• DM News , Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:30 PM

Ellen Keohane digs into the story of Reliant Energy, a Houston-based energy provider, and how the company tapped the power of geotargeted search marketing to woo (and keep) customers after deregulation sharply increased competition in the energy space.

"For companies like Reliant, which are limited to servicing specific areas, geo-targeting clearly makes sense," Keohane says. "Movers, for example, are one of the biggest target audiences for Reliant." So the company runs PPC ads against keywords like "moving to Houston," as well as ads for "real estate agent" that are targeted to a specific ZIP code. These geotargeted ads also direct clickers to a moving-specific landing page.

Reliant has also coordinated its search efforts with offline campaigns, and as a result, has seen dramatic improvements in search results over the past six months. "We've seen our new enrollments on the Web site increase by 72%, and our conversion rate has gone up 60%," said Sicily Dickenson, Reliant's director of online marketing.

Read the whole story at DM News »