Location Targeting in Google AdWords

Location targeting gives more control to locally operating businesses.

You may well have a fantastic ad but you are not going see your campaigns reach their full potential unless you are controlling where people are able to see your ad.

If your business can only serve customers in the local vicinity, you will get the most from your ad budget by only showing your ads to the locals. At the other end of the spectrum, if you are operating a global online enterprise your adWords efforts can be spread across the planet. Location targeting in Google AdWords lets you do all of this and more, with the highest level of accuracy.

Location targeting by country

If your business can potentially sell on a national or international level, targeting whole countries may be the best option for you. You are given the option to target one country or choose multiple countries.

If you are running an online store which has no limitations as to where it can ship products, you would choose to target multiple countries. However if you were running a business with a national service area (perhaps a franchise), you would benefit most from running a campaign which targeted your country alone rather than showing your ads to users in countries you are unable to service.

Showing your ads to smaller areas

Maybe your business’ service area isn’t so big. Perhaps you can only service a specific region, city or post code. Maybe your business can service nationally but you would like to run ads specific to an area within a country to run A/B tests and improve your click through rate. Location targeting in Google AdWords allows you to do just that.

This is the feature which gives the power to small businesses. Often in radio advertisements, a business which sells only in specific town will pay for immeasurable advertising on a station which is listened to in far more than just their service area. Businesses on a tight advertising budget cannot afford to waste marketing dollars like that.

With the ability to target right down to a postal code (as well as the fact that they show ads to users as they search for your products or services), Google AdWords is quickly pulling businesses away from the traditional ‘Tell as many random people as you can’ marketing platforms such as TV, radio and newspaper.

Radius targeting

Businesses such as a local baker or mobile Café often serve a general area and a certain radius around that area. Bakers make deliveries in their service area and a mobile Café goes wherever somebody may need a little pick-me-up. Also, a builder is likely to have a service area based on a radius around a certain area.

With location targeting in Google AdWords, advertisers have been given the power to not only target a city, region or postal code and a specific radius area, a list of areas within a chosen radius will be generated for you to review and remove areas if need be.

Your business now has the opportunity to advertise in up to 1000 target areas which can be as large or as small as you require. Stop wasting marketing dollars and start seeing a return by making sure that all of your AdWords campaigns have location targeting working to its full potential.