If your business caters to a local, geographic audience then a question always top of mind is “How do we reach more customers in our city?”.  There are a multitude of answers and the degree of these will vary based on your type of business, who you’re talking to, and what your goals are.  In general, it is critical that you integrate a strong marketing mix into the equation.  Traditional examples would include direct mail, yellow page advertising, networking events, partnership opportunities, event sponsorships, etc.  In today’s rapidly evolving world of technology and internet, an untapped market that has significant upside to small business owners is search engine marketing and advertising.

Specifically, the use of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising enables businesses to only serve up internet advertisements to those in specific areas, towns, and/or zip codes.  Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter are the major 3 PPC players.  They have the greatest reach, syndication network, and opportunites for immediate entry points.  You only pay when an internet user clicks on your advertisement.  These channels do allow you to advertise on a locla basis. If you are a landscaping company in Raleigh, NC then you can effectivley dominate your market and only pay for eyeballs when customers search Gooogle or other online outlets with keywords such as “landscaper raleigh, nc“, “landscaping company wake county nc”, “raleigh landscaping services”, etc, etc.  In addition and even better, if that user lives in a zip code that you specified to be in your service area and they only search “landscaping company”, your ad can serve and reach that visitor.

Using simple math and then comparing results to traditional advertising methods such as yellow pages, radio, and other print mediums, online search engine advertising wins 9/10 times.  If you only pay $1 for each website visitor through PPC and convert 2% of all website visitors, then you pay $50 for each new customer.  If your landscaping projects average $1,500 then you’ll be willing to pay that all day long!!

Use local search engine advertising to increase brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation and consequent revnue.