4 Search Engine Marketing Techniques for Small Retail Businesses

Want to rank at the top of search engines? Sometimes, you need to pay to play. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the practice of running paid ads in search engines — namely, Google — to attract more online traffic and customers.

But as a small retail business owner, you might not have the funds or technical know-how to run expensive, complicated paid ads. That’s why it’s essential to optimize the budget you do have and implement tried-and-trusted strategies to get the best return on your ad spend.

In this guide, I share innovative and cost-effective techniques for more lucrative SEM campaigns, driving better results for your small retail business.

Related: Smart Tips for Doing Search Engine Marketing Right

1. Implement geo-specific targeting

The effectiveness of your SEM campaigns is largely dependent on targeting — whether your ads reach the right prospective customers in the right geographic area. Implementing geo-specific targeting allows you to focus your advertising efforts on people who are most likely to convert into real customers.

First, determine the locations you wish to target. These should be areas where your prospective customers are most likely to be. These may include certain neighborhoods, cities or regions, whether close to your physical store or in areas where you offer delivery services.

Next, log into your ads account and select the campaign you want to target geographically. In Google Ads, you can navigate to the “Settings” tab and view the “Locations” section. This is where you can add specific locations to target, such as by city name, ZIP code or radius to your store address.

Use the targeted locations as keywords in your ad copy. For example, if you are targeting Denver, Colorado, you might use terms like “Denver boutique” or “Women’s Clothing Downtown Denver” in your ad headline or description. Monitor your ad analytics to assess the number of clicks, calls or conversions generated by your targeted ads, then refine your strategy accordingly.

2. Reduce ad spend by adding negative keywords

Negative keywords are used to prevent your ads from appearing in the search results for terms that are irrelevant to your business. For example, if you own a small retail store that sells luxury home decor, you might add “DIY” or “budget” as negative keywords to avoid attracting bargain shoppers or DIY-ers.

To identify negative keywords, review past campaigns to see if any irrelevant keywords triggered your ads. Further, brainstorm any common terms that don’t align with your products or business.

Here’s how to add negative keywords to a Google Ad campaign:

1. Log in to your Google Ads account.

2. Choose the campaign or ad group where you want to add negative keywords.

3. In the left-hand menu, click “Keywords,” and then select “Negative Keywords.”

4. Click the “+” button to add new negative keywords. You can enter individual keywords or upload a list.

5. Once you’ve added the desired negative keywords, click “Save” to apply them to your campaign.

Negative keywords filter out low-intent or non-converting traffic. This leads to a higher conversion rate and better ROI.

Related: Struggling to Attract Local Customers to Your Business? Use These Digital Marketing Strategies to Increase Your Visibility.

3. Increase relevance with clustering and ad groups

In SEM, clustering and grouping involve organizing your keywords, ads and landing pages into groups based on similar themes, products or services. This ensures that your ads are very closely aligned with the interests (i.e., search queries) of your target audience. Clustering and grouping can reduce your ad costs, improve your ad Quality Score and boost conversion rates.

Start by identifying keywords that are closely related to each other. For example, if you own a dress boutique, you might create separate clusters for “formal dresses,” “casual dresses,” “summer dresses,” etc. Each cluster should contain keywords that are specific to that category.

Ad groups can then be used to house clusters of related keywords and the ads that target them. Using the same example as above, you might create separate ad groups for Dresses, Skirts or Formal Wear, respectively. For each ad group, you’ll write tailored ad copy that specifically addresses the keywords in that group.

Clustering ensures that your ads are matched with the most relevant search queries and the right types of customers, based on their interests. Grouping increases ad relevance, which can reduce your cost-per-click (CPC) and increase your ROI.

4. Increase online sales with Google Shopping ads

Google Shopping ads are unique ads that are created using the product data directly from your Google Merchant Center account. They display your products directly in search results, leading to more online sales, as well as local traffic and in-store sales.

Here’s how to set up Google Shopping ads:

1. Create a Google Merchant Center account. You will need to provide your business details, verify your website and set up tax and shipping information.

2. Set up your product feed. This involves adding detailed information about your products, including titles, descriptions, prices, images and availability.

3. Upload your product feed to Google Merchant Center. You can do this manually or through automated methods like scheduled fetches or API.

4. Link your Google Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts. In the Google Merchant Center, navigate to the “Account Linking” section.

5. Sign in to your Google Ads account and create a new campaign. Click on the “+ New Campaign” button, select “Sales” or “Leads” as your campaign goal, and then choose “Shopping” as the campaign type.

6. Create your ad groups, designate the products you want to promote, and update your campaign settings (campaign name, budget, bidding strategy, keywords, target locations, etc.)

Shopping ads can appear in the paid Google results, Google Play, Google Maps and the Shopping tab, allowing you to get discovered by more customers in more places!

Related: How to Strategically Generate Search Engine Traffic

With some creativity and refinement, you can generate more business for your small retail store with SEM. Adopt these innovative strategies to enhance visibility, optimize ad spend and drive more targeted traffic.