Recently I have been noticing a lot more attention has been focused on how small local businesses can market themselves.
There once was a time when you could place an add in the yellow pages & maybe post a few flyers locally then watch as word of mouth about your beautiful business spread like wildfire.It’s a whole different ball game in this day and age and it’s been getting increasingly more difficult for small businesses to make their mark.
Google have started showing search results based on where the searcher geographically made the search, which is fine, but with their search results now only showing 3 local results – which used to be 7 – they really are turning up the heat.
I cannot stress how much the image above says about marketing locally. If you’re not one of the three pack – then you’re bang in trouble. Apart from those 3 results, PPC advertisers dominate almost 100% of the page.
This shows us that unless you’re utilising paid search then you’re up against it. It has to be said that often small businesses can be stuck in their ways & underestimate the power of online marketing, but if you provide them with factual information then you should be able to prove to them that they should be tapping into the potential of pay per click marketing.
There are lots of tools at your disposal to tackle the problems that small businesses face, such as:
Scheduling your Ads
It is one of the most basic tools available to you but is one of the most crucial. I have worked on plenty of accounts that have wasted substantial amounts of money by running their ads at ungodly hours.
Sometimes there is an obvious reason why your campaign performs better at certain times, other times it is just relevant to your particular industry or service & cannot be pre-empted.
Geographically targeting
As a small business you can make a small budget go a long way by targeting your ads geographically. This is often essential so for example if you only operate in a 10-mile radius around your business – why show ads to anyone else?
This type of targeting can allows us to target more broader search terms without wasting too much budget as the search volume is much lower in the catchment area of your ads.
AdWords is a fantastic tool that many businesses are still failing to capitalize on or they try Adwords expecting immediate results and realistically they will not receive them.
If you;Give AdWords time, patience & acquire the correct professionals and you will see substantial improvements.
