Google’s Smart Campaigns for small businesses launched in 2018 as the first new advertising solution under the Google Ads—previously the Google AdWords Express—brand. In their rebrand, Google Ads wanted to level the playing field for small businesses to compete in a competitive area.
In the past few months, our paid advertising team has seen significant success with Smart Campaigns for our clients with a local focus, and we want to share some of those results with you. But let’s start with an overview of these campaigns and how they work.
You can create a campaign with the sole focus of driving business to a physical location. These campaigns use the power of keyword-level targeting, location, user intent, and how much you’re willing to spend to put your business in a top search position. These search results are primarily in Google Maps but can also be within the search engine results page.
If a user sees your ad in Google Maps, they have many options:
These options increase the likelihood that a new user will see your ad and make an immediate connection with your business.
There are several key elements to creating your campaign:
In late August, we launched a Smart Campaign for a local client in Cleveland that operates in a highly competitive healthcare industry. For the past 6 to 9 months, this client had been struggling with competition issues in their paid search marketing campaigns: Competitors were highly bidding on their brand, and general terms were in the low impression share.
We needed to combat these issues and lower their cost per lead. Our paid search marketing team decided to try a local Smart Campaign. Let’s break down the results of the campaign that launched on August 28, 2020, and ran for approximately 10 days.
Clicks: 43
Spend: $190
*Conversions: 23
**Map Actions: 95
Verified Calls: 8
New Visits: 83%
Cost Per Conversion: $8.28
Summary: This client had been seeing an average cost per conversion in Google Ads of $37.68. The Smart Campaign cost per lead is 78% lower than the account average—and is driving 83% new prospective clients to their business. In such a short time, this local campaign had an incredible impact on this business.
*Conversions for this client include Maps calls, Maps directions, contact form submissions, online scheduler submissions, and page visits.
**Map actions are the number of times that people saw your ad and then clicked on your company’s pin on Google Maps or got directions to your business.
We would recommend a Smart Campaign for any business that wants to compete within a specific geographic area or is struggling with high local competition and high ad spends in their paid search marketing. If you would like more information, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
