This post explores a number of ways in which most advertisers can increase Return on Investment (ROI) with a well-configured AdWords campaign.  The good news is that learning how to improve ROI with Google Adwords isn’t difficult either.
Targeting Local Customers With Google AdWords
If you’re a local business, a plumber, for example, searchers type; plumber Birmingham or emergency plumber Birmingham. They also type; emergency plumber or sometimes just plumber.
To target traffic effectively, create two AdWords campaigns;
- one for keywords that include place names (plumber Birmingham etc), targeting a large area (searches with place names in qualify the traffic as relevant) and;
- the other using Exact match terms without a place (plumber, emergency plumber) – use location targeting for this campaign to target only the area you can service.
Each campaign will have a different CTR and conversion rate, but you’ll target a greater volume of traffic and generate more enquiries.
Targeting Multiple Countries With AdWords
First, build a campaign with great structure, keywords and ad copy and prove that it works well, delivering a strong CTR and conversion rates. Using the offline AdWords editor (much quicker), copy that campaign, target additional countries as necessary separately from the main campaign.
You may wish to target multiple countries with that second campaign initially, later fragmenting in to country-specific campaigns to improve the measurement of ROI from each location and what messages that audience responds to.
Take care with this method though, success will depend on your market, search volume and budget – don’t slice it too thin or you risk compromising quality score and missing out on opportunities.
Segmenting Customers by Location
Split-testing regions is an advanced technique and is often difficult to justify. However, in principle, you could have duplicate campaigns targeting different areas within a country; does your campaign and message perform better in the North or the South? How do the conversion rates, ad copy and landing pages compare?
High traffic volumes are required to justify such a strategy, but could reveal valuable insight in to your audience and reward you with a competitive advantage you may not have expected.
Maximising a Smaller Budget with Location Targeting
Minimise geography to maximise your budget.
We know that impression share and search funnels are critical for conversion rates for many campaigns.
With a limited budget, it is generally far better to have a 100% impression share in a smaller geographic area than a 50% impression share across the whole country. You can optimise as usual with all relevant keywords and ad copy, proving conversion rates.
Once proven, increasing geography and budget takes minutes and it’s usual to expect ROI to scale perfectly with this strategy, provided the budget accommodates the increase in search volume.
Getting Geeky with AdWords Location Targeting
Most advertisers don’t realise that targeting the UK on Google Search targets both users with a UK-specific IP address AND users globally searching using the Google.co.uk domain. That’s right – anyone outside of the UK will see your ads if the use google.co.uk and you’ll pay for those clicks too, of course.
It is possible to use negative locations too. For example, targeting the UK and excluding England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales etc, will leave a target audience of overseas users searching using google.co.uk.
Remember, using the AdWords offline editor, this campaign could be duplicated from another campaign in your account with different targeting, allowing you to effectively measure CPCs, CTRs, ad copy and ROI for this audience segment.
Again, depending on traffic volumes, you could segment the rest of the world in to smaller chunks if you need to measure the ROI from European or US-based Google.co.uk users, or even country by country if there’s enough search volume.
Divide and conquer!
