Leverage your offline sales with online marketing campaigns

Do you have a physical store or a chain of outlets in your city and everyone is telling you to set up an online platform because it is the “in” thing to have a website? Well, it does make good business sense to adapt to the latest modes of marketing to stay on top of the competition. But we do understand you want more details on why you need to go for online marketing and how it can help improve your overall business.

Let’s take the example of a popular clothing store that had numerous outlets in various states. They decided to set up an online e-commerce portal and a mobile application to sell their clothes. To their surprise, they found increased sales not just on the online portals but also in their regular outlets. They also noticed an increase in the number of people visiting their stores. Well, could this be attributed to the online marketing campaign?

Any businessperson worth his/her salt knows that it is important to have solid numbers backing up results. So, they wanted to find out if the online platform was actually having an effect on their sales or was there any other hidden reason. So, do you want to find out how they actually identified if the digital activity was having a positive impact on their retail outlet’s sales?

They analysed the data obtained with store visits & store sales options available in Google AdWords. They then compared this data with the online activity to find out if there was any relationship between online activity and store visits/sales.

Store Visit Conversions

AdWords collates the data of the number of people who click your digital ads. These numbers are then compared with the number of people who later visit your store. While AdWords cannot tell you if the person who clicked the ad visited the store, it gives an approximate count of the clicks versus visits. This AdWords tool helps you match the number of store visits with the number of people who expressed interest in your product/service. You need to understand that the results are viable only if there is a minimum number of ad clicks and store visits.

What should you do?

• In order to get this data, you should first link Google My Business Account to AdWords account
• Ensure that at least 90% of your linked locations are verified in Google My Business
• Activate the location extensions option in your account

Store Sales Conversions

This tool on AdWords requires you to upload the offline transactions onto the platform manually. The tool then compares the uploaded data against the customer database or data in the loyalty program to get approximate data regarding search and shopping campaigns.

What should you do?

• Maintain all the data of your store in a customer relationship management (CRM) system for easy uploading
• Maintain a loyalty program to collect customer information
• Comply with store sales (direct upload) policies
• Regularly update offline transaction data to your AdWords account 

How did the digital activity transform to offline sales?

This clothing store used the two AdWords tools to find out how digital activity on their website and mobile apps helped bring in more visitors to their retail outlets. They found that customers would browse the website to check the latest styles, the cost, and deals available. The online followers would then go to the closest retail outlet and buy the garment in question. In many cases, salespersons even commented on how customers would show the outfit on their mobiles and ask the salespeople to show that piece to them. By creating a platform where prospective customers could see the clothes, this store increased their offline sales.

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