13+ Tips to Get More Local Customers With Targeted Google Ads

If you’ve ever thought that brick-and-mortar retail stores were out of business, you’re wrong!

According to eMarketer research, 94% of retail revenue generation comes from physical stores.

Why? Well, consumers stated that they’d prefer to touch goods and go out with friends to have a nice shopping experience.

Amazing right? If you’re still not convinced, another research (I love numbers) showed that 85% of shoppers prefer to go to physical stores because they get to feel and touch the products they want to purchase.

Now, with that said, here are 13+ tips you can utilize to pull in more local buyers with Google Ads:

1. Increase Bids for Mobile Devices

A Comcast research revealed that 78% of local-mobile searches ended up in an offline store.

Furthermore, another survey by Ipsos stated that 88% of Smartphone owners and 84% of tablet users carry out local searches with the motive of finding out opening hours, address, product availability, and directions of local businesses.

This is proof that you need to be targeting mobile users with your Google Ads campaign. In order to do this, you need to create and set up your campaign, then select the devices icon.

Next, simply set the mobile devices adjustment bid to 300% +; then increase your maximum CPC bid to X3 of what would get you the position #1 to #3 spot on mobile.

For instance, if getting the 1 to 3 on mobile devices requires a $45 bid, set your CPC to 15$ (15 × 3 = 45).

This will drive strong mobile traffic to your ad.

2. Retarget Local Customers

Here’s all you need to do for retargeting:

Go to your Google Ads Audience manager and utilize the customer match feature.

With the customer match feature, you can upload email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses either using hashed or unhashed data.

By using this method, you can effortlessly retarget customers in your data books.

Your ad will appear to them as they conduct searches on the web. It might also interest you to know that retargeting can generate a 147% conversion rate.

3. Initiate Instant Communication With Click-to-Text Message Extension

The brand Kook saw a 60% CTR rate difference by simply introducing the click-to-text message extension in their Google Ads campaign.

Previously, they used only the click to call extension as shown in the screenshot below:

However, not every customer wants to make a call, some prefer to simply text. This made them add the click to text extension that saw such a massive increase.

That’s exactly, what this extension is for. Customers who simply want to find out information about your business quickly through text messages. All they have to do is click the message icon beside or under the ad and their text app launches.

4. Focus on Your Customer’s End Goal

There’s no better way to engage your target audience other than to meet their end goal. For example, the ad below seeks to target customers dealing with acne problems. It simply tells the web visitor what they’re already passing through.

Sadly, that’s not effective at all. Your customer already knows their problem, what they need is a solution.

So what do you do? Let your ad headline be the solution to your customer’s problem.

Hence, in our example above, the ad should read something like “Eliminate acne in a week”.

In the end, it’s all about solving their problems and giving them a reason to visit your local store.

5. Run Ads During Store Open-Hours and High-Traffic Hours

In order to run Google ads at the right time, you use the ad schedule bid adjustment. To use this feature, simply visit Google Ads, click on campaign, click on date range, then click on Segment.

In the segment menu, choose how you want to monitor your data either by week, day or month.

When it opens up, you have to analyze your data and increase your bids on hours of high conversions and low CPC. You can also check for days of the week where you get high traffic and increase the bids there.

After this, ensure you lower your bids on days or hours with high CPC and low conversions. When you’re done it should look just like the screenshot below:

6. Trigger Loss Aversion with Countdown Timers

The brand Venture Harbour experienced a 300% sales increase simply by leveraging loss aversion via urgency and scarcity in its campaign. That’s powerful!

You can also do the same with your Google Ads campaign countdown timer. This feature literally creates a loss aversion with your customers by putting a countdown in days and hours to the end of your special limited offers.

7. Get Super Specific With Your Offer

Amy Hebdon ran two ads having the same offers but with different levels of specificity. The first one had vague specificity, while the second one was very specific.

Well, your guess is as good as mine; the second one did far better. It pulled in 88% more clicks than the first one and had a 99% confidence rate. That’s some amazing results — simply by making the offer a little more specific.

Hence, it’s important your potential customers know exactly what you’re offering.

8. Target Local Keywords and Firm Locations

Google Trends allows you to find out what keywords people in a particular location are frequently searching for.

Also, with Google trends you can not only add regional terms to your keywords like “Car Tires in North Dakota” but it eliminates the region when delivering the ad to the customer based on the prevalent keyword of the search area.

Hence, the target audience would simply see “Car Tires”

Here’s a screenshot of the most prevalent areas of a particular keyword:

With such information, you’ll know whether a keyword is profitable in your location or not.

Now when it comes to a firm location, there’s a simple hack and it’s changing from the Google global 800 number to a local number.

Research has shown that this change alone, can double your ad conversion rate.

So, ensure that your company’s location is not perceived to be far away to your customers due to the wrong number.

9. Set up “Local Search Ads” and Leverage Bid Modifiers

As an advertiser on Google ads, you can now use the local extension to display your business location.

For instance, if someone in San Francisco is looking for where to purchase contact lens like the image below, the results immediately show them a store close to them that offers such.

And in this example it’s Walgreens.

The user can now click-through to see more details about your business. All you need to do to get into local searches on Google maps like the example above is to visit Google My Business and claim or add your business to it.

After doing this, you need to modify your bids percentage to increase in locations where you’re getting the most conversions from and decrease it in areas where the conversions are low.

10. Utilize Online Data to Personalize Call Experiences

According to a recent study, consumers are predicted to call businesses 162 billion times in 2019.

However, you need to embrace personalization to see any meaningful results regardless of the number of calls coming in and this can be done with all the untapped online data you’ve got.

Hence, henceforth, when a customer visits your website and you get personal information about them, when next they call, instead of simply giving them a “Hello” give them a “Hello Bernard, would you like your regular coffee?”.

This will increase the personalization effect of your customers call experiences.

11. Analyze Conversations for Actionable Insights

The global fresh canned vegetable brand Bonduelle was able to turn its social media interactions into profitable insights that helped boost customers’ experiences — by simply personalizing their offers.

That’s one of the potential benefits you get when you analyze conversations about your brand and turn them into steps to enhance the quality of your offer.

12. Design and Use a Hyper-Local Landing Page

Did you know that 33% of searches made on Google are based on location?

Interesting right? Well, you can use that to your advantage by creating Hyper-Local landing pages for each location of your business especially if you have numerous branches.

For example, the brand, Citywide Law has a drop-down menu on its main website that shows all their locations and each location has a specific landing page from the main website.

Also, ensure that these local landing pages have been optimized with local keywords and searches, to ensure maximum results.

13. Add Negative Keywords to Filter out Non-Location Keywords

Since your goal is to drive local buyers to your physical store, it’d be counterproductive to waste money on clicks from distant locations. This is where negative keywords come in.

Negative keywords will notify/instruct Google Ads not to show your ad to searches coming from those particular keywords.

To get started, simply set your negative keywords to be phrases or broad terms that have nothing to do with the keywords trending in your location. To do this, open up the keyword tab:

Next, open up the keyword tab and fill in the non-location keywords that you don’t want your ads to be shown for.

Conclusion

The benefits of using Google Ads to pull in more local foot traffic to your businesses is immense. However, you need to do it the right way.

To further simplify the process and help you improve your business in Google’s map pack, our San Diego Local SEO Company can help you. Get in touch today.