Karl Murphy, president and co-owner of Carolina Auto Spa, a car wash and automotive detailer with two locations outside Raleigh, N.C., says his business depends on impulse decisions—no one makes an appointment to wash a car.
So the company’s entire $4,000 to $5,000 monthly advertising budget is devoted to inspiring high-income prospects in the immediate vicinity to pull in and drop some coin. “Car washes live or die within a five-mile radius. If you put a compass and draw around my site, that’s where I advertise,” says Murphy.
A few months ago, Murphy started spending about $300 a month on Google and Yahoo! pay-per-click advertising. Murphy says the pay-per-click model works reasonably well for his business but it “would be much better if it had more specificity of location.”
Skyhook Wireless, a small technology company in Boston, is working to target those kinds of prospective customers with a new software tool that—through partnerships with big search engines—will allow advertisers to restrict their ads to Web surfers who happen to be in the neighborhood.
The company, which has mapped the 100 biggest U.S. cities, has pioneered a location technology that determines the latitude and longitude of any device with a Wi-Fi antenna, triangulating the location of individual PCs (and eventually other wireless devices), allowing ads to be served within a specific target area.
At the moment, the service is geared toward consumers, but Skyhook is working to get its technology adopted by handset makers and major search engines. If they do, it could be a boon for small businesses, because it would mean they could get bigger bang for their online advertising buck.
Right now, only about 5% of small and medium-size businesses are using paid search, according to consulting firm The Kelsey Group.
Photo by oranje88.
Stephanie Hedberg on March 5th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Thanks Dane, great article! I’ve been wondering what’s news out there in terms of local pay per click advertising. This would be a great thing!
I have also been researching a lot of “local search” articles and have founds some great info. It’s really important and I encourage everyone to get involved. If anyone out there is looking for free local search tips and how to get your company on board sign up for my colleague’s white paper on local search: http://www.blizzardinternet.com/whitepapers/whitepaper_form.htm
Thanks again!