The request usually arrives in a single line: “promoting a new location, opening in a few weeks”. Behind it is a salon, a restaurant, a clinic, a gym or a shop that has signed the lease, is fitting out the premises and has a date by which people need to be coming through the door.
It is a different campaign from the usual ones. It has a known end, it addresses a small piece of the map and it sells nothing online. The aim is for the people who live, work or pass near the new address to find out that you exist and to have a reason to come in the first few days.
Promoting a new location: three stages around a single day
The plan starts from the opening date and works backwards. The budget is not split evenly across the days: most of it is concentrated in the days just before and just after, when the news really is news.
If the date moves (and with fit-outs it often does), we move the whole calendar. An ad announcing a door that is still closed costs you twice: the money and the first impression.
- The announcement: “opening soon”, with the address, the date and an image that makes the place recognisable.
- The opening days: the message becomes “we are open”, with the opening offer, the opening hours and the directions button.
- The first weeks: ads to people who responded to the announcement, with real photos from the premises and a prompt to book.
The radius around the address, drawn to fit local habits
How far we show the ad depends on what you sell. For a café, the audience is within walking distance and in the offices nearby. For a medical practice or a showroom, people come from all over town. We start from the question: where do customers come from at the similar locations you already have?
A circle on the map lies. A river, a railway line or a main road with no crossings cuts the area in two. So the radius is adjusted: we take out the parts nobody comes from and add the neighbourhoods linked by a direct road. If you already have a location in the same town, we decide together how to divide the areas, so that you do not simply move your customers from one site to the other.
Meta Ads, Google Ads and the new location’s Google profile
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) shows the ad to people who are not looking for you: it is the channel through which the neighbourhood finds out. Google Ads puts you in front of someone who is already searching for your category, “barber” or “pizza”, alongside the name of the area. Google Business Profile is the free listing in Maps and in the local results, with address, opening hours, photos and reviews.
The profile comes first. It can be created before opening, with the opening date declared, and the verification Google requires can take time, so we do not leave it to the last week. Without a verified profile, the address cannot, as a rule, be attached to ads in Google Ads.
- Google profile: correct category, opening hours, phone number, photos of the interior and of the entrance.
- Location page on the website: address, map, parking, opening hours, offer, and a button to book an appointment or a table.
- Meta ads within the radius: images and short clips of the place and the people, not catalogue-style graphics.
- Reviews: you ask the first visitors to write one, without rewards, which Google’s rules do not allow.
The opening offer and the code that ties it to the ad
A good opening offer is simple, has a deadline and can be used only on the premises: a first visit at a reduced price, something on the house, a free assessment. Large, vague discounts attract bargain hunters who do not come back. If your sector has rules on advertising (as the medical sector does), you check them with your professional body before announcing anything.
The offer is also a measuring tool. Each channel gets its own code, shown at the till or mentioned when booking. At the end you count the codes and find out not only how many people came, but also where from.
What can be counted and what remains an estimate
What happens on screen can be measured reliably: how many people within the radius saw the ad, how many clicked, how many requests for directions and how many calls the profile received, how many online bookings came in.
The visit itself is another story. Platforms can estimate store visits from the location of phones, but only in countries where the feature is available, for accounts with high volume and only approximately; for a single new location, the figure is usually missing. That leaves the old methods: offer codes, the question “how did you hear about us?”, noted consistently by staff, and comparing periods with advertising against periods without.
Frequently asked questions
How long before opening does the campaign start?
It depends on how much the audience needs preparing: a restaurant needs less time than a clinic where people book well in advance. The Google profile and the location page, however, are prepared as early as possible, and the ads start only once the opening date is certain.
What budget does an opening campaign need?
It depends on how many people are within the chosen radius, how long the campaign lasts and how many channels we use. We set the amount starting from the population within the radius and from how many impressions per person it makes sense to buy.
Are ads still worth it if the location is on a busy street?
Passing trade helps, but people often walk past a new place without noticing it or without knowing what it offers. The ad gives people in the area a reason and a moment to come in.
This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.