According to Google, 50% of mobile users and 34% of tablet and desktop users are most likely to visit a store after conducting a local search online. Now imagine that you are an auto dealership or a restaurant or an advertising agency managing SEM campaigns for them. How can you prove that the potential customers who clicked on your ads actually came to test drive a car or have dinner at your business?
To empower advertisers such as auto dealerships and restaurants with more ways to track conversions, Google introduced store visits in 2014. At that time, this type of offline conversion was only available to a few advertisers. Recently, store visit conversions were rolled out to a wider group of businesses, including auto dealerships, retail stores, hotels, and restaurants.
As a Premier Google Partner, Aronson Advertising has first hand access to Google’s new functionality and beta tests. Our team has been able to track thousands of store visits and we are excited to see even more clients take advantage of this new type of offline conversion.
Let us take a closer look at store visits and answer key questions paid search advertisers or their clients might have about this new type of conversion.
What are store visit conversions?
Google is now able to identify potential customers who clicked ads and then visited a business with a very high accuracy. The data is based on aggregated statistics, and Google uses modeled numbers to calculate store visits. According to the Google support team, store visit statistics are only released once a 95% confidence level is achieved.
So how does Google know whether a person visited an auto dealership or restaurant after interacting with one of their ads? There are different technologies involved, including Google Earth and Google Maps street view data, mapping of coordinates of businesses, Google My Business listings, GPS, Wi-Fi signals, Google query data, and store visit behaviors. Google uses all these tools, in combination with Google AdWords data, to determine if a potential customer clicked on an ad then visited the business.
Is any account eligible to track store visits?
The Google team emphasizes that store visit conversions are only available to a small group of paid search advertisers. In theory, the bigger the account is and the more historical data it has, the better chance it has to have store visits data.
There are additional requirements of course. However, the most important are as follows:
- The business must have a physical location or locations.
- Each business location should have its own Google My Business account verified and linked to a Google AdWords account.
- Location extensions must be active. Aronson Advertising utilizes location extensions among others for most of our clients.
- The Google AdWords account must receive thousands of clicks (Google decided to keep it that broad) and many store visits.
Can an advertiser request store visits conversions be added to his account?
According to Google, no. Once an account becomes eligible, store visits will automatically appear among other conversions being tracked for that advertiser.
How many store visits should an advertiser expect?
The number of store visit conversions depends on the account size, the types of campaigns it is running, budget, how well the account is optimized, and seasonality trends among other criteria.
Below are some examples of store visits that we were able to track for our clients in December. Please note that the below represent store visits that Google was able to track with a 95% confidence.
Example #1: A Honda dealership in the Midwest – our client since 2015
- Search clicks received in December – 3,309
- Store visits tracked – 356
- Result: 10.76% of clicks converted to store visits
Example #2: A Toyota dealership in the Midwest – our client since 2017
- Search clicks received in December – 2,333
- Store visits tracked – 166
- Result: 7.12% of clicks converted to store visits
Example #3: A Chevrolet dealership in the Midwest – our client since 2016
- Search clicks received in December – 3,026
- Store visits tracked – 229
- Result: 7.57% of clicks converted to store visits
Why are store visit conversions so important?
The ability to track store visit conversions brings paid search campaigns to the next level. Almost any type of business can benefit from having such data. However, store visits become even more valuable for auto dealerships. As we know, people do not buy cars online, they rarely fill out forms on the website, and often prefer to stop by a dealership without even calling first. In such situations, store visit conversion data provides advertisers with an additional assurance that their paid search campaigns actually work and clicks convert to actual leads.
Let Aronson Drive Your Foot Traffic
You’ve seen what our team of Google AdWords and Google Analytics certified professionals was able to achieve for three of our clients. Let us show what we can do for your business and empower your Google AdWords account with store visit conversions. Get in touch with us through our contact form to let our team conduct an audit of your paid search campaigns. We will make sure that all the criteria for eligibility are met and your account is able to collect store visit conversions.
