For businesses with multiple locations that want to run separate PPC ads for each location, PPC can present a whole new list of challenges that a single-location business does not need to worry about. If you ignore these challenges in your PPC strategy, you run the risk of spending more than necessary on your PPC traffic and seeing less than desirable results.
At Stream Companies, we work with several groups of car dealerships, many of which have multiple locations in close proximity to one another. Below are a few approaches we often take when managing PPC for these multi-location businesses.
Coordinate Location Targeting
One thing you want to try to prevent as much as possible is showing a PPC ad for more than one location at a time on the search engine results page (SERP). I often come across instances where I see two separate ads showing for the same business, but each ad is for a different location—this means that both locations are bidding against each other on Google for one click. By bidding against themselves, they are driving up the click cost, which will result in fewer clicks in their budget.
If you have multiple locations near each other, it is best to determine which business location’s ads will own which cities/zip codes. This can be done by considering the proximity of those cities/zip codes to the business’ location, and looking at where your sales for each business location are coming from. PPC can target locations by zip, city, county, region, state, and country, or even by setting a radius around a specific address. At Stream Companies, we prefer targeting by zip code, which allows us to monitor performance for small areas. We also utilize radius targeting as a “catch-all” when Google can’t identify a user’s zip code.
Develop One Website for a Shared Used Vehicle Inventory
This one is specific to car dealerships, but may apply to some other industries, as well. If you have multiple locations that share a used vehicle inventory, a shared group site can help eliminate competing against yourself on the SERP for used vehicle search queries.
By creating a group site that includes the group’s used inventory, you can run one PPC account to prevent competing ads across locations and also show all your available inventory to a shopper in one place, providing more selection to shop from!
Utilize Location-Specific Ad Copy
Make it clear which location you are advertising for in your PPC ad by incorporating the location name into the ad copy and utilizing location extensions to show your address in the ad.
Use One PPC Vendor to Manage PPC for All Business Locations
Using one PPC vendor will allow for the PPC specialist(s) assigned to your account to make sure that ads for each business location have minimal overlap and you are not cannibalizing your own PPC efforts. Working with one vendor will allow for similar reporting across each business location, which will provide for more insightful results that can be used to compare performance between each location. Each digital marketing agency uses different reporting tools and may track results differently, making it difficult to compare one of your location’s results to another’s.
Building a thoughtful PPC strategy when you run a multi-location business can result in lower costs and also create a better experience for your customers by making it easier to find your business and the location that is most convenient for them.
If you are interested in learning more about running PPC for your multi-location business or if you have any questions, let’s chat!