Summertime is an intense period for Online-to-Offline (O2O) shopping activity. As consumers are on vacation, they have more time on their hands. They’ll probably spend much of it on social media, on their smartphone.
Those who are “on vacation”, also end up in places they don’t know, or know little about. They will therefore use their smartphones to find what they need nearest their current location.
Summer is ideal for launching location-based advertising campaigns. Imagine being able to follow your customers to their vacation spots and attracting new customers who are near your stores.
How? By creating location-based mobile advertising campaigns, with good targeting. These campaigns allow you to target the typical consumers (personas) you want to attract when they are near your stores.
Here are a few tips…
Carry out Google Ads campaigns in Google Maps
With its proximity ad format, Google Ads allows you to promote your store and encourage consumers to go there or call you directly.1
When a search is carried out near your business’s location, on Google Maps or Google search, an ad is displayed at the top of the results list. These are also distinguished by the colored Ad icon.
1. These announcements appear after setting up location extensions.
Advertise locally on Facebook
On Facebook the possibilities for creating ads are numerous.
First, three types of audiences are offered:
- Primary audience, to reach people based on their demographics, location, and/or area of interest.
- The personalized audience, to reach people with whom you are already in contact (contact lists, visitors to your website, followers, etc.).
- Similar Audience or Lookalike, to reach people who are similar to your existing customers.
Then, Facebook has 5 advertising formats: Photo, Carousel, Video, Slideshow, Canvas as well as other formats dedicated to specific objectives.
From an O2O perspective, creating a campaign on Facebook with the objective of Store Visits is ideal. This formula works for multi-location brands that have activated the Facebook Locations feature. Here, the ad you play will always include a call-to-action button (directions, call, message), a map, and a description of the nearest outlet. Campaigns with this objective offer full reporting from each location.
Advertise on Waze
Waze is a community navigation app that will allow you to strengthen your “Drive-to-Store” thanks to three advertising formats based on drivers’ locations:
- Search: Your ads are placed at the top of search results, along with your brand logo.*
- Pins: Wazers see on the map outlets that are on or near their route.
- Takeover: This is an ad unit displaying detailed information about your business. This format allows the automatic appearance or disappearance of offers, depending on whether the driver is stationary or not.
*A search bar for addresses, companies, contacts, etc. is present on the map at the top of the screen.
Images via Waze