I have a local business, how can paid search be effectively used to generate local traffic?

With more than a billion local searches each month, search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN have emerged as the number one destination consumers use when shopping for a local product or service – eclipsing the phone book, newspapers, TV, radio and all other forms of traditional media*. Additionally 73% of consumers would prefer to find local products and services on search engines than to have advertisements sent to them.

Know and leverage your businesses niche.

A business no longer is required to have a national presence with hundreds of brick and mortar outlets to build its visibility or traffic, it just needs to know its niche and leverage that niche through local online channels.

For three decades a local custom framing retailer hung out its shingle in its now trendy Chicago and upscale North Shore addresses, utilized local cable networks, placed newspaper and telephone book advertising and built its brand in the market as a high quality provider of premium custom frames and services.

In late 2006, recognizing its targeted upscale audience had shifted much of its attention to online media, the business sought to translate its long standing brand equity into online visibility and incremental in –store traffic.

Laying down the new foundation.

The first order of business was to give the website a facelift.  GDMI redeployed the website for a more upscale look as well as to capitalize on the owner’s long standing position in the community and leader in the framing industry with the launch of the business’ blog in addition to website.

Ironically, the one enhancement which the website did not integrate was an addition of e-commerce functionality. The first goal of the business was to establish an online presence to generate traffic to its brick and mortar presence.

With the launch of the new website, GDMI developed and implemented a local search campaign whose primary objective was to establish brand visibility and traffic within the local target Chicagoland and North Shore suburb.

Targeting Local Traffic.

To that end, a local business profile was initially created on GDMI’s proprietary local search tool www.MyLocalProfile.com to establish the business within search engines’ and online directory local search results. The profile is syndicated across a myriad of online destinations based on keywords which are included within the profile and combined with a geo specific term such as Chicago or Chicagoland such as: custom picture framing, photo frames, mirrors, shadow boxes, picture frames, photo frames, custom mirrors.

With the objectives to maximize visibility on the web and increase overall traffic to the website, into the store and on the telephone, GDMI then developed a paid search initiative which was specifically designed to:

• Be visible only within Chicagoland area and Northshore target suburb
• Utilize various geographic terms in combination with the service and product related keywords which comprise the Chicagoland metropolitan and suburban markets
• Drive ‘calls to action’ in ad copy which promote on phone and in store local traffic and pre qualifies customers within the geography.
• Coincides with in-store special promotions such as ‘Graduation Degree Framing’
• Protects the owner as a brand for purposes of brand management, promotion and protection.

Research your online customers and their search behaviors.

In advance of the launch, GDMI identified there to be more than 5,000 monthly searches for a mere handful of potential keywords within the Chicago market alone. Therefore the initial campaign in 2007 focused to test the ability of paid search to drive local traffic and was limited to the Google search network (exclusive of the content network) within the target geography.  

In the absence of an e-commerce sales, contact form or dedicated phone number m measurement and success criteria for this local advertiser was specifically identified as the overall visibility (impressions) of the campaign and website visits (click throughs).  Additionally, GDMI monitors average time on the website, page views and ad positioning as success criteria.

Determining Success.

The initial trial of four months limited the site’s exposure due to the comparably low bid rates. With the overall reported success of the campaign the budget was more than doubled to insure the client’s objective of dominant and continual presence daily as well as expanded across Yahoo!

To date, the paid search campaign has delivered over 1.3 million views (again within the limited geography), nearly 20,000 website visits with visitors remaining on the site 5 –7 times longer than the targeted duration and ad positions remain in the top 3 search engine spots overall. 
Further and more telling is the 95% of in store shoppers who are reporting they have seen the business online before coming to the store. 

The owner and business have not only made their mark in the local geography, they have begun successfully making their mark online within their same footprint.