Using the internet for local businesses can be a challenge. This is mainly because the internet is world wide, yet you only need an audience from just a particular territory. It gets even worse when you use PPC and have to pay for the traffic or visitors coming to your site. Untargeted visitors mean you spend money on visitors who have no hope of becoming customers.

Again, we will use Google’s PPC, Adword as the example by the fact that it is the leading PPC and probably the most advanced. Adword gives four main ways in which you can specifically target your audience, nearly anywhere in the world.

The first is the use of keyword matching. Keyword matching helps you as an advertiser to specifically target visitors that query particular terms.

For example, if you market a foundation that offers doctoral scholarships, then you want your ads to appear every time someone searches for “doctoral scholarships”; and similar terms; and not any other kinds of scholarships. With keyword matching, you are able to select the exact keyword terms that you would want your ads to appear to.

The second means of specifically targeting your prospects is by use of location targeting. You can literally target your adverts to over 100 countries in the world. This means if your ads only appeal to a Kenyan audience, then you can show your adverts only in Kenya.

A good example is for the Payday Loans business. These are short terms loan of about two weeks that are offered to citizens in the U.S, Canada, U.K and Australia based on ones payday check. It is a no hassle personal loan requiring only proof of a paycheck to get.

However companies that offer these services are very specific in their offers. They are confined to their countries of operations. For such a company allowing their adverts to show when someone searches for “payday loans” in Kenya is really a waste of money as a Kenyan is really an untargeted audience.

The third is language. Adword does not translate adverts. So if you write an ad in English and elect for it to show in China, the advert will still show in English. However if you writer your ad in Spanish or Swahili for that matter and elect for it to show based on language, the ad will only show to the Spanish or Swahili speaking nations.

Even more importantly, the Google system will detect the default language of the user and display the appropriate advert. This is handy in reaching a market that shares a language.

The fourth and last is targeting using specified websites. This is called site-targeting. You can choose to have your advert to display in specific websites.

For example, Mchogwano or Mwafrika are sites commonly visited by Kenyan Youth. If your offer particularly appeals to this market you can have your ads specifically showing within this websites. But note that the selected site should be in partnership with Google and hence in its content network.

Source by Mark Kimathi