Of the many factors of virtual location placement in paid search advertising platforms continues to be one of the most popular ways for tightly niched and small businesses to gain the attention of prospects. The numbers are obvious every time ComScore releases them, Google is squarely sitting on top of search. So for many businesses, Google is the obvious choice for getting your feet wet in paid search marketing.
However, many small businesses or regional players stop there, intimidated by the additional setup time required to even duplicate the same basic structure and keywords over multiple platforms. Some solve this problem by relying on a program in which they are able to manage campaigns across multiple platforms in one interface. I have found that these programs generally are not as robust as the actual ad platforms interface, resulting in less control over ads served. It is better to take the time to set up each campaign correctly and appropriately in each platform than to loose features provided by a platform in order to make bidding modifications easier, or automatic.
When it comes to location, one is just never enough. With Google nearing 60% of the search traffic, where is the other 40% going? Still more than 20% are going to Yahoo, with just over 9% using MSN, and near 5% for AOL and Ask respectively. That is 39% of the 40% accounted for. With this type of concentration, search marketers can use initial Google performance data to optimize campaigns as they are set up across the hand-full of players in the search placement sandbox. The users of each engine are also have distinct differences. By seeing how the differences in users effects campaigns across different search engines we are able to optimize budgets and placements to be sure clients’ virtual location align with their locational strategy
and branding.
