The future search is "Near Me"
How can Offline Retailers Benefit our of the New Trend "Location Based Searches"
Let me start with my personal experience, It was a Saturday and me along with my family members decided to stay at a nearby hotel to unwind ourselves over the weekend. It was a last minute plan and we decided to try swimming too at the hotel and except me, everyone in my family knew how to swim.
Obviously, I was going to try my hands at it but since I never swam I didn't have the accessories for the same. Now even though I knew the brand (Speedo in my case) from which I wanted to buy my swimming shorts and may have got a favorable discount deal if I would have ordered through online giants like Myntra but I didn’t have time. So my quick action was “Speedo store near me” and I got the store location which led to the purchase within a single day, which also proves Google Data
Screenshot for Location search for Speedo in Koramangala , Bangalore, India
As per Google mobile searches for “near me” have grown over 3 times in the past 2 years, and more than 75% of shoppers will visit a store when they have a requirement they want to fulfil immediately.
Source: Google Data, U.S., Jan.–June 2015 vs. Jan.–June 2017
What this means is that Retailers with physical stores have a massive opportunity to cater to the growing expectations of impatient customers. To effectively do this it’s important that retailers integrate their Search plus local strategy with Digital Strategy to ensure high intent shoppers are able to find what they need at the time when they are nearby and ready to shop.
Please Note: Your Local Search Strategy should also focus on the content being published in the regional languages as you will be surprised to know Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Tamil make up 80% of the current users.
*Data & Image Source Credits: Google, Single Interface
