There comes a time in every marketer’s (or website owner’s) life when they need to break free of convention and really start diving into their paid search accounts. They have spent countless hours learning the basics of search marketing, understanding reports, and generally becoming “almost” awesome.
Then, one sunny day, they sit on their front porch drinking a beer and thinking of their accomplishments and they realize they simply need to start REALLY understanding how they can make the most of their money.
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My friends, the Smart Ad Targeting series is here to help.
In this post we’re going to talk about targeting geographically to get the most out of your advertising budget. Now, many people believe that geographic targets should are designed for the local business.
And, while this may or may not be the case (and anyone who witnessed the Enhanced Campaigns “Pizza Delivery” fiasco can attest to it being), Anyone with a paid search campaign can really improve their strategy with a few simple steps. But first, let’s determine if geographic targeting is right for you.
Question #1: Do you have a paid search account?
If you answered yes, congratulations! You should be utilizing geographic targeting!
Setting Up Geographic Targeting in adWords
Fortunately, setting up geo-targeting is very, VERY simple and a basic target can be done in a few short clicks. Let say you own a Louisiana-based business and would like to only target that state. You simply go to the campaign you want to target, click on the “Settings” tab and then click the edit button under “Locations” (hint: it’s highlighted!)
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Next, you enter the city, state, zip code, or other identifier into the (again highlighted) box, click the “Add” button, and then hit save.
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It is important to note that it can get more complicated and these are simply the basics. You can target your campaigns to multiple regions, but it is usually better to set up specific campaigns for each if you really want to get granular with your bidding and your data.
But Wait! There’s More!
You can also exclude regions. This is great if you are targeting a state, or country, but know that a specific area in that region is giving you trouble (we will cover that in a bit). The process is the same as targeting, but instead of clicking “Add”, you hit “Exclude” instead.
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You have now targeted your adwords campaign geographically!
Once you have set up specific locations within your campaigns, Google offers the option to adjust bids based on those targeted regions. This is especially helpful if your ad text can remain consistent across regions, but certain places perform better than others.
For example, let’s say that within Louisiana I know that Baton Rouge has a higher conversion rate and I want to bid those terms up by 25% across the board. To make this happen, you go to your settings again, click on the “Locations” tab, then click on the box under “Bid Adj” next to the region’s name. This will pull up the box below, and you can enter a positive or negative bid adjustment and click “Save”.
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Digging into Geographic Analytics
Now, we could all just throw darts at the wall aimlessly, but unless you understand what your campaigns are actually doing, setting up geo-targeting is a bit useless (and probably dangerous).
Inside adWords there is a report that allows you to see geographic information to help you see where your traffic is coming from and how those regions are reporting. To get there go to the “Dimensions” tab, click on the “View” drop-down and choose “Geographic” (Hint: don’t stop at geographic – this is a GREAT tool for understanding deeper information).
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So that’s the basics! Spend some time digging around your account and you will be surprised at the level of detail you have access to and the ways you can target to get a great return on investment.
if you have any questions, let me know below or simply say hi if you wish! Image may be NSFW.
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