The prospect of running paid search marketing can often feel overwhelming, especially for local business owners who have many other responsibilities and have less time to manage online ads. This post will give you some tips on setting up a paid search strategy on Google that meets your local business needs. You will know about:
1- Pro tips for structuring your Google advertising account, ad extensions, and landing page.
2- Tools for the most effective conversion detection, keyword research, and targeting.
3- Additional methods to ensure the highest return on your Google advertising investment.
Whether you are considering running a campaign for the first time or want an agency to serve a local client, you will already try to run Google ads; you will need the knowledge, tools, and best practices to succeed.
If done correctly, local advertising on Google can be a very effective way to attract nearby customers and pursue your local business goals. So let’s look at the suggestions to help you do just that.
- Try Single Keyword Ad Group
It is essential for every advertiser to fully understand the “why” about investing in paid marketing channels. It is what many people think is common knowledge on the face of it. Still, it is pervasive for me to participate in businesses that feel they have to advertise or do without any clearly defined results. If you are interested in investing in targeted keywords, you need to have specific goals related to those ad groups. I like to structure accounts based on a single keyword ad group strategy or ‘SKAG.’ This allows me to create a highly specified campaign and keyword ad groups that can be refined by type.
If you run a paid search campaign for locally-driven queries, this account structure works well because it can make it very specific with the ads you serve to the targeted terms and groups. With any business offering PPC advertising, this is important.
- Use Google Tag Manager
One of the more difficult (but necessary) aspects of paid advertising depends on your capability to track conversions. Conversions are the desired action that your visitors take after clicking your ad. For example, if I have an advertisement that directs a user to a web page with a login form and submits their information, it will count as a conversion. For businesses such as restaurants or flower shops, this is the completion of an order or reservation.
For people with limited experience with web development, the process of setting it up can be quite cumbersome. The easiest option to create conversion events is to install Google Tag Manager on your business website. With Tag Manager, you can quickly create events in the locations you want.
For example, if you drive a food order, you will want to perform a conversion action on the order confirmation page. Some advanced options for this type of business are to specify conversion values for purchases. For example, you can return the value of the cart to Google so that when a person places an order, you can determine the return on your ad. This additional complexity allows you to understand your most profitable campaigns; you can be confident how much your budget allocates over time based on average conversion rates.
- Refine Your Goals
The goal is one of three primary considerations when coming up with a paid strategy. Targeting is especially crucial for local businesses, as you want to reach as many audiences as possible close to your business location (s). To change the location setting, select the campaign you want to edit and then select “Location:” in the left menu.
Under ‘Targeted,’ you can select the specific areas you want to target or radiate:
You have the option to target an area directly or according to the radius. So if you have multiple brick and mortar locations, you can set a specific radius around these locations to search traffic within workable distance. When determining your campaign’s location, one thing to notice is that one option is that Google is not necessarily pre-empty. If you choose your campaign and then select campaign settings, you will see the target locations:
Expand “Location” so that you can see the target details:
From there, you want to expand “Location Options” and select “People at your target locations or often.” It ensures that you target only those individuals who are physically searching within the radius you specify.
- Use the Keyword Research Tool – keyword Planner
There are lots of keyword research tools you can pay for, but you also have the option of using free keyword tools like Google’s Keyword Planner. With this tool, you can understand how the search volume looks for your desired search terms and other information. Go to the “Tools and Settings” icon in the top right corner of your Google advertising interface to access the Keyword Planner. Then choose ‘Keyword Planner’ from the menu. There you can enter the keyword you want to predict. As soon as you enter, you will be redirected to a page where you can change the locations for which you want to see the number of keywords.
- Use Google Trends
You can also see Google search trends to understand how the epidemic’s current state affects some search queries’ volume and frequency. To do this, go to https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US.
Once there, you can enter the keyword you’re looking for and the location of the data. Looking at the search terms and location I used in the example above, you can see that the search for outdoor eateries peaked in July, and we began to shrink as winter approached in Massachusetts.
- Provide Exceptional Service
Attracting new customers is one thing, but new, attracting customers is something else and can be gained through properly customized Google advertising campaigns. With a fully optimized campaign, you will eventually make more profit from a few conversions if you do your business very well. Regardless of your perspective, there is an abundance of opportunities awaiting your business due to local search queries.
- Make sure your website is Optimized
These features make paid search particularly useful for local businesses if their website is well organized. The key here is the website itself. Many local businesses have done little of their digital site in the past, but there is no better time to upgrade its quality with the current epidemic. Most users search for local businesses through their smartphones. A significant benefit in paid search engines is optimizing mobile landing pages – whether it is part of your website or separate, unlinked pages. Mobile navigation is an essential aspect of the conversion aspect and the quality point aspect. If your landing page seems clean and easy to navigate, Google gives you an extra edge over your competitors bidding on the same keywords.