The largest instrument and equipment retailer in the Netherlands drove 20% more brick-and-mortar sales with online ads. Here's their story.
Bax Music is the largest musical instrument and equipment retailer in the Netherlands. In fact they offer equipment and instruments from over 1250+ brands. That’s a lot of clarinets.
Now, today’s consumers mostly shop online, right?
But then again, we’re talking about instruments and equipment. Musicians are each unique. They have different needs and styles. And they are exactly the kind of audience that benefits from brick-and-mortar locations. They want the option to visit a physical shop just to hold that instrument or to check out what’s available.
But in the age of online shopping, consumers kind of forget that brick-and-mortar is even an option. Think about all the specialty items you buy online. Where would you even find them in town? You might not have even considered looking at the shop around the corner.
This could have been a big bad problem for Bax Music. But instead of thinking solely in terms of “offline” and “online”, they were able to combine the two and build an awesome multichannel system using Google. Here’s what they did.
Bax Music's story
You probably already know Google Shopping, this allows businesses of all kinds to create ads and product listings that appear on Google. And it is, definitively, one of the most popular ways to reach shoppers no matter the region, industry, or audience type.
Bax Music was already using Google Shopping, and that drove traffic to their online shops. But if only there was some way to use those powerful, dynamic, targeting ads to get shoppers in-store.
There actually is--and it’s called Google Local Inventory ads, also known as LIAs. Bax Music used Google LIAs to take all of the amazing targeting and power of Google Shopping ads and flip it towards brick-and-mortar.
LIAs can target users within a certain area, like the blocks surrounding your store, and send ads directly to those folks who seem to be a good match for your in-store products.
So, when someone gets near a Bax Music store, and they seem to be a good match, they might get an ad that says: Hey! Did you know Bax Shop isn’t just online--it’s also right around the corner. Right there. You can walk right it.
So what happened?
Within one year of running LIAs, Bax Music recorded an increase of in-store revenue for all three of their brick-and-mortar locations in the Netherlands. That means all of the stores they advertised for drove more revenue.
- In the end, Bax achieved an average revenue uplift of 20.8%. That’s 20% higher than before, and it was achieved just by connecting online and offline. Well done.
The fact is, online shopping is growing fast--but some 90% of shopping still happens in-store. And for businesses like Bax Music, it’s important not to think in silos, but to think multichannel. Because that is the future.
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