Location targeting is a must for any business that wants to be successful with its PPC campaigns. By targeting specific locations, you can ensure that your ads are being seen by people who are more likely to be interested in your product or service. This can lead to a higher click-through rate and more conversions, but also provides you the ability to focus on core locations that deliver positive ROIs.
There are a few different ways to target locations with your PPC campaigns. You can target by country, region, city, or on some platforms even specific zip codes and radius around a location.
The importance of PPC ads in your digital marketing strategy
As a refresher, PPC, or pay-per-click, is an advertising model in which businesses can place ads on platforms like Google and Bing and pay only when their ad is clicked. This makes PPC a very effective way to generate leads and drive sales, as businesses only pay for results.
PPC ads can be very effective, but they can also be very expensive. That’s why it’s important to understand how PPC works and how to use it effectively before you start bidding on keywords and why location targeting also plays a part in effective PPC campaigns.
PPC can be incorporated into other ad targeting strategies, such as cost per lead, where you can monitor PPC campaign CPC (Cost per click) alongside Cost Per Lead (CPL) targets.
What is location targeting and why is it important?
In CPC and CPL campaigns, location targeting allows businesses to adjust who they are targeting their ads to. With Google Ads, you can both add and exclude locations in your campaigns.
Location targeting is a powerful tool that can help you reach the right customers with your Google Ads campaigns. When used correctly, it can help you improve your campaign performance and drive better results.
As an example, for a number of clients we not only target by country, but also by state and city. This allows us to focus on core factors which are part of our clients’ organisational requirements alongside key campaign requirements such as meeting CPL levels, monitoring CPC costs or ensuring conversion rates are high.
In the example below, the client is measuring conversions in Google based on leads being received and measuring sales in their CRM platform. You can see in the specific campaign leads are being generated fairly equally between three locations. However, the conversion rate in Sydney is a lot lower than the other two locations being targeted, which in turn is driving up lead costs.
The client also generates more sales in Queensland and Victoria, than in Sydney and New South Wales; so one of their business objectives is to drive more leads in these two states, but also drive more cost-effective leads in Sydney and New South Wales to increase ‘opportunities’ for sales in that state and to build clientele.
In some cases, you may also find that targeting specific cities as opposed to states provide better ROI based on either more sales or lower CPL/CPC or in an ideal world both. In these cases, pushing more leads through based on lower CPC from say a city by adjusting bids positively and adjusting state bidding negatively will not only benefit a campaigns CPL average, but also ROI.
Achieving business results and looking at improving sales in different markets
The example above also shows how different bidding levels can be adjusted within each location. By using client sales data, we gain a greater understanding on performance based on location and can adjust paid advertising campaigns accordingly.
With a need to push more leads through in Queensland and Victoria and an effectively higher conversion rate than Sydney, the same number of leads have been able to be achieved for each location by using bid adjustments.
By generating leads in Sydney at a lower CPL, the client has the ability to work with more leads and with the lower CPL; in effecting leading to less pressure to convert leads to sales and further opportunities to improve sales.
E.g., If you know your clients conversion rate from leads to sales in one location is lower than other locations (as Convestion rates (C/R) from lead to sales in Sydney is in the above table), and you can effectively adjust bids to decrease both CPL and CPC without adversely impacting the level of leads, then you can still achieve a positive ROI based on keeping “Cost per Conversion” from lead to sales lower in that location (in the above table cost per conversion is $48 in Sydney, whilst $80+ in other locations).
Ultimately, the optimal level of bid adjustments largely depends on client needs and wants.
Tips for using location targeting
There are a few different ways to use location targeting in your PPC campaigns. You can target customers in a specific location, target customers who are searching for products or services in your area, or target customers who have been to your website or app before.
Tips on making use of location targeting in your PPC and CPL campaigns:
- Understand your clients’ requirements before considering location targeting
- Explore new growth markets with bid adjustments to drive low-cost CPL and clicks whilst market interest is gained and ROI can be achieved
- Exclude Locations
- Understand where your client’s ROI is by location and work with your client in ascertaining the locations where positive ROI is being achieved
- Adjust Bids According to location – don’t be afraid to head significantly into the negative or positive; just ensure you’re still achieving target CPL and CPC levels
- Continue to optimise over time – this is not set and forget – And continue to request performance feedback from your client
- Research and consider the use location keywords
Where to find the location targeting option in your Google Ads campaigns
Step 1: Select your locations
- From the left-hand menu, click Campaigns.
- Click on the campaign you’d like to use location targeting on.
- Click settings and then click the drop-down arrow next to ‘Locations’.
- Enter the name(s) of the location you’d like to target
- Scroll a little further to select Location Options
- At this point we recommend selecting the Target option of “Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations” and the Exclude option of “Presence: People in your excluded locations (recommended)”
- Click Save to add the locations.
Step 2: Adjust Bid targeting to suit your needs
Once you’ve completed Step 1, you should see a locations option in the left-hand side menu. Use this to adjust bids based on your organisational needs. E.g., need more leads from one location as opposed to another OR know your sales team have better results in one location than another? Target each location to suit your needs.
No matter how you choose to target your locations, make sure that you are including this important digital marketing element in your PPC campaign management. It can make a big difference to both your campaign results, business outcomes and ultimately your client’s bottom line.