The Future of Multi-Location Marketing is Comarketing (With AI)

As a marketer, you’re always looking for ways to improve your efficiency and get better results. Partnering with artificial intelligence (AI) technology can make this happen.

Our internal data found that 65% of marketers have already incorporated AI into their marketing technology (martech) stack. While many marketers already use AI, are they using it to its fullest potential?

That’s where comarketing comes in. This blog will define today’s version of comarketing with AI, why it’s a must, and how to use AI as a complementary role to your marketing team.

The Newly Defined Comarketing

Comarketing without a hyphen is a partnership between humans and AI technology.

Aragon Research defines comarketing as “A collective of intelligent assistants across key areas of marketing that analyze data, make strategic and tactical recommendations, and automate the marketing process to buyers across channels, locations, and platforms.”

In simpler terms, comarketing is the collaboration of human marketers and AI technology to optimize marketing efforts and improve results.

Why Comarketing with AI is a Must

Traditional marketing methods are no longer enough in today’s fast-paced digital world. Consumers are constantly bombarded with advertisements and messages from various companies, making it difficult for businesses to stand out.

This is where AI comes in.

AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data and make strategic recommendations can help marketers cut through the noise and deliver personalized content that resonates with their target audience.

Furthermore, utilizing AI in your marketing efforts can save time and resources. As machines take on repetitive tasks such as data analysis and campaign optimization, human marketers can focus on more creative projects that require more expertise and skill.

The Size of the Problem Without Comarketing

Additionally, there’s the size of the problem for multi-location marketers with 100s or 1,000s of locations. Ask yourself:

• Does your marketing team have the ability to create local content across all locations?
• Can you respond to reviews in a personalized and timely manner at scale?
• What do your local SEO efforts look like for each business?

Often, some of these initiatives fall through the cracks because there simply isn’t enough time and resources to execute them effectively. By not optimizing your marketing strategy, you’re giving your competitors the edge to zoom past you with their more streamlined and efficient approaches — particularly if they’re utilizing genAI tech.

However, with the introduction of comarketing tools, your brand can solve these problems and get ahead of competitors!

4 Ways to Comarket Effectively

Now that you understand what comarketing is and why it’s essential, let’s look at ways your brand can comarket effectively through search, social, and reputation management efforts.

1. Develop Personalized Responses

Data from our 2024 Consumer Behavior Index affirms that consumers care if businesses respond to them and the nature of the response. For instance, 81% of the consumers surveyed reported that they occasionally write reviews of local businesses. But how are businesses responding?

Only 30% said the business responded within 1 to 2 days when they wrote their most recent review. More troubling, only half of consumers who received a response said they felt fully satisfied by the interaction.

While responding to reviews is important, responding to social media engagements is equally essential.

Some 82% of the consumers in our survey say they sometimes post comments and questions on businesses’ online social profiles. Still, only 31% say the company responded quickly to their last comment or question, and only 57% got any response at all.

Clearly, businesses are missing the mark when it comes to engaging with consumers online, and AI can help.

With the right AI technology, you can analyze and respond to comments and reviews in a timely, personalized, and on-brand manner, improving consumer satisfaction and building trust in the business.

AI can also gather valuable insights from these interactions, providing businesses with useful data on customers’ preferences, concerns, and feedback. Brands can then use this information to improve products or services, create targeted marketing campaigns, and make more informed business decisions.

2. Create Custom Local Content

Consumers also crave information that speaks to them. For instance, the products you promote and diction used in a social post for your target audience in Florida should differ for your patrons in Maine. Creating local content for your brand’s different audiences is critical.

Our recent research report, Unlock the Secret to Social Media Success: Localized Posting at Scale, found that creating local social media posts can generate 71x more engagement than corporate waterfall posts — when a company publishes the same piece of content to all of their locations’ local profiles.

Content expands beyond just social posts, though, and can range from blogs to email copy to social media ads and beyond.

Generative AI (genAI) tools can help brands create local content at scale. For instance, some martech solutions have AI integrations that can make local social media content, blogs, and emails for each business location. For a full breakdown of how marketers use genAI tools today, check out our blog.

3. Optimize SEO Efforts

As a marketer, are you aware of how your brand appears in relevant local searches? Having a strong local search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is a must. This includes creating relevant, local-specific content that incorporates keywords and phrases related to your business’s location.

By optimizing your local listings, website, and local landing pages, you can increase visibility in search results and attract more potential customers.

GenAI tools can enhance your local SEO efforts. For instance, sophisticated genAI tools can help you manage your listings at scale while providing recommendations on improving SEO efforts locally.

These tools also use natural language processing to analyze search queries and create location-specific content that aligns with what users are searching for. This helps improve your local search rankings and provides a better user experience by delivering relevant information to potential customers.

4. Improve Your Customer Experience (CX)\

Lastly, AI can be your brand’s comarketer in creating a great Customer experience (CX) for your customers.  By analyzing customer data and behavior, AI can provide personalized recommendations and tailor content to each prospect or client.

For instance, envision a large multi-location retail corporation, where each store receives high social media and website engagements, like online reviews. With the help of AI, this multi-location enterprise could organize that data and track patterns, such as common unanswered questions or complaints about a specific product line.

Then, the retail company can use these insights to help the retail brand modify its following product line or update the FAQ section of its website. This improves the overall CX and increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.

How SOCi Can Help

Comarketing with AI is the key to leveling up your marketing efforts and breaking through the noise. As a multi-location brand, finding the right solution to help you comarket with AI can seem daunting, especially when considering the need to scale your efforts and find an AI solution you can trust.

Enter SOCi. SOCi is the CoMarketing Cloud for multi-location businesses. We’ve tailored our innovative platform for intelligent omnichannel automation at the local level.

SOCi Genius is the AI brain and power behind our CoMarketing Cloud. It’s an AI automation layer on top of our platform that our products use to automate human action.

For instance, Genius Reviews allows you to generate on-brand and personalized responses to local reviews across all major local directories.

Similarly, Genius Social allows you to create on-brand and location-specific content that resonates with local audiences and boosts brand loyalty.

And lastly, we recently released Genius Search, which is designed to transform how your business tackles local search optimization with the help of AI.

If your brand isn’t optimizing its marketing efforts through AI, you’re losing out to competitors who are. For more insight into how SOCi can be your brand’s comarketing partner, request a demo today!