How Local Businesses Get Found with Digital Advertising: 5 Industry Examples
In recent years, we have seen traditional advertising take the backseat for modern technology. Traditional media companies are now switching their direction and adopting digital, but why? Because there is an extremely large market interested in digital advertising.
Digital advertising spend is set to grow from $83 billion this year to $129+ billion by 2021.
WOW! That’s a lot of money. Statistics like this show us just how high the demand is for digital advertising solutions; and just how successful digital advertising can be in terms of acquiring new customers for local businesses. Digital advertising is becoming a necessary addition to every marketer’s toolkit!
So how do companies leverage digital advertising to acquire new customers, revenue and generate massive online engagement?
We have the answers (and examples) from businesses who have successfully harnessed the power of digital advertising with the help of our digital advertising team!
Our white label digital advertising team can get your clients stellar results under your brand!
Table of Contents
How Does Digital Advertising Help a Local Business?
5 Industry-Specific Digital Advertising Examples
Home Services (560% ROI)
Retail (1353% ROI)
Automotive (14.38% CTR)
Transportation (625% ROI)
Restaurant (4381% ROI)
What Makes a Good Digital Advertising Campaign?
How Does Digital Advertising Help a Local Business?
Digital advertising increases awareness—it's that simple. Digital advertising consists of a range of services, all of which work to promote a business online. Most advertising companies and marketing agencies in the digital realm offer a variety of services but are not able to offer a full-stack of digital solutions to local businesses. With the help of a digital advertising team, your business is able to expand their offerings and get your clients’ business in front of customers.
More and more businesses are increasing the amount that they spend on digital advertising, and experts like Jamie Turner suggest digital advertising on social platforms is well worth the spend.
The best part about digital advertising for local businesses is that they can see direct results. No business wants to invest in any form of advertising without a little ROI, right?
With traditional media channels, there is sometimes no way of tracking the effectiveness of an advertisement in terms of advanced data analytics. With digital advertising, companies like Google and Facebook allow users to access advanced analytics. This way the local business knows that their money is being well spent and that the digital advertisements are positively impacting their storefront.
When determining the success of an ad, the important factors will differ case by case. For the most part, the success of an ad lies in the indicators listed below.
ROI indicators/measures of a successful campaign:
- Impressions: the actual # of views on an advertisement
- Clicks: the actual # of direct clicks on the advertisement
- Engagements: Social & landing page clicks
- Results: In most cases, results come in the form of a phone call or a store visit.
Related Reading: ROI Analysis: Choosing Digital Advertising Metrics that Matter
The Best Place to Advertise
Through our team's extensive work in the digital advertising space, we have come to the same conclusion as pretty much every digital advertising company. The best place to spend money on digital advertising: 
Google & Facebook
With digital advertising, not only is a local business visible online, but they are visible to the right people online. Platforms like Facebook and Google allow for advanced targeting, which puts a local business in front of consumers who are more likely to convert into a sale.
Plus, Google and Facebook are set to rake in 63.1% of all digital ad spend in 2017!
Related Content: White Label Guide to Mastering Google and Facebook Advertising for Local Businesses
Why Google?
Reach: Google is the largest search network in the world, and consumers are using Google every single day to search for local businesses. Utilizing Google’s massive network capabilities, digital advertisers are able to find ideal prospects and get in front of users looking for their products/services.
In the age of digital, people are not looking at TV commercials or listening to radio ads to find a local business, they are searching for a service and then locating your business online.
With 3.5 Billion Google searches conducted every single day, customers are looking for local businesses and businesses should want to be on Google.
Flexibility: Google allows the local advertiser to spend whatever they want, whenever they want. With flexible options for ad spend, advertisers are able to test what works and what doesn’t work for a business. Spend a bit, wait to see how the campaign performs, and then reinvest in larger budgets for greater prospect reach.
Why Facebook?
Audience: The audience on Facebook includes 1.32 billion daily active users (DAUs) on average, at an increase of 17% year-over-year. As a local business, you simply cannot ignore the fact that Facebook is likely an intersection in which you can find prospective customers. If the daily average users stat doesn’t have you convinced then let’s talk about how often social media is being used. The average person spends nearly 35 minutes everyday JUST on Facebook, according to a recent study by Mediakix.
If there is one thing to take away it is that the audience on Facebook is MASSIVE, and they are on Facebook a LOT.
Targeting: Facebook Ad targeting is a marketer’s dream. Facebook allows the ability to focus on users so microscopically that you can basically become a bit of a digital stalker (in a good way?). Target users by their interests, behaviours, age, gender, location, and really anything that their Facebook profile may reveal about them including job title.
5 Industry-Specific Digital Advertising Examples: Vendasta Case Studies
Vendasta’s digital advertising team works with agencies across the globe to create thousands of digital advertising campaigns across the web for local businesses. The team is comprised of talented individuals that each have a deep understanding of the various components of successful digital advertising. Our team works with clients in every industry—including businesses of all shapes and sizes. No matter the local business, digital advertising can be utilized.
Don’t believe us? We will not only show you proof of performance, but we will ensure that a local business is getting the most out of their advertising spend.
Here is a short list of digital advertising examples from local businesses that we have helped in the past few weeks.
*Note: The names of the local businesses are either changed or removed to protect
the local businesses’ privacy and anonymity.*
Digital Advertising Example: Home Services Industry
Meet our first local business, a chimney sweeping company located in Washington. If you know the state of Washington then you know that it rains ALL the time. With an annual precipitation of 38.15 inches, people seek the comfort of their cozy homes dry and by their warm fireplaces.
This company works hard to ensure Washingtonians are warm and dry by the comfort of their fire, especially during the wet seasons. With state-of-the-art chimney sweeping tools and a motivated workforce, this local business was ready to attract a larger client base with the help of digital marketing services.
- Objective: Increase phone inquiries for chimney sweeping services.
- Target Audience: Cities, regions, and radius around the business location. Major centers including Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Kent, and Everett.
- Measures of Success: 15 or more chimney sweeping jobs generated per month.
After the first month of the campaign’s run, we recognize a healthy movement. Ad views are doubling to total over 6,200 impressions which also doubled the number of clicks to over 90. At a CTR of 1.48%, including 5 Adwords conversions, the company has seen 14 total phone calls. This particular company values each job at $200, and we see positive ROI in the campaign’s infancy.
As you can see, the local business has allocated nearly $475 for digital advertising spend (to date). For a business that used to rely heavily on traditional media, they are seeing the benefits of switching to digital. This local business is able to better analyze and track their advertising spend using digital ad platforms such as Facebook and Google as opposed to traditional mediums.
Digital Advertising Example: Retail Industry
Gals N’ Gowns* is a bridal boutique in the US that boasts a vast selection of brides and bridesmaids dresses. This particular location is part of a larger bridal franchise, yet under local ownership, faces many of the same struggles as other small local businesses. Gals N’ Gowns* makes customer service and satisfaction a core focus, and the reviews reflect these values. In order to amplify their positive brand image online and attract more eager brides, Gals N’ Gowns hired our services to run a multi-channel digital advertising campaign.
- Objective: Increase social media traffic, website traffic, and encourage customers to book appointments with Gals N’ Gowns*.
- Target Audience: Women - Audience aimed to find women who are either brides to be or bridesmaids in the process of wedding planning.
- Measures of Success: Increased sales through a digital ad spend. A visible correlation between appointment booking increases and increased digital advertising.
After nearly 30 days of the digital advertising campaign, Gals N’ Gowns* saw a 90% higher CTR than the industry average for Google AdWords. Display advertising also saw a positive return, with 30% of their ads performing at over double the rate of the retail industry average. Overall, this local business saw a predicted campaign revenue of over $14,000 in just 30 days!
To get all of the statistics and an in-depth look at this campaign, download our detailed case study of Gals N’ Gowns success story!
Digital Advertising Example: Automotive Industry
Our first case focuses on a car dealership located in Mississippi. The dealership offers both new and used vehicles and competes in an industry with many local competitors. No matter how good the dealership was in terms of customer service, it still lacked an online presence. The dealership looked for new ways to acquire customers and eventually turned to digital advertising solutions to drive more customer visits and phone calls.
- Objective: To increase customer visits and phone calls to the dealership. By utilizing both Google Advertising.
- Target Audience: Male and Female audience, aged 21 and up. Interested in targeting competitor locations as well as people in Mississippi and surrounding areas. Essentially, targeting people who drive vehicles - which is a very broad audience.
- Measures of Success: Clicks on the company website and visits to the physical location.
With a budget set in place, Vendasta worked with the dealership to gather information including past customer buying habits, demographics, and known consumer behavior.
After the first month of the campaign, Vendasta saw positive results, including a list of trending keywords that consumers looked for when searching for automotive dealers.
The campaign results above are from Google AdWords reporting for this client. As you can see, Google AdWords advertising brought in a ton of impressions and an extremely positive CTR for this dealer. With a CTR of 5.61%, this dealership was well above what Google considers a healthy ad performance of 2%. For this particular dealer, the most successful keyword combination was “Toyota Pre Owned Vehicles” bringing in a staggering 14.38% CTR.
For many dealers, no matter the type of vehicles they sell, pre-owned seems to be a trending search. If an automotive dealer sells primarily Ford vehicles, they should be bidding on AdWords “Ford Pre Owned Vehicles.” We see high competition among automotive dealers, so being able to have digital advertisements that perform at a higher rate than the competition is extremely critical.
Digital Advertising Example: Transportation Industry
Next, we introduce a local moving company from Connecticut. This company is focused on both local moves and long-distance relocation. Their passion for community involvement and friendly customer service has long been a pillar for success. With the decreased use of traditional media, the company was looking for a forward-thinking approach to marketing. This is where Vendasta intervened and helped this company kickstart their digital advertising.
- Objective: Drive customer phone calls and website visits.
- Target Audience: Residents of Connecticut
- Measures of Success: # of qualified sales leads calling or visiting the business who look to book a moving date.
Between a mixture of display advertising, search advertising, and Facebook advertising our team was able to deliver results FAST!
After the first month of the campaign, our digital advertising team was already seeing a positive return. The ad views went from 40,000 to over 90,000, generating over 420 ad clicks. This traffic and exposure ultimately lead to over 80 engaged prospective clients amounting to 23 total phone calls to the business (in just a month!).
Note: The results above are from both Google and Facebook advertising
Note: The results above are from both Google and Facebook advertisingAs you can see, the local business has allocated $1,300 for digital advertising spend (to date) and the results shown are from both Facebook and Google. Typically, with success like this (625% ROI) we encourage the local business to spend more on digital advertising as they will see paralleling profits. ROI is different for every business, in this case, a move/relocation is considered to be $500 in value to the client, therefore, the ROI calculation is on the basis of this metric.
Digital Advertising Example: Restaurant Industry
This example features a little Mexican restaurant in the heart of Texas, complete with delicious food and an authentic atmosphere. Café Mexicana*, in their own words, aims to be “a restaurant that feels like a vacation.” Mexican cafe by day, and Latin dance club by night, this local business strives to offer a unique, dynamic dining and entertainment experience. Vendasta looked to help this client with their digital advertising, and not long after the business began to see a positive return on digital advertising spend.
- Objective: Real life customers - driving people and traffic to the physical location to dine. The ad campaign was to emphasize the local business’s featured $8 lunch special.
- Target Audience: Targeting competitor establishments by fencing their locations and looking specifically for people in the local business’s area/surrounding area.
- Measures of Success: # of customers who go to the physical location and attribute digital advertising as the motivator.
Our digital advertising efforts for Café Mexicana blew past the guaranteed impression amount of 100,000, and the campaign gained over 157,000 impressions in one month. It also achieved so much more including a 4381% ROI for the business!
To get all of the statistics and an in-depth look at this campaign, download our detailed case study of Cafe Mexicana’s success story!
What Makes a Good Digital Advertising Campaign?
Don’t just spend money on digital advertising because I said it is important! Make sure that you understand the fundamentals, the appropriate platforms, and how to advertise effectively through various means of digital advertising. Before I let you give a digital advertising platform an unlimited spend and run your client's’ advertising budget dry, try reading the following suggestions.
Or better yet, contact Vendasta and setup digital advertising services so that our experts can handle digital advertising for you while you watch us deliver results!
Digital Advertising Tip 1) Nail your ad extensions
Shoppers are turning to search engines to find the items they want to buy, and they’re looking for your business clients store details. 66% of online shoppers want to find the location of the nearest store with a wanted item, and 63% want even more details about the store like hours and phone number. Thankfully, your search network ads for retail clients can have handy extensions like Call Extensions and Location Extensions to provide the consumer with just what they need. Making engagements and generating new business has never been so easy!
Digital Advertising Tip 2) Pick the right keywords
More than simply picking keywords with a high volume, you’ll want to pick keywords that are relevant to both your business client’s services and the promotion their campaign is based on. That way, the ads are displaying for highly-relevant searches, and are more likely to gain clicks and conversions. Picking keywords that are relevant to the business, yet not to the specific campaign, will simply waste your advertising budget as the consumers are looking for more specific results.
Digital Advertising Tip 3) Don’t skimp on the photography
When it comes to advertising campaigns for retail businesses, imagery is everything. Consumers will want to knowwhat the clothes look like before coming in to visit the store location, so make gorgeous photography a priority when establishing a campaign. Make use of the display network’s image capabilities to gain the best conversion results from your images and copy.
Conclusion
Digital advertising is a must-have for local businesses, and you should be the company that provides them with that service. To get started, read through our resources on all things local advertising, and start selling today!