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How to bring business to your store with Local inventory ads

You have an online store but you want to increase traffic to your physical stores, then Google Local Inventory Ads is for you. 

The program can help you to easily bring more visibility to your products and your stores to potential customers shopping near your points of sale.

Lately, the number of customers who choose to collect their orders in-store has significantly increased. Then, what better idea than to show nearby shoppers that your store offers what they are looking for and that they can also order online and pick up 5 minutes later in your shop. 

What is Google Local Inventory Ads?

The Local Inventory Ads (LIA) are Google Shopping Ads that are displayed when shopping do a local search on Google. This feature can be an effective way for retailers to drive in-store traffic as it allows merchants to showcase their products and store information to nearby shoppers.

How it works

When shoppers make a search on Google for products near them, a list of ads will display. If they click your ad or free listing showing your product, they are redirected to your local storefront. That page is hosted by Google and allows shoppers to check the inventory, get opening hours, find directions...

What are the advantages and disadvantages of LIAs for e-merchants?

Google Local Inventory Ads will certainly bring several benefits to you and your potential customers:

  • Shoppers: they'll quickly know that your store is nearby and that you have the products they’re looking for, at the moment they search on Google
  • Retailers: as LIAs appear at the top of the search results, you can easily capture customer’s attention by offering ready-to-ship products and so bring traffic to your store

Because LIAs must be updated regularly, the process required to configure and keep them up to date might be one of the only drawbacks.

Check how to automate the LIAs update with our Simple Google Shopping extension.

How to perfect your omnichannel strategy

Follow the below steps to set up your Local Inventory Ads and provide information about your business, stores, and products. 

Step 1: Set up your accounts

You will need 3 separate accounts to run LIAs:

Don't forget to connect information across these sources and link your Google My Business and Google Ads accounts to your Google Merchant Center account.

Step 2: Enable the Local Inventory Ads program

To be able to use Local Inventory Ads, you need to enable the program from your Merchant Center account.

Note that if you're from a European country, you need to verify your About page.

Step 3: Create, register, and submit feeds

Before starting advertising your products with Google Local Inventory Ads, you must:

  1. Create a primary feed: your primary feed is a list of all of the products that you sell with attributes that describe the products
  2. Create a local product inventory feed: your feed must include the following attributes for every product you sell in at least one store: id, store code, quantity, and price 
  3. Register and submit local feeds: the products feed must be submitted at least once a week, and the Local product inventory feed must be updated at least once a day

While creating your data feed, make sure to respect and meet Google’s Product data specifications.

Use our Simple Google Shopping extension to easily create and update your products and local product inventory feed.

Step 4: Request inventory verification

From your Merchant Center account, you can now request verification following 3 steps:

  1. Submit inventory verification contact: your inventory verification contact will work with Google to coordinate verification
  2. Request inventory verification: during this step, Google will ensure that the data provided in your feed matches your stores' inventory
  3. Complete inventory verification: finally, Google will review your submitted feeds (this could take up to 7 days) and schedule verification

Your products should then be eligible to run as Local Inventory Ads.

Step 5: Enable local inventory ads in your Shopping campaign

The last step but not the least is to enable ads for products sold in local stores from your Google Ads account. 

Once ads are enabled, shoppers will see your ads when making a search on Google for products near them.

See also

How to take full advantage of Google Shopping with your Magento store

How to make your Shopping ads stand out with Google Product Ratings

How to benefit from Google Customer Reviews to gain visibility on Shopping ads

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