This list of guidelines can help you create PPC ads that are effective, affordable, and above all, sales driven.

Why Use PPC Ads?

Many local businesses shun pay-per-click advertising, thinking that this digital marketing strategy is too expensive for their “small” operation. But on the contrary, PPC is a cost-effective way to drive sales and boost brand awareness, as suggested by these several studies: 

• Around 74% of brands say their PPC ads have a positive impact on their business. (Hanapin Marketing)

• For every $1 spent on Google paid ads, companies on average earn $2 in revenue. (Google)

• PPC ad is one of the top three on-page conversion generators. (Formstack)

• About 65% of users who are serious about making a purchase go to paid ads. (Wordstream)

• Even with a solid SEO strategy, organic search traffic takes time that most companies need to wait at least three months before they see some improvement. (LOJO Marketing)

PPC Is Affordable with the Right Approach

PPC is only expensive if you use it the wrong way. By contrast, if you study your target audience, the competition, and above all, the business landscape, this becomes a cost-effective or even downright cheap marketing strategy. 

Remember, despite having a limited marketing budget, local businesses have a certain edge over their bigger competitors because they know their local audience better.

Guidelines to Make Your PPC Effective and Affordable

Here is a list of methods that will help your PPC campaigns reach the right audience at the right time and in the right place, making this tool affordable even for small local businesses.

Cherry-pick your products or services.

Your PPC campaigns should focus solely on your products/services with the best profit margin. These “best-sellers” should also be the ones your business is particularly good at, making you the better option than your competitors. 

One of the most common mistakes of local businesses using PPC is promoting all their products/services. This approach is not only expensive but also ineffective when it comes to reaching high-quality leads. 

In PPC, there is an axiom that industry experts keep in mind: “When you highlight everything, you highlight nothing.”

Make locally relevant ad copy.

All your content should be locally relevant to your target audience; this means using location-related keywords such as your city, county, or region that you are targeting. For example, if you are a professional plumber in Sacramento, California, you should include this county in your ad copy. 

However, you can also choose a more niche market based on your geographical location. If you choose this route, you have to mention the cities (or neighborhoods) within the county, e.g., Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, Folsom, Galt, Isleton, Sacramento, and Rancho Cordova. 

But if you really want to be hyper-local, consider mentioning places or stuff that only locals know, i.e., their favorite hangouts, the local parks and other landmarks, etc. 

By being hyper-local, you mostly get high-quality clicks and leads, which means a huge saving.

Use zip code in your ad copy.

Google conducted a survey suggesting that four in five consumers “want search ads to be customized based on their city, zip code, or immediate surroundings,” with “18% of local smartphone users making a purchase within a day.”

Over the past several years, Google has been fine-tuning its paid ads platform, allowing businesses to show their ads to people in a physical location without exception. 

Pro Tip: To avoid getting impressions for excluded locations in your Google Adwords, make sure that you click the “People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my excluded location.”

However, if you’re using Facebook ads, take note that you cannot use zip code, age, and gender for employment, housing, and credit-related ads. 

(Facebook has been under pressure after a 2016 investigative report shows that some companies exclude certain groups based on ethnicity. This prompted some advocacy groups and plaintiffs to file discrimination lawsuits against the social media giant, prompting it to remove gender, age, and zip code for some industries using their paid ads.)

Use search engine optimization for your PPC.

Your SEO can help you create a solid PPC campaign. By looking at your best-performing keywords and phrases (based on the highest number of impressions) and comparing them with your best-selling products/services, you will know what keywords will likely give the best results.

Narrow down your target audience based on their location.

Instead of designing PPC campaigns based on your products and services, you may want to focus on your target audience’s location. To help you better understand this concept, look at the example below:

• Ad Campaign: Sacramento County

• Ad Groups: Include cities like Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, and Folsom OR communities such as Orangevale, Foothill Farms, Antelope, and Fair Oaks.

• Advertising Examples: Plumbing service in Antelope, professional plumbers near you, plumbing near Foothill Farms, etc.

Use Adword extensions correctly.

Ad extensions can make your text ads more appealing to your local audience because they serve as an additional avenue, making you more reachable and “contactable.”

There are three ad extensions that can boost local engagement: 

• Call extensions. With the proliferation of mobile phones, call extensions have almost become a necessity rather than a recommendation, allowing your target audience to simply click and dial your number.

• Location extensions. If you have multiple brick-and-mortar stores in the same county or city, these extensions allow your target audience to see the different locations on the same ad.

• Dynamic sitelink extensions. This AI tool chooses and shows the different pages from your domain on your ad based on the users' search intent.

Use social media tactics the right way.

Facebook and Instagram should be part of your social media PPC campaigns because of their widespread use and the tools that allow businesses to target a highly niche audience based on their location. 

Facebook Proximity Ads. This social media giant allows advertisers to set the radius of their PPC campaigns so that these are only seen by local users. Furthermore, there is a tool that allows your ad to show when a mobile user is within your predetermined radius. 

Pro Tip: Proximity Ads are ideal for sales, special deals, events, and promotions. 

Instagram. This image-centric social media site is not just a platform for brand awareness but also for PPC, especially if you post locally relevant content, listing locations, and events. 

But what makes it ideal as a paid ad platform is that you can be hyper-focused on the locality. For instance, you can add more locations and choose people “who live in this location,” “traveling in this location,” and “recently in this location.”

Make your PPC mobile-friendly.

Around 88% of local searches is done through mobile phones, making it a sacrosanct rule to create local PPCs that are mobile-friendly, which you can achieve with the following tips: 

• Create a fast-loading landing page. While Google suggests that a page load time deemed “acceptable” is under two seconds, it remains ideal to aim for under a half-second. 

• The landing page should fulfill the promise or goal of your PPC ad. 

• Use mobile-friendly extensions, particularly call extensions that are three times more effective than web clicks. Also, use message extensions that allow users to contact you directly through their mobile phones. 

• Create a location-specific, mobile-friendly ad copy. A good rule of thumb is to follow the KISS principle, i.e., keep it short and simple. 

• If calls are more important than website visits, try call-only ads that encourage users to make a direct call to your business. 

• Focus on creating a frictionless buyer’s journey. Make sure that your paid ads, content, and landing pages contribute to excellent user experience–i.e., fast-loading website, no intrusive pop-up, easy-to-navigate site, easy-to-shop e-commerce site, and direct and concise message

Conclusion About How to Create Effective and Affordable Paid Ads

To learn more about affordable and highly effective PPC campaigns, contact LOJO Marketing at (916) 303-4080. We are a team of paid ads specialists, SEO experts, content creators, and web developers helping local businesses boost their sales and brand awareness.