Conquering PPC in a competitive market

Unless your business has a product or service that’s truly unique or extremely niche in nature, you’ll always be in competition with similar businesses who target the same audience.

In the world of pay-per-click advertising (PPC) via Google, this means you’ll also be in competition for the same keywords – so how do you stand out?

The secret is to outrank your competitors by making your Google Quality Score as high as possible, which means convincing the search engine that you’re offering genuinely useful information to users.

Localise your strategy

Any business that depends on local customers should focus on geo-targeted campaigns, which optimise the user experience by including highly relevant keywords, advertising copy and landing pages.

It’s reassuring for users if they can see an address and local phone number connected to a business that pops up in response to their search query – such as a plumber, dentist or pet shop in their immediate proximity.

And if you have a multi-unit business, location targeting can give you a huge advantage, as you can create individual campaigns for different outlets – for example, individual hotels or restaurants within your brand group across the UK. Aggregator websites are unable to do this and can only focus on overall location.

This is also more cost-effective, as you can control the budget and keep an eye on how each location is performing, then adjust your spending accordingly.

Essential steps for location-based PPC

DO:

1. Identify all outlets and their respective locations (if you have a multi-location business).

2. Create a campaign for each outlet, using geo-targeted keywords and ad content.

3. Use valuable extensions – for example, setting a distance radius around the physical location of the outlet or the city or town where most customers are likely to live. This means anyone with an IP address within this area should see your ads.

4. Exclude areas you’re not interested in, to avoid wasting clicks.

DON’T:

1. Target the entire nation if you run a business in only one location, as this will also waste clicks.

2. Use general landing pages that force the user to navigate a generic website to find their local area, as they may give up and go elsewhere.

3. Scrimp on localised keyword research, as cutting corners like this will limit the reach of your campaign.

Our volume and visibility team is always happy to talk about charming Google and its users, so get in touch for a friendly chat about how we could support your business.