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Recently, I was at a breakfast session with a bunch of fellow Vermonters. During the course of  small group discussions, a question from a local business owner hit me hard. He was wondering if online marketing can help him to pitch his ads to a target audience within a specific periphery of his business. Currently, he does it with direct mail to a targeted list select. This, of course is costly , time consuming and unless one has the right tracking code and a circulation analyst on board, it’s hard to  match back conversions to the specific mailing, or measure  the efforts. As a result, the ROI tends to look miserable…and of course, now this business has pretty much lost the motivation to send out another piece of that print mail.

In several of my recent communications, I have been talking about online location targeting.  According to a report from BIA/Kensley ,the locally bought portion of the market, which primarily comprises small and medium-sized businesses, will grow from $45 million in 2008 to $565 million by 2013. The market share of these small & medium businesses for localized ad targeting is expected to swell from 5% to 30% of the overall ad spend  during the same period.

This might be a good time to speak to it a little bit more in detail since that’s one of my core interest areas and a special focus for Curve Trends Marketing.

WHAT IS LOCATION TARGETING AND WHO SHOULD DO IT?

Location targeting allows businesses who cater to regional customers  to reach out to their audience through an online campaign using a combination of locations, including countries, territories, regions, cities and custom areas. Additionally, Google also allows advertisers to further expand their reach. Advertisers can now bundle ( group countries or territories) , specify a radius around a point on the map , or simply define out a custom shape on the map  for their ads to appear.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

These targeted ads appear alongside Google search results pages to users in the specified locations. As a small Vermont business owner, I might choose to show my ads in & around 30 miles of Burlington, Vermont and  45 Miles of Sunnyvale California , since my business capabilities are limited to these 2 cities and their specified surrounding areas. I could even choose a custom area if I know that’s where my customer base lies.The image below is an example of custom area selected by an advertiser. His ads will be shown against searches for related  keywords exactly within this defined area.

Here’s how it works : Mr. JS owns  a locally made shoe business in Vermont. He’s giving a 25% discount till the middle of January to clear out some of his inventory and opts for location targeting of “Vermont”.  He also wants to target prospects searching with the keyword “shoe” or “ holiday discount”. When prospective customer in Vermont searches for “ shoes “, JS’s ads are served. His ads are also shown when someone in New Jersey wants to send a pair of  “Vermont made shoes” for the “holidays” to his parents in California.

You may ask how Google does it. In the first case, Google uses the person’s Internet Protocol ( IP) address to determine the location and serves the local ad. For the next one, Google uses the location information “Vermont”  in the search query to serve the relevant ad.

HOW DOES LOCAL BUSINESSES SAVE MONEY?

Having served locally as opposed to being targeted across the entire nation or demography, they tend to be cheaper and cost per click works out lower than similar ads without specified location.

Unlike print ads,

a) You can set your budget for online campaigns and never be able to exceed it ( Google won’t let you)

b) Tweak your ad copies as frequently as you choose to improve  click through rates as well as conversions.. and..

c) Set your specific goals and measure it more accurately with Adwords reporting.

Simple, Targeted, Measurable – Key to any Marketing Campaign Success!

That’s what makes this tool one of my favorites.

Now it’s your turn. Have you tried this tool? What are your experiences? Do you have any concerns?

Let  us know.

Here’s wishing you & your family a wonderful & a relaxing holiday!

-Bibi