Winning New Customers: Why It’s All About Convenience and Conversation

  One of your primary goals as a multi-location marketer is to win more customers and ultimately gain more sales. While the idea seems simple enough, it's often easier said than done. It takes hard work and effort to create an effective localized marketing strategy that allows your business to stand out from your industry competitors.   While finding success in a marketing world that constantly changes can be difficult, it comes down to two main focus areas - conversation and convenience. If your multi-location business can nurture customers through conversation and give them convenience, you're on your way to a winning localized marketing strategy. Within this blog, we'll look at data that backs up our claims on the importance of conversation and convenience, break down both areas, and explain how your business can leverage each of them to their fullest potential.  

A Look Into the 2021 Localized Marketing Benchmark Report 

  SOCi's 3rd Annual Localized Marketing Benchmark Report (LMBR) is live. A collaboration between Localogy, the leading global non-profit trade association helping marketers and agencies realize the full potential of localized marketing, and SOCi, the LMBR examines how top brands performed last year in the most influential digital channels, including local search, social, and ratings and reviews.   For the third year in a row, the LMBR found that businesses with an optimized localized marketing strategy grew revenues at rates up to three times that of their peers, even amidst the pandemic's uncertainty. This data proves that a solid localized marketing strategy is essential to winning new customers. To determine what makes up a strong localized marketing strategy, the report looks at multi-location businesses 'local search and local social efforts and scores them on each. The combined scores make up the business's overall LMBR score. On average, companies studied in the report scored 43/100, showing significant room for improvement.   Local social scores relate to the conversations you have with your customers, while the local search is all about how convenient it is to find information about your brand. Local search and social go hand in hand.  Focusing on just one can help some aspects of your localized marketing efforts, but both are needed to see optimal results. Let's look deeper into conversation and convenience and their tie to local social and search to see how you can use them effectively.  

Conversation and Local Social - What You Need to Know 

  When it comes to conversation and local social, it's all about making connections with your target audience. After a year of limited in-person interaction because of the pandemic, consumers crave a local connection more than ever. When your multi-location business puts time and effort into communication, your customers will notice. It starts with local social.   For instance, when looking at local social media performance, the Localized Marketing Benchmark Report considers metrics such as your business's monthly post frequency, percentage of your location posting on social, and the types of engagement your posts get. If each of your business locations is posting at the local level frequently, you will likely see an increase in conversation or high-valued engagements.   Similarly, ratings and reviews come into play with local social and conversation. If your multi-location business is receiving reviews at the local level and responding to them in a timely and personalized manner, this will help boost your local social score. Reputation management is a great way to engage in conversations with your consumers and show them you value their thoughts and opinions. If you're not already leveraging these tactics to engage with your consumers and improve your local social efforts, you could be missing out on opportunities.  

Convenience and Local Search - The Basics 

  Similarly, if your multi-location business isn't optimizing your local search efforts, you're selling yourself short. In today's digital-first world, consumers expect convenience, and a comprehensive local search strategy provides it. For instance, if you have your local listings updated across business locations with the most accurate information, consumers can get any information they want about your business in a single area. = Accurate and consistent listings lead to higher rankings on Google, increasing the chances potential customers will see your business.   Your completeness of profile and visibility in the Google 3-Pack are just a few of the factors the LMBR considers when developing your local search score. It also looks at your average star rating, the percent of listings claimed, and the number of reviews your multi-location business receives. Reputation management comes into play for local search as well. The higher your business rating and the more reviews you have, the higher you can potentially rank on Google. Finding a solution to manage your reputation across business locations is key to improving your local search and social, increasing your customer base.  

Merging Conversation and Convenience Into A Winning Strategy

  How do you think your business would fare in the LMBR results? Are your local social and search efforts up to par? Is there room for improvement? Unless your business scores 100 percent, which has never happened, there's always room for improvement. If you're wondering how you can get started with improving your local search and social efforts, look no further than SOCi.   SOCi is the all-in-one platform for your localized marketing needs and the central command for multi-location marketers. SOCi's streamlined reputation management software can help your business view every action taken on reviews and monitor social media activity. Now, your local, regional, and corporate teams will always know which reviews and social engagements to address and those that no longer require attention to ensure the prompt responses consumers expect. This tool is essential to help boost both your local search and local social efforts.  

  To further improve your local social efforts, SOCi's Content Management solution can help. SOCi's Content Management solution enables multi-location businesses to manage and deploy localized content at scale while maintaining brand consistency at both the enterprise and local levels. If you're looking to increase your conversations on the local level and ensure local businesses are postings frequently, this tool is a must.  

  Lastly, local listings were a big component of local search and improving convenience for consumers. SOCi again has a solution that will provide your multi-location business with the support it needs to manage listings across 100s or 1,000s of business locations. SOCi Listings allows your multi-location business to sync, update, and manage your business listings to maintain accurate and consistent listings across 35+ direct integrations to leading directories, including GMB, Facebook, Apple Maps, Foursquare, Waze, and Yelp. With updated and accurate local listings, your business will become more visible on Google, which leads to more sales.  

  As you can see, SOCi has you covered in every aspect of local search and social. For more information on the data found in the 3rd Annual Localized Marketing Benchmark Report, download the full report here. To learn how SOCi can take your localized marketing efforts to new heights, request a demo today!