We live in a digital world where location does not seem to matter. People work remotely. Shop online. Connect with friends digitally. They rarely need to go to a physical store anymore. But physical offices, warehouses and retail locations still play a major role in B2B categories.

You’re probably well aware that, when you set up an SEM campaign, you can inform Google of the geographies in which you want your ads to appear. These could be at the country or city level or right down to the zip code, so you can even set up a customized campaign to target the head office of a particular hot prospect. We’ve even set up short-term SEM campaigns to target attendees of conferences while the attendees are in the conference venue.

Taking things one step further, you can customize your ad based on the searcher’s location. Using location extensions, for instance, you can show the address of your nearest physical location within an ad if the searcher is nearby. The B2C example below shows a nearby location of a Verizon store for people living near Niles, Illinois. If you have brick-and-mortar locations that you want prospects to visit, this is a must-do for your account.

Location Customizers

With AdWords, adding a location to your ad copy is just the start. With ad customizers, your ad copy will dynamically change to reflect where the searcher is located without you having to manually create ads for different locations.

Consider this example: a restaurant equipment supply company sells throughout the U.S. but has its main warehouse in Denver. At the warehouse, they often sell excess inventory at a discount. This month, they need to sell off ProWhip stand mixers (but not other brands) at the warehouse, but nowhere else.

The company’s SEM agency provides AdWords with a file that specifies the customizations they want to make and the locations at which they want the customizations to appear. It contains the following information:

Target location	Brand (text)	Sale (text)
Denver, Colorado	ProWhip	20% off mixers in our Denver store.
United States	ProWhip	Best price guaranteed.

So when a searcher in Denver enters the keyword “ProWhip,” the resulting ad appears like this:

Searchers outside of Denver would see the same headline, but the body copy (or description) would read: “Best price guaranteed. Find the right mixer for you!”

With a little imagination, you can see how local customizers could be used to create national or international campaigns that still include locally relevant content. For instance, perhaps you work in a heavily regulated industry, but one in which the regulations vary by jurisdiction. You could use location customizers to insert the name of the local regulatory standard into the ad copy, adding a higher degree of relevance to the ad. And, to ensure that locales that are particularly important to your business are well covered by your SEM campaign, you could use bid adjustments.

One caveat when using location-customized ads: Always include one ad in each ad group that does not reference the geographic area, just in case Google cannot identify the searcher’s location.

The next step is to revisit your existing campaigns to see how they address location. If you have physical locations, add the location extension to appeal to people who live and work in those areas. This has the additional benefit of taking up more real estate on the search results page, which improves click-through rates. If your strategy is to expand to specific markets, consider adding location-based customizations to your campaigns—especially if there are incentives for specific areas—or get in touch with Quarry for assistance. We can help!