One technique for fine tuning your Google AdWords campaign is to use Google’s geographic targeting options to only run your ads specific markets. One very good reason for this is if you only do business in certain markets. In this case, you will be wasting money if you run your ads nationwide. It just makes sense to only run your ads in markets where you do business.
Another reason for using geographic targeting is if you have reason to believe that your products or services may sell better in certain markets. In this case, you would want to set up a separate campaign for each market in order to generate separate performance data for each market. By doing this, you can learn exactly what markets are more receptive to your marketing message and concentrate your budget in those markets. If you already know that your products or services will sell better in certain markets, then you should just run your ads in those markets to start with. For instance, it is a pretty good bet that snow blowers will sell better in Minnesota than Arizona.
Google’s geographic targeting works by examining the IP address of the Web browser and making a determination of the location of the user. It’s not a perfect system, but it seems to work fairly well. The negative for you, if you are running geographic-targeted ads, is that you can only see yours ads in Google if you are actually sitting in the market in which your ads are running.
But Google provides a way for you to test your geo-targeted ads:
Visit Google.com/adpreview
This page will let you select a specific market in which to view search results pages and ads. Just type your search phrase (one of your campaign keywords), select a market, and then do the search. This will let you actually verify for yourself that your ads are running in your target markets.
If you could use some help managing your Google AdWords account, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.