Google Ads Geo Location Targeting | Advanced Tips and Tricks

What Is Geo Location Targeting

Location-based advertising, often known as location-based marketing, is a form of highly tailored and targeted marketing that is directed at customers in a certain area. While it isn’t new, geo-targeting and GPS-enabled mobile devices have made reaching high intent prospects at a much more intentional rate.

It is a form of advertising that makes use of location data to deliver messages tailored to recipients’ location and habits.

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How To Do Location Targeting – Segmenting Your Locations

At the start of the campaign setup, instead of selecting the whole of Singapore, what you could do is to manually select each selected area so that you are able to segment your locations.

This allows you to segment your data; to allow it to populate for you which location is generating the most number of clicks or getting the healthiest cost per lead. This is useful if you are targeting the whole of Singapore, but would like to make adjustments in your bids for each location groups.

google ads geo targeting - 6a. how to do location targeting result

Steps to do it:
1. Click on your campaign in Google Ads
2. Click Locations
3. Click the blue pencil icon
4. Under Location option, click on ‘show all areas’ (You have the option of doing radius targeting instead)
5. Proceed to click on each location and click on target
SAVE

google ads geo targeting - 6a. how to do location targeting

How To Do Radius Targeting

On the other hand, if you only have 1 local shop front and would like to target people around your area, then radius targeting might just do the trick.

Steps to do it:
1. Click on your campaign in Google Ads
2. Click Radius
3a. Adjust the radius: e.g. 20 mi or km
3b. Proceed to type in your address or location coordinates > TARGET
SAVE

google ads geo targeting google ads geo targeting - 6c. radius targeting- 6c. radius targeting

To add locations in bulk:

Unfortunately, currently (2021) it does not work like radius targeting, whereby you can just throw in your postal code and the system would be able to detect it.

The way that works – you would have to follow the ‘Show all areas’ format:

google ads geo targeting - 6d. add locations in bulk

Factors / Tips To Consider Before Doing Location Targeting In Singapore

(1) Does Proximity Matter To Your Target Audience?
If you are say offering ‘massage services’ and your target audience is very particular about location and would only visit store fronts that are near their home area, then it would be wise to do location targeting.

On the other hand, if you are offering island wide service for digital marketing, then proximity might not matter as much, then it may be wise not to limit your location targeting, and just proceed to target the whole of Singapore.

(2) How Do You Personalise Your Message?
If you have multiple store fronts, and your service offering and customer experience differ from store to store, then it would be useful to personalise your messages to your customers.

Think about promotional mechanics – such as 20% off – only at our Serangoon outlet.

(3) How Do You Use It To Complement Other Marketing Tactics?
It is essential to have a comprehensive understanding of the location-based customer, but it is also vital to focus on other things. When consumers leave that place, as soon as possible, the message is lost. It is critical to collect locations, followers, and emails from location-based customers in order to deliver retargeting ads, etc.

(4) Integrate Online To Offline To Measure Your Results
If you are managing several locations, it would be helpful to customise your landing pages and forms – so that you will be able to directly attribute (qualitative) which lead came from which location. This will help you know the true performance of your campaigns.

Sample form leads titles:
Serangoon outlet: Serangoon Outlet Lead
Hougang outlet: Hougang Outlet Lead

An easy way to do that is to simply:
1. Duplicate your current landing page – with a new URL
2. Adjust the forms in each landing page – lead title
Done!

(6) Ensure That Your Campaigns Don’t Compete Against One Another
Ensure that each your campaigns are not competing for ad space and causing a keywords bid war internally. Doing it right will ensure that your budget is always well spent.

(7) Consider location specific keywords
You can judge a search intent simply by analysing the search query given by users.

Search terms such as “physiotherapy near me” (location sensitive) have a different search intent compared to search terms such as “physiotherapy Singapore” (general).

It is important that you match the search query and intent with the content provided.