Local Campaigns in Google Ads – An Ultimate Guide

There’s a common misconception that online search marketing only benefits companies that are looking to attract global audiences on the Internet. It is this misconception that causes many small, local businesses to refrain from utilizing PPC marketing.

In reality, the most successful PPC campaigns are designed on effective local keywords to generate local traffic and in-person visits, not worldwide traffic. Local traffic is inherently more valuable than global audiences.

Neglecting to target customers in your direct area means failing to capitalize on the powerful benefits of local PPC. Not only will this lead to overall weaker campaigns, but it also means that you could be wasting your ad budget on less relevant audiences.

What is Local PPC?

Local pay per click advertising, or simply local PPC, use paid search and display ads to target audiences in a specific area, typically in the immediate neighborhood of the business itself.

This is particularly ideal for service companies that only want to target customers within their service range or local businesses that want to drive in-store visits.

This PPC strategy targets keywords with localized intent and uses geo-targeting options to ensure that customers in the desired location are targeted with your marketing messages.

While local PPC is most commonly used to target the areas around your business, it can really be used to target any geographical location.

Why Local PPC Campaigns are Effective

Local PPC campaigns are notably more effective than other types of advertising efforts. There are several reasons why including a local campaign is a smart strategy for many businesses:

• Relevance is a significant component of successful PPC marketing. Not only does relevance impact click through rates and other key metrics, but it also influences a higher Quality Score. When you connect local audiences with your PPC ads, this essential element of relevancy is practically guaranteed.
• Many local keywords are packed with high action intent that leads to near-immediate conversions. If someone searches “pizza near me” or “plumbers in my area,” it’s because they need a pizza or a plumber right away. Attracting audiences that are searching for these types of terms is extremely valuable.
• Local audiences are inherently more valuable because they have the opportunity to convert online, over the phone or in-person at your business’ location. Customers love having options!
• Since local PPC campaigns aim to attract customers in a specific geographical location, the competition for keywords can be a lot less than global ad campaigns. This means you can pay less and rank more often for ad placements.

When you combine these many benefits together, you get an ad campaign that has more relevance, performs better, costs less and faces fewer competitors, while attracting a very valuable audience segment.

Spending less and getting more is something that any business can get behind, right?

How to Setup a Local Campaign in Google Ads

To set up a Local campaign, make sure you have set up Google My Business and you fulfill eligibility requirements of store visit conversion. The account that meets these requirements will only see the option to set up a local campaign. You should run the campaign’s minimum of 30 days, and you may target 10 or more locations in an account. You can use these locations in multiple campaigns if you need to.

Here’s one way to create a local PPC campaign:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads.
2. Click Campaigns from the left side menu.
3. Click the + icon and choose to create a new campaign.
4. In the “New campaign” window, you should choose Local store visits and promotions. (This option would only be visible if you have configured your Google My Business account)
5. In the next panel, you have the option to either choose from (Google My Business) to select your store locations or affiliate locations to select product stores.
6. Click the radio button next to the option you want to select.

• For (Google My Business), you have the option to choose all locations in the account for a local campaign by using the “Use all locations in your linked Google My Business account” option. You can uncheck the box to select a particular subset of your locations if you want. If you already created an existing location group, you can use that too. That location set will be applied to your campaign and persisted as a reusable location group.
• In the case of “affiliate locations,” use the “Select a chain” window to click the country of your location and then the location’s chain. You have the option to use all of the subsets of the location chain.
• Google ads will infer geographic radius targeting based on the physical business locations specified in your campaign. If required, you can exclude certain geographic locations from your campaign.

7. Click Continue.
8. In the campaign name box, enter the name of the campaign
9. Fill out the text assets for your advertisement.
10. Fill out the information for the following settings:

• Languages
• Bidding
• Daily budget.
• Additional settings

11. Click and Save your campaign and continue at the bottom.
12. You are done with your local campaign configuration. You can review the settings of your campaign on the next page. Click (Ad assets) to review the text and images you set for your ad.

Managing a Local PPC Campaign

Like any PPC campaign, a significant amount of your time will be spent managing your local PPC strategies. There are a few areas of concern when executing a local campaign, some of which are unique to local PPC.

Bid Optimization

The default bid strategy being used in Local campaigns is to Maximize Conversions Value. Based on your conversion value it will automatically maximize the number of store visits within your daily budget.

You can analyze the store visits data by using the “Per Store report” available in Google Ads.

Ensure to define conversion action for the store visit value to track the monetary value of all visits. The default value is set to $1 but you have the option to change (it is under “Conversions” in the “Tools” menu).

Create more Ad Groups

To handle different types of assets you can create multiple ad groups, for example, if you want to run a specific ad on a certain schedule, you may use a different ad group for it. Once your local campaign is created you are open to add any number of ad groups in it.

Manage What You’re Offering!

You’ve taken care of the where, the who and the how now you need to fix the what. In other words, what products or services are people in your target location actually searching for?

If you offer a lot of different products, chances are some items are more popular than others. As you manage your local PPC strategies, you want to make sure that you’re highlighting the products that perform best.

Otherwise, you could be wasting valuable time and money on products that just don’t resonate with your local audiences. It’s much better to focus attention on the products or services that yield the best returns.

Who Benefits From Local PPC?

Local PPC is valuable to many types of businesses. It isn’t just restricted to companies that want to attract audiences in their immediate area. Again, local PPC can be used any time you want to target an audience in a precise geographical location.

Here are a few mock businesses and how local PPC campaigns help them succeed.

• A local business that wants to drive more in-store visits: This is perhaps the most apparent local PPC user. You’re a local business with a physical store, restaurant, etc. You want to attract attention from customers in your area that are searching for products, services or businesses that are relevant to your company.
• A service company that wants to attract clients in their range: Again, this is the pool cleaning company that needs customers in a certain location. If your service company has a limited range, then you only want to advertise to customers within that area. There’s no sense advertising outside of the area that you’re willing or capable of servicing.
• A tourism, hospitality or event company that wants to attract audiences in specific locations: This is an example of when local PPC might be used to target sites outside of a business’ area. If you’re holding an event or are trying to attract tourists, it makes sense to target areas outside your local neighborhood and drives those audiences in.
• A larger business branching into new locations: When a large business opens a new branch or wants to enter a new location/market, they need to build brand awareness and start attracting attention. Using local PPC campaigns can be a valuable way to start building that reputation in a new area where people may not be familiar with your brand and products.

It’s also worth mentioning that your customers also benefit from local PPC. This advertising strategy helps Google users connect with businesses in their immediate area.

This helps consumers solve their problems with local businesses, which is far more convenient than waiting for an e-commerce supplier to ship and deliver.

10 Local PPC Best Practices

No matter what type of business you fall under, if you’re utilizing local PPC tactics, you need to understand the best practices for these types of campaigns. The following tips will help you elevate your local PPC strategies.

1. Have a Direct Plan and Purpose

As discussed, local PPC can be used for many different types of businesses and scenarios. Before you begin creating your local campaigns to attract location-specific audiences, you need to have a clear objective and goal in mind.

This plan will help you measure your results and find the audiences and locations with the most to offer you. Without a plan, it’s all too easy to target the wrong customers or invest in strategies that don’t help a business achieve its key objectives.

2. Create a Google My Business Listing

You must have already completed this step because a Google My Business listing is a powerful marketing tool that also enhances local SEO and other digital marketing strategies. If you haven’t, you are one step away from the local PPC campaign. Do it first.

This listing offers a complete profile of your business in Google searches. It includes all of the information relevant to your customers, like your business address, phone number, menu (when applicable), hours of operation, etc.

Your Google My Business listing will help you include site extensions to your local PPC ads.

3. Enhance Ad Copy with Site Extensions

You want your local customers to instantly connect to your business in whatever way they desire. They may not be interested in visiting your website. Instead, they may just be looking for a number to call or an address to visit.

You absolutely must include site extensions in your local PPC ads that provide this information! Otherwise, customers may not be as inclined to click the ad and search your landing page for this information.

Remember, it’s all about connecting search users with the relevant information they are after.

4. Don’t Rely on a Single Location

Local PPC works best when you target more than one location. Not only does this open the doors to more audiences, but it also allows you to compare results between one or more places to see which areas perform the best.

You may want to divide your desired location into smaller parts. For general geo-targeting, this may mean targeting specific neighborhoods within a larger city or town. For radius targeting, you may want to create different radial distances away from your business (a one-mile radius, five-mile radius, ten miles and so on).

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Exclude Locations!

You want to allocate your budget to the locations that provide the best overall ads ROI. Sometimes, finding this budget means pausing or excluding areas of your local PPC campaigns that are under-performing.

Ideally, you want to exclude areas that just don’t have the same level of relevance as other places. For example, if you were managing a local PPC campaign for a lawn care company, you’d want to focus your budget on rural areas, while excluding urban neighborhoods with little or no yards.

6. Keep Your Budget Flexible and Well-Spent

It’s always smart to save a little room in your budget to take advantage of trending topics or keywords that suddenly start to perform above expectations. If you spend all of your money right away, you won’t have any left to take advantage of these high-value opportunities.

It’s also critical that you understand your conversion value. You don’t want to be spending so much on ad activities that it results in a negative return! This will be a big waste of your budget.

7. Create Ad Copy Relevant to the Location

The reason that local PPC often performs better than global strategies is the added relevance that comes with advertising to a specific location. You want to make sure you capture this in your ad copy.

Including the name of the target area in your ad copy helps capitalize on this local relevance. Audiences will know that you’re explicitly targeting their area. You can also include a famous landmark, local slang or other clues that showcase that you’re a member of their neighborhood.

The more local value you can provide, the better your ad copy. You may want to develop ad copy unique to each area you want to target.

8. Optimize Your Landing Pages with Location Too!

You want to use the same strategy above with your landing pages. Since your landing page experience doesn’t have a character limit like your ad copy, this is where you really want to showcase that you’re a true local.

Mention stuff that only locals know and your landing page will automatically resonate with your target audiences in these areas. Use colloquialisms and other lingo to add even more local appeal to your page.

9. Understand Your Marketing Attribution Model

One of the challenges associated with local PPC campaigns is understanding when and where conversions actually occur. A customer may see your local PPC ad, but then make an in-person visit and convert.

Developing a marketing attribution model that incorporates local PPC strategies is helpful in understanding when an in-person sale is the work of your PPC ads. Or, if it is just a regular, organic visit.

If you aren’t able to identify in-store traffic or purchases caused by your local PPC campaigns, it will be very difficult to accurately predict your marketing conversion rates.

10. Stay Current

As with all of your PPC marketing strategies, it’s wise that you continue utilizing resources like this one. PPC requires dedication and attention to the changes that frequently occur on various platforms.

If you aren’t paying attention to the latest trends and testing new developments in your strategies, it will be easy to fall behind your local PPC competition.

It’s also smart to stay current on what’s happening at the locations themselves. Current events can provide a great source of campaign ideas and keyword targets!

Conclusions

The Internet opens up a lot of doors and opportunities for businesses. You can connect with customers all over the world through search engines, social media, and other effective go-to marketing strategies.

Many companies flourish almost entirely by creating these online connections with customers all over the world.

Yet, the vast reach that the Internet providers shouldn’t be a reason to neglect the audiences right at your front door.

Local audiences and local PPC campaigns offer remarkable opportunities that, while not as vast as global search campaigns, are unmistakably powerful.

You’ll likely experience higher clickthrough rates, more conversions and better overall ad experiences, which will raise your Quality Score and drop your costs.

Not to mention, local audiences produce tremendous word-of-mouth marketing that increase your brand awareness.

With the information included in this guide, you’re more than ready to begin capturing the attention of local audiences through pay per click advertising.