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into your mind. But in reality it seems there’s new locksmith business advertising around every corner.
Stating that the locksmith industry is highly competitive in AdWords is quite an understatement.
Seeing Avg. CPC costs ranging from $10 to $15 is not something out of the norm when it comes down to the locksmith business. Depending on your targeted location, estimated top page bids from $20 to $40 are quite common.
All of this might sound like grim news and there’s no question about it, the locksmith industry is a tough place to compete and survive in AdWords. It would take a sound strategy as well as constant monitoring and correcting along the way to survive this online mine field.
Now let’s take a look at some of the strategies and ideas that can help you successfully navigate through the rough seas of the locksmith industry.
1) Avoid Highly Competitive And Expensive Keywords
Let’s analyze that keyword for a minute. It surely has a lot of search volume, and it’s probably highly relevant to your business too. A lot of people could just type it on Google to find a locksmith, so it sounds like a winner, right?
Well, depending on your campaign’s budget that might not always be the case. According to the Keyword Tool the Avg. CPC cost for the exact match keyword [Locksmith] is $13.98! Yes you read right, that’s almost $14 for each click. So unless you’re able to achieve an extremely high conversion rate or have plenty of money to burn on AdWords, that keyword will not be right for you.
Use Instead Longer Tail Keywords Mentioning More Specific Locksmith Services
To get some ideas as to what these keywords could be, just take a look at your business accounting to check about the most common services provided during the last two or three months.
You might find out that you did a lot of services for key cutting, replacement keys, or duplicate keys so you should think about including those as part of your keyword list.
Those keywords would be highly relevant to the services you provide and as a great benefit they will usually have much lower Avg. CPC. Some of these keywords would run into the $1 to $3 Avg. CPC ranges which is a great price for the locksmith industry.
To come up with more of these keywords, take a look at all the locksmith services you most frequently provide, or at the ones that will bring the most return on investment and then create a good list.
You could also use the Keyword Tool to find new variations of those keywords, which could also be of great value to your campaign.
If You Still Want To Use The Keyword “Locksmith”, Try To Include It As Part Of A Phrase
As a general norm long tail keywords have higher Quality Score and therefore usually lower avg. CPC. Depending on how competitive your targeted location is you could still get away with relatively low cost keyword.
To determine how competitive your local area is you could type on Google the word locksmith and the name of your targeted state or city and see how many competitors will show on the search results page.
You could also use the Keyword Tool and get an estimate for the Avg. CPC in your targeted city.
By doing this research you could find out that keywords such as “locksmith clarksville tn” or [hawaii locksmith] have medium competition and Avg. CPCs in the $2.50 to $3 range, so you could use them.
Additionally, if the traffic in your targeted area is not that high you could use a couple of plain broad variations of these long tail phrases including the keyword locksmith, as your campaign’s ads will probably show for people who just type the keyword locksmith.
2) Use Your Targeted Areas Zip Coded As Part Of Your Keywords
Remember that people who are locked out and need a locksmith usually are in a desperate situation with no time to waste, and searching for the nearest locksmith could imply using the zip code.
Besides using the zip code as part of your keywords, you could take a look at your dimensions tab or Google Analytics geographical reports and determine from what location and even zip codes you’re getting most of your traffic.
If you notice that a couple of zip codes are particularly productive, you could take advantage of this information by including ad groups and ads specifically targeted for those locations.
You could have ads such as:
33156 Pinecrest Locksmith
Locksmith Near You Ready To Help.
We’ll be There in 10 min. Call Us!
www.33156-locksmith.net
Just keep in mind that not all zip coded keyword combination might have enough demand so make sure they’re not labeled as “low search volume” when you upload them to your AdWords Campaign.
3) Determine Your Most Profitable Business Hours
But let’s say that you’ve got call and conversion tracking installed on your campaign so you let the campaign run for 24/7. Now, after a couple of months you take a look at the gathered data and find out that you get most leads between 3PM and 2AM.
This data could be quite valuable, as you could make sure you spend your advertising budget only at the times when you’re more likely to gain a good return on your investment. Since the locksmith industry is so competitive and expensive, saving your budget to show your ads only between 3PM and 2AM might make a big difference in your ROI figures.
4) Remember People Locked Out Of Their Cars
People locked out of their cars need service and ASAP!, so make sure you have car locksmith related keywords and opt in to advertise on mobile devices for legacy campaigns or have higher bids for those keywords aiming at enhanced campaigns.
Remember that people locked out of their car will have to search from a smart phone so finding keyword variations for keywords such as: “unlock a car door” or [car lock smiths] with moderate Avg. CPC costs could be highly beneficial as your ads will show and you won’t have to spend a fortune to reach those clients who are in desperate situations and are thus most likely to hire your services.
The AdWords Market For Locksmiths Is No Walk In The Park
Currently the locksmith industry is no walk in the park, but with a creative strategy, a healthy budget to spend on AdWords and a great keyword research you could find ways to survive the storm and out maneuver your competitors.
Always keep in mind that knowing your own business is what differentiates you from your competitors and being able to present your unique value proposition effectively is the key to survival.
