I’ve managed all types of paid search campaigns (Google Ads)… from eCommerce to Consumer Lead Gen, but I had never managed a campaign for a multi-location business before I joined Position².

Over the last few years, multi-location PPC has quickly become one of our “in-house specialties” that we offer our clients.

In this post, I’ll share some tips and tricks that I’ve learned over the last few years that’ll benefit those who are managing marketing efforts in a multi-location business.

Hours of Operation

Save your budget for when you have staff to answer the phone – be mindful and turn your campaigns off when your office is closed.

Call Tracking

Third-party call tracking is mandatory to measure results from phone calls. CallRail is one of our favorite providers of choice. It’s incredibly powerful, reasonably priced, and user-friendly in both setup/execution.

You’ll be tracking two types of calls: People who call your extensions right from the search results page and people who visit your site and then call from there. We recommend your business set up full source-to-close tracking where all inbound calls (and all form fills, if relevant) get recorded in your CRM and are tied to a unique GCLID tag.

These “leads” will be tracked through the funnel and data from each stage gets pushed back into Google Ads. When the leads “close”, those closes will also be pushed into Google. When your CRM shares data with Google, it trains the algorithm to find prospects that are more likely to become leads and closed sales.

We know that not every business is set up to do full source to close tracking, however, if your company can at least track all inbound leads and tie them to paid search it will generate an accurate cost per lead and the investment in a call-tracking solution will be justified.

Performance Max / Smart Campaigns

For each office location, we typically run unique Branded and Non-Branded Search Campaigns along with an office-specific Performance Max Campaign. We don’t recommend creating Performance Max Campaigns to cover multiple offices because it can lead to an increased likelihood of showing an inaccurate office location to a prospect. Office ads overlapping each other can happen but that is fairly normal and not a negative.

Display Campaigns

Although generating direct lead volume is never guaranteed, Google Display Network Traffic is affordable and if targeted aggressively within a small local area you can attain great brand recognition that will help generate interest from other marketing channels. We recommend that you allocate between 5-10% of each locale’s marketing budget for Google Ads on the Google Display Network.

Response time

During business hours, your prospective customers expect quick responses to their inquiries (or within a reasonable time during off-hours). Not responding promptly, could drive those prospects to choose a competitor. We’re recommending you set and commit to a service level agreement (SLA) for all inquiries – and ensure it’s executed in every communication/engagement. It will help prevent a loss of down-funnel revenue.

We hope you found these tips useful, we think Google Ads is an essential tool for keeping your multi-location businesses visible and profitable. Following these steps, will help your business will get more business.