Local Search | Jennifer Lind

How do you market a purely online business in the local search realm? I’ve seen many of these companies turn to national advertising when faced with this challenge, but there are other options that will lower your cost per click.

Although you are a national company, you still have specific local market areas that you are targeting. It is important to still think locally because your advertisement should be focused on the local buyer on an IYP site. For example, a hotel comparison site like Priceline.com has hotels where you can reserve a room, it just happens that they are not specifically Priceline.com’s hotels.

A national buy will cost you tens of thousands on any IYP site. However, if you focus on specific metro markets that make sense for your company, you could drastically decrease your CPC and increase your relevance. For example, a site like jobweb.com, which is a career and job-search site for college students, could only target the big university towns like College Station, TX, Berkley, CA, Iowa City, IA, etc. Then if your CTR meets your expectations you can consider going to a national ad to draw in those smaller college towns.