Regardless of whether you've made local mobile search a priority in the past, one thing is clear: Your customers have become big fans of local search results, and they are forcing businesses to follow suit.
According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, quoted in LSA Insider, local mobile search increased by almost 50 percent over the past year. That has major implications for mobile search advertising, which now has to make sure local considerations are taken into account.
Here are three tips you can use to improve localization for your mobile search ad strategy.
Optimize Your Website and Ads for Local and Mobile
By now, most businesses understand the importance of having a mobile-optimized site. But if a significant portion of your customer base is comprised of a local audience, it pays to optimize that site and your content for local search, too.
Think beyond blog posts and business listings that establish a local presence for your brand. As Search Engine Watch explained, the metadata for images and other content can also be localized to increase your visibility in organic search, while localized ads emphasize your capabilities in serving local customers.
Take Time and Proximity Into Account
If the goal of mobile search advertising is to drive traffic to a physical business location, targeting your local area isn't enough. You want to add an element of proximity targeting so that you're only advertising to customers close enough to your location who have a good chance of visiting your business. You don't want to advertise to customers in an entire city when you know that no one's going to drive 20 minutes or more across town just to walk into your store.
Similarly, your ads should be timed so that you aren't advertising your company outside of business hours. Search Engine Journal recommended that if your company closes down at 5 p.m., make sure your campaigns are paused in the evenings. Meanwhile, if your company tends to do most of its business during peak hours of the day, it's worth targeting campaigns to these time windows to capitalize on the forces driving customers to your business in the first place.
Follow Up With Retargeting Campaigns
Your local audience is one of your most valuable audience segments, so it's worth spending more on advertising for this group as long as you're smart about how you make an impression. Retargeting is one of the highest-value marketing campaigns because of its ability to engage customers who have already demonstrated an interest in your company. And when used to target local mobile customers, it can help capitalize on important micro-moments in the buyer journey, while leveraging existing brand awareness to incentivize a conversion.
As local search traffic increases, businesses face greater urgency to target and serve this customer base. Experiment with local mobile search advertising to figure out which approaches yield the best results.
