Local Vs. Niche Marketing, On PPC services like Adwords & Overture Options

[YungCEO]

As I'm sure many of you know, the web hosting industry is absolutely flooded these days. As a result, I was wondering if you would suggest focussing my keywords on specific demographic groups or making them slightly broader to cover a geographic area. National PPC on Adwords, Google, etc. is a waste of money IMO and I'm still not convinced there is value in local or niche PPC either. What do you think?

[Haystack]

In my experience, you can expect higher conversions from terms where you include a regionally targeted phrase. However, it only works if you clearly state your geographic location within your site. Advertising on now-regionally targeted terms with Google's Regional Targeting can also deliver results.

[cline]

I just took on a web hosting company as a client. I'd already done for them what Haystack recommends and can tell you it worked.

[YungCEO]

Interesting. Was your client located in a large metropolitan area like Chicago or was it headquarted in or near a suburban or rural area? Also, would you recommend targeting by state, by city, or by region?

[oneofthe3lions]

Well if you are going to use the ppc then why dont you just try all three ?

give it time and see what gives you the best roi

(IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/thumbup1.gif)

p.s Id also sort out your text on your website as it displays v poorly on my browser ie6 both 800 and 1024

[Haystack]

YungCEO, in general, the narrower the target the better the conversions, but as oneofthe3lions, who not try all three by setting up three campaigns with the same terms but different regional targeting to see which works best for you?

[YungCEO]

Well if you are going to use the ppc then why dont you just try all three ?

give it time and see what gives you the best roi

(IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/thumbup1.gif)

p.s Id also sort out your text on your website as it displays v poorly on my browser ie6 both 800 and 1024

Most visitors usually have "medium" for the default text size at Internet Explorer. Based on your post, I would assume that your text size is either "larger" or "largest". Nevertheless, I would not want to lose business behind the discrepency so I will definitely inform my design team of it. I stopped by your website and checked out your source code. How did you code your font size to enable it to remain the same regardless of the Internet Explorer settings? Even the font at Yahoo.com changes size so I am wondering how you accomplished that.

[cline]

My client is located in NZ. It's a small enough country to do nation-wide targeting as there's not a lot of other NZ competitors.

[Haystack]

YungCEO, you may want to check out the new Customized regional targeting, where you can actually target based on distance from a specified lattitude and longitude or physical address. That could be particularly valuable for businesses outside major metro areas.

[oneofthe3lions]

How did you code your font size to enable it to remain the same regardless of the Internet Explorer settings?

Well you looked at the source code , so you should see i use css...... every programme is different tho and most programmes write things slightly different to another.. to be honest mine is a mish mash of a code and couldnt answer that specifically, altho somebody will definately be able to help you with that in the Search engine friendly design section

[netconnect]

From my experience on the net it seems consumers are searching more locally than nationally. I think advertising via zip codes/city names for local businesses is the beginning of how consumers search the Internet. Consumers would rather do business with a local company than with a company 2,000 miles away.

What do you all think if consumers can search their city or state via zip codes to find local specific relevant search results?

[Haystack]

Welcome, netconnect. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

While conversions are defnitely higher for local searches, it doesn't seem like many searchers are taking geography into consideration when they search. Or if they are, they're using sites other than major search engines to run that type of search like Citysearch or an online Yellowpage site.

The recently introduced local search products from Google and Yahoo could be very popular, but it doesn't seem like they've caught on yet. But, I'd definitely keep an eye on them as a potentially GREAT source of traffic.

[netconnect]

Thank you for welcoming me Haystack!

Regarding your post, I would agree mostly with what you say. I think the general internet population over time will begin to use the local search engines from the major players, as like anything, it takes time.

Small businesses locally are seeking new forms of cost effective advertising. The yellow page modo of charging what the market will bear will hopefully dissipate with local searches. Yellow pages charge way too much and for too long now. I think the local search engines will drown out the yellow pages slowly over time. I personally rarely use the yellow pages anymore. Why fumble through thousands of pages when you can go online and find exactly what you are looking with a few key strokes? As more and more people begin to use the Internet yellow page books will begin to shrink!

Maybe a flat rate yearly keyword/category marketing approach is one solution for local business advertising instead of the pay-per-click approach which often confuses people. Thus allowing a business to budget a specific amount of money each year for listings, rather than being charged for the number of clicks which can be enormeous if not tracked on a daily basis.

Look forward to your response.

netconnect

[Haystack]

I definitely think Local search has a LOT of potential, but I have no idea how long it will take before it simply can't be ignored by businesses.

Yellow pages charge way too much and for too long now. I think the local search engines will drown out the yellow pages slowly over time.

Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if a yellow pages company makes it big in this industry. They have the business relationships, so it's an easy cross sell. It could happen through partnerships with portals who have a huge share of online eyeballs, or possibly mergers.

I personally rarely use the yellow pages anymore. Why fumble through thousands of pages when you can go online and find exactly what you are looking with a few key strokes?

Me neither, and I'm blown away how much some businesses in general will pay for advertising without tracking whether it's actually working for them.

There are some things consumers probably prefer about offline YP. For example, you can learn something about a business based on the ad size in a print YP, but there isn't a similar online comparison (well, maybe based on PPC rankings, but I don't think it's quite as effective).

I think it's tough to argue against the growth in PPC advertising. While it can be volatile, businesses do seem to like paying for a visitor more than for an impression. For businesses on a limited budget, it's easy to set limits on their ad spend. However, if they're tracking the effectiveness of their advertising, they should be able to justify their ad spending over much shorter timelines than yearly.

[netconnect]

Absolutely Haystack! You can look at this several different ways. I agree with you on everything you say. The bottom line is time will tell how consumers use and adopt the local search strategy along with businesses. I hope to see more small to medium size businesses coming online in the next few years or sooner! Small-medium size businesses will determine the outcome of the pay per click, flat year rate, and the local search strategy.

netconnect