How To Show Ads On Google Maps (Step-by-Step Tutorial)

Okay, so how do you get your ads to show right here? Right. So I typed in carpet cleaning Fort Wayne and it's city I live in and you get these businesses right. So this is the, the map pack as it's called. Sometimes you'll see a sponsored listing here, but in this case I'm gonna hit more businesses and then boom, these two at the top, you can see the sponsored link right there. Right, right below their business names. So how do you actually get ads on the Google Map Pack? Well, there's actually some disinformation on this. In fact, it's something I used to think as well. It used to be thought of that you needed to have Search Partner Network enabled on your search campaign. That's not correct. So I'm actually going to just walk you through how you can get Google Map Pack ad exposure if you're a local service based business. Real quick, this is the actual Google Doc. I will have this in the description below, but here's the instructions. Enable location assets for your Google Ads account and I'm going to show you how to do that. Set up or update your business profile listing. I'm going to show you how to do that. By the way, if you don't have a my business profile, you're going to need that. In order for this to work. You must have that. If you don't, they have a little learn more button there that you can learn how to set that up. You must be using location targeting and bid by location. I'm going to show you how to do that. And then you must optimize your keywords. Basically use keywords in your campaign that relate to your location and what people are searching for locally. Uh, it's very simple. I'll talk about the, the keyword targeting there as well. But this will be in the description below. But that's it. So a lot of people, I'm hopping into a real account. A lot of this will be unfortunately blurred out to keep things confidential. But a lot of people think so this is a campaign here that you must have Search Partner Network turned on. So in this case this, this campaign actually does have include search partners. So this is turned on. A lot of people believed this is where Google Maps technically would live. That's not true. So if you had this turned off, Google Maps is part of just Search Network. It's not Search Partner Network. I used to believe this too. I don't. Sometimes disinformation is very easy in the Google Ad world. So you do not need Search Partners to show on the Google Maps. So just remember that that is a myth. A myth that I actually believed as well. Now what do you need to get on Google Maps? Well, you're going to need your my business profile linked to your Google Ads account. So we're going to go to Tools, we're going to go to Data Manager. This account already has it. So you can see it's connected right here. But all you would do is hit connect product up here and then you would literally just connect your Google business profile to the account. So, so that is now linking Google now knows your business information from your my business profile or your Google business profile listing. And then now it's linked to this Google Ads account then in the campaigns. Okay, so I'm going to go back to this campaign. I'm going to click into it. You're going to need to set up a location asset. So I have a full video on all assets. They used to be called ad extensions. So that'll be in the description below if you want to learn more about all the other ad assets. But all you need to focus on for Maps is this one called location. Right now Location asset only works if Google My business profile is linked to your Google Ads account. So that's why you start with linking that. Then all you do is come in here and you add it to the campaign. So because I've linked my Google, my business profile, boom, I just add that, I hit save and here you go. It's already starting to show. This can show by the way on text ads and this is what gets you on Google Map pack listings as well. So you must have this piece. It's not as simple as connecting your Google My business profile to the account, calling it a day. You have to actually connect the location asset to the campaign itself that you'll be targeting those keywords. So that would be done. We would just hit save. Now the campaign itself you must be targeting like. So this doesn't necessarily work if you're going to be targeting the United States. Right. But most of you watching this are going to be local service based businesses. Here you must be targeting usually local geotargeted area. So in this case this is around a county, Allen county, which is a part of Fort Wayne, Indiana. So here we've got nice local geotargeting already set up. So we're good there. Then simply all you must do and this is, you know, going back to the the sheet, optimize your keywords, use keywords in your campaigns that relate to your location and what people are searching for locally. This is pretty easy. It's what people are going to be searching for. You're a local service based business more than likely. This isn't rocket science. If you're a carpet cleaner, people are searching for carpet cleaning, near me carpet cleaning, whatever city you're in, right? So in this case Fort Wayne, obviously there'll be variations of that, some long term or long tail terms that you'll be adding. But same with whether you're a plumber or pest control or a roofer, doesn't matter. You want to be targeting some of those like geo targeted locations. The near me's plus your service and city. That is what is going to fire map packs. Now you can do some searches, right? And just see like does Google show map packs walla do some of those searches. But that is those, those type of searches that Google does put map pack listings up. That is the keywords you're going to want to be targeting. You're going to be wanting to be targeting those keywords anyways because they're going to perform the best for you. But those are what are going to fire for map packs. Now here's the problem with map pack ads. You have zero control over it, okay? So you, you can't tell Google you want to only show ads on map packs. That doesn't work. You can't show. And I keep saying map packs. It's, it's the map pack listings, right? So that's what I mean by that. If you're confused with my lingo here, what does that even mean? You can't tell Google though how often you want to show there. And you can't like decrease how often you show there either. So you actually have zero control of whether or not, whether or not you're showing. You just have to have the technical components that I just showed you set up correctly to give you the chance to show. Google is going to show you if it thinks you should get that spot or not based off of the auction. So you don't operate your campaign any differently. You're going to be bidding on keywords and showing ads. It's just Google can at times show you on, on that map pack listing. Now you can see if you go at the campaign level here you go to segment and then you go to click type. Okay? This will actually show you sort of what sort of interaction you're getting. So here we have driving directions and get location details. This data is a bit vague and so I don't use it a whole lot. But there is Some click type data here too that you can look at to make sure you are kind of getting some exposure on the map packs. Here's what I know if usually you're aggressive already, you're getting like high impression share on your campaigns and like you've got really well performing search campaigns already for your local geo targeted market that you're going after for your local service based business. You're you're usually going to get pretty good exposure on map on the maps but again you just have no control over that. You just have to have these technical components set up and that will give you the chance of showing there. Okay now you can also show ads on the Google Maps if you're utilizing a Performance Max campaign that is targeting a geo targeted area around a city similar to what I just showed you in this account. For that search campaign it was targeting Allen county which is around Fort Wayne Indiana. So if you're doing a city or location based targeting and you're utilizing a Performance Max campaign that can show on the maps as well. However you still have to have your Google My business profile linked and you still have to be using the location asset within the Performance Max campaign for that to work. Now I don't have a full video on Performance Max for local Legion yet, at least on the YouTube channel we do have a community called PPC Copilot. I do a weekly Q and A in here and then people ask questions and then I have like a lot of course material in here. Legion Accelerator, E Commerce Accelerator. I have a Performance Max course for E Commerce. We do Q&As, lots of stuff in here. Right. So by the way, if you want to upgrade some your Google Ads knowledge or you would like more access to me directly to ask me questions, then go check out PPC Copilot. They'll be in the description below. I do have though in our local Gin accelerator I have a full training already on how to show ads on Google Maps. But then I also have the Performance Max campaign for Legion. So here I actually do a full 30 minute training on performance Max campaign setups for lead generation. I probably will have a training on this on the YouTube channel at some point too. But if you want to go check that out now this is in our PPC Copilot community so go check it out. I wanted to bring this up because Performance Max will show on the map packs as well. So I just wanted to make sure you know I'm articulating that. However you have to do very specific things for Performance Max campaign to work correctly from what I've seen for lead generation, especially for local service based businesses. And so I would highly recommend not using Performance Max if you're a local service based business without going through that training first. Otherwise what we have found is just a lot of spam, a lot of junk. I do have if you go through the YouTube channel, I do have some Performance Max material and so some of that will be relevant to this. But I don't have anything specific yet to just the local based businesses, but I do have that inside of our PPC copilot community. So go check that out. Otherwise, stick to search campaigns, stick to the Google my business profile integration and the location asset and then proper keyword targeting in your campaigns and that will give you a shot of really showing up and dominating on the Google Maps.