I found myself at a loss of something to talk about this week but then inspiration came as a client called in to talk about his account.  He wanted to talk to us about re-working his campaigns to include areas in North Carolina.  His small business is expanding to that area and he wanted to use pay per click as one engine to drive customers to his site.

It seems to me that over the past several months a majority of our sales leads and new clients hail from one of the following areas: Virginia/DC/Baltimore, North Carolina & South Carolina, Florida, and California.  Although being Californians focusing on this region a bit more may skew the results a bit.

We have not increased our bidding in those areas over any others (save for California).  There is no particular, focused initiative taken by us to explain why we would expect to get more traffic from those areas.  Therefore, I am wondering if we as pay per click managers have an unique insight into the national economic health.  Or, alternatively there may be more social and cultural reasons.  Perhaps these areas are merely more entrepreneurial in spirit and therefore look to pay per click advertising as just one way to drive their small business to success?  But I need to consider who we are as a company as well.

We do cater to the truly small business and are happy to work with Adwords budgets that many of our ppc competitors will not touch.  So in a way we are opening ourselves up to the folks who are looking for the best options to suit their limited ppc advertising budgets and these people are more inclined to take that extra step needed to take advantage of the online marketing realm.  In other words, catering to small business budgets puts us in direct contact with the owner of the small business looking to sustain their livelihood rather than a corporate entity trying to save a buck or two by hooking up with qualified Adwords professionals.

So, are the people in the DC areas and the South more inclined to give small businesses a shot?  Is it a social/cultural thing?  Nah. I doubt they’re any different than an Oregonian.

That is why I wonder if perhaps those areas are beginning to actually notice a recovery of sorts and that filters down into people taking the initiative to do better and expand their business through online pay per click advertising.

I am not an economist, but I can ponder like the best of them.  Anyhow, food for thought.