How Small Businesses Can Use Local PPC To Increase Business

Small businesses benefit greatly from pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Brand awareness and ROI-boosting ads are just two of these benefits. Experts have devised many other examples.

Here are seven Chicago PPC agency tips on how you can use local PPC to help your business:

1. Match people’s search terms.
2. Improve your conversion rate.
3. Customize marketing.
4. Track campaign metrics easily.
5. Advertise more than products.
6. Attract people with multiple ads.
7. Establish your true audience.

There’s a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

If you want to learn how Digital Authority Partners can increase your PPC effectiveness, watch this video!

7 Ways Local PPC Boosts Your Small Business

Marketing strategies are necessary for growing your business; that is true, but how do you know if your plan succeeds without costing you more in the end? Local PPC is a great answer to this because it allows you to start small and scale as you go. Many other benefits apply, too.

For instance, you can use tools and software to do most of the hard and repetitive work. That ranges from running A/B tests and setting up dynamic ads, to retargeting high-quality leads. The ease of use is just the beginning, though; here are seven other vital PPC benefits:

     1. Match People’s Search Terms

Accurate matches are a major selling point for paid ads and a key benefit that local PPC brings to your Chicago business. A local PPC campaign uses keywords and demographics, which you can modify to reach different market segments, and gives you a good chance of finding quality leads.

According to Google, the following data points are relevant to determining what results it shows:

• Your current search terms
• Google's estimation of your approximate current location
• Google's estimation of your areas of interest based on your activity

The top point, in particular, is crucial because the better you are at figuring out the search terms your target market uses, the better you perform. Even if you know the exact terms, you can fall back on combining the correct target keywords, negative keywords, and match types.

     2. Improve Your Conversion Rate

Ads put you higher on results pages, giving you an instant advantage over organic results. That puts you in a position to draw more clicks to your website or profile and, consequently, increase your chances of converting leads into customers. In short, local PPC boosts your conversions.

Although clicks, views, and impressions themselves do not lead to more conversions, local PPC does more than boost visibility and clicks. You can set your ads to appeal better to your target market, too. Creating a matching landing page further strengthens your PPC ads’ effectiveness.

     3. Highly-Customizable Marketing

Paid marketing comes in many forms and serves many purposes, from ads on results pages to mid-roll ads on YouTube videos. You can use them to draw attention to your brand or convince someone to buy your products. How you create your strategy and deploy your ads is all up to it.

If you find that one or more of your choices are not as effective at reaching your marketing goals, you can just as easily remove, remake, or revise them as you want. You can also increase or decrease your ad budget to fit your campaign or change your location or keywords.

     4. Track Campaign Metrics Easily

Local PPC is easier to track and manage than traditional marketing, which benefits small businesses and startups because you have everything you need in one place. Even without a Chicago PPC agency assisting you, you can learn to manage a local PPC campaign well.

Of course, having experts on your side helps immensely, too. The most challenging part is identifying the right metrics to use as the foundation for your campaign. Vanity metrics are popular but less beneficial than marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

     5. Advertise More Than Products

Local PPC is not just a way to get more people to read your blog posts or buy a specific item in your shop. You can use them as a subtle way to market your brand, among many others. For example, make clever infographics or short-form videos to generate leads on social media apps.

Use your ads to tell a story and display your brand’s unique identity. People might come for your products and services, but they stay because they connect with your business on a deeper and more personal level. Local PPC gives you opportunities to start or build customer relationships.

     6. Attract People With Multiple Ads

Though local PPC helps you connect with new customers, it can just as easily drive them away when done wrong. That is why every Chicago PPC agency recommends that you create a diverse portfolio of paid ads. Everyone in your target market responds to ads in their way.

Given that, creating different versions of the same concept or message increases the chances of your campaign garnering a positive response from a person. When you apply this to dynamic ads, you increase your chances further by leveraging AI that matches the best ads with people.

     7. Pinpoint Your Perfect Audience

Local PPC can help you find your ideal target market — the ones your business appeals to most. Throughout running a local PPC campaign, you generate a rich data set based on key information such as search terms and location. Other indicators help here as well.

For instance, Google Ads allows you to target based on interests and intents, among other data its algorithms estimate about the searcher. You can also make informed decisions about your target audience based on which ads receive the most positive actions and yield the most conversions.

Summing Up

Local PPC is an easy and good choice for marketing strategies, especially for small businesses, because it has a manageable learning curve and allows you to learn as you go. Moreover, it can help you grow your business by tapping into different marketing channels to reach more people.  However, if you are not careful and do not watch your campaign carefully, you could well spend money that has no benefit for your business. 

Need help creating a local PPC campaign for your business? Contact Digital Authority Partners to learn how we can help.