October 24, 2022

6 Tips for Your Multi-Location Brand to Dominate Holiday Marketing this Season

It’s hard to believe, but the 2022 holiday season is almost upon us. As a multi-location marketer, you’ve likely started to think about what your business can do to optimize this holiday season. Whether you’re just getting started with your holiday marketing plans or have already implemented pieces of your strategy, this blog can help! We break down the top tactics your multi-location business should focus on to keep customers happy during the holiday season and boost sales! Let’s get started.

1. Review Results of Previous Online Campaigns

When planning your localized marketing strategy for the holidays, it’s important to analyze how past holiday campaigns have performed. You especially want to set aside some time to look at what worked well last year. If you’re not familiar, localized marketing is the process of creating and implementing a marketing strategy that is distributed at the local level. These findings will help you understand where you should focus your efforts this year and avoid making mistakes from the past that may cost your business sales and ROI. Similar to reviewing the results of previous online campaigns, it’s equally important to determine how you will measure the success of this year’s initiatives. Does your current marketing technology allow you to report on performance? If so, which metrics are you going to track? How will you define success? Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a way for your multi-location business to measure success in any localized marketing campaign. Your KPIs should be the desired outcome of your performance and must be measurable. For instance, is there a specific number you want this campaign’s ROI to be at to consider it successful? Do you have any other metrics you want to track along the way? Analyzing the performance of past campaigns and defining what will be considered successful for this year’s holiday season is a must.

2. Increase Online Visibility

Forty-six percent of all online searches link to something local. When a customer searches for a product or service your business provides, will you appear in the search results? If so, can online users easily find helpful business information? Customers are 70 percent more likely to visit and 50 percent more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with a complete Google Business Profile (GBP) — one of the most important local listings there is. When preparing for the holidays, ensure that each business location has a local listing claimed for each business location on all major search platforms, including GBP. While claiming local listings is crucial, updating your local listings with as much relevant business information as possible is equally important. Consumers are in a rush doing their holiday shopping, and a lack of business information shouldn’t be a deterring reason to visit. Information your multi-location business can incorporate into your local listings includes:

Helpful business information, such as your name, address, and phone number (NAP)
Photos of your local business
A relevant call-to-action (CTA) such as to “order online,” “book an appointment,” and more
Local posts, when applicable
A strategy in place for replying to reviews

While your local search profiles are one great way to boost online visibility during the holiday season, there are additional ways to optimize your SEO through Google’s ranking factors. Check out our guide, the Top Ten Things You Should Be Doing in SEO NOW to learn more!

3. Optimize Your Ad Spend

According to Statista, digital ad spending for the 2020 holiday season in the U.S> was a staggering 45.6 billion dollars. As the holiday season approaches, which can often start in October and stretch to January, many multi-location marketers increase their ad spend to get their business in front of more potential customers. If your business has the resources to increase your digital advertising budget, do it! If not, there are plenty of ways to optimize your current efforts. For instance, consider where your multi-location business is spending its ad dollars. With 2.93 billion monthly users, Facebook is one of the best places to promote your business through digital advertising. Meta Ads Manager is your business’s starting point for managing Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger ads. This tool allows you to set up ad campaigns, track performance, and make optimizations accordingly. While Meta Ads Manager allows you to create ad campaigns for each of your local Facebook or Instagram pages, managing 100s or 1,000s of business locations can be challenging. Later in this blog, we’ll discuss a solution for that! Remember to review previous holiday ads and let their success influence your 2022 campaigns. If you find that your ads aren’t performing up to your expectations right away, give it time! Digital ads often take trial and error to get your campaigns up and running effectively. If you’re still not finding the success you want, test different types of content! Try including video content, information about holiday deals or promotions, or other localized content that you think may resonate with your target audience.

4. Create a Seamless Online Experience

Adobe Analytics predicts that online spending will hit 209.7 billion from November 1st to December 31st, 2022. There’s no question that your multi-location business should review your current online experience before the holiday rush. Have your employees search for your product online and navigate through the purchase process. These employees can provide feedback on what should be improved and where they run into issues. You can also conduct this same test on competitors’ websites to see how their online experience differs from yours. Here are some factors your multi-location business should consider when optimizing your online experience:

Allow consumers to check out as a guest — requiring a consumer to create an account often leaves the potential for you to lose a customer.

How many pages does a customer have to navigate through, from finding the product online to completing the purchase? Minimizing the opportunities for a customer to change their mind is critical.

Your multi-location business should also prioritize the search bar. The more accessible and effective your online search bar is, the better!

Implement “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL). Over a third of U.S. consumers use BNPL.

Ensure images and website pages have a quick load time. A website that supports interactive images that can be resized and loaded quickly is key.

Make it easy for consumers to find your business locations with a store locator and local landing pages. This also helps with local SEO.

Following these tactics will allow consumers or potential consumers to have a positive experience with your business on mobile, increasing their chances of doing business with your company.

5. Ramp Up Organic Social Content

While digital ads are crucial during the holiday season, organic social shouldn’t be left on the back burner.

Three out of four consumers say they’ve discovered a new local offering based on recommendations on social media.

While a presence on social media is essential, a local presence is even more critical. Data has found that localized content receives 12x the engagement of content that is not considered localized. For your multi-location business to stand out on social media, it must have local social profiles for each business location, especially on Facebook. When planning content at the local level, you can share various types of content, including:

Special promotions or discounts that are happening at your location
Positive customer reviews from local customers
Pictures of live or virtual events happening at your local store
Current events that are happening in your local area
Ways your local business is giving back to the community

If a consumer sees that your multi-location business is taking the time and effort to create content relevant to them and their local community, they’ll remember when the time comes for them to make a purchase. This local content will also make them more likely to become customer advocates. Download our Localized Social Content Guide for more insight into what it takes to level up your local social strategy.

6. Elevate Customer Support Teams

Finally, this should go without question, but your multi-location business must increase your customer support efforts during the holiday season. Sales will likely increase during this time, and the need for additional customer support comes with that. Eighty-seven percent of consumers read online reviews of local businesses. Don’t let your online reputation suffer because of a lack of customer support. While having a fully staffed customer support team is essential, there are additional tools your business can leverage to keep customers happy during this busy time of year. For instance, if set up correctly, chatbots allow your business to engage with consumers in real-time. Chatbots allow consumers to ask questions about products or services, leave feedback about their experience, and receive answers without waiting for a customer support specialist. Some chatbots can also come in handy when trying to spread a message across multiple business locations. For instance, if your multi-location business has upcoming deals and promotions around the holidays, your chatbots can help relay this information to consumers. While your business can easily change the messaging on chatbots, adjusting the messaging across locations can be a little more tricky. We’ll dive into a solution for this next.

Start Crushing Your Holiday Season Goals

Now that your multi-location business understands what it takes to succeed this holiday season, it’s time to get to work. While managing your localized marketing efforts across 100s or 1,000s of business locations combined with the holiday rush may seem daunting, SOCi is here to help! SOCi has all the tools your business needs to run a successful holiday campaign across all your business locations under one login. Over 600 multi-location brands trust SOCi, the only centralized platform explicitly built for multi-location marketers. From local listings to local social to reputation management, chatbots, and beyond, SOCi can help your business dominate the competition this holiday season.

image of multiple devices showing the SOCi platform