Last week we published a blog that weighed in on a post discussing the “Top 5 AdWords Strategies to Avoid”. We were almost 100% in support of all the strategies to avoid. You can read that post to find out which items we had qualms about in particular. Today though we want to dive into some of the scenarios we are able to use Google AdWords for small local businesses in ways that provide realized value and success
Call Only campaigns for your business name
Even if you have a very small budget or don’t think you want to spend advertising dollars on your core service it may still be advised to run a call only campaign bidding on your business name, nick names, or maybe even competitors. When we go with a branded campaign we break those terms out from the other keywords and set them aside with unique budgets and bids and ad copy. This is a recommended strategy to ensure that your reporting is clear and your strategies remain manageable. With a properly structured campaign we are able to identify opportunities and weaknesses as well.
Branded Name Campaigns Perform Better…Hopefully
In fact, when we structure our campaigns in such a way we generally see better conversion data than our local campaigns. You can see this from the screenshot below.
The example above is of AdWords campaign we run and optimize. This example shows why you should consider running a branded AdWords campaign even if you feel like you don’t have the budget. Let’s break down just how the two campaign types compare:
- Period Cost: The branded keywords, in the same time period, spent only 5.23% of the budget.
- Period Total Conversions: The branded keywords had 21.43% of the total conversions.
- Period Cost per Conversion: The non-branded keywords cost 493% more per conversion
- Period Conversion Rate: The branded keywords converted at an almost 16% higher rate
So basically, branded keywords perform much better. This shouldn’t come as a surprise really but it demonstrates that for a relatively small budget (who can’t spare $20 to get 6 phone calls/form submissions?) you can reach your customers still.
Use Local Business Manager to Target Local Searches
With our Local Business Manager tool and service we are able to claim, verify, and optimize your Google My Business (GMB) listing. If we manage your AdWords campaigns we always link your GMB listing into your campaigns to target local map search results. Using the same campaign from above we can see that using this strategy is great for local businesses. Remember, in this post we’re highlighting that a “Branded Call Only” campaign is worth the small budget and ad spend required due to how effective it is for local businesses.
This screen capture shows that of all the 28 conversions above that 27 of them occurred when the GMB listing was integrated into the search results. Furthermore we are able to identify that 22 of those occurred with the “mobile click to call” conversion metric. Again, we remind you that we’re showing you the value of a AdWords “Call Only” campaign for your business. This means that 78.6% of the total period conversions came off a mobile click to call conversion. If you’re curious about the Branded Campaign discussed above all 6 of the period conversions came off of the mobile click to call ads. So it is safe to say that the Local Business Manager subscription/tools and the Branded Keyword Campaigns work together to hit your local customers quite well.
ServiceHoot helps optimize your local click to call campaigns
We hope you would consider hiring our team to help you realize performance numbers like those shown above. Our value can be expressed to you in many ways. We may be of value simply for our peace of mind knowing you have an expert resource to rely upon. You may value your time the most and appreciate knowing your campaigns are being taken care of by ServiceHoot. While those are some great reasons, no other reason is greater than the DOLLAR. We save you money and/or make your more money when we manager you AdWords campaigns.
This screenshot is taken from the same campaign above and compares the analyzed period used above with the previous period. This happens to represent the time period of ServiceHoot optimizing the campaigns. When working with a local business we have to ask ourselves many questions. One of those questions is, “How far out are our client’s customers in actuality?” We discussed this with the client and decided that we would narrow our search area. In doing so we ended up delivering a campaign that not only spent less overall but also increased the total number of leads/conversions. In fact, you can see in the screengrab above that we improved conversions 15.79% in our local campaign and 500% in the Branded Campaign.
So in this particular example we not only saved the client money but we made the client more money as well!
We are happy to discuss your business’ AdWords opportunities any time. We can work with almost every type of business but our toolset and services are especially powerful for local brick and mortar or service area businesses. If you’re interested you can sign up here and get started today!
