Businesses often times run into the situation of have many products/services that they want to promote in a paid search campaign, but not the budget to cover it. Some choose to pick their top products/services and wait for the ROI before expanding their campaign. Although this can be a safe bet, there are products/services that will get left out which people just might be searching for. On the other hand, some folks try to run all of their products/services on a paper thin budget and see no progress because their budget runs out for the day or the month before the paid campaigns get any true traction. However, there is a simple solution to this issue for many businesses and it's called geo-targeting.
Geo-targeting can be a great asset and many times this simple feature can be overlooked as a solution to a budget problem. Geo-targeting allows a company to choose the geographic areas where their ads will show. You can segment by country, by state, by city, by zip code and some search engines even allow radius geo-targeting (for example: a 25 mile radius around Chicago, Illinois).
The beautiful part about geo-targeting is that it gives companies flexibility to show their products/services in different areas and still stay within their given budgets. Let's look at an example. An online store sells college sports gear for some of the top colleges. They want to promote all of their items, but know that the sports fans for these colleges are all across the nation, and they have a limited budget. Instead of selling a few items nationally, this company can advertise all of their items to certain geographic areas. They can target the states where these top colleges are located or they could even target certain college towns. As their business grows and they gain brand recognition, this company can expand their reach, without compromising frequency, to include other areas. One might be thinking okay, but our business sells services not products, what should our strategy be? It's the same approach. Target the areas that have the largest concentrations of people who use your service(s).
The simple act of geo-targeting can save companies money and allow them to gain visibility for all of their products/services. In the long run, businesses will have the opportunity to increase their advertising spend because they used their budget wisely up front. A geo-targeting strategy may be right for your business, if you are stretching your budget, but not getting as many products/services promoted to the public as you would like.
