Google Local Campaigns are important to retail chains because they increase the digital visibility of physical stores through advertising inserts in the Google ecosystem.
Implementing local campaigns allows stores to adopt a “top of mind” strategy. In other words, it reminds customers or prospects of your presence and the services, products, or actions you offer. The goal is to place yourself on all digital platforms to associate a particular service or product with the name of your brand.
In this article you will discover:
1. What is a Google Local Campaign?
A local campaign is the digital promotion of your store in a geographic area around it. The campaign ensures that your brand’s most important information is automatically displayed on the digital platforms of your potential customers located nearby.
With the information provided, Google will promote your local shop on all of its platforms. Ads will appear on:
- Google Maps when someone is looking for a facility of your type or exploring an area nearby.
- Google Search engine when someone uses terms relevant to your brand
- Youtube in video format when a person is watching a video near your facility
- All Google Display partner sites and applications when a person located nearby is on the web.
2. What are Google Local Campaigns for?
A local campaign is very useful in reaching potential customers as it increases the online visibility of the point or points of sale. Reaching new customers is usually complicated. This is why it makes sense to be on all Google platforms which is the most important search engine (representing 95% of the market share on mobile). By doing so, you will find yourself in all the stages of the “customer journey” (awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty) of your prospects.
Overall, a local campaign therefore enables to achieve business goals by maximizing visits to your store.
3. How do Google Local Campaigns work?
Google Local Campaigns are very simple to set up. When creating a campaign, simply indicate that the objective of the campaign is “promotions and store visits”. Then, give informations such as:
- The GMB listing of the point of sale (which will give all the information such as address, opening hours and telephone number)
- The budget for your campaign
- The text for your campaign
- Images for your campaign
- Videos for your campaign (if needed)
With its “machine learning” system, Google will optimize auctions, ad locations and ad combinations for your needs.
4. How to implement a Google Local Campaign?
The implementation of a local campaign is done via the Google Ads interface. It is quite simple to assemble one when all the resources for it are ready. Here is a list of resources that we recommend to prepare before building your campaign on Google Ads:
- A budget strategy to identify the daily budget you want for this campaign.
- A list of 5 different headlines for this one. These titles should attract attention. Google will analyze the one that brings the most results. Limit of 30 characters.
- A list of 5 different descriptions of your store. These descriptions must contain a maximum of 60 characters. You are advised to offer a description with a promotion. Once again, Google will analyze the one that brings the most results. Limit of 60 characters.
- A list of 5 CTAs or “Call to Action” that are small formulas that encourage people to visit the store (e.g., “Visit Now”, “Visit Today”, “Visit Us Safely”,…). Limit of 11 characters
- A logo for your brand. Image ratio of 1:1 with a minimum size of 116px x 116px. Maximum file size of 5Mb
- A set of images for the campaign. It is recommended to have about 20 photos for a single campaign. Image ratio of 1:1 (with a minimum size of 314px x 314px) or 1,91:1 (with a minimum size of 600px x 314px). Maximum file size of 5Mb.
- A set of videos of less than 20 seconds. It may take time to prepare videos but having at least one is always beneficial for your campaign.
To learn more, a Google article has been written on the subject.
Discover our Client Success Story
A case study was conducted to study the benefits of local Google campaigns
In the context of a collaboration with Färm, a network of organic cooperative stores, Mobilosoft proposed the construction of local advertising campaigns. This is in order to improve the digital visibility of the stores for the entire network. Thanks to a first local campaign dedicated to the promotion of the in-store action “galettes des rois”, the Färm network has achieved its objectives. Find out how this Google local campaigns helped our customer!
Discover our Client Success Story
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