Local Business Ads Series – Part 1: What is Local Search

This post is part one of a series in which I explain what Local Business Ads are, why and when marketers should use those and what the benefits are. Later on in following posts I will show how to implement them and how to optimize a Local Business Ads campaign.

The idea behind local search marketing is to satisfy the needs of the people that go online and use search engines (SE) to find a product or a service, guiding them to the nearest place to their location where they can purchase it. From the advertiser’s point of view, local search marketing consists in precisely targeting customers who search online but purchase locally.

Local search marketing consists of paid search/PPC and search engine optimization (SEO). Whereas I will only cover paid search and more specifically Google Local Business Ads (LBA) in the AdWords system, there are more search engines (Yahoo!, Bing, etc.) along with local directories, online yellow pages, and database providers (like MapQuest) that offer paid search ads. The main offline counterparts of search engines and internet directories in terms of local marketing are print Yellow Pages and other directories in which businesses are usually listed in categories.

The next post will be about user behaviour regarding local search online. So stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: Google, LBA, Local Business Ads, Local Search, Paid Search

Related posts:

1. Local Business Ads Series – Part 2: User Behaviour
2. Local Business Ads Series – Part 3: What is the Google Local Business Center
3. Local Business Ads Series – Part 4: How to set up your Google Business Listing