Sponsored Content: Managing a Coordinated Local Presence Management Strategy
More than half of businesses now use 21 or more digital marketing solutions, an incredible figure that’s not wholly unsurprising given the disconnected nature of many local marketing channels. Clicking between dozens of browser tabs at any given time, and managing the volume of data coming in from so many channels, can be an overwhelming experience. The only proven way to keep an eye on such a vast number of local marketing channels is to add one more — a system that synthesizes data to draw a complete picture of all campaigns on one screen. These systems are known as dashboards, and they’ve become a necessary tool for businesses looking to cultivate a local presence online.
Thirty-seven percent of small businesses already use digital dashboards for ROI analysis, according to Street Fight’s most recent National-to-Local marketing survey. These dashboards make it possible for marketers to review, correct, and optimize the data being published about their companies, while also providing status reports on the health of various digital channels. Marketers using dashboards can empower employees to participate in marketing tactics and make adjustments to their strategies in real time, based on algorithmic changes.
Over the course of this series, we have discussed the real meaning of local presence management, how all the pieces of local presence management fit together, and the role that online mapping apps are playing in desktop, mobile, and voice search results. In this article, we’ll delve deeper into what it really means to manage a coordinated local presence management strategy and how dashboards can help marketers keep a closer eye on the many channels that are necessary in a successful campaign.
Technology companies like Advice Local offer dashboards specifically designed for the purpose of helping with local presence management. Advice Local’s Local Presence Management Dashboard is a cloud-based platform with location data monitoring and maintenance, as well as online reputation, social and review monitoring.
“Dashboards are a critical tool for analyzing and optimizing multi-channel campaigns,” according to David Card, Street Fight’s research director. “They might be over the head of a lot of SMBs, but enterprise local marketers and agencies should be all over them.”
Surveys of both SMBs and enterprise local marketers show that both use a variety of marketing channels, so evaluating each channel’s effectiveness on its own, and then coordinating marketing programs across those channels, is important. But, as Card goes on to explain, marketing channels such as directory listings, data aggregators, map listings, social profiles, and review sites fuel each other and produce multiplier effects.
Advice Local and others offer dashboards that businesses can use to manage their local presence from a single solution. These dashboards incorporate the data being funneled in from search engines, directory listing sites, social and online review websites to provide real outcomes for marketers interested in keeping data up-to-date.
Take, for example, outdated business information. Regardless of who is at fault for the inaccuracies, 73% of consumers say they lose trust in businesses when incorrect information is displayed on directory sites. With Advice Local’s dashboard, marketers can quickly edit or update incorrect business listings for individual business locations through the dashboard.
Previous articles in this series have discussed how various marketing channels influence one another, and the dashboard is where that all comes together. With Advice Local’s dashboard, marketers can get a snapshot of their clients’ reputation with data pulled from top review sites like Yelp and Google. Comprehensive Reputation Reports showcase some of the most current reviews, while an integrated sharing feature allows marketers to seamlessly post positive press or reviews on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Advice Local also provides a sentiment score, which combines star ratings and comments to give businesses a clearer picture of their online reputation.
What impact do these features have on a brand’s bottom line? That information is made available through Advice Local’s many reporting capabilities. In particular, Progress Reports display the status of listings that the company has submitted and whether those listings are present. Monthly Reports highlight growth for the business, with an included visibility score.
Dashboards are a valuable tool for bringing together data for both enterprise-level brand marketers and small and mid-size business owners. Particularly as the number of mobile and location-related searches grows, and as current trends place an increased emphasis on the ratings and reviews found on social media sites, dashboards will become even more valuable to marketers who care about driving consumers into brick-and-mortar store locations.
To help businesses learn even more about dashboards, the team at Advice Local is offering behind-the-scenes tours of the company’s local presence management solution. Click here to request access.
