Improve Your Online Presence and Measure Marketing Impact with Google My Business and Store Visits

With endless information available at our fingertips, we use multiple devices throughout the day to search for things to do, places to go, or things to buy. According to Google, there has been a 900%+ increase in “near me tonight/today” searches in the past two years, with 76% of local mobile searches for something nearby resulting in a same-day in-store visit and 26% of those visits resulting in a purchase. If you’re looking to drive more in-store traffic and sales, this shows how critical it is to reach local shoppers when and where they are researching online, while understanding what marketing initiatives are driving that local foot traffic.

With Google My Business and Store Visits, now available through Netsertive, Brands with multiple-locations are able to easily enhance their online presence to drive traffic to their physical locations. They will also gain visibility into what’s driving consumers physically in store through Netsertive’s Analytics Dashboard at the campaign and ad-group level.  

Google My Business: Enhance Your Online Presence and Drive More In-Store Traffic

Google My Business (GMB) is a tool to manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps, which includes business information such as name, location, hours, contact information, customer reviews, business photos, and more. For Brands who want to be found locally online it’s critical to keep updated, but verifying hundreds of business locations is tedious work.

We make it quick and painless to bulk-verify your GMB listings, saving you time and the headache of manually verifying each location via postcards and phone calls. As a Google My Business Featured Partner, we can claim and verify your GMB listings almost instantly – regardless of the number of your locations – so that your customers and prospects can easily find and connect with your business.

Store Visit Reporting: Measure Marketing Impact

Store Visits enables you to understand the impact Search, Display, and YouTube ads have on driving visits to your physical locations. With full visibility into what's working and what isn’t, you can reallocate budget and efforts towards those ad copies, keywords, and devices that generate the most traffic for your business. But there’s a caveat - taking advantage of Store Visits reporting requires that you meet several conditions, one of which is having a verified GMB account.

Using Google My Business and Store Visits together represents a powerful marketing attribution tool to improve your presence online and measure the impact of your marketing on in-store traffic. Read on to learn additional benefits provided by Google My Business and Store Visits.

Six benefits of utilizing Google My Business and Store Visits:

1. Build brand loyalty and trust

GMB profiles appear immediately when people search for businesses, allowing consumers to learn more or get in touch with one click. Responding to customer reviews, answering questions, or simply thanking a happy customer will show that you are invested in and care about your customers. Two out of three customers say having positive reviews was an important factor in selecting a business or store to purchase from (Ipsos, 2017).

2. Show up

According to Forrester research, by 2021 mobile devices are expected to influence $1.4 trillion in local sales. With “near me” searches more prevalent now than ever before, it’s critical to optimize your business listings to increase your digital presence in local searches. With a verified GMB profile, your business listing will appear on Google Search and Google Maps, which is a more effective way for consumers to locate businesses nearby. If, for example, you’re a local coffee shop and someone searches for “coffee shop near me”, your store location will pop up. All it takes is verifying your GMB listing - it’s that easy! Coffee fiends will able to see how close you are to their location, increasing the likelihood that they’ll stop by for a cup of joe.

3. Stand out

Customers compare Business Profiles on Google to make decisions. A current listing complete with useful information, open hours, and reviews is great. Take it a step further with fresh photos and a special offer or a promotion and your listing will surely stand out from the competition.

4. Measure Marketing Impact

90% of retail sales still happen in physical stores - not online (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019). For brands and businesses with physical locations, Google Store Visits represents a powerful marketing attribution tool to optimize your digital campaigns and measure the marketing impact to your stores. It will help you understand your return on investment (ROI) so you can make smarter, more informed advertising decisions. With full visibility into what's working and what isn’t, you can reallocate budget and efforts towards those ad copies, keywords, and devices that generate the most traffic for your business. But there’s a caveat - taking advantage of Store Visits reporting requires that you meet several conditions, one of which is having a verified GMB account.

Here’s what you need to qualify for Store Visits conversions:

• Have multiple physical store locations in eligible countries
• Receive thousands of ad clicks and viewable impressions
• Have sufficient store visits data
• Have a Google My Business account linked to your Google Ads account
• Create each of your store locations in your Google My Business account
• Have at least 90% of your linked locations verified in Google My Business
• Ensure location extensions are active in your account

Check out this quick video from Google to learn more about Store Visits.

5. Make it easier for customers to get in touch

GMB profiles provide plenty of opportunities for customers to engage with your business. They can easily access your website, call you with one click, submit a question, and even reserve a table or schedule an appointment directly through your listing.

6. Control your information

Have you searched for a business’s open hours before only to find, after you drove to the store, that the hours listed were incorrect? A GMB profile allows you to manage and control the information you share about your business, guaranteeing that customers will have access to accurate information.

The Power of Google My Business + Store Visits

A common challenge digital advertisers face is tying together online efforts with in-person purchases and interactions. Google My Business enables eligible businesses to receive store visits reporting, which helps tie advertising on Google directly to in-store visits. The data provides marketers with a better understanding of what drives store visits, allowing them to optimize their online marketing programs and allocate budget more effectively.

To capture store visit conversions, advertisers must have verified Google My Business accounts for each of their store locations and ensure that they’re linked to their Google Ads accounts. Additionally, location extensions must be active in Search, Display, and YouTube ads. Store visits are calculated based on aggregated, anonymized data from hundreds of millions of Google users who opt-in to share Location History, click on a Search or Display ad or watch a YouTube ad, and then visit a business location.

Best practices for store visit conversions include:

-       Segment store visits by device
-       Understand which products drive store conversions
-       Calculate the best location bid adjustments

When store visits and offline impact are captured and factored back into return on ad spend, the value of that spend increases dramatically - from 2X to well over 10X, according to Google data. Let us help you claim and verify your Google My Business listings so that you can start taking advantage of Store Visits and unlocking insights to drive better campaign performance.

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