The Update
Even though consumer trends are increasingly shifting towards online shopping, rising from 5.1% in 2007 to 13% in 2017, the majority of sales still take place offline, at 87% in 2017, according to the US Department of Commerce Statistics.
A recent Google study found that majority of consumers research products and brands online at home before visiting or considering a purchase offline. In response to the findings, Google Ads introduced the integration of store-visits following campaign clicks in its analytics. It measures those who have clicked on the ad and visited the store for a specific amount of time, using location history when enabled on a consumer’s phone.
For accuracy, conversion data excludes specific duration visits such as extraordinary long and consistent hours, who resemble employees, and it excludes very brief visits as people might surpass the store while being on the street. Also, the aggregation of data is protected by remaining anonymous and cannot be assigned to a specific search. However, it does show which campaigns and keywords are most effective or drive the in-store visits.
What This Means for Your Business
By being able to more accurately measure the impact of your ads to in-store traffic, marketers can earn more customers, value mobile marketing more optimally, and optimize for consumer behavior.
Businesses with physical stores should use these Google Ads ad features to measure the impact of online advertising activities in terms of in-store traffic, optimizing campaigns and keywords based on this conversion goal.
First, we advise businesses who own a physical store presence to enable this conversion goal setting and benefit from the additional data generated by Google to get more value and create a more coherent and effective customer journey.
Second, businesses can benefit from the data. We advise to map out the consumer journey and reach their customers at essential key moments of it.
Finally, we suggest creating Google My Business page to show local presence on Google Maps linking that with the location extension on Google Ads.
Interested in knowing more about Google Ads features? Do you want to fully enable your online advertising capabilities?
Contact us to learn more about our Media Buy services.
