Say Hi To The Local Search Association’s Website And You’ll Understand Why Optimizing Your Location Online Is So Important

The Local Search Association offers a wealth of resources for retailers, small business owners and local business operators. Their mandate is to help bring clarity to the value and importance of local online marketing optimization. While reviewing the Infographics section of their website, we found some data points that stand out.

Let’s review them.

Local Search Association Statistics

Most Helpful Sources For Finding Local Business Info

Digital channels are the most helpful for finding local business information, lead by search engines. Search engines are even more important than the company website, which highlights the critical importance of optimizing your Google My Business account (GMB). A big part of GMB optimization includes ensuring that ratings and reviews are added to the listing and responded to by business owners.

Doing so helps Google decide how often to present your listing and, more importantly, they help consumers decide whether to visit your location or not.

Local Marketing Reaches Undecideds

4 in 5 consumers using search engines to find local information. 63% of local search queries made by people who are undecided on a provider or retailer. So you can begin to see why it’s so important to be optimized. Try these other statistics on for size too: Local Searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within one day, and address and location are the primary pieces of information sought by local searchers.

Put all these numbers together and it’s clear why Google My Business, Bing Local and other services such as Yelp and Foursquare are so important for your local marketing. Mapping technologies such as Apple Maps, TomTom and others also help you get found easily, while serving to provide additional SEO benefits to GMB.

Ask For A Local Review

The above statistic is fantastic and what you should take away from it is simple. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Reviews actively play an essential role in consumer behaviour and are used as the tiebreaker for where to shop and what to buy.

BirdEye is an online reputation tool that helps small business owners generate positive online reviews. They cites that 92% of customers read online reviews, and 68% trust a local business more if it has positive reviews. So if 68% percent of the people you ask for reviews will give you one, and you ask people who think positively of you, you’re more likely to convert someone who searches for local solutions like you offer to a sale.

Conclusion

We’ve often cited this one last statistic, also from the Local Search Association, in our marketing materials.

According to a study conducted by the Local Search Association, about $10.3 billion worth of potential annual sales are lost because of wrong, missing, or incomplete local business information.

Think of the power of that statement. And then think of the power of being optimized to intercept searches from your business listing. The business potential is unlimited.

Full disclosure: 10|20 Marketing is a BirdEye believer. We resell their platform to our clients and have seen them enjoy tremendous success generating new reviews on their directory listings when they use this platform.

Why The Apple Watch Is An Important Location Marketing Consideration for Small Business Owners

The new Apple Watch Series 4 was released last week, and now that we’ve been able to play around with it, we see some incredible potential for it within the location marketing world. As a result, small business owners should be aware of some of the more obvious reasons to keep tabs on the Apple Watch – and some that are more obscure.

3 Obvious Location Marketing Apple Watch Uses

Connectedness

Let’s start with the obvious reasons and why they’re essential to the small business owner. First, it’s important to note that the Apple Watch, since the Series 3 iteration released last year, is available in an LTE version. LTE functionality allows users to stay connected via data and phone services to people and their apps. As a result, iPhone apps are now available on your wrist, for the most part, even when you leave home without a phone.

Online Directories and Reviews

Apps such as Maps, Yelp, Trip Advisor, Booking Now and other vital directories become even more crucial. At the turn of their wrist, your customers can now find you, read reviews about your location and decide whether or not your business is worthy of theirs. As a result, having a strong directory presence and review building strategy becomes even more critical to small business owners.

Apple Pay

Another way that Apple Watch can impact small businesses is through payments. Apple’s Wallet app is available on the watch, making it easy for customers to pay you. All it takes is a tap of the watch your terminal and, just like that, you’ve received your payment. This makes having a console that is optimized for tap and Apple Pay even more important than ever. For some consumers, knowing that you keep up with technology is a key reason for them to visit your business location. As of February of this year, it was reported that over 127 million people worldwide are using Apple Pay. And that number is only going up.

2 More Obscure Location Marketing Apple Watch Uses

Geofencing + Business Alerts

Geofencing is the use of GPS or RFID technology to create a virtual geographic boundary, enabling software to trigger a response when a mobile device enters or leaves a particular area. As a result, you can push an alert or coupon to Apple Watch users who are close to your business. With the haptic feedback from the watch “tapping” the wearer on the wrist, people will be aware of your alert sooner because they will feel it – and not discover it waiting on their phone when it’s too late because it was sitting in a purse.

Running Your Small Business

Time to look at the other side of the coin as well. While the Apple Watch can help you attract people to your business, it can also help you become a more efficient business owner. There are several apps designed to help you run your business and keep you on task. From CRM apps to ones for accounting and invoicing, or note-taking applications to reminders and to-dos, the Apple Watch can help you focus on what you do best and service the people who do come through your doors – all thanks to the navigation apps on their wrist.

As a small business owner, what’s important is being aware of the potential of this watch. It’s not that you’re expected to do all these things, but trying even one of the tactics may be the one thing to get on the radar of your potential customers. And that might very well be enough to turn someone’s indifference for your business into a real difference for your business.

Claiming Your Business Location Is Foundational, But Does It Match Your Mapped Address?

We’ve recently learned an important lesson about claiming your business location online, thanks to the collaboration of one of our clients. As a result, we’d like to ask you this important question: Have you searched for your business’ address recently? Here’s why we’re asking.

After working with the business owner to claim his store’s location on Google My Business and Google Maps—along with other directories including Bing, Facebook, FourSquare, Yelp and Apple Maps—the client’s location was properly placed and pinned across these networks. Leading with his store’s name, we claimed, placed and pinned his store on all of these online networks.

Almost immediately, we noticed that his listing was performing well. In fact, amazingly well. His Google My Business metrics exploded from the minute we took control of his listings. His views have increased and held steady every month, to the tune of 190% growth from the first month to the most recent. His total actions, which add together clicks of their phone number, directions and website buttons from their Google Listing, have increased by 202%.
Like any good business, though, his marketing presence didn’t end there. Because of the nature of his business—he’s a retailer with time sensitive promotions and always-changing inventory—he also advertised in local newspapers. And at the bottom of every ad, he wisely put the address of his store.

That’s when he started to get phone calls. The problem? When potential shoppers would search for the address of his location, the pin for that search was misplaced on Google Maps and was leading his customers to another store. In other words, if you searched for the name of his store, you’d be brought to the right location. But if you searched for the address of his location, you’d be lead elsewhere. And he had concrete evidence that his customers were being misled, leading to lost visits and sales.

“My customers would search for our location on Google Maps and were brought to another area on the opposite side of our premises,” said our client, who asked for his name not to be published. “This was frustrating and confusing for all concerned. I had numerous clients tell me that they circled around until they figured out on their own how to get to us, or called us.”

When he brought this to our attention, we immediately jumped into action, contacting Google directly and requesting that they match the pin placement for the search of his address to the one we claimed for the name of their business. It took some time—exactly a month—to go from request to successful pin move. The request was actually escalated from the Google My Business (GMB) team to the Google Maps team to reflect the importance of the problem.

So, now, when our client buys advertising in print publications, he can do so with confidence, knowing that those who want to come to his store to shop will find it.

Within a month or two, we should see the impact on the GMB metrics for this listing, likely resulting in more views, as well as more calls, website visits and in-store traffic. We’ll check back in on this story and let you all know.
In the meanwhile, we suggest you conduct a search of your address and see if it matches up with your listing. If not, we’d be happy to help you set things straight—and help shoppers head straight to your front door.

Hells Angels Use Online Reviews For Revenge

Wow! This is a great article by Caroline Barghout of the CBC and a cautionary tale for business owners who doubt the power of online reviews. After being denied service at a local establishment, the Hells Angels launched a coordinated campaign to hurt the business online by giving them low ratings. Overnight, the business’s average rating dropped a full point. And then they did it to other businesses as well.

Online reviews are an important way for business owners to drive customers to their business. The review plays two key roles:

1) It helps those who are searching for your location to create an opinion of your business. People trust the opinions of people who are similar to themselves more than they do brands or business owners. So generating positive reviews is vital.

2) Reviews help with the SEO of your business listing. The more you get, the more likely your directory listing will be presented when people are looking online for what you sell. The more positive, the better.

For local business owners, creating an online review strategy is a great advantage. Monitor and respond to them, but also create an environment where you let your customers know that you’d like a review. This could be an in-store strategy, email campaign or by simply asking your clients for one after house calls. Either way, the results could be truly impactful.

It’s not that you risk having the Hells Angels conspire against your business. But keeping things positive and encouraging good reviews from your best customers can go a long way towards getting your business found and then driving phone calls, visits to your website and traffic to your store.

To learn more about reviews, read our post titled, “Four Fantastic Reasons Why Small Business Owners Should Have An Online Customer Review Monitoring Strategy.”

Lo-Lo-Lo! Why It’s Important To Think Local Marketing For the Holidays

Halloween is about to come and go and, with it, Christmas lights and displays will arrive. With the big shopping season just around the corner, it’s vital to think about your local marketing efforts to get your retail location ready to generate traffic.

This means ensuring that your online local business listing is updated and accurate.

Retailers are always thinking about how to increase foot traffic to their store. And with 72% of all in-store purchases made following online research, it’s vital that your business details are correct. Even more so during the holidays. As hours and other details change, you must make sure you’re optimized online.

What should be the first thing on your holiday list then? Ensuring that your holiday hours are accurately represented. This means everywhere. On your website, social networks, and local listings on search engines, maps and review sites. Consistency matters!

Inconsistencies across networks can easily lead to consumer confusion and a loss of foot traffic. During a recent bank holiday, it was found that 85% of brands never updated their opening hours online. This included not only major retailers, but also local shops and businesses that need every advantage to attract people to their door.

Back home in Canada, this can account for a significant loss in revenue. According to the CPA Canada 2016 Holiday Spending Monitor, last updated in January, 37% of Canadians planned to spend over $800 during the last holiday season. It’s easy to see just how easy it would be to lose out on your fair share of the pie if shoppers were frustrated with the accuracy of your business listings.

Something else to think about is that the shopping season starts earlier than it has traditionally. Last year, retail sales in Canada decreased 0.5% in December over November – a decline that followed four consecutive monthly increases in Canadian retail sales. Sales made during Black Friday and Cyber Monday are pulling more money into November – which gives you all the more reason to ensure that you’re all set up and ready to go with your listings before then.
So, with all this in mind, we ask you this: It’s October 19th, are your listings ready?

Online Local Business Listings Defined

What is a local business listing?

A local business listing is an online profile that contains:

  • Your business name
  • Address
  • Phone number
  • Hours of operation
  • Written descriptions of your business
  • And other important details.

When you claim your listing on search engines, social networks or review sites, more people who are looking for what you offer in the area where you operate will find your business. This makes it easier for them to call you, get directions to your business, click through to your website or share details about your location with others.

When there are errors in your business information across the internet, your chances of being presented in search engine results diminish when potential customers search online. According to a study conducted by the Local Search Association, about $10.3 billion worth of potential annual sales are lost because of wrong, missing, or incomplete local business information. As a result, it’s important that your business information is presented consistently across several directories, as it helps validate your business on each network. This has an impact on your listings’ SEO overall and makes your locations more findable overall.

Ratings and reviews matter too

A business listing also contains ratings and reviews of your location, which help people find your business. The more reviews you have, the greater the SEO benefit. The higher your ratings, the more likely that customers will choose you. When customers have a positive experience and help create buzz, your reputation grows. In fact, 90% of respondents who read online reviews claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions. As a result, a lack of reviews – and a lack of positive reviews – for your business can lead to lost customers.

With the volume of “near me” searches only growing, it’s important to be optimized – and understand what online local business listings mean for your business.

Learn More

Have a question about your online business listing and how to claim it? We’re happy to help. Please complete the form in the right-hand sidebar and we’ll be happy to reach out with the information you’re looking for. Thanks!

QuickBooks Connect Toronto, Here We Come!

The phone call came last Thursday, when @IntuitBry called with an invitation to speak  at the Intuit QuickBooks Connect conference in Toronto. The event is coming up in early December and we couldn’t be more excited to lend our expertise to the small business leaders and accountants in attendance. Intuit has asked us to share our expertise in local listing management and online review strategies.

QuickBooks Connect provides small business owners and accountants with an opportunity to learn, connect and be inspired to grow their businesses through breakout sessions and keynote presentations. Breakout sessions are led by industry experts and participants will have the chance to get real world advice and connect with peers.

10|20 Marketing’s Presentation Abstract

How to Improve the Odds of Attracting Small Business Clients Online
Where can an small business owner, be it an accounting practice, individual accountant or retailer, get the most value for their dollar online? What are some of the easy-to-use tools available to them that don’t require too much of their time? What should they know about these low-hanging fruit solutions that will help drive business to their doors, keep them relevant in a digitally changing world and help them build online relationships?

Also, we’ll examine which metrics they should look at to prove that their investment is bringing a return. This presentation will look at these challenges, provide solutions and outline which tools can be used to achieve these goals. We’ll look at Google My Business, relevant review sites, and platforms designed to drive phone calls, website visits and walk-ins to their locations, in addition to the metrics that make the effort worthwhile.

Let us know if you’re going to be there and we’ll be happy to set up some time while we’re in Toronto. QuickBooks Connect is taking place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre December 4 – 6, 2017. Hope to see you there!

The Three Levels of Listening To The Voice of The Customer And Why It Matters So Much For Local Marketers

Listening to the voice of the customer is so vital to the health of your business. But so many small business owners don’t know where to start and where to go. You know from experience that listening to the feedback you get in person can help you learn so much about what you sell, how you sell it and who you are selling it to. So imagine you could extend your ears and listen to feedback in a different form. Well, you actually can. Because more and more of these “discussions” are taken out of the physical business and into the online world, which eliminates the customer’s discomfort of confrontation while magnifying the impact of the comments, good or bad.

The Three Levels of The Voice of Customer For Local Business Owners

In the three levels of voice of customer listening, there are both online and offline components, two vital from online conversations and the third is an extension of the on-site experience.

Level 1: Online Review Monitoring

With 92% of consumers now reading online reviews before making a purchase, monitoring them is growing in importance. But it’s not good enough to just monitor. Respond too. Thank those who give you good reviews, and solve problems presented in negative reviews. The overall feedback you gain about a specific location, however, can give you valuable direction. Listen closely and make the adjustments being asked of you. When you show that you’re responsive, people respond in kind. Plus it gives you instant credibility among the buying public.

Monitoring reviews and notice that not many are pouring in? You may want to think about a review building strategy to encourage your best customers to act as advocates on your behalf. This can help change the perception of your location, and also help search engines index your business to better present it to those searching online. Why? Because online reviews and the rating you receive have an impact on your SEO. The more you have, the better perceived your business will be by search engine. And this is of vital importance.

Level 2: Social Listening

With your location being monitored via review sites in Level 1, you can turn to social media to listen to feedback on social networks, away from Google Reviews, Yelp, Trip Advisor and others. With a social media listening tool to work with, you can track brand keywords and @ mentions of your handles. Using your own online profiles, you can then respond to the positive and negative being published on social networks. In addition, you can think of this information as free focus group feedback that you can apply to your business planning, content marketing, merchandising and customer service approaches.

With the right social media monitoring program in place, you’ll be able to listen to what is being said, track the sentiment of these conversations and gain a better and more complete understanding of your customers. For small business owners, this information is not only vital, it’s gold.

Level 3: Asking For Feedback

Once a customer leaves your location, you’ve lost the chance to engage them one-on-one and discuss their experience. But what if you could extend the opportunity to gain their feedback by giving them a link to a survey? You’ve seen this in practice many times as a consumer, I’m sure. After making a purchase, your receipt has a survey link on it and an incentive to fill it out. Consider this to be another level of gaining the voice of the customer. Every survey response is a personalized, private piece of feedback that you can use to improve your business. Best of all, by standardizing your questionnaire, you can measure your progress on specific objectives and see if you’re gaining traction or falling behind. By measuring, though, you have information you wouldn’t have gained otherwise, which puts you in a position to act.

That’s why, if you’re engaged in Levels 1 + 2 and feel that there’s something missing, bits of information you’re not getting from online discussions, go out and ask. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at what people will tell you when you do.

Another reason these three approaches are powerful is because, unlike when you speak to someone one-one-one at your location, you’ll have a record of the discussion. You’ll always be able to go back and review, learn and and, most importantly, teach your staff what works and what doesn’t, identify trends, and help them improve!
And that’s important. After all, local marketing is all about adjusting to the needs of your customers. Otherwise, they may make the adjustment without you knowing. And that’s worse.

Three Ways To Avoid Losing Existing, Potential and Paying Customers By Keeping Your Online Listings Accurate

Our clients tell us stories all the time of people who come to their store or restaurant angry only to reveal that it was something little that set them off. An online issue that the business owner has no idea about is often at the source of the problem too. When they hear these stories, though, they should consider themselves lucky. It’s likely that some of these problems result in no visit at all. Our clients don’t always hear why their customers are upset and, worse, why they’ve lost a sale.

What are the three small things you should do to make sure you have a steady flow of customers who don’t start off frustrated? Keep your online listings accurate. 

1) Make Sure Your Store Hours Are Accurately Listed Online

We hear this one a lot. People look online for store hours, plan their visit and pull up only to see that the store is closed. There’s nothing more frustrating. Not only is your customer unable to accomplish what they were hoping, but they have to plan another trip to accomplish their task. More time wasted. Frustration and resentment gets built up. Sales are lost.

What can you do? Ensure that your hours are correct on your website, online listings across the web and on social media profile pages. For holidays, make sure exceptions are listed and communicated as well. Merchants across Canada (with the exception of those in Quebec, who have until Labour Day), you have until the first Monday of August to ensure that your holiday hours are accurate. It’s t to start thinking about what your store hours look like online, folks!

2) Check Your Price Lists and Menus On Search Engines and Review Sites – They May Be Old!

When people are hungry, they want fast, accurate information to help make a decision on where and what to eat. In fact, 86% of people view a menu online before dining out. But what if your menu has changed and people ordering in had no idea? Or what if they came to dine in and wanted something specific that wasn’t offered any longer?

What can you do? Get online and update your menu. Google, Facebook, Open Table, Zomato, Yelp, Trip Advisor – all of these networks need your attention – and so does your website. Update some and not others? All it takes is a handful of people to discover the wrong menu and you risk not only upsetting them, but also give them license to upset others too. How? They can simply leave negative reviews about your business for anything that upsets them. That’s why your best strategy is to update your price lists and menus and keep everyone happy.

3)  You’ve Moved But Haven’t Properly Communicated The Change Online

This one is a classic online mistake that small business owners make. When you move down the street or to another neighbourhood, you have so many details to think about. Phone lines, internet connections, moving companies, insurance and bank account updates, and the list goes on. Everything needs to be changed, including your online listings so your business is pinned, mapped and easily found by the people who matter most – your customers.

What can you do? Again, get online and make those changes. Think about your listings on Google, Facebook, Yelp, Bing, Yahoo and, if you’re a professional (think dentist, doctor, psychiatrist, lawyer, accountant, etc…) make the change on industry specific sites as well. Remember, for every error in your listing, you risk upsetting customers, not ever getting found, or getting penalized by search engines because they’re not fond of inconsistent listings. If you don’t, the result is lost sales. And you can do better than that.

If keeping your online listings accurate seems daunting, the task doesn’t have to be. There’s a low-cost solution to your problem, just ask us how we can help.

Why It’s Important To Claim Your Business Listing On Other Search Engines When Google Has The Highest Search Market Share

Small business owners often ask us a very smart question: If Google has the highest search market share, why do we need to claim our listing on other search engines, directories, review sites, and social networks? After all, their reasoning goes, all roads pretty well lead through Google.

While the question is certainly valid, I’d be willing to bet that Google’s market share in Canada isn’t quite as high as you’d think. And, even so, your Google listing benefits when you also claim your business location elsewhere.

Reason #1

First, have a look at the numbers.
In Canada, search engine market share as of April 2017 looks like this:

Google’s 62% certainly leads, but is it as high as you thought? We’ve heard people say with certainty that it was over 90%. So, who owns the other other 38%? Well, mostly Bing, as 21% of all searches in Canada are conducted on Bing’s engines. That’s significant! In the U.S., Google’s combined market share – including desktop and mobile – is just under 86%, followed by Yahoo and Bing, each with about 6.5%.

So, the first answer to our clients’ question is: Google’s share of the search market isn’t quite as big as you would think. As a result, there is still significant business to be driven to your location from other search engines.

Reason #2

Secondly, the consistency of listings across different networks is also crucial to the SEO of your listing on Google. When Google creates a listing on a company’s behalf before it’s claimed, they aggregate information from other directories. Once a merchant claims its listing, Google will continue to validate it against on other directories.
As a result, the consistency of your listing on other websites still influences Google’s view of your business. So it’s vital to provide different directories with the same exact information initially and every time you make a change. This will have an impact on the SEO for the listing itself on Google, where three out of every five searches by Canadians are taking place. Simply put, the more accurate the listing, the higher it will be presented to an online searcher.

Once you have your listings up and running, wait to see how many more views you’ll get and keep optimizing.

Three Takeaways

  1. Google’s search market share isn’t nearly as high as you would think.
  2. Google validates your listing against the information you provide to other engines.
  3. Make sure that your listing is consistently posted across multiple engines and review sites.