Certain businesses such as Bed & Breakfasts, Hotels, etc. understand that their customers come primarily from out of the local area. Others such as those in the service industry - plumbers, roofers, etc. understand that their customers come from only the local area. But what about the rest? Do those businesses understand that their customers may be a mix of local, and out of area searchers, and how far out of the area do people come from?

Obviously it depends on their location. Businesses in larger metropolitan areas are going to draw from larger areas. For example, I was working on a PPC campaign for a company in Allentown, PA. geo-targeting them to the Philadelphia area covered the majority of their customers, but expanding that out to central southern PA (Harrisburg, Lancaster, York) also brought them some traffic to their site. Businesses in tourist areas may draw from far away locations, for example a restaurant in Lancaster, PA. looking to do a PPC campaign would want to target areas in New York, and New Jersey, as well as locally, given that large quantities of tourists come down from those areas and may want to plan ahead to figure out where to eat before they come down.

So targeting your PPC campaigns to where your customers come from is an important strategy, just remember to put your location on your keyword buys out of your area, if you’re in York, PA advertising on ‘restaurants’ in the York area is fine, but in New York, you want to make sure that your keyword buy is something along the lines of ‘restaurants in york pa’. Actually in my experience, buying the keyword with the location in it in your market isn’t a bad idea either, as it can generate some decent traffic.