After reviewing hundreds of Adwords accounts on behalf of business owners who aren’t seeing adequate results from their pay-per-click campaigns, I’ve come to notice that there are a number of common errors that are made, and perhaps the most common of these is to have the wrong location targeting settings.
This mistake is made by both novices and marketing agencies alike; and can prove to be very costly if not amended swiftly.
For this reason, I’ve written a quick and simple guide to help advertisers:
1. Identify if their Adwords campaigns are suffering from this error
2. Quantify the damage done
3. Fix the issue to save further loss of ad spend
Error in Location Targeting Settings
Many advertisers erroneously (but understandably) use the following default targeting setting for their Adwords campaigns:
“People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations”
This appears innocuous at first sight, however by including those who are merely showing an interest in your target location, you will be targeting users from other countries and even continents that you never expected.
You may notice that this is the ‘recommended’ setting by Google, which is why this is one of the most common errors made.
Check the Damage
This single setting can end up costing an advertiser thousands in ad spend over the months and years that their campaigns are running.
To view the evidence of the cost sustained, simply go to the User Locations report for your campaign by:
1. Selecting Locations
2. Clicking Geographic Report
3. Choosing User Location Report
You’ll notice that in the example screenshot above, an advertiser that intended to only target users from Australia has ended up targeting a variety of different countries around the world, including Botswana, Bulgaria, and Cambodia.
To quantify the level of wasted ad spend that has occurred as a result of this setting:
1. Within the User Location report, select an ‘All time’ date range
2. Download the full report by clicking the Downward Facing Arrow Icon
3. Within the downloaded sheet, remove the row of data for your intended location (for example if your intended location was the United Kingdom, then remove this from the data)
4. Add up the total cost for the remaining rows using the Cost column
This is the total amount your Adwords account has spent on locations outside of your intended targeting.
How to Fix It:
To fix this issue with the location targeting, simply do the following:
1. Select the campaign you wish to edit
2. Click Settings in the left-hand menu
3. Click the Additional Settings option at the bottom of the page (that’s right, this important setting is hidden from view!)
4. Open the Location Options and select “People in your targeted locations”
And that’s it. Your ads will now only target users who are physically located within the countries or regions that you have selected for your campaign.
Why Does This Happen?
If you have fallen foul to this common error, you may be wondering how it can be possible for your ads to be shown within countries so far from your intended targeting location?
The simple answer is that the recommended setting of targeting “People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations” is designed to give you a broader range of targeting, which will include users who are deemed to be interested in your service/product within your targeted location, even if they are not physically located within, or anywhere near, your targeted location.
Therefore, this setting should only be used for businesses that can service to individuals from other countries.
For example, if you have a tour guide business that runs tours of the Vatican, you may wish to target users outside of Italy for the keyword “Vatican Tours”. This allows you to serve ads to potential customers who are planning their trip within their native country.
Bonus: Excluding Locations
For good measure, or to further refine your location targeting, you also have the option of excluding locations from your targeting.
Excluded locations allow you to designate particular countries where you would prefer your ads not to ever show.
To add locations to exclude:
1. Select Locations from the left-hand menu
2. At the top, click on Excluded
3. You can then search for and select the countries or regions that you’d like to exclude
Considerations
With the continual development of the Adwords interface, it can be easy to miss some of the most important settings within the account.
If your account has been negatively impacted by the wrong settings, I hope this article has provided all the information needed in order to rectify the issue.
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