Published on February 14th, 2019 | by Bibhuranjan

How To Use Google PPC Adverts To Drive More Foot Traffic

Living in the digital era where consumers are turning to ecommerce shopping, you would expect physical stores to be shutting their doors , but in fact, this is not the case. The National Retail Federation reported that physical retail shops had a net increase in revenue of over 6000 store openings between 2017 and 2018.

Even with the continuing trend of online shopping, retail stores are still thriving. There are still so many advantages to visiting physical shops over online shopping. These are some of the main advantages of physical stores:

Customers can look and feel the items that they want to buy, something that is just not possible online.
Customers can sometimes negotiate the prices when they are inside a store, this cannot be done online.
Customers don’t have to worry about their private information being leaked because physical stores don’t require all their personal information and credit card or banking details when making a purchase.
It’s far easier return items to a physical store than a retail shop.

What is trending at the moment is ‘Research online, purchase offline’ (ROPO). Consumers have now have the ability to research products and services online and to find the best possible prices, but then they purchase the item from a physical store instead of online.

This way they get the best deals but don’t have to wait for the product to be delivered and don’t have to pay delivery fees.

While having an e-commerce site or store is very important, being able to drive foot traffic to your physical store has is equally important.

Google AdWords (Google ads) has developed new innovations to help with this which you can learn completing a digital marketing course.

Location ad extension

If most of your sales are still made in your physical store, then it’s very important to include the physical address of the store in your search adverts. Google Ads allows you to do this with a location ad extension which shows your store’s address within the ad.

Customers are a lot more at ease and a lot more trusting when buying from a business that feels ‘real’ and tangible. Just visit the Google ‘My Business’ homepage to enable this feature. Google has even made location extensions and store visit measurement available on YouTube.

Promotion extension

Google AdWords has also made it possible for you to increase local foot traffic by implementing promotions in your online advertising campaigns. The promotion ad extension allows you to display your store’s current promotions within the ad.

Using Google’s promotion extensions in your ads can drive awareness to your promotions. Creating more awareness of your in-store promotions will help you drive more traffic to your store.

Google AdWords also gives you the option to choose what device you’d prefer your ads to show on. Running these promotions will also increase your CTR. (Click through rate)

Click-to-text message extension

Another great way to drive foot traffic to your physical store is by offering instant SMS communication with potential customers. A click-to-message extension is another link that Google Ad’s offers that you can incorporate in your ads that connect customers to your business by text message.

Your customers can easily book appointments and contact you by clicking on the link which will take them to their messaging app so that they can text for an appointment.

Optimise your ads during trading hours and high-traffic hours

Showing your ads at relevant times (such as during trading hours) can be a lot more meaningful for customers.

By using the Google AdWords feature of ad scheduling, you can set which days of the week and time you want to run your ads on.

Use geo-targeting ads for specific locations

Geo-targeting is an effective way of identifying your ideal customer’s location depending on their IP, WiFi or GPS data.

This feature also allows you to record consumer behaviors based on their location. With geo-targeting you will have the option to run different promotional campaigns within a specific area.

Conclusion

Being able to offer customers the best of both worlds – both online and offline – has become so important for businesses in today’s era. Brands can no longer afford to only focus their attention on one or the other because it is very likely that they will be missing out on sales if they do.

Google AdWords has developed all these new features to help businesses drive more foot traffic through more effective digital advertising.

To learn more about online advertising or digital marketing in general. Be sure to visit the Digital School of Marketing page to have a look the variety of digital marketing courses that they have available. All courses are accredited internationally ensuring that your education and career prospects are taken well into consideration.

Tags: boost foot traffic, boost traffic, digital marketing, google ads, Google PPC Adverts, PPC

About the Author

Bibhuranjan Editorial Officer, technofaq.org I'm an avid tech enthusiast at heart. I like to mug up on new and exciting developments on science and tech and have a deep love for PC gaming. Other hobbies include writing blog posts, music and DIY projects.