Local Proximity
For businesses whose customers have to physically get to them, or who travel to the customer. Geography does most of the targeting work, which makes this unusually forgiving — the audience is small and self-selecting, so mediocre creative still performs. The two things that decide it are the radius and whether the ad says where you are. A plumber advertising to a whole city pays for calls from 40 minutes away that are not worth taking. Almost every local campaign is set too wide, because a wider radius feels like more customers and is actually more waste.
What local proximity is judged on
Cost per call or per booked visit. The landing page has to ask for Call, book, or get directions, with the phone number tappable and the address visible without scrolling. For most local businesses the best landing page is the map listing, not the website. — if it asks for something else, the campaign underperforms for a reason that never appears in the ad account, because people arrive expecting one thing and are shown another.
The offer that fits: call now, get directions, book a slot, or claim an in-store offer.
How local proximity goes wrong: radius set too wide, generating enquiries from outside the workable area that cost the same as good ones
That is the first entry on the list AdPlaybook checks a generated campaign against. The rest:
- Radius set too wide, generating enquiries from outside the workable area that cost the same as good ones.
- No holdout, so calls and walk-ins that would have happened anyway are counted as ad-driven. A shop with a door gets footfall whether or not it advertises, and cost per visit with nothing to compare it against is the most flattering number in local advertising.
- Phone unanswered during ad hours. The commonest and most expensive failure in local advertising, and nothing in the ad account will show it.
- Opening hours, address or phone number inconsistent between the ad, the site and the map listing — buyers read that as 'closed down'.
- Ads running at hours when nobody can respond.
- Targeting by 'recently in this area', which buys tourists and commuters instead of residents.
Surfaces it suits, and one it contradicts
Rated highest for google, meta. Rated 0.25 or below for x, linkedin — the app will not offer it there, because the surface contradicts the approach rather than merely suiting it poorly.
What the creative has to do for local proximity
Show the place. Real photographs of the actual premises, the actual van, the actual street — recognisability is the whole asset, and stock imagery destroys it. Name the area in the creative itself, not only in the targeting: people scroll past ads that could be anywhere. If the business has local review scores, show them as they appear on the platform buyers already trust.