and Cell Tower Signals

Even without GPS turned on, your device can be located through Wi-Fi networks or cell towers you connect to. The accuracy of this method varies, but it can provide a general idea of your location for local PPC advertising.

Search Queries

The keywords you use in your search for information Google or any other search engine can be used to determine your location.

For instance, searching for “best pizza delivery near me” indicates you’re looking for options in your immediate vicinity.

An agency that offers local PPC services can leverage this info to show targeted ads matching your needs and preferences.

Past Online Activity

Your browsing history and past online interactions provide clues about your location. Some websites you visit or apps collect location data with or without your consent.

This data is then sold and used by advertising platforms to create and distribute targeted ads. However, privacy regulations like GDPR in the UK restrict how personal data can be used without your consent.

How Does Geofence Advertising Work?

First, most people use geofencing and geo-targeting advertising interchangeably. Even though the two terms refer to location-based marketing, their level of specificity and approach are different.

Geo-Targeting

Broader scope: It targets potential customers based on a large geographical area, often defined by state, region, city, or country.

Low precision relies on location-based data like zip codes and IP addresses.

For example, a local PPC agency can decide to target prospects who have shown interest in “restaurants” within a specific city or show ads for ski resorts to users in regions with mountains.

Geo-Fencing

Highly Specific: Targets users within a defined virtual boundary, often created using GPS coordinates.

Highly Precise: Utilizes GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or RFID signals to pinpoint a user’s exact location.

For example, a local advertising agency can target people who enter a specific mall with ads for a clothing store inside the mall or send a notification with a special lunch to users near a particular restaurant.

Here is a table to give you a better idea of the difference between geofencing and geo-targeting.

Feature Geo-Targeting Geo-Fencing
Scope Broader (city, region, country) Highly Specific (defined virtual boundary)
Location Data IP address, zip code GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID
Targeting Accuracy Less precise Highly precise
Use Cases Broad brand awareness, targeting demographics in a specific area Drive foot traffic to physical locations, deliver hyper-relevant ads based on real-time location

Let’s now shift gears and discuss how geofencing advertising works. For starters, local business PPC management agencies use location-based technology to target specific segments of customers with ads based on their physical location.

Here are the four steps used to set up a geofencing advertising campaign.

Setting Up the Geofence

Marketers define a virtual perimeter around a specific location using GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) signals. This can be anything from a small area like a store to an entire neighborhood or city.

Identifying Users

Smartphones and other mobile devices with location services are enabled to transmit location data constantly. When a user with such a device enters the predefined geofence, their device is identified.

Ad Triggering

Once a user’s location is identified within the geofence, a pre-determined ad is sent to their mobile device. Depending on the platform and campaign strategy, this can be a pop-up notification, a banner ad within an app, or even a text message.

Targeted Messaging

One of the highlights of geofence advertising that sets it apart from other PPC strategies is the ability to tailor the ad content to a specific location.

For instance, a clothing store might show customers an ad showcasing a summer sale when a user enters a mall geofence, while a restaurant might send a lunch special notification when a user is near their establishment.

5 Common Types of Local PPC Ads Used By Businesses

You can spice up your local PPC advertising campaign by using different ads, namely:

Local Search Ads

They appear on search engine results pages when users search for products or services you offer in their location. They include additional information like business name, reviews, call to action and location.

Local Shopping Ads

They are ideal for businesses that sell products online and in-store. The ads include product images, location and prices to help customers easily compare the prices before visiting your store or website.

Call Only Ads

These PPC ads encourage phone calls from potential customers. They are displayed on mobile devices with a call button that customers can tap on to call you or the support team.

Location Extensions

Unlike the other three ads, location extension PPC cannot function alone. They support the main ad by providing additional info about your business like phone number, address, and a map.

Display/Banner Ads

These ads are displayed on websites your target customers frequently visit. You can try different location targeting options offered by the ads platform to ensure your ads are shown on websites relevant to the locations you service and target demographics.

We recommend experimenting with different ads on different audiences and monitoring the results to know which ones suit your business. Be open to tweaking the design and ad copy to get more results.

Which Is The Best Advertising Strategy For Local Businesses?

We spent the last six months researching the effectiveness of local PPC advertising in helping small local businesses get more sales and visibility online.

Our analysis shows that local PPC advertising is the most efficient and cost-effective advertising strategy for small businesses.

We based our recommendation on the following reasons.

Local PPC advertising enables you to reach the audience at the right moment, ensuring that your message resonates with potential customers

Unlike traditional online advertising strategies, local PPC advertising allows you to target customers in a specific physical location who are actively looking for your offer. This focused approach ensures that your ads are shown to the right audience, such, as people searching for your services or products in their location on Google.

With PPC you have control over your budget and can track the performance of your campaigns with transparency. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, allowing you to adjust your budget according to your marketing objectives.

Additionally, analytics tools provided by PPC platforms offer insights into how your ads are performing. By monitoring metrics like click-through rates and conversions, you can optimize your campaigns for better results. Make sure that your budget is utilized effectively.

Finally, consider hiring a Local PPC business management service provider to enhance the effectiveness of your campaign. Also, do not overlook the impact of geo-targeting and geofencing as they broaden your reach and engage customers who have yet to search for your products/services, but are most likely interested.

It’s time to regain the ground you lost to competitors and grow your business to its full potential. Contact us today for professional local PPC services and local PPC business management services.

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