Summer is an intense period for Web-to-Store activity. Consumers are on holiday, so they have time on their hands and will probably spend a chunk of this time on social media using their smartphones. Being “on holiday” usually involves visiting places they don’t know very well. So they’re going to use their smartphones to find the things they need near their current location.
It’s therefore the ideal time to launch local digital advertising campaigns. Basically, you’ll be following your customers to their holiday destinations and attracting new customers near your points of sale. But how?
Creating “geolocation-based” or local digital advertising is a good option. With correct targeting, this type of campaign can be aimed at the types of consumers you would like to attract when they are near your points of sale. Here are a few tips:
Run Adwords campaigns in Google Maps
With its local digital advertising format, Adwords promotes your points of sale and encourages consumers to go there or to give you a call.1
In practical terms, when a search via Google Maps or Google Search is conducted near your point of sale, an advert is displayed at the top of the search results, indicated by the coloured Ad icon.
1 These adverts are displayed after location area codes have been configured.
Advertise locally on Facebook
On Facebook, there are many opportunities to create adverts.
First of all, there are three types of audiences:
- Main audience, to reach people based on their demographic data, location, interests..
- Custom audience, to reach people with whom you’re already in contact (contact lists, visitors to your website..)
- Similar or lookalike audience, to reach people who are similar to your consumers.
Then, Facebook has 5 advertising formats: Photo, Carousel, Video, Slideshow, and Canvas, as well as other formats designed for specific objectives.
From a Web-to-Store standpoint, the creation of a campaign on Facebook with the Store visits objective is ideal. This approach works for retailers with multiple points of sale that have enabled the Google Places functionality. In this case, the advert you post will always include a call-to-action button (display directions, call, send a message), a map and a description of the nearest point of sale. Campaigns with this objective offer full reporting for each point of sale.
Waze is a community-based navigation app that helps you strengthen your “Drive-to-Store” performance thanks to three advertising formats based on drivers’ positions:
- Search: your adverts are placed at the top of the search results, accompanied by your brand logo.2
- Pins: Wazers see a map with the points of sale along or close to their route.
- Takeover: an advertising block displaying detailed info about your businesses. This format automatically displays or removes offers, depending on whether the driver has stopped or not.
2 A search bar (addresses, business, contacts..) is displayed on the map at the top of the screen.
Image via Waze
Purchase online advertising space
To increase your local profile, you can also run geolocation-based adverts on national or regional media sites using Real-Time Bidding or Proxistore.
Learn more about Geolocalised Ads and drive more Web-to-Store traffic!
