arrange paid adverts for a number of enterprise places
If you're a fast growing company with a multi-location franchise or a virtual business looking to attract customers from different regions, optimizing your advertising campaigns for different locations can help increase your reach.
This guide will walk you through why you should set up ads for multiple locations, the best strategies to achieve this, and how you can further streamline the process to increase your reach and convert more visitors. Also included is a basic introduction to geolocation and some tips on choosing a suitable region to get the best return on your investment.
Let's begin.
What does it mean to run ads in multiple locations?
In short, setting up ads for multiple locations means showing users a personalized ad based on their current location.
If you are a London based company, it will be more profitable to promote your products and services to people in London. Suppose you have a global or virtual business with customers spread across different locations. In this case, you need to optimize your paid search campaigns to reflect the needs of visitors in different locations.
For example, you could set up a Europe-centric campaign to attract European customers while creating a similar but separate campaign for US-based citizens.
Why should you run paid ads in multiple locations?
If you've set up all of your ad campaigns in one place, you're likely to miss out on customers outside that region who may be interested in your offers. If you have a virtual company that can offer your services anywhere, you should take advantage of the digital reach of geotargeting.
A study by GE Capital Retail Bank shows that 81 percent of people search for a product or service online before making a decision.
When you optimize your paid social media campaigns to target such users in different locations, you increase your reach and, consequently, your conversion and sales.
Before we start setting up our ads for multiple locations, it's important to identify the locations to target. The following section provides a simple, logical strategy for finding a region that best suits your business needs.
How to identify the locations to target
If your company has a physical location, this region should be prioritized when geotargeting. If you're also interested in reaching people who live near or outside of your city and state, then you can just expand the radius of your targeted ads.
What if you have a virtual company that sells products or services in multiple states and countries? This is where research comes in.
When choosing a location, you should aim for a region where similar businesses are already doing well.
For example, it doesn't make sense to run an ad for digital marketing services in an area with poor network connectivity or a significant customer focus on physical businesses. Instead, look at cities and suburbs where companies often use services similar to yours.
You can get this data by doing a quick search for "X near me," where X is your business. Then monitor search traffic, keywords, and market trends for that and other similar terms. You can do this for free using tools like Google Trends.
Alternatively, you can try going the other way and targeting your campaigns to a region where the competition is low. Be careful though. This approach is risky as you may not have enough customers to cover advertising costs.
If you're on a tight budget, it's probably best to focus on popular locations than trying to get it working with little-known and potentially risky regions.
Steps for running ads in different locations
When you are done with your research and have a few locations in mind, follow these simple steps to set up ads in multiple locations.
These steps will walk you through creating your first paid search campaign and show you how to monitor analytics after your marketing campaigns have started. If you've done this before, you can skip to step 3 for instructions on how to add multiple locations in a single paid search campaign.
1. Think of separate targeting keywords
If you want to target people in different regions, you'll need separate targeting keywords for each location you're setting up your campaign in.
For example: "Schools near Paris", "Spa in Bali", "Coworking space in London" etc. If you sell the same services everywhere, simply swap the location field to generate new targeted keywords. It can be as simple as (your business) nearby (your target location).
Take a look at the sample table below. You can choose as many locations as you want and add your company name before or after the region for better optimization.
2. Set up a targeting campaign for a single location
Now that you have your best ad campaign keywords ready, it's time to set up paid search campaigns.
First, visit the Campaigns section in the Google Ads menu. If this is your first paid advertising project, select "Create Search Campaign". If you've set up an ad campaign before and just need to edit the locations, go to "Settings" and click "Locations". Now you can select a region of your choice to target the users who live there.
3. Add different locations to your campaign
Once you've set up a single location campaign, you can add, remove, or edit any location. Click the Edit option next to a campaign, then click Change Locations to add your settings.
You will see two options: one to change the current region and one to add new locations for the same campaign. Select the latter. Now you can add as many locations as you want.
For example, if you already have a paid search campaign for “Schools in Paris” and want to expand it to London, Italy and Switzerland, you can add these locations in the Change Locations option by entering their names or their respective postcodes.
4. Add locations in bulk
What if you have a large or mostly virtual business and need to add multiple locations quickly?
There is a bulk add option for you. This option was specially developed for franchises and virtual service providers with multiple locations and can increase your reach immediately with minor regional changes.
Click the blue icon on your campaign page and select Add Multiple Locations. Now you can add up to 1000 locations in bulk to further extend your reach and save time in the process.
Use the table mentioned in the previous section to create a database of the locations you want and simply copy the data into your paid search campaign settings as described here.
Location-based paid marketing campaigns on Facebook
While Google Ads offers excellent search-based reach, Facebook is better suited for targeted paid search campaigns. If you want to reach out to a very specific group of people, like swimmers in Miami, a marketing campaign on Facebook can bring a better return on your investment.
To promote your business on Facebook, visit the Audience section of your advertising campaign menu. Select the "Bulk Add" option here to select multiple locations at the same time. You will see a drop-down menu where you can choose the regions that are best for your business.
Most social media platforms offer a similar process that allows you to reach a wide range of users in different locations.
Once all the settings are in place, you can sit back, track performance, and make any changes necessary to keep all of your paid search campaigns profitable.
How to measure the success of your paid ads in multiple locations
The metrics for comparing the success of advertising campaigns targeting multiple locations are little different from campaigns with one location. For example, you're still looking at traffic, conversion rate, and a reasonable return on investment. However, for a deeper analysis, you can add the location element by tracking which region has the most ROI.
To streamline this process, there are several questions you should consider when evaluating your performance:
This will give you a good idea of what is working and what needs improvement. If you find that some regions are doing better than others, you can increase advertising spend for that location and reduce it for the poorly performing areas.
This strategy will help you save money and maximize the return on your investment.
What to do if your paid search campaigns aren't working well in certain locations?
Sometimes in your analysis you will find that certain regions do significantly worse than others. This is a sign that you either need to make a change and try again, or remove it entirely.
If all you see is a small dip that can be fixed with minor tweaks, try playing around with the radius, editing your ad copy, or picking a region nearby instead. If you are experiencing significant losses month after month, it is much better to remove the location and set up a campaign for users elsewhere.
This step is particularly helpful for virtual companies without a stationary location, as they are not tied to a specific city or state. If you don't have a physical store, you can experiment with new locations until you find what works best for your business.
How to run paid ads in multiple locations
In summary, how to run a successful advertising campaign across multiple locations:
- Think of separate targeting keywords:
Optimize your campaign with location-specific keywords. For example: (your company) nearby (your target location).
- Set up a targeting campaign for a single location
If you don't have any ongoing campaigns, start a new one in a location of your choice. You can add more regions later.
- Add different locations to your campaign
In the campaign settings, you can easily add locations of your choice to increase the current reach of your advertising spending.
- Add locations in bulk
If you want to save time and target hundreds of locations at once, consider using the bulk add option to add multiple regions in a single edit.
Conclusion
This process may seem complicated at first, but it is actually quite simple. If you spend enough time monitoring the trends, studying your analysis, and experimenting with new locations, you can find out what works best and spend more money reinforcing them.
However, going through these steps and implementing successful paid marketing campaigns can be challenging, especially if you're a small team or a busy company that doesn't have much time or energy to invest in the complexities of marketing.
Even if this is the case, all is not lost. You can still use ads with multiple locations by letting someone else manage your ad campaigns.
What will your next step be? Ready to experiment with paid search campaigns by creating ads for multiple locations?
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