Managing Local Pay Per Click

These days, managing your own Google or Yahoo Pay Per Click account can be a real pain in the neck. Long gone are the days when you could spend $20 to $40 a week and get over 200 visitors. Local businesses are spending upward of $10,000 a month in some industries. Nationally, the numbers are increased more than ten fold.

With competition so high, analyzing your keywords and impressions, and adjusting your bids daily can become an necessary obsession. How can a local small business owner possibly find enough hours in the day?

There are many Pay Per Click management strategies to choose from, and they all have their ups and downs, but for your internet spending in a local market, I really like a service called Reach Local, and there's a short 5 minute video explaining what they do, and how they do it.

With Reach Local, you just set a monthly budget (as low as $100), and the bid management software splits that  between Google, Yahoo, and the Verizon Superpages.

Each day (or week) you can get a report that says (for example)…

July 30, 2006 8 clicks
Spent $12.19
2 emails generated
2 online product sale
1 phone call - at 11:10 AM that lasted for 1o min 41 sec from phone number 503-555-5555

Wow! How’s that for tracking your advertising dollars?

If you have a few hours a month to spend managing your own local paid search accounts, then have at it! However, if you need to be spending more time running your business, and less time rummaging in your PPC accounts, then check out Reach Local.