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Ask PPC Hero! PPC Geo Targeting Best PracticesPosted by John on November 24, 2008 in Ask PPC Hero |
Last week, we received a question (well, a series of questions!) from a faithful reader regarding PPC geo targeting. Her questions were based off a post that I wrote last year, and were really focused on strategy. In lieu of responding only to her, I felt this would be a good excuse to recap some of the PPC geo targeting best practices!
I set up a campaign, using different Ad Groups to target different locations; including location in keywords: [party hire yorkshire] exact matches. Had planned to target whole of UK. But would like to try Location Targeting different areas of UK instead. I would modify campaign to include both general & geographic keywords. What do you mean by ‘Companion Campaign’; does this mean a duplicate campaign targeting the whole of UK instead of specific areas. What are geographic modifiers? Thanks for the help!
- Jessica
Well Jessica, I believe I can help you out! First of all, it’s important to note that there are 2 distinct strategies for targeting searchers by location: IP Targeting and Keyword Targeting.
- IP Targeting: As the name implies, the search engines have systems in place to recognize the IP address of each user. This IP address includes their geographic location. When you set geographic restrictions at the campaign level in Google or Yahoo!, the keywords in that campaign will only display ads for users within the specified location! When working within an IP Targeted campaign, you should employ the use of broad, phrase or exact match keywords that cover the spectrum of general to long tail keywords. All of your normal keyword savvy still applies, but my point is you don’t have to append a location to every keyword with this strategy.
- Keyword Targeting: This method involves appending what I call “geographic modifiers” to your keywords (as Exact Match) as to only display ads to searchers who are looking for your product/service within that location. To use Jessica’s example, [party hire Yorkshire] contains the core keyword “party hire” and the geographic modifier “Yorkshire” – which will only display ads for users who enter that exact search – regardless of their physical location. That being said, when trying to target searchers by location with keyword targeting, your geo targeting settings should be open to all users in your area (i.e. US or UK; Indiana or Cornwall, etc.) for maximum effect.
In most cases, I would recommend creating campaigns to account for both methods. Be aware that when using IP Targeted campaigns, each campaign can only target a single location – be that Country, State, City, or custom region. The IP Targeted campaigns should be your top priority. The Keyword Targeted campaign(s) are what I call “Companion Campaigns” and they serve as a safety net to catch any searchers who may have slipped past your IP Targeted campaign!
Jessica, I hope this helps to answer your questions and gets you headed in the right direction! Does anyone else have anything they would like to add to help Jessica out?
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November 24th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
I try both and it really depends on what you are offering on your website as far as success goes.
With IP you tend to get much more traffic, but it may not convert as well. With keyword targeting the conversions are much better but the traffic is just not there sometimes.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I have created and managed some realy cool geo-targetted campaigns, and my advice is:
Create a campaign for each location you wish to target and use the campaign settings to geographically target your location (I love drawing an area on the Google map when doing this
but you can also hand pick cities etc)
Then of course, include the location keywords (party hire yorkshire, yorkshire party planners etc..) into the campaigns, and tailor your ads to these locations.
the reason to target at campaign level is that if you dont and someone in yorkshire only types ‘party hire’, then you ll be competing with the big players… if your ad immediatly says ‘yorkshire’ because its picked up on the location of the user, then it makes it super extra relevant to him, and he ll click.
I had a campaign for a dentist’s franchise, and everytime he got a new franchise, we would build a new campaign, so it was really scalable. Also, you can allocate budgets to different campaigns/cities/regions etc..
the result was that because be mentioned a nearby city in the end (where the practice was), we would get higher CTRs than normal, and of course a good Quality Score later down the line. Worked really well, I hope you have the same success. However, I wouldn’t limit myself to exact matches only, unless you are reeeeeally short on budget.
Hope this helps,
Eloi
November 25th, 2008 at 7:57 am
@ Jaan,
You’re right that IP will likely drive more traffic. I’ve found this is typically because I can run broad match or phrase match in those campaigns knowing that I’m still targeting the right searchers with my geographic settings!
@ Eloi,
Thanks for the additional feedback! I totally agree that building your geo targeted campaigns with a new campaign for each location offers a scalable solution and gives you the most control.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
If I were to geo-target a single campaign to all of southern california by choosing LA metro, San Diego metro, and any other metro areas that would blanket southern california, would I see different quality scores, min bids, impressions, etc, opposed to if I were to create say 4 of the same campaigns with each one targeting a specific metro area in southern california?
November 25th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Great question George - in terms of seeing differing results - thats a hard one to call.
It would make sense to have a single one because of budget management and the ability to say have negative terms at campaign level (if required). Due to having different budgets per campaign - this might affect volume of impressions?
Also if you alter the day parting (not sure if any of the Southern California would be in different time regions) you might see different min bids at different times of the day in the different regions - having 1 campaign would not allow this obviously?
November 25th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Best Geo-Targeting practices are really in the ad copy, this is where most businesses fail to highlight the fact that they are targeting local areas. I have seen many cases where campaigns and keywords are set to target specific areas however the ad copy fails to highlight the local targeting. An example of this, look at any local lawfirm which fails to use the following ad copy strategy:
- Local Business Ads which highlight the location of the firm
- Use of the City or State in the ad copy
- Local Phone Number instead of 800 number
These simple techniques in ad copy can take a normal regionally targeted campaign and really take it to the next level. Why set up a campaign to target an area specifically then fail to have your ad copy highlight the area? Just some food for thought, love the blog guys!!
November 26th, 2008 at 2:54 am
I dont know if I unerstood correctly your question George, but in terms of seeing this information, the anwser is in the question:
If you have one campagin targeting all of these locations, then you would see data for those keywords, for all the locations. Having several campaigns for each city will allow you to see/compare data individually (data from San Diego vs data from LA vs Data from Palm Springs) whilst also presenting the searcher with a more tailored ad, which will help the QS.
However, in terms of quality score, it is now attributed at every search (as opposed to just looking back at your account history’s information)… I have a feeling that if San Diegans click your ads more, then you might get a better QS (position) over there, once Google detects their IP.
But the fact of having several campaigns with tailored ads should increase the performance and QS of your campaign much more anyways, so I recommend the multi campaign approach. Even though it’s 3x the optimisation work
(or however many campaigns you have).
November 26th, 2008 at 9:01 am
@ George,
The readers have spoken! The 3 comments following your own all contain helpful information. I’m with Eloi on this one, however, in that I feel you will have the most accurate reporting and control over your targeting by creating separate campaigns for each area you are geo-targeting.
@ Kalin,
Thanks for your input! You are absolutely correct that geo-targeting doesn’t stop with campaign settings and organization - you must follow through with location-specific text in the ad copy. And why stop there? Your landing page should reflect the go-targeting as well. This is a perfect reminder of the symbiotic relationship between account-keyword-ad-landing page. They all have to work together.
@ Eloi,
Thanks for jumping in and sharing your expertise again. I get the feeling that geo-targeting is one of your favorite aspects of PPC! : )
November 26th, 2008 at 11:33 am
@ John
No probs, I love the blog! I do absolutely love geo-targetting, because when done right you get huge CTRs! I try and implement it everywhere I can
Good luck Jessica and George!
December 10th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
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