Next week this time, we’ll officially be half way through 2015. You might remember that early this year, we laid out some resolutions to get you thinking about how to make 2015 your year with Local SEO. Now that some crucial industry news and updates have taken from these past 5 months, it’s time re-evaluate your tactics and adjust your strategy to accomplish your goals. Use these mid-year tweaks to get back on track and finish Q3 and Q4 strong.
Leverage the Momentum of Mobile
In a world where programmatic advertising is becoming the norm, we need to move past the hype of Mobile’s arrival. Mobile is now. In fact, there are officially more searches coming from Mobile than desktop. Search engines know it, users know it, and if you don’t already have your Mobile advertising strategy in the works, you’ve just lost to your local competition. Leverage the momentum of mobile to tweak and evolve your strategy. Consider implementing some Mobile game-changers:
Social CRM- Your relationship with local customers should be a two-way street. Use a dashboard that takes in your customers’ sentiment via social and review channels to enhance your brand’s social consciousness. Localize your content strategy for your local-social pages to create transform local customers perception .
Video- Industry experts have caught wind of the idea that soon enough, Facebook Video could overtake that of Youtube for advertising. When you already have location and corporate pages in place, consider integrating this insight into your strategy to provide more visual, valuable info to users.
2. Sync Your Small Data
As local marketing steadily climbs in importance to enterprise brand managers, you should ensure that the heart of your strategies always include one particular element: Small Data. By this- we mean your most actionable information that engages with customers with your nearest location. On the path to purchase, these bits of data are what will encourage customers to make that trip and purchase in-store. It doesn’t matter what industry you are marketing to-- you must continuously tweak your efforts by maintaining and syncing your small data.For example, your NAP information, store hours, promotions and even photos all require constant refreshes in order to serve as impactful touchpoints to convert customers. If you are consistently finding new ways to push your small data into the hands of the mobile customer, syncing will help to make the customer experience actionable.
The main key to syncing small data is finding a platform that can proliferate this information to all of your digital properties. From there, you can start helping users generate a buzzword every marketer loves to talk about--Big Data. Small Data aids marketers in driving trackable customer actions and behaviors. With wearables like Apple Watch being penetrated into every-day user life, syncing this data has become even more crucial.
3. Open the Door to Local Optimization
The ever-present issue for local marketers is algorithmic fluctuation. Most recently, Google announced a penalty on Doorway Pages that marketers did not initially see kicking into effect. Now that it has been confirmed as live and continuously updating-- it’s time to tweak the way you are reeling users in from SERPs.
Local page optimization is a timeless effort that needs constant moderation. Because of the Doorway Penalty, you now have the opportunity to focus more on contextualizing your content for users through your local pages. The point is to give the most valuable content in the most local and contextual way as possible. On desktop and mobile, having the intent to provide local users with value will keep you top of mind to users and SERPs. In addition to your social channels, these customized local pages will be yet another influential touchpoint on the path to purchase that can give customers engaging moments that they are searching for before walking into your locations.
With half the year down and half to go, take action to adjust and enhance your current marketing efforts. Remember that with Local, everything goes back to the satisfaction and experience of your customers. If you tweak your strategies to reflect this, the next six months of summer, back to school and the holiday season will be the optimal time to boost your ROI. Start boosting your customer love with our newest infographic and whitepaper.
Social Media Specialist at Brandify. Home is where the Wifi is.
