Have you been wondering how your home services business can more effectively reach your local market online? If so, we have a powerful solution for you. That solution is geotargeting ads for home services contractors.
OK, that sounds great, but what is geotargeting, how does it work, and should I be using it to promote my business? We’re glad you asked! We are going to go over all that and more. And by the end of this article, you will know the basic building blocks to use geotargeting ads to promote your home services business.
What Is Geotargeting?
Geotargeting is a marketing tactic that involves delivering content, advertising, or other messages to customers based on their geographic locations. And with geotargeting ads for home services contractors, that means using geotargeting to advertise to local customers and potential customers for any given home service.
How Does Geotargeting Work?
Geotargeting works by identifying a specific target audience based on a location or set of locations. The geotargeting campaign messages are then set to only be delivered to the specified area and audience based on that predetermined (geofenced) location. This is achieved by a search engine identifying a user’s location using their IP address, GPS data, Bluetooth, cell tower IDs, or WIFI that shows them being in any given location.
For example, if someone is in Tampa and they do a search for roofing services near me, a list of all the roofing contractors in that person’s physical vicinity will appear in their search results.
What Is the Difference Between Geofencing and Geotargeting?
Geofencing and geotargeting both use location-based marketing tactics. However, they serve different purposes. Geofencing uses a virtual fence and outlines an area for a specific geographic location and that’s it. There are no other factors involved. Geotargeting, however, takes that virtual fenced area and geotargets that area using a variety of factors to hyper-focus the marketing for that area so that it only reaches a specific target audience.
Geotargeting Example
Geotargeting is particularly helpful for home business services like yours. This is because you don’t want to advertise and subsequently attract customers that are outside of your service area. So for example, if you only want to attract customers in the Tampa area, you simply set your geotargeted search ad campaigns to only show to searchers in the Tampa area. That means your ads won’t show to anyone outside the Tampa area. It also means you aren’t wasting money on delivering ads to customers you can’t serve because they are too far outside of your local service area.
What Are the Benefits of Using Geotargeting to Promote Home Services Businesses?
Should you use geotargeting to promote your home services business? Yes, absolutely! Geotargeting is one of the best ways to reach a targeted audience. But there are other benefits of using geotargeting to promote your business as well.
- Personalized content. With geotargeting, you can create ads that are customized and relevant to your target audience.
- Build brand recognition and authority. A geotargeted campaign will help you build brand recognition and authority in your local neighborhood.
- Allocated marketing budget. Geotargeting allows you to design hyper-focused marketing campaigns because you can segment your ads by location, which will help you make the most of your marketing dollars.
- Product and market testing. You can use geotargeting to test new home products, services, specials, etc. to a smaller audience before rolling out a larger launch.
- Radius targeting. Radius targeting ensures your ads are only seen by those who live within your service area.
- Protect your campaigns from competitors. With geotargeting, you can exclude the locations of your nearby home service company competitors, so they won’t see your ads and campaigns until after your promotion or event has launched. This will help you get an edge over your competitors.
Super Simple Geotargeting Best Practices
Here are some super simple geotargeting best practices. These are some of the geotargeting tactics you can use to get started.
1. Radius Targeting
With radius targeting, you only target the areas your business serves. So when using radius targeting, you basically “fence in” all the territory that is within that radius. Ultimately, when someone enters that radius, your ads will be delivered to their mobile device.
2. Audience Targeting
This method enables you to target specific ads to people who have visited a location, brand, or category within a certain time period. It also allows you to use behavioral targeting by including data based on visitation and demographics. Alternatively, you could create custom audiences by including a set of consumer shopping and other behavioral data for your campaigns.
3. Location Targeting
Location targeting will help you see how customers behave in particular localities. Then you can use personalized geotargeting-based ads to increase your chances of converting someone into a customer. To do this, you will use location-focused keywords and create granular location-focused campaigns. Then you simply customize every aspect of the ad copy to personalize the ad a potential customer receives.
4. Exclude the Locations Your Business Doesn’t Serve
You should exclude the locations your business doesn’t serve. Think of this method as the geo-targeting equivalent of eliminating negative keywords. We’ll use an example to explain how this works. For example, if you have a roofing company in Tampa and you don’t offer your services anywhere else, you simply exclude your search campaigns from everywhere but Tampa.
5. Use Location Extensions and Call Extensions
You should always use location extensions and call extensions to make it as easy as possible for your local prospects to contact and reach you. This method lets you show your phone number, business address, map to your location, or the distance to your business.
Whoa! This Sounds Time Consuming!
We know all of this sounds quite daunting and it can be if you don’t have the proper tools and resources. So the best way to tackle geotargeting is to use online tools and software to help you get the job done. One of the best marketing software solutions on the market is Surefire Local Marketing Platform.
Let’s take a look at our business intelligence marketing software in a little more detail and how you can go about requesting a demo. There’s nothing like a “try before you buy” option.
Request a Surefire Local Platform Demo
Why should you request a demo of our software? Here are just 5 of the benefits home services contractors see by using our marketing software to manage their online marketing activities.
- Fast Results – 85%+ more customers.
- Higher Google Rankings – increase web traffic by 34% or more.
- More Online Reviews – get more happy customer reviews and be alerted when a negative review occurs so you can respond immediately.
- More Local Search – you will get 70+ local directory placements including Google Local, BBB, Bing, Yelp, Yahoo, Foursquare, and Angi. And, you will be able to manage and update them all in one spot.
- Major Worldwide Business Partners – we are partners with Salesforce, Google Partner, Inc. 5000, Facebook, Intuit Quickbooks, Yelp, Google Analytics, and more.
More reasons to request a Surefire Local demo…
We provide business intelligence marketing software that costs a fraction of what other tools and agencies charge. And, Surefire Local is capable of handling nine of the most important online marketing activities.
This platform will save you time and money while helping you grow your home services business, your brand’s reputation, traffic, and income.
Let’s take a look at the nine online marketing activities Surefire Local can help you with.
1. Ratings & Reviews
This function will help you rank first across the different search engines. It does this by helping you generate more reviews. So you can request, manage, and respond to all your ratings and reviews from a single dashboard.
2. Business Listings
Surefire Local will help you improve your home service business’s search visibility. This is done by adding your business to 70+ online directories. Then you can manage and update those listings all from your Surefire Local dashboard.
3. Content Marketing
With Surefire Local, you can generate, schedule, and distribute your online content across all your digital assets, such as your blogs, social media pages, websites, and more. And, you can do all this all from one account dashboard.
4. Lead Generation
This platform will help you manage your lead pipeline all from one place. You will be able to track how many leads you have generated, where those leads are in the sales cycle, and who it is you need to follow up with.
5. Local Paid Ads
With Surefire Local, you can advertise on any search engine or social media network using pre-built ad campaigns that are location-based. You can also track your ad effectiveness in real time.
6. Analytics & Reporting
Using Surefire Local, you will have insight into what’s working and what’s not. You can also track calls, monitor your web traffic, measure your paid ads, social media campaigns, and assess their effectiveness.
7. Competitor Analysis
This platform will assist you in discovering the keywords and local search terms your competitors are using and benchmark your performance. This will give you a definite edge over your competitors.
8. Geo-Location Check-Ins
This feature will help your local customers find your home service’s business. It will enable you to provide check-ins that are location-based. It will also let your customers know where you are and what you have to offer at any given moment.
9. Text Message Marketing
The Surefire Local platform will assist you with chatting or texting with your customers in real time. This will enable you to answer questions, increase engagement, and convert more leads because of the easy-to-use interface of the software.
What’s Next?
Would you like help setting up geotargeting ads for home services contractors, or perhaps you have some other local marketing needs? If so, schedule a demo with Surefire Local today.