It may be difficult for local businesses to establish good online visibility because attracting the target audience on a tight budget can be challenging. 

If this is what you’ve been experiencing then going for Google Ads and running local PPC campaigns is the answer. These will improve your brand visibility and help you target your audience when you are under a tight budget. 

Just like pay-per-click (PPC), local PPC refers to paid online advertising. The difference between the two is that local PPC only targets local audiences of specific geographic areas. When done right, local Google Ads can get you quality leads which can then turn into massive ROI.

Some of these stats confirm the fantastic potential of paid ads. 

• More than 40% of consumers click on the top 3 paid ads
• PPC visitors are half the time more likely to buy products organic visitors.
• More than 80% of the local searches that click on a website turn into a sale.
• How many paid ads are they running or how active are they?

Also, the best part is that businesses only need to pay when users click on the ad. Let’s look at the top seven tips that will help you plan a successful PPC campaign for your local business. 

Tip #1: Research Your Competitors

Before planning local PPC campaigns, it is important to understand the market trends. The easiest way to achieve that goal is to do a complete, thorough competitor analysis. It may seem like a simple task but it will help get an edge in your local PPC campaigns and increase the chances of boosting conversions. Here are the questions to answer when you are analyzing your competitors. 

• Who are your local competitors?
• How many paid ads are they running or how active are they?
• How big is their online visibility?
• How difficult is it to compete with them?
• Are there any seasonal trends that the competitors are following?

Some KPIs which you can note of your competitors are ad copies, impressions, and CTAs. There are many tools that can help you extract this information, such as Woorank, and Google Ads.

Next, you need to decide what type of paid advertising campaign you want to run. Some of the most common types of local paid campaigns are the following.

Search Ads: these refer to the text ads that appear on local SERPs. 

Display Ads: These ads signify the image-based ads that appear on external websites. 

Social Ads: these ads appear on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. 

Keep in mind that you should select ad campaigns that align with your local marketing goals. Use the research information to find the gaps and identify the opportunities for devising the right ads. 

Tip #2: Plan Your Local PPC Budget and Bid Strategy

When planning your local PPC campaign, you need to decide on a budget. How much are you willing to pay for ad clicks? A well-planned budget for the paid campaign will help you achieve these important goals.

For Google Ads, you need to set a daily budget. But the budget setting may be a difficult process. You may have to pay a different amount based on the audience segments or your search terms. Most PPC platforms have auction systems. Using the budding strategies, you can make the best use of your budget. On Google Ads, you have these bidding options:

• Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Bidding: you pay Google for every single click on your ad.
• Cost-Per-Acquisition (COA) Bidding: You pay Google only for conversions.
• Cost-Per-View (CPV) Bidding: You pay every time your video has a view or a click. 

If you use Google Performance Planner, you can achieve “S.M.A.R.T” PPC budget goals. S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.  You can also predict the performance of your budding strategy and manage your budget using Google Performance Planner. 

Tip #3: Use Local Keywords

The keywords in your PPC ad should be very relevant to the target location. You can research on Google Trends to find out the keywords people in your target region use to look for different products. If you use local terms which are relevant keywords, they can help you succeed in the local PPC campaigns. For Google ads, you can always set the following keyword match types for which your ad will appear. 

Broad Match: your ad will show for searches that are related to your target keywords.

Phrase Match: your ad will show for searches that include the meaning of your target keyword. 

Exact Match: your ad will appear for searches with the same meaning or user intent as the target keyword. 

Tip #4: Have a Landing Page

A landing page is one of the most critical elements of your local PPC campaign. Your PPC ad has to direct the potential leads to a landing page. So that needs to be well-optimized, have good content, and be easy to go through. When you’re designing your landing page, make sure it is relevant to the ad and has information that delivers value to the user experience. These elements make the best landing pages for a successful PPC campaign. 

• Add relevant titles
• Clean design and layout
• Attractive images
• Display responsive form and CTA buttons
• Highlights products.

Tip #5: A/B Test Your Ad Copy

Despite a good strategy, your campaign has a chance of failure if your ad copy is no up to the mark. The best way to ensure good results is to test the ad for a few days before you run the campaign. A/B testing is a simple method that helps you compare your ad’s two versions to understand which one performs better. The goal is to enhance your conversion rate. You can track your ad with these parameters:

• Headline
• Descriptions
• Landing page
• Target keywords. 

You can tweak these elements and run variations of the ad for a few days. 

Tip #6: Use Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads allow marketers to reach potential customers who have visited and left your website) and remind them of your offers. These ads also target prospects who added products to their cart or filled an inquiry but didn’t make a purchase. retargeting ads help you run a personalized campaign for this audience. There are two main types of retargeting ads.

Pixel-based retargeting ads: these ads appear when visitors leave a website without any interaction. These ads use ‘cookies’ to collect visitors’ information. 

List-based retargeting ads: these ads use a list of email addresses that users leave when filling out forms. 

Tip #7: Track PPC KPIs

Key performance indicators offer insights into your performance over a period. They give you actionable, measurable, and quantifiable information about your ads and campaigns. Analyzing this information can help you understand the local trends and have better strategies. Here are some KPIs to look out for and keep a check on.

• Search queries
• CPC
• CTR (Click Through Rate)
• Conversion Rate
• Impressions
• Ad Spend
• ROI of Campaign
• Quality Score
• Tracking these metrics will allow you to make more informed decisions.

Summary

Running ads for a local business can be challenging. But mixing the right ingredients, strategies and using the right tools can cook up wonderful results. You just need to plan carefully with these tips to get the brand visibility and qualified leads you’ve been looking for. Good luck!