Local web advertising can boost profits says web marketeer Chris Brown

Although the web is global, online advertising with a local focus can prove phenomenally effective.

On the rare occasions that we have some space in the diary and want to find new customers we sometimes choose online text advertising to supplement our SEO activities.

From the outset we only ever advertised our web design and marketing services to UK clients. This was easy to do with the Google Sdwords system and made sense to us because we like to visit our clients and the expenses budget doesn't generally cover too much international travel.

However, even that level of 'localisation' meant we were potentially advertising our services to people in the highlands and islands of Scotland. For a small company based in the Thames Valley (Windsor, Berkshire to be exact) this was still bad use of our advertising budget.

Recently Google have changed their code and now allow advertisers to display their ads only to specific locations. I can choose my own postcode and specify a radius such as 100km within which my ads will appear.

This has proved an excellent way to keep down costs. Geographic targeting or 'geo-marketing' is a standard marketing tool with a long and proven history, so it should definitely be applied by businesses wishing to maximise their online advertising budgets. Obviously if your business is global then this is less important to you, but even regional offices can try out geo-targeting. We should never forget that in marketing as in all things it comes down to the customer and the customer is a human being. Humans are social animals by nature and like to know the opportunity is there (even if they don't ever use it) for a face-to-face meeting.

We can take one further step in geo-marketing, by using specific geographic keywords in the ads themselves. For example, when someone living in Windsor, Slough, Bracknell or Ascot looks for a web designer they may well respond more positively to an advert saying "Windsor based web designer" than they might to a simple "Web designer" ad.

I don't know about you but I often use my county name when trying to refine a search, so it is a good bet (borne out by research) that other people do it too. So, I also advertise as "Web designer in Berkshire" and variations on that.

If you are looking for ways to keep marketing costs down and conversions up, consider localisation for yourself. It may just be the answer you have been looking for.

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