I have no experience with Overture but am wondering whether I should be advertising there as well. Is either service better suited for my regional restaurant ad? Is it worth the cost to use both?
Thanks.
Their regular program, which has no geographic targeting so you have to add geo qualifiers to your keyword list.
Their local program is built for brick and mortar businesses. It allows you to specify an exact location for your building and then how far around that area you wish to target.
The local program doesn't work so much off of IP targeting like AdWords but more based on user query like searches on local.yahoo.com and some IYPs where exact addresses are specified. The traffic isn't high, but it's very qualified.
Nor does it give any clue as to whether additional advertising (on Overture) will be worthwhile.
Untracked or untrackable advertising can and does waste a lot of money.
Would be best to devise a way to track conversions so you can calculate some type of return on investment.
For example, allow users to print coded coupons from your web site, which they must present at your establishment to receive a bonus gift, discount, or other special offer that they can't get otherwise.
By simply counting up the coded responses you can track exactly which Adwords campaigns, ads, and even specific keyword terms, are driving visitor traffic.
Would be smart to test various incentives too, to find which draw in customers most cost-effectively.
Anything other than trackable, accountable advertising is the equivalent of flying blind and burning money.
Marty Foley
