Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Did you know that over 20% of searches on Google are related to location, and that 88% of people who search for local information on their smartphones take action within the same day?  Local advertising on Google is HUGE, and if you are using Google AdWords to advertise your business locally, we have some very exciting news.  Google recently introduced three new features that will allow local advertisers to create ads more relevant to potential local customers.

The first local advertising enhancement is the ability to target customers by zip code.  Prior to this, advertisers were only able to target their accounts by cities and/or metro areas.  Google AdWords campaigns will now have the ability to target over 30,000 US zip codes with performance statistics available at the postal code level.  This means that you will be able to literally SEE exactly where your clicks are coming from and the quality of leads you receive from each specific postal code.  Advertisers will then be able to optimize their campaigns based on which area produces the highest ROI for their business.

The next update to Google AdWords local advertising is the ability to have “more clarity and control” through advanced location targeting.  Basically, Google is making the location targeting options easier to understand and implement by allowing them to easily ensure that people who should be seeing their ads do, and those who shouldn’t don’t.   This update should improve the click-through-rates (CTR) for locally targeted campaigns.

The final, and in my humble opinion, most exciting update to Google Adwords local advertising is the ability to create Location Insertion ads.  Similar to Keyword Insertion ads, location insertion allows ad text to by dynamically updated to include city, postal code or phone number that matches a searcher’s geographic location.  This update will allow advertisers to have extremely relevant and customized ad copy shown to potential local customers.  In order to start using location insertion, location extensions must be enabled in the campaign.  Next a parameter tag will need to be added to the ad text.  Google will then replace the parameter in the ad with information that most closely matches the location extension of the local searcher.  These location specific parameters can be inserted into the ad title, description lines and both the display and destination URL fields making for extremely relevant local ads.

Most businesses begin advertising online with Google AdWords because it provides a straightforward way to use  pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to attract more potential customers to their website. According to a new report by ZenithOptimedia, 44% of global online advertisers choose to advertise on Google as opposed to only 4% on MSN and  8.3% on Yahoo!  However, I have a feeling that this dynamic might be changing in the not-so-distant future.

On December 4, 2011, Microsoft hit the tech community with an exciting announcement that Xbox Live will now support voice searches on the MSN/Yahoo search engine www.Bing.com.  Consumers who own an Xbox 360 have recently seen a software update for their gaming console.  Additionally, those who also enjoy the Microsoft Kinect accessory will now be able to take advantage of the Kinect voice recognition capabilities to perform spoken searches on Bing through their Xbox 360 console.  According to Microsoft, this new feature is the next step in the evolution of television and entertainment.  They are hoping to be the frontrunners of this new era of entertainment by bringing games, movies, television shows, music, sports and the internet together in one place.

So what does this mean for the 87.7% of global online advertisers who are NOT advertising on Bing?  It means that they might want to think about allocating some of their PPC budget to Bing.  Migrating Google AdWords accounts to the MSN/Yahoo! platform can be a tricky task because the platforms tend to not play nicely together.  There are many nuances that make straight Google to Bing migration difficult for people who don’t do it regularly.  So, if this is something you are interested in doing with your AdWords campaigns, please consult a professional before you attempt it yourself.

It will be interesting to see how this Bing voice search functionality will evolve.  I am excited to see whether Bing will allow advertisers to build voice search PPC campaigns or whether voice search data can be analyzed separate for traditional type and click data.  There are so many possibilities and so much potential for this new functionality.  I can’t wait to see what the future brings.  Only time will tell – so stay tuned!

Last week was full of big news from the Google+ Project.  Not only did Google announce that they would finally be opening Google+ up to businesses via Google+ Pages, but they also unveiled the new Social Extensions feature in AdWords.  Social Extensions will be rolled out to advertisers this week and will allow advertisers with Google+ Pages to link their Google+ Page to their AdWords campaigns.  This means that all brand +1s that are received, whether via the website +1 button, ads or organic search results, will be complied and added together to be viewed as ONE single total visible to consumers.

How does this have the potential to affect the PPC advertising efforts you have in place for your business?  Google believes that adding Social Extensions can potentially improve the ad performance for PPC advertisers.  According to Google (via Harris Interactive, June 2010), recommendations from friends and family impact the purchasing decisions of 71% of shoppers.  The AdWords ads for current campaigns that do not have Social Extensions enabled only show the +1 recommendations for the specific landing page of the ad.  Once Social Extensions are enabled in your Google AdWords campaign, potential customers will be able to see all of the +1 recommendations that your brand has received and make their purchasing decisions accordingly.

Now that they are able to show more highly targeted and personalized ads, how will advertisers be able to study the performance data of this new feature and gauge whether or not it is working for them?  Of course Google has an answer for that!  Google has enabled a new +1 annotation AdWords reporting segment for any campaign, ad group, keyword or ad.  This new segment allows advertisers to view performance metrics by three categories.  The first performance segment category is impressions with personal annotations.  A personal annotation means that a personal contact of the searcher has +1’d your brand (your webpage, Google+ Page, organic search result or PPC ad).  The next performance segment is impressions with basic annotations.  Basic annotations are impressions that included an anonymous count of people who have +1’d your brand.  The third, and final, performance segment is for impressions without social annotations.  While both personal and basic annotations make your ad socially relevant, viewers that see people they actually know and trust +1ing something they are interested in purchasing will, in theory, be more likely to purchase said product.

If you are a PPC advertiser interested in making your brand more socially relevant, then you have some homework to do.  First, set up the Google+ Page for your business here.  Setting up your Google+ Page will not only allow you to get closer to your customers, but will allow you to create your business’s identity on Google+.  Next, you will need to use your Google+ Page URL to enable Social Extensions from the Ad Extensions tab in your AdWords campaigns.  Finally, after you have let the data accrue for a bit, use the +1 annotation reporting segment to see how the +1 features are affecting the performance of your advertising efforts.

Here at JumpFly we are very excited to see how these new Google+ enhancements will affect our clients ROI.  We expect nothing less than big things from the ever evolving Google!