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Mass High Tech
May 2004
by: Elizabeth Harvey

The New Buzz in Search Engine Advertising — Regional Adwords

Once thought upon as a leftover to the dot-com boom, search engines are now gaining a reputation as a viable advertising medium. Several new tools provide advertisers with highly targeted methods of reaching new customers.

One such tool is called Regional Adwords launched by Google in October 2003. Regional Adwords is the perfect solution for advertisers who want to target a specific geographic region while still maintaining visibility for popular keywords.

This option is best suited for businesses specializing in certain cities and states and stores with target customers located throughout a city or cities.

For a software developer in Boston whose target audience is Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island it wouldn't be smart to buy the words software developers in Google and pay for a click from someone who clicks on your ad from Ohio, Arizona, or Georgia. You want people from your geographic area to click on your ad.

In this scenario only those searchers from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island who type in software developers will see the ad. Why? Because Google checks to see if the person doing the search is from one of the states you selected. It then delivers your ad to those search queries.

The AdWords system first analyzes a searcher's query to establish what region that person is searching for. It may also take note of the person's Internet Protocol (IP) address to see where he or she is searching from. The system will then examine these factors and others to determine the best targeting for your ads.

Your chosen region is then identified at the end of your ad on Google.com. This helps distinguish your ads from nationally-targeted ads and calls out their relevance to a user's search. With regional targeting you may find that you can successfully use more general keywords that may not have performed well with national distribution.

Additionally, advertisers can select a Google option called Broad Match and the ad will appear on any and all searches (in your selected states) with the keywords software developers like, business software developers, electronics software developers and database software developers. This is fine if you actually deliver all of these services, otherwise it is best to select the Exact Match option targeting just those words that fit your specialty. However, advertisers need to be careful when choosing broad match because the ad will also appear for phrases like free software for developers. This would result in a wasted click. In order to avoid this from happening, advertisers should choose the negative keywords option and select words that should not want to be included in the keyphrase, ie; Free.

Another example might be a pharmaceutical rep for cardiac stents who covers New England. Since he can "only" sell his product to those states, he should advertise using Regional Adwords. After choosing his keywords, eg; "stents", he then selects the six New England states. His ads will only appear when someone from those states searches for the keywords he has bid on.

The downside to Regional Adwords is that advertisers still pay the same price as they would pay nationally. The upside is that the person who clicks on your ad is highly qualified. What would it be worth for the Boston-based software developer to get a click over to his Web site from someone in Newton entering software developers? .25? .75? $1.00? $3.00?

Regional targeting is a powerful way to reach more qualified prospects. It is designed to benefit advertisers who want to market to customers in specific geographic areas. If this seems appropriate for your business, consider creating a regionally-targeted ad campaign.

Elizabeth Harvey of Harvey Marketing Group (www.harveymarketing.com) is an Internet Marketing consultant providing search engine optimization and pay per click advertising services for businesses looking to increase their web traffic, visibility, and sales. Call or email us today at 603.502.8892, or info<at>hmgsearch.com.