What are the best practices for managing a local SEM budget?

1) Set up Google My Business feed and Local Inventory Ad Feed 3) Leverage Automation and Machine Learning wherever possible. 4) Set your goals - store traffic, site traffic, online revenue. 5) Evaluate your audiences - how do you value new vs existing? 6) Know your competition and make sure you can differentiate your value props. 7) Make sure your Geo targeting is tight. 8) Uncap your budget, optimize to ROAS or CPA 9) Set different goals for Brand and Non-brand. 10) Make sure your measurement is as tight as possible. Understand relationship between SEO/SEM. Focus spend on incrementality.

Start by defining clear, measurable objectives such as increased website traffic, lead generation, or sales conversions. Once your goals are established, select the relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and evaluate your progress. Whether it's click-through rates, conversion rates, return on investment (ROI), or other metrics, align your strategies with these benchmarks to ensure your marketing efforts are effective and results-driven. Regularly monitor and analyze these metrics to make informed adjustments to your campaigns, ultimately optimizing your digital marketing performance.

If it's local business marketing, assumably a 'bricks and mortar' type business then it's all about CPL. And making sure you can actually service the business so it's in your location. Obviously there are metrics like CPC, CTR, Conv. % on landing pages that lead to this, but the end goal is the lowest possible CPL, in your geographic area... and knowing you conversion numbers from lead to sale. If it's a $50 CPL, and a 10% conv. it's a $500 CPA. If your service is $500 then you're not getting an ROI, if your service is an average of $5,000 then you're getting a 10:1 ROI... Simple formula that needs big data to support it on small budgets!

Measure twice, spend once… SEM platforms need conversion data to improve their algorithms and find the users that are most likely to convert for your business. If you don’t have proper tracking in place, Google / Bing can’t optimize your campaigns and you won’t be able to determine which of your media efforts are contributing to your success.

A clear vision of your marketing strategy first, then you can use SEM to support it. Only KPI that I would use are booking values ($ / units) compared before campaign or strategy launch.

In my experience, the first step is to collect the keywords that the product team considers essential for research. Once this information has been gathered, there is a lot of hard work to be done: 1 - Align the marketing, sales and product teams 100%; 2 - Have a good understanding of the business, the sector in which the company operates and the players involved (in my case, I have experience in the wireless communications area); 3 - Having a well-defined ideal customer profile; 4 - Identify the competition correctly (work on the Go-to-Market plan beforehand); 5 - Start the test phase, and then include the negative keywords in the ad configuration (as time progresses and we understand what our ICP's search intent is). (this is very brief)

First, select your goal based on which you will select the keywords you'd like to show your ads. Here is how you can find the right keywords: 1. Competitor Research: See what keywords your competitors are bidding on. Semrush or Spyfu can help with this. 2. Intent-Based Keywords: What would your customers search on Google to find your shop? Use those queries as seed keywords and find more keywords for your area. Now, filter the keywords with some competition & and good search volume. Pro-tip: During this time, also create a negative keyword list to not show up on irrelevant queries. Regarding the match type, ideally, start with phrase match, and based on search term data, take a call on adding some terms as exact or as broad.

Before you select your keywords you need to outline your goals for the campaign. If your goal is visibility, the keywords you select will be different to those if you're trying to drive orders. Keep this in mind before you start your campaigns, you don't want to pay for research-based terms if you're looking for people to convert.

best practices for managing a local SEM budget effectively very well. These practices are essential for businesses looking to make the most of their budget while targeting a local audience. Here's a brief recap of the key points: Clear Goals Keyword Research Budget Allocation Quality Score Ad Scheduling Geographic Targeting Negative Keywords A/B Testing Landing Page Optimization Monitor and Adjust Ad Extensions Remarketing Stay Informed Consider Hiring Experts By following these best practices, you can effectively manage your local SEM budget, increase your online visibility in your target area, and ultimately grow your local business.

It is imperative to research and experiment keywords or search terms that your expected or targeted audience may be searching. Perhaps you want to reach a passive audience that hadn't thought of your business as an option. Using food service as an example, the person looking for a sandwich may be enticed by your pizza shop if you target them as well. Don't close the door on RELATED search terms or terms that fall in the same genre of your targeted audience.

Ad Copy: Human Psychology: We skim through most content & looking for specific word or tone in any text we read. Using {Keyword insertion} can help you capture the attention as the ad copy would have similar text to what the user has searched for. I am not a fan of overselling so I would stick to on CTA per RSA and dont pin your headlines. Look at the most converting search terms & add them to the RSA mix. Landing Pages: The user already likes your shop (he clicked on the Ad) now if you show him what exactly he searched for you won half of the battle (as stated by others here) Relevancy is the key. Using home/category page is good for generic terms but direct users to specific pages. Key: Price, Real life images & customer feedback

It's very important to have consistent language from your ads to your landing pages. One good strategy is to send people to unique landing pages based on the campaign instead of just sending people to the home page. Otherwise, you can confuse the searcher and end up wasting some money.

Your messaging should be clear, concise and relevant to your primary product or service offering. Make it easy to navigate and find additional information. Ensure the keywords for your offerings match what you had in your SEM terms. If you're selling something, make it east to navigate what happens during engagement. Remember that consumers will disengage with content that is hard to navigate, is misleading or is "too much" to digest.

Optimize landing pages and ad copy using persuasive tone: Ensure relevance, engagement, and alignment with keywords and user intent. For 'pizza delivery near me,' show delivery info, menu, and contact details on the landing page. Ad copy should highlight speed, quality, and offers, with a clear CTA like 'order now' or 'call us'.

You rightly emphasise coordinated landing pages and ad copy for local SEM. Both elements must guide users through mutually reinforcing messaging aligned with keyword goals. Your "pizza delivery near me" example demonstrates landing pages directly answering location, menu and contact queries. Ads correspondingly emphasise speed, quality and value to motivate action. Including a clear CTA orients the next step, whether ordering, calling or offers. Landing zones and ads functioning as a cohesive unit through relevance, alignment and direction maximises conversion odds. Ongoing refinement safeguards the intentional user journey from awareness to sale.

You should also consider device traffic when it comes to bidding and budgets. Analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics can track device trends for your ad performance to see how users interact with your ads. Is most of your traffic coming from mobile vs. desktop? If so, you may want to increase bids for mobile traffic to reach your users where they are. Or you may want to investigate your desktop ads to see why they are not converting. You will also want to optimize your landing page content to match what your ads are advertising. Google uses ad relevancy to see how closely your ad matches the intent behind what the searcher is looking for. This will help to increase your overall ad quality.

Consider device traffic for bidding and budgets. Use tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics to monitor device trends for ad performance. Focus on mobile vs. desktop traffic. Adjust bids for mobile if needed and analyze desktop ad conversion issues. Optimize landing page content to match ad intent for improved ad quality.

Start Small and Optimize: If you're new to local SEM, start with a modest budget. This will allow you to test different strategies, ad copies, and keywords. As you gather data on what works best, you can adjust your budget accordingly.

You're right that tracking and testing are essential for optimising local SEM efforts. Leveraging tools like Google and Bing Analytics reveals trends, patterns and insights to enhance performance continually. Understanding high and low-performing elements like keywords, ads, pages, locations, devices, or times indicates where to adjust spending. Just as key as reviewing past data, experimentation via A/B and split testing new variables such as bids, budgets, match types, copy or calls-to-action provides evidence of optimal future approaches. Only through this data-driven process of measuring, analysing and refining based on user behaviour can strategies evolve to maximise qualified leads within budget.

Important! One way you could track and test your campaigns is ensuring you have segmented your data by utilizing utm parameters. Including custom parameters for you is essential in understanding your data and will lead you to better optimize your spend. For example: Do you want to test different creative, landing page, or keywords? Set these up via custom parameters so you can track progress and make changes when needed.

Uno de los experimentos más efectivos que he corrido fue analizar la hora de creación de los leads que realizand una compra. Descubrimos que, para nuestro sector y audiencia, los clientes potenciales que generamos entre las 18:00 y 22:30 horas son los más propensos a comprar, sin embargo tenemos un pico de conversiones de 22:30 a 02:00 hrs. Si bien nuestras métricas de conversiones eran buenas, aquellas que maximizaban el ROI dictaron el camino. Una vez que restringimos el horario de distribución el número de leads redujo pero aumentó nuestra tasa de conversión a venta. Optimizar no significa tener mejores resultados en todas tus métricas pero sí en aquellas que más impactan el negocio.

One of the most important aspects of a local PPC campaign in my experience is paying attention to the specific zip codes. Start out with a decent radius and as conversions come in, take a look at the locations and add them in as individual zip codes to add an extra layer of bid adjustments. Location exclusion is also a key component. Say you are a home remodeling contractor and work in the surrounding areas of a large metro city. You may consider excluding a large city so your budget isn’t exhausted on a much larger populated area and focus on the more affluent towns that you’ve had success landing jobs in.

Determine your monthly or quarterly budget based on your business goals, the competitiveness of your industry, and the expected return on investment (ROI). Be realistic about what you can afford to spend. Divide your budget wisely among different SEM channels, such as Google Ads and Bing Ads. Allocate more budget to high-performing campaigns and keywords while keeping some budget for testing and experimentation.

- Efficiency is Key: Regularly evaluate your campaigns, keywords, ads, and landing pages to determine which ones are delivering the best results. Allocate more budget to those that are effective and profitable. - ROI Focus: Optimizing bids and budgets is crucial for maximizing return on investment (ROI) and minimizing costs. - Adaptation: Be prepared to adapt your budget strategy as market conditions change or competition evolves. Flexibility in budget management is essential to stay competitive and efficient. - Periodic Review: Consistently review your budget to ensure it aligns with your goals and the performance of your campaigns. Make necessary changes based on the results you're seeing.

That's an excellent summary of SEM best practices. The key is optimising budget allocation to high-performing keywords, ads and pages. Tools like bid adjustments, pacing, and intelligent bidding intelligently govern spend amounts, locations and timings. Periodic reviews tie budget shifts to results, competition and market changes. While demanding, following your outlined best practices for goals, keywords, landing pages/ads, testing, and refinement enables the localisation of SEM to grow businesses. Comprehensively optimising digital strategy centred on goals builds durable differentiation. Sustained budget management informed by data strengthens competitive position through strategic online presence.

One way I love to manage budgets is by using rules to notify me when I have reached a specific % of budget. Often times, during changing seasons for a client, I will want to front load budget and use 65% during the first two weeks of the month, and then lower it to use the remaining 35% for the last two weeks. Having a rule that notifies me when I reach that 65% allows me to quickly adjust the budgets to ensure there is no over/under on budget pacing that can lead to future issues.

Beat competition and control budgets with laser focus on location targeting. 1. Targets location only where you do business - state, cities, zip codes, radius around an address 2. Layering city over state, or similar layering, allows you to do #3 3. Bid adjustments - set bids by location allows you to increase bids by a % for a closer or more critical area for your business 4. Exclude locations that are not likely to become a customer or where services are not offered. #2 works for exclusions. Happy geotargeting!

1. Use Ad Scheduling: Since you're a local business, there might be specific days of the week or times of the day when your audience is most active or when your business can handle inquiries. Use ad scheduling to display ads during these optimal times. 2. Consider Seasonality: Local businesses often experience seasonal trends. For instance, a local flower shop might see increased demand around holidays. You should anticipate these trends and adjust your budget to capitalize on these opportunities.

There's value in experimentation. Try new things. There is a lot of advice out there from people who've done this work. If your terms, targets, bids and locations aren't working, consider testing different keywords, audiences, content and copy. Keep it simple to start and adjust as needed.

Managing a local SEM budget can be challenging, but it's essential for businesses that want to reach their target audience and grow their business online. I've been managing SEM campaigns for local businesses for several years. One of the most important things I've learned is to set clear goals and objectives for each campaign. This helps me to allocate my budget wisely and track my progress effectively. I've also found that it's important to be flexible with my campaigns. I regularly monitor my performance and make adjustments as needed. By following some best practices, I've been able to help my clients achieve their business goals and grow their businesses online.