As you look to reopen your doors to customers, we want to support you. Here are some considerations and recommendations as you reconnect with your customers and relaunch your local marketing.
Assess your local market situation
- Define your reactivation timeline as you get updates from your local government or markets where you have locations.
- Reevaluate your customers’ needs and circumstances to align your messaging to what people need at this time as things may have shifted during COVID-19.
- Customize your campaigns by region considering different impacts state by state and city by city.
Communicate your latest business updates and changes
- Ensure your Business Profile on Google is updated to reflect the latest changes that affect your locations, including reopenings or updated hours.
- Add or edit attributes on your Business Profile on Google indicating if your location offers “in-store shopping, “store pickup,” or “curbside pickup.”
- Reconnect with customers by highlighting your open and newly reopened locations. Provide the information they need to plan their visit using solutions like Google Local campaigns. You can update your ads as your stores reopen to highlight in-store or curbside availability, dine-in and takeout service attributes if you operate a restaurant, delivery offerings, health and safety updates, special promotions, and important business changes on a store-by-store basis.
- Keep customers updated on what products are available near them whether they plan to shop in-store or pickup by leveraging local inventory ads. You can indicate if you offer curbside pickup, right in your local inventory ads. You can also promote products that may not be available in store immediately but will be within a few days through the new “Pickup later” option.
Keep customers informed on safety measures
- Your customers are looking for real-time updates on how your business is responding. Assure customers you’re taking important safety measures and you’re ready to meet their needs by communicating changes across your customer facing channels like your website.
- Post a COVID-19 update via your Business Profile on Google to inform customers of the changes you’re implementing like applying more stringent cleaning procedures, physical distancing guidelines, and updating training materials for employees. If you have a food, retail, or service business, you can also add health and safety attributes to let customers know about the safety measures you’ve put in place.
Stay flexible and use automation to adjust in real-time as conditions change
- As your stores reopen, Smart Bidding with store visits allows you to use anonymized and aggregated mobility data for your locations to optimize your Search and Shopping campaigns automatically. Your campaigns will remain optimized, flexible, and agile to dynamically shift as online and in-store traffic fluctuate.
Keep a pulse on the local landscape and changing demands
- Tools like Google Trends provide access to search insights to better understand changing consumer behavior in different regions.
- To learn more about what your customers are searching for across your Search and Shopping campaigns use retail category reporting.
- Stay on top of measurement across your active campaigns with store visits and sales reporting. Keep a pulse on how renewed foot traffic is leading to conversions as the environment evolves.
- Learn how other thought leaders are coping with similar business challenges on Think with Google and get industry-relevant tips from Google including for retail and restaurants.
Visit our COVID-19 hubs on Google for Retail and Google for Small Business for the latest tools and resources.
