Google’s Local Ads Tips for the Back-to-School Shopping Season

As the Covid is coming to wrap, the world is taking a much-needed vacation from computer screens and headsets. People have started to go out, resuming the daily proclivities that were unseasonably halted for about a year and a half as the vaccines are becoming available to everyone. Given this, children are likely to pick up their bags and return to school this fall. It means the back-to-school shopping harvest is upon the many retailers and here we are discussing a few ways Google can help you optimize and get the best out of your online shopping portals and in-store shopping experience.

According to Ipsos data commissioned by Google, more than half of North American back-to-school shoppers prefer to check in-store inventory online before visiting a store, and 48% out of these shopped locally at retailers that offer curbside pickup or contactless shipping. Retailers may take advantage of these consumer preferences by promoting their in-store inventory, pick-up choices, and locations.

Advertisements for products at stores

Retailers can use in-store product announcements to bring their actual physical stores online. Stores can use in-store product announcements to indicate if things are available for immediate curbside pickup or picked up later.

Get your local inventory online

Businesses that do not yet have an in-store inventory feed can use Google Pointy, a hardware device that connects to a point-of-sale barcode reader to extract its title, image and details in order to add it to your store’s profile on Google. For qualifying retailers in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland, Pointy is free until September 30 this year.

Local inventory ads

Retailers can bring their brick-and-mortar stores online with local inventory ads. Local inventory ads also enable stores to indicate whether products are available for immediate curbside pickup or pickup later.

Local promotions, which are available in beta to merchants participating in local inventory ads and promotions in Australia, France, Germany, the UK, Canada and the U.S., can also be used to show store-specific offers.

Make your store’s location be known

Ipsos data also tells us that 60% of back-to-school consumers want to do at least some of their shopping at a small business this year. Local campaigns can help businesses like yours take advantage of this by promoting their locations across Google Maps, Search, YouTube, Gmail, and the Google Display Network. Local campaigns measure and optimise specifically for store visits and local actions (calls and clicks to driving directions).

Optimize your website for both online and offline Shopping

Advertisers can use smart auction tactics available for Search and Shopping campaigns to integrate store visits to boost in-store and online sales.

Smart Bidding for store visits allows you to optimize for store visits, using the same bid strategies used for online sales.

Our Verdict

If not, the pandemic has taught us about the power the web holds over everything but reaffirmed our faith in it, without it, thousands of stores would have closed for good. As we with the rest of the world are recovering we have learnt a valuable lesson on how important it is to get online in today’s day and age. Getting your business online might just turn out to be the wonder you were looking for.