Radius targeting bled into the next metro and ate 70 percent of my test
Ten week paid search test for off market small rentals in a secondary market, run with a partner who has done this before and a freelancer who set up the account. Budget was $6,400 all in, $5,200 of it media. We were targeting three counties. The freelancer used a 40 mile radius from the county seat, which is a perfectly ordinary way to do it, except that radius clipped the edge of a metro about 35 miles away with maybe eight times the search volume and four times the cost per click. Nobody looked at the location report until week seven. By then 71 percent of spend had gone to zip codes we would never buy in, at $19 to $26 a click against $7 to $9 in our actual counties. Total: 96 clicks in target, 11 form fills, 3 conversations, 1 property we looked at and passed on. What I would do differently, in order: target by zip code list rather than radius, exclude the neighboring metro explicitly rather than relying on the radius edge, and read the location and search terms reports weekly from week one instead of waiting for a monthly summary that only showed blended numbers.