As your business grows and expands to multiple locations, you need marketing strategies that match that growth. Multi-location PPC (pay-per-click) helps connect with audiences while keeping branding consistent across your organization.
In this blog, Mark Hite, Director of Franchisee Sales & Marketing, explores multi-location PPC, including its definition, challenges, and how to choose the right platform. We also discuss why working with an agency can help you achieve your goals.
What’s Covered:
- Why Multi-Location PPC Matters
- Key Challenges in Managing Multi-Location PPC Campaigns
- Must-Have Features of a Multi-Location PPC Platform
- Top Multi-Location PPC Tools and Platforms
- Best Practices for Multi Location PPC Campaigns
Expert Opinion on Multi Location PPC
There are many components of a successful digital marketing strategy, and pay-per-click advertising is one of them. This element is particularly essential for multi-location businesses that need to tailor advertising to each location and audience within it.
While traditional PPC is about establishing a clear brand identity and connecting with specific audience segments, multi-location PPC balances these aspects with the needs and wants of people in each target community.
Many stats also support the importance of local PPC and personalized advertising: According to a report from Hypercology, Google searches seeking local information comprise 46% of all searches, 72% of consumers visit a store within five miles following a local search, and four out of every five people prefer ads targeting their area, city, and zip code.
With a better understanding of multi location PPC and what goes into a strong campaign, you can take the right approach to your next strategy to achieve the best results.
Why Multi-Location PPC Matters
When businesses expand to several locations, they must acknowledge the different audiences that come with each location. Every city and region has unique wants and needs that make it important for businesses to adapt their messaging to speak to them.
With localized ads and other content that resonates with audiences, businesses can drive more engagement and, ultimately, sales. In turn, this leads to a higher return on investment (ROI) as businesses build stronger and more lasting relationships with their local target market.
For example, athletic shoe brand Nike knows how to connect with global audiences through unique ad campaigns targeting each local audience. In recent years, the company has launched various ads to connect with different cultures, especially in large cities like New York City and London.
Specifically, for its London audiences, Nike put together its “Nothing Beats a Londoner” ad, which was able to generate 93% more product searches for Nike from London and 54% more across the U.K.
Knowing your audience wherever your business is will lead to a greater impact with your marketing and advertising, getting people more invested in your brand over less personal competitors.
Key Challenges in Managing Multi-Location PPC Campaigns
As businesses work to get the best possible results from their Multi-Location PPC efforts, there are some potential challenges they may face along the way.
These challenges may include:
Budget Allocation Across Locations
Businesses spreading to new locations may have a hard time balancing their budget evenly across their ad campaigns.
It’s important for all business locations to have the resources they need for adequate marketing and advertising. Otherwise, they may struggle to get off the ground and achieve any real results.
Maintaining Brand Consistency
Expansion can also make it more difficult to keep branding consistent while attempting to target advertising campaigns locally.
While it’s important to “speak the language” of your target audience, your overarching brand messaging and theme should be consistent to establish a clear identity. The more consistent your brand appears, the more recognizable and trustworthy it will be to your audiences, which can lead to more sales and overall loyalty.
Sufficient Data Tracking and Reporting for All Locations
To succeed with Multi-Location PPC, each location’s campaigns must also result in sufficient data and comprehensible reporting to enable continual improvement over time.
Every location should have sufficient data and analytics, allowing advertisers to track critical key performance indicators (KPIs) based on their goals. Using this data, platforms can provide actionable insights that guide future efforts based on performance.
Managing Multiple Campaigns at Scale
More locations mean more advertising campaigns to manage, which can become increasingly challenging, especially without the right tools or adequate in-house staff to give all campaigns the attention they need.
Must-Have Features of a Multi-Location PPC Platform
As you look for the right multi-location PPC tool to handle your campaigns and overcome the above challenges, there are some essential features your platform should include, such as:
- Centralized Campaign Management: All of your campaigns should be easy to access and manage using a single hub. Look for a tool that can help you consolidate all of your data into a format that’s easy to both navigate and understand. This feature will help maximize your ad strategy’s overall efficiency.
- Geo-Targeting and Localized Ad Customization: You should also be able to use geo-targeting (and possibly geofencing) and customize your ad campaigns for each location. Geo-targeting can help you reach people with ads that target audiences in specific service areas, with dynamic messaging and visuals that resonate with each market.
- Budget Optimization Tools: Certain solutions will make it easy to allocate your budget and determine the overall cost of your campaigns, which can help you measure these expenses against your budget and make recommendations based on your total budget. The right budgeting tool can help you keep your campaigns both efficient and cost-effective for maximum ROI.
- Reporting and Analytics: The platform you use needs to provide you with meaningful and accurate data to help you get the most from your campaigns. Data and analytics should be easy to collect from each location and provide you with the insights you need to make informed, strategic decisions to perfect them over time.
Top Multi-Location PPC Tools and Platforms
There are plenty of popular Multi-Location PPC platforms you can use to get the results you want with your advertising campaigns.
Let’s break down and compare some of the more popular options worth implementing and their various features:
Google Ads
One of the most essential PPC tools for multi-location businesses is Google Ads, which can help you develop, manage, and optimize campaigns across any number of locations.
Google Ads gives you access to all of Google’s advertising platforms to maximize reach with locally targeted ads, including Google Search, Google Display, Google Play, YouTube, and Google Partners websites.
Some of the features that make this a particularly crucial Multi-Location PPC tool include:
- Audience Segmentation: Easily segment audiences for each location using AI-powered tools that assess user data, enabling you to deliver resonant ad content to each audience based on specific audience personas.
- Location-specific Ads: Create ads that are relevant to each location with dynamic copy and visuals.
- Real-time Monitoring: Get in-depth analytics regarding your campaigns in real time to determine what’s working and what needs improvement with each campaign.
Microsoft Advertising
To supplement Google Ads campaigns, you should utilize Microsoft Advertising, which can display ads on Bing and Microsoft Partner platforms.
Microsoft Advertising offers similar features to Google Ads but for Microsoft ad platforms, helping you manage campaigns beyond Google.
Some other helpful features for multi-location businesses include:
- Radius Targeting: Target audiences within a specific radius around your location for geofencing marketing, which can bring more foot traffic to physical locations.
- Location Extensions: These extensions can display various location-specific business information in your ads, including addresses, phone numbers, and directions to help people connect with each location.
- Bulk Location Management: Using the Microsoft Advertising API, you can manage and connect Location Extensions to all of your locations with ease, enabling users to see location-specific details within a 50-mile radius of the nearest location.
WordStream PPC Advisor
Get some meaningful advice to guide your multi location PPC campaigns with WordStream PPC Advisor. This tool can easily automate various tasks while providing you with some in-depth guidance to help optimize your campaigns across locations.
Using WordStream, you can conduct keyword research, manage workfloks, create ads, and analyze campaigns.
One of the main benefits of WordStream is the ability to easily integrate it with other tools, including Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, along with social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Adzooma
Another third-party tool that’s worth integrating into multi-location campaigns is Adzooma, which provides details PPC analysis, automatic testing, marketing automation, and management for shopping ad campaigns.
What makes this tool particularly ideal for multi-location ads is the ability to connect multiple Google Ads Manager accounts to the platform and instantly switch between them.
It’s ultimately a great tool to help assess PPC campaign performance and inform you of what you need to perfect your efforts.
Comparison of Tools
Below is a table comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each of these PPC management tools, which can help you decide which to implement:
| Platform | Pros | Cons |
| Google Ads |
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| Microsoft Advertising |
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| WordStream |
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| Adzooma |
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Best Practices for Multi-Location PPC Campaigns
To get the most from the above Multi-Location PPC platforms, incorporate the following best practices:
Properly Set Up Campaigns for Each Location
To start with, it’s important to set up campaigns for each location using the right strategies.
For example, using tools like Google Ads, you can use geo-targeting to target ads to specific service areas, ranging from an entire country to a particular radius within your location.
You should also segment your audiences for each location, which you can do by developing personas for each type of audience based on demographics, buyer behaviors, and other inputs like cultural differences. You can then factor these details into audience segments on platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising.
Effectively Allocate Your Budget
Another critical step entails allocating your budget for each location.
There are multiple strategies you could use for budget allocation, such as:
- Distributing funds based on campaign performance or market potential, channeling more funds to campaigns in need of improvement
- Aligning your budget with each location’s goals in connection with the business’s overall PPC goals
- Accounting for consumer behavior shifts and seasonal trends in certain areas
Customize Ads for Each Audience
Each audience should also see ads that target and speak to them directly with the right messaging and offers.
You can personalize your ads for every location’s audiences by implementing local keywords like “best coffee shop in [city]” or “legal services near me,” promoting offers that are unique to each location, and using dynamic messaging that changes to reflect the language of each city or region.
Regularly Track and Optimize Campaigns
To get the most from your PPC campaigns, you must consistently monitor and optimize them based on their performance.
Set up a schedule for weekly or even daily monitoring and periodic reporting to gauge campaign effectiveness for each location. Be sure to set clear goals for your campaigns to help determine whether efforts are successful.
Based on the data you collect, you can determine how to perfect your efforts and get increasingly great results.
Build a Winning Multi-Location PPC Strategy With Ignite Visibility
As your business grows and your network of locations grows, it will become more and more challenging to balance all of your PPC campaigns. If you need some assistance with multi location PPC management and optimization that can scale with your business, consider working with the PPC experts at Ignite Visibility.
When you turn to us for help, you’ll get:
- Access to Google Ads and other top PPC management tools
- Help with audience segmentation to determine each local audience’s wants and needs
- High-quality dynamic local ads with consistent branding across all locations
- Continual monitoring and reporting to guide future optimization efforts
- Proper budget allocation to maximize ROI
- And much more!
For help with PPC and other aspects of multi-location marketing, contact us today, and we’ll show you what we can do for your brand in the long term.
