Your customers buy in person. Your marketing should account for that.
For a business with physical locations, a website visit is often just one step toward the real goal: getting someone through the door.
JumpStart, a gas station and convenience store brand with more than 50 locations, needed a way to connect those steps. The client knew digital marketing offered an opportunity, but lacked a clear way to understand whether advertising was influencing store visits or delivering a meaningful business return.
Paton Digital built a Google Ads program from scratch, connected the brand’s physical locations to its advertising, and established store visit measurement. The result was a clearer connection between online engagement and offline customer activity.
The Results at a Glance
| Metric | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Physical locations in the project | 50+ |
| Google-attributed store visits, modeled | 65,421 |
| Local direction actions | 5,627 |
| Total advertising spend | $5,568.59 |
| Blended ad spend per attributed store visit | $0.09 |
Results use the supplied all-time Google Ads campaign export, provided November 5, 2026. Store visits are Google’s modeled estimates, rounded here to whole visits. Direction actions are a separate engagement metric and should not be added to visits as unique customers. Blended spend per visit is total account ad spend divided by reported store visit conversions.
The Challenge: Advertising Without a Clear Connection to the Store
JumpStart’s business happened at the pump and inside its stores. Measuring digital success only through clicks or website activity would leave the most important part of that customer journey out of the picture.
Someone could discover a nearby location through an ad, check directions, and stop in for fuel, food, or everyday essentials without ever completing an online transaction.
Without a connection between advertising and physical locations, the client had limited visibility into what happened after the click. That made it difficult to judge performance, choose meaningful campaign goals, or understand how digital investment could support in-store business.
Our task was to build both the campaigns and the measurement foundation needed to answer a more useful question: which advertising activity was associated with customers visiting JumpStart?
The Approach: Build Around the Destination
Connect the locations to the advertising
We worked through JumpStart’s Google Business Profile presence, formerly Google My Business, across its 50+ locations to establish the access and location connections needed for the program.
This was the bridge between the digital campaign and the physical business. Connecting the location presence to Google Ads helped establish the foundation for store visit reporting, which became available for the account.
Launch campaigns around local customer needs
We built branded Search and Performance Max campaigns, with messaging focused on practical reasons to visit: nearby fuel, fresh food, drinks, convenience, store locations, and rewards.
The campaign structure connected two useful moments in the journey: reaching potential customers and helping people already looking for JumpStart find their next stop. Geographic settings focused on people in the targeted areas, keeping the physical destination central to the strategy.
Measure the steps toward a visit
We established conversion tracking for actions including location searches, direction clicks, store call clicks, and order-ahead clicks. These signals helped make the journey toward a store more visible.
Once store visit reporting was available, we brought that outcome into campaign optimization. The change history documents store visits becoming a primary account conversion and replacing directions as the Performance Max campaign goal on July 22, 2026. Store visits were also added to the branded Search campaign’s goals.
The program now had a way to evaluate advertising against a physical-world outcome, alongside the digital actions that preceded it.
The Outcome: A Measurable Connection Between Online and Offline
The supplied Google Ads campaign report recorded more than 65,000 modeled store visits attributed to advertising, alongside 5,627 local direction actions, on $5,568.59 in total ad spend.
Performance Max accounted for approximately 49,691 attributed store visits, while branded Search accounted for approximately 15,627. A smaller Display campaign accounted for 104.
Across the account, that equated to approximately nine cents in ad spend per attributed store visit.
The larger achievement was giving JumpStart a measurement framework tied to how the business actually operates. The client could move beyond evaluating advertising only through online activity and begin assessing its relationship to visits at physical locations.
Store visits measure attributed foot traffic, not completed purchases or proven incremental lift. Connecting that measurement with transaction value, purchase rates, and margins is the next step toward evaluating financial return.
What This Means for Any Business With a Physical Location
The same measurement question matters for retailers, restaurants, automotive businesses, showrooms, and other companies whose customers transact in person: what happens after someone interacts with your marketing?
If your reporting stops at the website, you may be missing an important part of the customer journey. A useful local advertising strategy connects your location presence, campaign goals, and measurement to the actions that matter to your business.
For eligible advertisers, Google’s store visit reporting can help make that connection. Availability depends on Google’s requirements, including location setup, sufficient advertising and foot traffic data, and privacy thresholds. Businesses without access can still build a measurement plan around directions, calls, bookings, offer redemptions, and transaction data where available.
JumpStart’s case demonstrates the value of building that foundation from the start: campaigns with a clear destination, measurement that extends beyond the click, and a more informed basis for deciding where to invest.
Turn Digital Interest Into Your Next In-Store Opportunity
Your physical locations should be part of your digital growth strategy.
Paton Digital helps businesses build campaigns and measurement plans that connect online engagement with visits, inquiries, and sales opportunities at their locations.
Want a clearer picture of how your advertising supports foot traffic? Let’s review your locations, campaigns, and tracking to identify your next opportunity.