How Pricewatch are beating local supermarkets to the top spot on Google

Pricewatch is a family-owned and operated independent group of forecourts located across Sussex in the UK, and trades under the Power and Esso brands. Each location has a convenience store and off-license selling a large selection of groceries to the local community

“NearSt has enhanced our Google presence in a way we could never have done on our own.” 

- Claire Goddard, Marketing Manager 

Problem

At the start of 2023 Claire Goddard, the Marketing Manager at Pricewatch, was looking for a way to solve three challenges: 

1. Help a growing number of local customers who are searching online see that their local Pricewatch store has what they need.
2. Get these online shoppers to visit the stores, without the need for large operational changes to head office or in-store teams.
3. Develop a better understanding of what this growing audience of local shoppers searching online are looking for. 

With over 15 years experience at Pricewatch, Claire understands the business as well as anyone. In her marketing role she’s overseen a variety of campaigns, marketing solution implementations and business transformations.

“Some of our branches have been trading for several years and some local people weren’t aware of our store”

- Claire Goddard, Marketing Manager

Solution

As with many marketing managers, deploying new technology to reach today's customers is integral, yet, integrating a new technology with existing systems is typically a headache. It often interferes with existing set-ups and takes weeks to months of building and testing. When Claire began conversations with NearSt, she immediately saw that it was different. There was zero technical work for anyone in the Pricewatch team to unlock the solutions Claire was looking to use.

“NearSt has been a seamless transition”

- Claire Goddard, Marketing Manager

Claire was able to continue running her stores as normal while unlocking access to a suite of new local customer engagement channels on Google and Facebook. Thanks to NearSt’s simple direct integration with the existing in-store EDGEPoS Point of Sale system, in just four days Claire was able to enhance the existing inventory data in their system and display the full product range of each store online.

Read on to see how Claire used NearSt to resolve the first of her three challenges, and the results she saw:

1. Help a growing number of local customers who are searching online see that their local Pricewatch store has what they need.

• Example: Google Maps

Claire knew local shoppers were increasingly going online to search for products and places. 55% of customers want to check if a product is in stock before visiting a store. With stores located across Sussex, Claire also knew that her stores had the potential to attract visitors, tourists and families on their way to visit relatives in the area. The problem was, how do potential local customers or those passing through, know a Pricewatch store was near to them and stocked the products they were searching for. 

“Some of our branches have been trading for several years and some local people weren’t aware of our store…We wanted a professional digital shopfront on Google, Facebook and our website and we couldn’t achieve this quickly or easily ourselves.”

- Claire Goddard, Marketing Manager

Pricewatch are now surfacing their products across Google Search, Maps, Images, Shopping and Lens via the connection to NearSt. Meaning Pricewatch stores are now showing local shoppers they stock the products being searched for in a nearby store.

Results

In the first quarter of 2023, Pricewatch saw a +22% increase in clicks on ‘Directions’ within their Google Business Profiles - a strong indicator of local shopper intent on store visits.

They are now attracting more online shoppers into their physical stores by providing relevant and convenient product information for local shoppers searching online and creating seamless calls-to-action, bringing shoppers into the store. 

Claire can see Pricewatch stores are also out-ranking local competitors such as Waitrose and Tesco in online search results with NearSt’s Local Visibility Report tool (see below). As Google is populated with live data about exactly what each store stocks in real-time, it can recommend Pricewatch at the top of local searches above competitors who do not show their in-store inventory online.

Business Results Comparison (above) explained - ARP: Average Rank Position across data points where the business is found in the top 20 results. ATRP: Average Total Rank Position across all data points searched. SoLV: Share of Local Voice is the percentage of data points where the business ranks in the top three positions.

“NearSt’ has made it possible for us to reach more people. It’s been amazing to see the Impressions and how many people we’ve reached - it’s been very impressive. Even if that person doesn’t come in to buy that product, they’ve still seen and now know our brand.”

- Claire Goddard, Marketing Manager

To find out how Pricewatch solved: 

2. Getting these online shoppers to visit the stores, without the need for large operational changes to head office or in-store teams.

3. Develop a better understanding of what this growing audience of local shoppers searching online are looking for.