Boost the visibility of your points of sale with local ads

The “local ads” and the “local campaigns” are extremely powerful advertising formats for brand networks. Indeed, this format allows à physical stores to promote their products or services in a geographic area around the ’brand. The magic of this is that ’an advertisement will appear on digital platforms at the best moment: when a prospect à nearby is looking for a brand of your type or a service/product you offer.

In this article, discover:

1. What is a local ad
2. Roles around local ads
3. Local ads tools
4. Mistakes to avoid during local campaigns
5. The indicators à follow for a good local ads campaign

1. What is a local ad

A local ad consists of digitally promoting your store in a geographical area around it. The system ensures that the most important information (name, address, opening hours, images, etc.) about your brand is automatically displayed on the digital platforms of potential customers in the vicinity.

The goal is to attract the customer to the point of sale. This strategy is called “Web-to-store” and consists of optimizing the online visibility of its points of sale on the biggest media to encourage store visits (for more information, see our article on the subject). To do this, brands must create local pages for each of their physical stores on Facebook and Google, for example. With these pages, it is then possible to create advertising campaigns linked to them.

A local ad is très useful to enable reaching potential customers because it increases online visibility of the point(s) of sale. Reaching new customers is généralement complicated. C’est why it is wise to be present on all major digital platforms like Facebook and Google. C’est by being at this point present that l’on ensures that a prospect will automatically associate the brand name with a specific product or service.

A local ad campaign therefore allows overall to achieve business objectives by maximizing visits to your store.

2. Roles around local ads

It is important to mention that the brand networks are composed of distinct levels: the headquarters, which represents the overall name of the brand and the local, which represents the set of physical stores bearing the brand name. These two entities both obviously have roles in the implementation of local campaigns.

• The siège has the rôle of monitoring l’ensemble advertising campaigns postées by the local. It must ensure that l’ensemble campaigns remain cohérent and correspond à l’image of l’enseigne. To do this, it is conseillé to the siège to make à disposition a library of pre-formatted publicités that the points of sale can easily use to launch a campaign. The siège can also have the rôle of reporting the campaigns auprès the points of sale.
• The local has the role of publishing local advertising campaigns for all interesting communications about their stores. A store can, for example, communicate during promotions, new products, events in store or collaborations. The local must ensure that all its communications align with the brand image it represents. Additionally, it must make sure that this communication does not overlap with that of another point of sale in the same network.

3. Local ads tools

There are several search engines and platforms that allow you to create local ads like Google, Facebook, Microsoft Bing and others… The most relevant tools by their user volume for retail chains are: 

• Google: 3 Google products will be used in the implementation of a local campaign: Google Search, Google Maps and Google Display. These tools will ensure directing the prospect to the Google Maps interface and the listing Google Business Profile (GMB) of the point of sale. This in order to provide the most information to encourage in‑store visits. These tools also allow adjusting bids based on the consumer’s distance from the point of sale. The essential in these tools is to have a GMB listing as complete and up‑to‑date as possible. For more information, consult our article “The benefits of local Google campaigns”

• Facebook: Facebook is an extremely powerful tool for creating local campaigns. Indeed, this platform offers the ability to create ads in different formats but also with a strong audience targeting precision. Dû à the nature of the platform, Facebook has réussi à récolter a very large amount of data d’utilisateurs. This allows targeting l’audience very precisely. L’outil is generally very practical for businesses that know the profile of their clients. For more d’information, see our article “What are the advantages of Facebook ads for a network of stores?”

4. Mistakes to avoid when running local ads campaigns

Dû à the separation of roles around local campaigns, it is sometimes difficult to manage the entire communications. Indeed, the more the number of stores increases, the more one must communicate between entities to avoid “stepping on each other”. The risk is that the headquarters communicates a general campaign and it competes with the campaign of a point of sale. We talk about “cannibalization” of campaigns.

The phenomenon is multiplying for companies having a separation between their national headquarters and their regional headquarters. In addition to the campaigns of the points of sale and the regional headquarters, it will also be necessary to take into account those launched by the national headquarters.

In the event of cannibalization, the point of sale will lose money because the local campaign is ineffective. But not only! The cost of publishing the campaign will also increase because the price of bids for ad placements will do the same due to the strong competition linked to the headquarters campaign set up in parallel. The cost of publishing the campaign will also increase if at the same time the headquarters and the local are in competition for bids on the same keywords and ad placements.

To avoid this situation, several things need to be done:

• Make sure d’have a good communication between the siège(s) and the local. First préalable, it is necessary to définir the messages that will be portés by each. The création d’un communication calendar for these différents messages must then be être créé to allow good synchronization between entités.
• Use geolocation variables of the different platforms to create “trade areas”. It is possible in the platforms to exclude geographic zones where the campaign will therefore not be communicated. The campaigns will therefore be mutually exclusive of each other.

5. The indicators to track for a successful local campaign

For each campaign, it is obviously important to measure its results to understand the impact of the actions and work on continuous improvement. 

There are basic indicators:

• Impressions: indicates the number of times the ad appears on a page for a specific keyword.
• Clicks: indicates the number of times the ad was clicked.
• CPC or “cost per click”: indicates the average cost per click on a local ad. Platforms offer CPC automation to optimize this cost. For example, there is the option on Google to set CPC to “enhanced” mode.
• CTR or “click through rate”: indicates the percentage of people who saw the ad compared to the number of clicks on it.
• CPM or “cost per mille” or “cost per thousand”: simply indicates the average cost for 1000 impressions.

Regarding the spécialisés indicators for points of sale, the tools are différents for each platform. For Google there is the possibilité to use Store Visit and Store Sales which are particularly useful tools for reporting of stratégy “o2o” or “online to offline” (for more d’information, see our article “What is O2O traffic?”). Regarding Facebook, the reporting of campaigns with the stratégy “point‑of‑sale traffic” will give the l’entire set of intéresting figures for a physical point of sale. 

It is suggested to experiment with your campaigns. Indeed, the format, visuals, budget and other variables will have a significant impact on the results. In addition, everything depends on the objective of the campaign. Experimentation will identify what works best for your network of brands. 

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