Different advertising messages for different locations

I was reading the other day that Google AdWords is soon going to be retiring its “custom shape” geographical area feature, replacing it with alternative methods, and it occurred to me that there might be those among you who don’t even realise that such amazing customisation exists. Here’s the deal: it’s not necessary to have your AdWords ads displayed to people making searches who are physically outside your sales area. All you need to do is to say: “only show my ads to people in Wales” or “only show my ads to people within 50km of Leicester” or whatever you want, and that’s exactly what happens. Even if you sell nationwide, or worldwide, the facility can still be useful. How? By showing different ads – or sending people to different landing pages – depending on where they are.

Examples include promoting local distributors, or even – if it’s an advantage – promoting your head office. For example, one advertiser, whose Google AdWords account we manage, shows a standard landing page to most enquirers, but to those within 20 miles of its office, it has a different landing page saying: “Your favourite [widget] supplier is just around the corner.” They’ve found that customers actively like this.