Marketing is like a marathon. If you don’t pace yourself, you might just not make the finish line. Around the holidays, retailers list out strategies to make the current year, better, more engaging and more competitive than years past. By now, you probably have a detailed strategy in place to realize these goals. But before we cross the finish line of 2015, use the following 3 questions to check yourself twice for the holidays:
1. Are your online advertisements targeting the right customers?
The key to creating engaging online campaigns for the holiday season is to ensure you're targeting the right consumers. This should go without saying, however we are still seeing month after month that industry leading brands are missing the mark to target their campaigns effectively. When keeping “Black Friday” sales at top of mind, your primary goal is to lead online searchers to your nearest location, thus stressing on the importance of adding location information to your advertisements.
In one of our recent posts we emphasized how smart marketers are using location information as a targeting metric in conjunction with demographic and online behaviors. This type of hyper personalization is what’s needed to ensure you're reaching the right consumers, at the right location, with the right offer. All three of which are needed to getting from searching about your products online to buying them in store.
2. Are your local properties fully optimized?
It’s crucial to remember year round that your customer’s experience is the number one priority. Just last week, Google’s mobile searches surpassed its desktop searches. Instead of building local properties that are mobile friendly or responsive, you should optimize fully to suit the needs of these on-the-go users. From an audience engagement and retention perspective, working with a detailed focus on optimization (mobile, desktop and more) builds an even greater opportunity to expand to new communities and boost your ranking in search engine results.
As the app vs. mobile power play saga continues between Google and Apple, you need to be prepared to flow with both of these major channels. One provider is making purchasing from search results readily accessible with schema while the other is more heavily focused on seamless engagement through through apps.The point is, your information needs to be crawlable and indexable to both Google and Apple. Make sure your most differentiating local information is being marked up to stay ahead of the curve.
3. Is your local data complete and updated?
Many marketing managers make the mistake of neglecting their listings once they think they’ve been updated. Unfortunately maintaining your brand’s online listings is an ongoing process. And with external local signals, such as NAP consistency and citation volume, making up over 15% of overall ranking factors it’s something your brand can’t afford to ignore - especially during the holiday season.
Having accurate and consistent data across multiple listings is the foundation of how your brand gets found online, but it shouldn’t just stop at NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) data. When we talk about having a fully optimized listing for each location, we’re talking about ensuring your holiday promotions are listed, photos are published, and your brand is responsive to customer reviews.
Of course for brands with multiple locations scattered across the states, bringing this task in-house might not be scaleable.
Click below to gain access to an instant (free) report of how your brand’s data looks online and how Brandify can help.
Topics: Local Marketing
Social Media Specialist at Brandify. Home is where the Wifi is.
