The benefits of using geo-location targeting in PPC subscription campaigns

Geo-location targeting PPC is a highly effective tool which is often underutilised. But before setting it up, ask yourself what you want to achieve. Are you looking to create greater awareness for your brand, an increase in traffic volume, or do you want to drive in large volumes of leads or subscribers to help bolster your ABC circulation figures? If so, geo-location targeting might not necessarily be the best option for you as you will want to maintain the broadest campaign possible.

But if you do want to reduce the cost of your subscription PPC campaign to help improve your ROI, geo-location targeting is a simple way to eliminate wasted traffic and display more relevant ads to your prospective customers.

There are two main ways to utilise this targeting method:

1) Geo targeting. With this you are in full control of your ads and where they appear. You can choose the level of targeting you want: by country, state, city, town, or even by small village. The location of a user is determined by their IP address. The user has to be in the location you are targeting in order for them to see your ad. So, for example, if you are only targeting people based in London, and a user in Scotland searches for ‘London news’ they will not see your ad (as they are not based in London).

2) Keyword targeting. In this situation, if you are bidding on the keyword ‘London news’ and you want everyone in the UK to see it, then you would set your geo-targeting to UK and bid on the keyword “London News”.

At Jellyfish CoNNect, we decide whether to use geo-location targeting, or how to set it up, on a magazine by magazine basis. For example, if we were promoting a publication with a separate Scottish, English and Welsh edition, we will set up a geo-targeting campaign specifically targeting individuals in each country, and only promoting the relevant edition. But, if we are setting up a specific campaign for a publication which runs an event taking place in Birmingham, we would use location targeting to target users who are interested in the Birmingham event, but they won’t necessarily be based within a certain radius of the Birmingham area, but across the whole of the UK.

Key benefits of using geo-location targeting:

• Including/excluding user locations
• Eliminating high cost areas
• Granular targeting of campaigns
• More qualified ad copy (helps increase Quality Score and reduce cost-per-click)
• Better defined user journeys

Creating the perfect user journey is a key focus at Jellyfish CoNNect. Every step an individual takes, starting from their original search, through to the landing page they get delivered to, and the subscription offer presented is considered when setting up and running a PPC campaign. The diagram below illustrates this: