Roy’s Restaurants has landed on a recipe for success with Google Mobile Ads. By using hyperlocal advertising and creating mobile-only AdWords campaigns, Roy’s was able to drive 40% more calls and ultimately more customers to their stores. Read more to learn how Roy’s and its agency, G&M Plumbing, have implemented mobile best practices to achieve an 800% ROI.
In 1988, James Beard Award-winner Roy Yamaguchi opened the first Roy's in Honolulu, Hawaii. Multi-ingredient fusion dishes, a spacious dining room, an expansive lounge, and a signature exhibition kitchen in full view defined the experience.  Today’s Roy’s 31 restaurants cater to diners celebrating a special occasion as well as business travelers looking to wind down.

Getting started with click-to-call mobile ads
Based on substantial success with Google AdWords, G&M and Roy’s began looking for new ways to increase marketing returns and create meaningful connections with customers. Together, they determined that customers who call the restaurant will frequently make multiple reservations and that a growing number of people prefer to use their phones to secure a dining spot. With a goal of increasing phone reservations, Roy’s extended their desktop click-to-call location extensions campaign to the mobile platform. As a result,  call volumes grew and the company became curious about what they could do to further maximize calls and returns.

Creating mobile-only campaigns and implementing mobile best practices
Roy’s and G&M subsequent steps are a great example of how to maximize returns by advertising on mobile devices with Google. First, the duo created a national, mobile-only campaign that enabled them to budget, bid, target, and track their mobile performance separately from their desktop AdWords campaigns. Next they employed aggressive bids to increase the chances of their ads appearing in the top positions – an important consideration for advertising on mobile because of the phone’s smaller screen size.
 
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Harnessing the power of hyperlocal advertising
In addition to mobile-specific campaigns, Roy’s also took advantage of Google Mobile Ads’ new hyperlocal advertising feature which serves locally relevant ads and displays distance information to help users understand how close they are to a business. The hyperlocal functionality of the ad format immediately enabled the company to better target on-the-go customers searching for the closest Roy’s Restaurant location.

Reflecting on the experience with hyperlocal ads, Jason Maloney, Vice President of Marketing for Roy’s said, “With Google's hyperlocal mobile advertising, we were able to target our potential guests at their point of need. Mobile searchers looking for dining options could effortlessly see how close they were to a nearby Roy's Restaurant and the click to call function allowed for instant reservations. Our hyperlocal mobile-only campaign drove a 40% increase in calls with a CPC 67% less than desktop ads.  The numbers are impossible to ignore. We have to invest in hyperlocal mobile advertising as part of our long-term growth strategy.”

Reaping exponential returns
Roy's was able to achieve click-through rates 539% higher on mobile than on desktop by investing in mobile-specific campaigns and hyperlocal advertising. And Scott Dunagan, Director of Digital Marketing at G&M Plumbing believes this is only the beginning of the mobile advertising returns for Roy’s, “With Google Mobile Ads we saw an 800% return on investment on our mobile-only campaigns, roughly doubling our ROI from when we had blended mobile/desktop campaigns. Google Mobile Ads have allowed us to reach our target consumers and enable them to transact with us in much more effective ways than any other medium. It’s all about giving the end user all the information they need within the ad. With Google mobile-only campaigns we are seeing tremendous results.”

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Product Marketing