How do i advertise to people in another state?

I'm launching a new website one state at a time. I have an ad budget of $20k/mo for each state. What is the most effective way to advertise to reach the most people to try an automotive website for car shoppers?

• Answer:

  There are a ton of factors you'd need to consider, but first off, setting a blanket $20k budget "per state" is really not a solid strategy, as the populations of various states differ which affects how many people you could reach with your given budget in each state. With a budget of that size, I'd strongly recommend against using Television. I own a full service shop and my background is in traditional advertising, so this isn't a slam against TV at all. But with that kind of budget, you sadly can't be that effective. Even if you combined the entire budget so it was $1,000,000 for a national buy (50 states X $20k budget per state), that really isn't enough to get you any kind of scale, reach, or impact for a TV buy. With that kind of budget, and seeing that your goal appears to get people to "try" your site, I would suggest you'd be better off with a paid search campaign to get people over to your site and have them test it out. You'd probably want to start small and focus on just a few areas, which would be a good way to see if people in certain parts of the country respond to your message better than people in other parts. You should also test a bunch of different ad copy in search so you can not only which ads drive people to the site but of the people that get there, do they do what it is you want them to do (i.e., "do they convert?"). Then over time you can optimize your buy toward the areas, ad copy, and search terms that are yielding the best conversions for you. You should also make sure that you put some metrics in place so you know what success should look like. How many people do you want to come to your site? What actions do they need to take for you to begin recouping the money you're spending on your ad campaign? Best of luck to you.