Geographic Details of a Campaign

Location targeting allows the advertiser to decide where an ad campaign will appear.

The Ad Manager and Geographic

Google Ads allows the ad manager to regulate the exact geographic locations for a campaign to target. Under the “Location” tab in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. All ad campaigns have a list of towns and cities to link the ads in the campaign to a specific location. We can add places like cities, and counties, and add a location radius to the location list. Having an understanding of a city and its surrounding areas can play a major role in getting the best ROI.

The service area is a 30 to a 35-mile radius from the city center as defined in Google Maps. Smaller cities with a shorter service radius since there are fewer people to serve. The total driving distance can not be more than a maximum of 2 hours or 120 miles when traveling by surface streets to and from the office.

All NuFinishPro campaigns should target:

• The major metropolitan area of the chosen location
• The city center
• Two or more locations can be added to the location list.
• A specific radius of fewer than 30 to 35 miles from the city center.
• A total maximum driving distance of 120 miles or 2 hours drive time to and from the office location.

Presence of Interest

Another thing to consider is when a location is added to the campaign. Google will target both people living in the target location and those who are interested in it. The ads can target both visitors who are in the location and those who are interested in the location.

If you live in the location that is being targeted by the ad campaign, you are a presence in the location. An outside person who is able to still see your ads is a person of interest. Google by default allows both types of visitors to see your ads.

You have three options available to you, you can target the following.

1. Presence of interest: People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations (recommended)
2. Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations
3. Search interest: People searching for your targeted locations

If you want you can choose to exclude either people in your location or both people inside and those who are interested.

1. Presence: People in your excluded locations (recommended)
2. Presence of interest: People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your excluded locations

You can choose to choose a different than the default recommended settings. In some cases, you don’t want any except those in the targeted location to see the ads. Then you would choose to target presence instead of both Presence and Interest.

Location targeting
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6317

Campaign Effectiveness

The ad manager can examine the map and begin to weed out the specific areas in which the ads are underperforming, helping to take a specific ad campaign to the next level. These underperforming areas will often be less populated or geographically difficult for refinishers to go to. We must keep track of places where contractors are either unwilling or unable to accept work due to travel time or other reasons. This helps to save both time and money.

It is important to save money by turning off an ad campaign in regions where there is no business is important to reduce costs and save money. This way the shared budget is not used on meaningless clicks and the phones are kept from ringing with irrelevant calls.

Adding locations to an ad campaign

All Google Ad Campaigns allow an advertiser to target locations. Cities, counties, zip codes, and countries are allowed to be added as a target locations in an ad campaign. Be aware that Google has the right to exclude a specific location from a campaign for any reason.

Let’s paint a picture:

San Diego, CA is a major metropolitan area, composed of dozens of sub-cities and regions. NuFinishPro provides serves most of San Diego County. Cities like Carmel Valley, Mission Valley, Oceanside, and Chula Vista will always be in the San Diego Google ad campaign. Places that are not easily accessible or have a low population will have no service. Towns like Jacumba and Mount Laguna with a low population in the hundreds would be removed from the campaign. Plus, places in the campaign with a drive time of greater than 2 hours, 120 miles total drive time (to and from the office), or a 30 to 35-mile radius are subject to removal from the campaign.

This helps to avoid the costs of running ads in poorly targeted areas and of people calling in. Only to find out that there is no one from NuFinishPro available to service that area. A larger metropolitan area or county includes smaller places. This does not always mean that it is important to include those areas in an ad campaign.