How do I advertise my business on Google maps?

by | Oct 12, 2023 | GMB

Advertise my business on Google maps

We no more get lost on roads amid traffic right, well thanks to Google maps. At some point in your life, you might have used Google maps to find directions or locations. Google maps have reached a billion customers with its unique features like finding addresses, fetching traffic information, viewing photos, exploring nearby places, etc.

Now Google maps have come with the latest update, that is Google ads. Now with the introduction of Google ads, business owners can market their businesses easily. If you’re a location-based business such as a restaurant or retail store that relies on foot traffic to generate sales, then local search ads can significantly increase your potential customers overnight.

Here is everything you need to know about Google ads marketing.

Advertise my business on Google maps

What is Google Maps Advertising

The process of using the functionality of Google Maps to ensure your business is found easily is called Google Maps Marketing. This suits all types of business from smaller to larger scale but is more profitable for smaller scale business. Google Maps marketing includes visibility and positioning and if you use it strategically, it plays a prominent role in your business. If you aim at a higher rank in search, then you can enhance your business. The better you optimize your profile, the better your chances are for showing up in a Google Maps search for your business type in your area.

Also Read: Best Google Maps Marketing Company

How Google Maps Advertising Works

If you own a business then you can use Google maps to promote your business and focus on positioning. If you are looking for gift shops, then you can search’ gift shops nearby’ and you will get a list at a glance. If you can be on top of results then your visibility is more. Now, you might be wondering how I can list my business at the top. Here are your ads to help you.

Google maps ads are advertisements that market nearby places based on the searcher’s proximity. The ads encourage business profiles rather than websites or landing pages. Your list depends on your location. These ads advertising has fetched better results nearly 50% conversions than traditional search.

Mobile users tend to choose the first profile listed in the results. Hence If you use the ad and it is placed on the top, users tend to click on it. If your details meet the requirements then you can top the listing.

Why Advertise on Google Maps

Now, Google maps have fetched nearly 1.5 billion users hence it is one of the best platforms to promote your business. If you are still wondering why I should go for Google maps advertising, here are a few benefits in your basket that encourage you to use this platform.

  1. Increased Visibility: If you wish to reach the target audience then you need to be wiser while placing ads. Google maps ads are a great option to sell your products and services to local customers. These ads put your brand in front of customers hence your visibility increases. These ads provide you with tricks to reach customers based on their location and matching their needs. By investing in Google ads, you can improve search performance, leads conversion, and supports website clicks. You can create a positive impact on your business.
  2. Increases credibility: By providing customized service based on location, you can build trust with your customers. The user only has to be in the area for the ad to be triggered. This is especially useful for restaurants and local stores that mainly rely on foot traffic to drive sales.
  3. Improve customer experience: Google ads promote customers to visit stores by providing different experiences based on their needs and proximity. Remote and hybrid workers who like to step out of the house at midday, marketers have more incentive to run local search ads to reach these on-the-go customers at critical moments of influence. Searches help shoppers to shop save time and improve customer experience.

Understanding  targeted audience

Finding the right audience will help you to enhance the visibility of your audience. We can include various factors in understanding our audience like age, income, education, location, gender, etc. We can categorize the factors into the following types-

  • Demographic Information: Demographic information includes socio-economic data that describes the user. Attributes such as age, education, income, geographic location, and gender come under this category. Based on this content, you can analyze your target audience. For example, you can categorize a young audience (18-24), both male and female in an urban area with a population greater than 50000.
  • Customer Interests and Behaviors: This category includes attributes that let us know customers’ passions and hobbies, and what they would like to read about.  The attributes can be cars, books, movies, sports, magazines, etc. By understanding your customer’s interests and passions, you can map strategy to engage your audience and deliver according to their needs. You can offer sports magazines, music albums, etc.
  • Location-Based Data: Understanding what customers need in a specific location will help you to improve customer experience and provide customized services and products.

Advertise my business on Google maps

Setting up Your Google My Business Profile

Refer to the previous Blog

Understanding Google Maps Ads

Running Google ads on maps is a great way to improve your customer experience, increase visibility, etc. It is the best way to outshine the competition in today’s market scenario. Google encourages users to take action by promoting various features of Google Maps. The top 3 results will be displayed on Google Maps based on a query in your mobile app.

Advertise my business on Google maps

Types of Google ads:

  • Location-Based ads- In your mobile device, when users type in their query regarding your business, it will fetch results based on users’ location and ratings. If you wish your business to be listed in the top 3 packs, Google offers map paid ads that help you to be at the top in the listings. This will help you to get better exposure to your business. You will appear on top on both desktop and mobile devices.
  • Promoted pins: When users are browsing on mobile apps, promoted pins are the paid ads in the listing that helps you to top the listing. The unique aspect is bolded pins promoted on the results. When users are searching for something, the pins grab the great attention of users which will enhance your business in your service area. It will increase visibility and in-store visits. The pin style and color depending on the type of your business.
  • Branded promotion ads: Here business ads on your business pages will let users know the special offers and discounts you are offering. These promotions can include various strategies like Flat discounts, Buy 1 get 2 free, discounts, etc on your products and services.  In this scenario, the pin is listed as standard Google my business tore, but when user clicks on it, they will see promotional offers.

To make your business effective, you can use all three features. You can customize your ads based on your business type.

How does Google map ad work?

Before we get started with setting up a Google maps ad, first we have to ensure the Google map business profile is up and running. This will help you to get a lot of exposure. Ensure you have an active GMB profile with all business details.

Check whether you have Google ads account, if you don’t then create one. The important thing is to use the same email address for both the GMB profile and the Google Ads account.

Have some search ads running as the local search ads require taking advantage of location extensions to create ads on Google maps.

Adding location extension:

After running search ads to your website, click on the left-hand menu and navigate to ‘Ads and extensions’. Now you have a range of ads extension. In the next step, it’s time to add a location extension to link your Google business profile. Go for the extensions menu, and click on the blue button at the top with a plus sign to begin adding a new local extension. To confirm location extension, you need to select Google business profile.

Target location setup: Once you are done with adding location extension, now it is time to set up a specific location target for your ads. On the left side menu, click on locations and then click the blue circle at the top. Now select active search campaign, and then enter the area you wish to target. I recommend you target the postal code the same as your business area and use radius targeting to target people. You can adjust to nearby areas as well. By doing this, people who are close to your business address will have a much higher chance of seeing you on Google Maps.

Creating a Google Maps Ad Campaign

The campaign provides you the cope to promote your products and services on a huge network of Google results, listings, etc. Based on your strategy and advertisement goal, you can choose an ad campaign type.  To advertise on Google maps, we can create an ad campaign. Here is the entire process of setting up an ad campaign.

Step 1: Choose a goal and advertising objective

While creating a new campaign, the first step is choosing the advertising objective of your campaign.  Here is how you can choose the objective of your campaign.

  • Sign into your Google ads account. Ensure your Google ads account and Google business profile have the same mail id.
  • On the left side, click on campaigns.
  • Click on add button ‘+’ to add a new campaign
  • Now choose the advertising objective of your campaign
  • Scroll down, then choose your conversion goals and click Continue
  • To add more goals click on Add another goal
  • To remove goals, you can click on the delete button.
  • Now, select your campaign type and click on continue

Advertise my business on Google maps

Advertise my business on Google maps
Advertise my business on Google maps

Step 2: Now it is time to choose your campaign type. It determines the place where customers find ads. To finish your campaign setup, follow the below steps-

  • Choose a campaign type, the campaign types will be listed based on the goal you choose.
  • You can choose campaign subtypes as well if there are any. Then click continue.
  • Now, you will be moved to a new page to select settings where you can choose ad type, ad groups, and create ads.

Search: Text ads on search results

Display: images on the website

Shopping: product listing on Google

Videos: videos on YouTube

Discovery: ads within feeds

Smart: simplify your campaigns

Choosing Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience

Based on your audience’s interest and passion, you can choose ads for them. You can understand them depending on how they have interacted with your business or on what they are searching actively. You can find audience segments using audience search. You can find suggestions and ideas in the search tab. You can find the right audience for your brand, product, and services.

Setting Up Audience Targeting

The ability to show your ads online to people with specific interests can help you reach the right customers. You can do this in Google Ads by adding audience segments to your ad groups. Now we will understand how to add an ads segment to your ads campaign.

  • Sign into your Google ads account to add your audience.
  • On the left-hand side menu, choose the audience
  • Click on edit audience segments in the audience section
  • To select an ad campaign group, click on select ad group and chose ad group from the list. You can also search campaign of your wish.
  • Select the audience segment that you want your audience to know.
  • Click on the check box to add a segment and then click on save.

Selecting Your Ad Budget

Understanding Ad Budget

In your Google ads, you can choose the budget for each campaign. You can choose based on your advertisement goals and on the budget you wish to spend every day. You can change your budget whenever you wish. You can take recommendations to form Google ads as well related to the budget.

Setting Up a Reasonable Ad Budget

To set your ad budget, you can follow the below steps-

  • Sign into your Google ads account
  • Choose campaigns and click on them to edit
  • Click on the ‘Budget’ column and click on the pencil icon to edit
  • Enter your new daily budget
  • Click on the save button to confirm your daily budget

We recommend you check your account every day to understand leftover dollars. You can understand the impressions and clicks you have collected.

Creating Ad Content

Writing Compelling Ad Copy

If you wish to succeed in your business, you need to market your products better. To promote your product effectively, the secret tip is how you deliver your message and deliver at the right moment. Now, we will understand how to write compelling ad copy.

  • Craft a message that focuses on users’ benefits, this will help you to connect with users better and get a faster response.
  • Use a call to action in your message, and avoid general language as it disconnects you from the audience.
  • Create ads that fit across devices and represent your brand. The audience will connect with emotions better.
  • Keep your headings simple and short, lengthy headlines will be boring for customers.
  • Use attractive styles and colors to attract audiences.

Adding Relevant Images or Videos

Audiences connect more with visuals than words. Hence add images and videos in your ads to build relevance.

  • Keep an attractive logo that conveys your description better.
  • Add images and videos to convey your message, and add relevant images.
  • Images and videos help you to build credibility with customers.

Choosing the Right Ad Format

When choosing the ad, choosing the right format plays a vital role. Your ad should fit the website and represent your brand better.

  1. Insert keywords in your ad to rank high on listings. If you rank high you can reach a wide range of customers.
  2. Choose the size and width of ads to fit the page better.
  3. Be mindful of the length of the headlines.
  4. Customize the length of the ad
Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide to Utilizing the Top Google Maps Marketing Tools

Optimizing Your Google Maps Ad Campaign

Measuring Ad Performance

Once you have created and it is running, it is important to understand how well it is doing in the market. To begin with, you can start with tracking details like clicks and impressions. Keeping in mind what you wish to attend with these goals will help you to analyze the statistics better and stay focused. To track performance you can follow the below simple steps:

  • Sign into your Google ads account
  • On the left side menu, click on “All campaigns”.
  • Click on either ‘ads & assets’ or ‘keywords’ to get the complete description of the data.

I recommend you keep track of your ads by monitoring clicks and impressions to get comfortable with tracking your ads on network search. You can find these details in ‘ column’ and you can modify them by enabling the columns according to your needs.

Testing and Refining Your Ad Campaign

Different marketing techniques have different testing styles, you can go for landing page testing, keywords testing, etc. here is the popular technique A/B Testing-

Advertise my business on Google maps

Understanding A/B Testing

Before testing has the goals in your mind. If you have headlines, images, and videos, then you can go for an Ad variation test. Here the goal is to check the dynamics of the campaign.

To do this, follow the below steps-

Advertise my business on Google maps

  • Sign in to your Google ads account; go for the ‘All campaign’ tab.
  • Select the campaign you wish to test if you want to check multiple campaigns, and then select individually.
  • After selecting the campaign, on the left side click on ‘Ads and Extensions’.
  • Choose ads options, click on the ‘+’ option to create a new ad
  • Select ‘ad variation’, now you’ll have to select the Campaign and Ad type, and then hit continue.
  • Now you have to look for the text you want to replace with a variation. You can do this using the ‘find and replace’ option.
  • Match it up with the correct part of the Ad using the right-hand sidebar’s “In” function
  • In replace a section, put the variation text.
  • Give a name to your test and select run time
  • Select experiment tip to 50% to balance impressions
  • Once you are done, click on create variation. You can find analytics of A/B testing here.
  • Best Practices for Google Maps Advertising

Optimizing your campaign will help you to achieve more success in your Google map ad marketing. Here are a few techniques to achieve it.

Advertise my business on Google maps

Choosing the Right Keywords

Keywords will help you to rank your business in the top 3 ranks, then you can reach a large number of customers. The keyword will help you to build relevance with your customers. Choosing the right keywords is important and you can do it with help of a keyword planner. 

  • Choose the words that describe your product and services better.
  • You can research the keywords your competitors are using.
  • You can estimate the performance of keywords in the planner tool

Incorporate your keywords in your GBM profile

Use the keywords in your GBM profile to enhance the rankings in listings. Here are a few tips-

  • Use keywords in your product description
  • Use keywords in headlines
  • Use keywords on the landing pages of your website

Advertise my business on Google maps

Encouraging Customer Reviews

Google reviews play a vital role as most of the customers decide based on reviews given by other customers. Online businesses will fetch results based on customer reviews. Your customer’s reviews will fetch traffic and boost your rankings to the top 3 ranks.

Let me simplify it for you:

 More, better reviews = Higher search rankings, more leads and sales, and increased revenue.

Your online presence depends on customer reviews.

Encouraging Customer Reviews for Your Business

You can encourage your customers to improve your business by following the below tips-

  1. Ask your customers directly the feedback via an email or face-to-face interaction
  2. Add a review link to your website
  3. Follow up on your customers
  4. Use a call to action that encourages your customers to give feedback
  5. Give good customer service

Advertise my business on Google maps

Conclusion

Google maps’ marketing is one of the effective techniques to improve your business. You can achieve customer credibility, improve visibility and enhance customer experience. Providing services matching needs, and requirements based on location will help you to build trust with customers.

Advertise my business on Google maps