【A must See for Store Business owners in Taiwan】The Power of Google Map Ad

Hello, I’m Leo Sato (@slamdunk772), the CEO of applemint, a digital marketing agency in Taiwan!

When we open Google Map, we nowadays see an ad at the top. The official name of this type of ad is called “Local Search Ads,” and it’s mainly for people who run stores. If you are a store owner and you have never tried this ad before, I strongly suggest you try it.

We started this local Ads back in December of 2020 for some of our customers who run store businesses in Taiwan. The result was astonishing,

it had a tremendous impact on attracting customers.

It had a huge impact on our business, so I’d like to share with you in this blog some of the results we got from this local search advertising.

I think this blog will be very useful for those who are running a store business in Taiwan!

Prerequisites for Local Search Advertising

First of all, I’d like to talk about some of the conditions necessary to do this local search advertising.

Requirements for Local Search Ads

• 1. Open a Google Ads account
• 2. Have your own website
• 3. Create a Youtube video
• 4. Prepare your store’s images
• 5. Set up Google My Business and 6. Link it with Google Ads

First, you need to open a Google Ads account. Next, you need to have a website of some kind, where people can click on your ads. If you don’t have a website, you can use Facebook (in theory, it’s OK).

You will also need Google My Business and to connect that My Business to your Google Ads account.

Lastly, you will need to have a video uploaded to Youtube. In other words, you need a Youtube video. The reason why you need to have a Youtube video is because you can advertise on Youtube as well.

Here are some of the main places to advertise

As you can see, your ad will be posted in many different places. This is what local search advertising is. Now, you might be thinking, “Well, if it’s posted in so many places, it must be pretty expensive!”

Don’t worry, you can set your own budget. If you want to, you can even do it for 1,000 NTD a month.

Most people give up not because they don’t have the money to start, but because they can’t upload Youtube videos. I mean Youtube videos are tedious to make…

The result of local search advertising

So, let’s get down to business. What’s great about this type of advertising is the amount of exposure (impression). You can get your ad exposed in many places on. By the way, Google ads are pay per click so you do not get charged until the ad is clicked.

So, to see how much exposure you get, please see the following figures:

Cost	Amount of ad exposure
10,192 NTD (app.365USD)	7,376,628 times

What do you think of 7.3 million ad impressions? Don’t you think it’s a ridiculous number? I mean, it’s a lot of exposure.

You may be wondering, “Now that I know the number of impression is huge, what about the results?”

As a result of this local search advertising, one of our customers who run 15 stores in Taiwan saw a 2.4-fold increase in the number of phone reservations made to the store. However, this increase is based on what I saw from the ad management screen, so I think the actual increase may be about 1.5 times. Nonetheless, it contributed to acquiring customers.

Points to keep in mind when using Google map advertising

If you are running a store business, you can’t find any reason not to try local search ads, but of course there are disadvantages and cautions. I’d like to give you the proper cautions.

Things to keep in mind in local search advertising

You can’t control it.
Once it’s set up, there are not many ways to optimize it.
Cut corners-Youtube videos are counterproductive.
The service you are advertising must be a good one.

First of all, let me tell you that this advertising is completely automated, so you have no control over it. I often get asked by customers, “If I search for XXX in Google Maps, it will show up, right?”

The answer is always, “I don’t know”. Sometimes I get asked by store owners saying, “Leo, I saw our ad on Youtube, can you stop it?”. But if you want to do so, you would need to stop all local search ads.

Also, this is an ad that is completely left up to Google, so there is no way for us to tweak or optimize it.

Lastly, please make sure that the video you upload is one that makes your store or service look appealing. When I recommended local search advertising to someone the other day, I instructed him to shoot a Youtube video, but the video he uploaded later was the worst lol

The camera was shaky and the focus was not clear at all. It was super counterproductive. By the way, this person has not uploaded any more videos since then.

Anyway, please introduce your store from the consumer’s point of view in your video. Think about what kind of information would make you want to go to that store if you were the customer.

At applemint, we have the know-how and expertise as communication professionals to help you create the best video possible based on our past experience. So if you are interested, please contact us here.

In the end, no one does it :/

I’ve talked about how great local search ads is, but I’m not sure if anyone will do it after all this talk. haha

For example, if I’ve told this story to 10 people who run a store business in Taiwan in the past. 1-2 have taken it seriously and started taking action, 6 did nothing at all, and the remaining 1-2 thought about it and done nothing but research, and then came back to me about 6 months later to ask about the same thing.

That’s how it goes. In the end, everyone is doing reasonably well without doing anything, so although they are interested in attracting customers, they don’t want to pay extra money to do digital advertising. People are more afraid to lose something than gain and it’s called Prospect theory.

Also, the hurdle to uploading Youtube videos is quite high. It’s not just a matter of technology, it just takes a lot of time to make one. With a few Japanese companies, they have difficulty due to compliance issues. Some of them are not allowed to open a Youtube channel….

Even if you can break through the compliance barrier, it costs a lot of money to outsource the filming and editing the video, so people end up giving up.

In addition, if you ask an advertising agency to handle the linkage between Google ads and Google My Business and the actual setup, you will have to pay a fee. I have the impression that not many store owners are willing to go through these costs.

(It would be best if we could do it ourselves, but for some reason, no one wants to do it…)

In the end, many companies don’t do it, which may be one of the reasons why it is so effective. If you read this blog and are willing to pay some money to try it, please contact applemint. We’ll do our best to support you!

That’s all from Leo!