Our customers often ask us the famous question, “How much should I budget for this?” Unfortunately, the short answer is not going to please you: whatever you can afford. The long answer? Find out in this article!

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Don't have a Google Ads account? Start small and budget between €2,000 and €4,000.

There's no need to aim for the moon right away, but you need to find the right balance and have enough budget to achieve interesting results over time. Our recommendation: start with a minimum test of 2,000 (4,000 allows you to access certain features that we'll talk about another time!).

What is the purpose of these 2 to 4k€?

The goal? To convince yourself of the relevance of this lever. For shopping centers: no doubt about it—we've already done it successfully. However, if your location has specific regional, geographical, access, or other characteristics, you need to test and calculate your ROI.

What do you need €2,000 to €4,000 for?

This launch budget allows you to:

• Launch your first local campaigns and see their impact on your brand awareness
• Validate the ROI on concrete actions (e.g., generating foot traffic, table reservations, gift card purchases, etc.) --> Contact us for ideas!)
• Discover information about your customers: which customers are you reaching? When? Where? How?

This is the best way to objectively assess your potential without wasting resources.

What you need to measure: conversions, not just clicks!

This puts us at odds with many marketing agencies, but the results speak for themselves, and we are ready to debate the issue with anyone who disagrees, backed up by data!

Why look at conversions and not clicks?
Because you are not an e-commerce site! Clicks don't make you money—except for gift cards and loyalty programs, we'll give you that—the ROI isn't good. Your goal isn't to generate visits to your website: you want to generate awareness and foot traffic to your center using your website. Nuance!
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Which Google Ads metrics should I track for my shopping center campaigns?

They are easy to understand—but not always easy to implement. You have a goal of driving foot traffic to the store:

• Foot traffic generated
• Table reservations
• Gift card purchases
• Loyalty program sign-ups

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Psst agencies, if you're reading this and don't want to set up the tracking mentioned here, get in touch! It'll be a chance to tell you about our partner program and (maybe) recommend you to our clients!

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You have a brand awareness goal: OK, we like

• ‍Impressions
• clicks
• CTR (quality of the keyword and campaign in relation to the user's search intent).

Let's requalify our statement: impressions, clicks, and CPM are not useless; they are useful if you want to develop your brand awareness, but they are not enough.

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And after the test? What is the annual budget?

Once the ROI has been validated, implement a continuous action plan:

• €1,000/month as a baseline
• + occasional peaks during busy periods: Christmas, sales, back-to-school, etc.

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💡 Expect to spend around €15,000/year for a sustainable and effective strategy, including €9,000 for the year (running) and €6,000 excl. tax for your peak periods. This is an affordable— because it is profitable—investment to maintain the visibility of your brands and boost traffic.

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What you want is ROI, right? So focus on real, measurable, actionable initiatives. If you're not sure which ones to choose, feel free to contact us via our website, and we'll offer you a free consultation!

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