Monthly Industry Roundup: December 2017

Location3 News

Location3 Recognized as Official Facebook Managed Partner

Location3 recently announced it is now recognized as an official Facebook Managed Partner. This comes after years of research, testing, technology development and strategy development for Facebook ad campaigns.

We’ve found that Facebook’s ability to leverage complex audience data, including audience targeting, retargeting and lookalike audience capabilities, were a natural fit for Location3’s local marketing for franchise systems. This fit is only reinforced with the evolution of our franchise marketing platform, LOCALACT. Through this partnership, we’re looking forward to opportunities for increased performance for all of our clients.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN LOCAL SEARCH?

How To Maximize Online Data For Offline Sales This Holiday Season

Location3 CEO Alex Porter recently shared via Total Retail how retailers can make the most of their online marketing strategies in order to drive sales at their brick-and-mortar business locations. Here are a couple tips:

• Mobile-First Mindset: Forty-nine percent of mobile visits to a business website result in an in-store purchase. That means retailers should be optimizing their site for the mobile experience, including mobile apps and prominently displayed call-to-action buttons on the home page.
• Local User Data: Marketers can find trends in user search data from Google Analytics and AdWords to determine what user searches are driving the most foot traffic. Retail marketers can then use this data to fine-tune their messaging from both an organic and paid search perspective.

For further analysis, the entire post can be read here.

Source: Google

Google Assistant Now Capable Of Finding Local Services

Google announced on Nov. 30 the capabilities of its Assistant product had been updated to allow users to find local services such as plumbers, electricians, and other local businesses.

Users can simply ask their Assistant to “find an electrician” or any other relevant service. After a few more details are shared including the user’s location, the Assistant will offer to call an electrician or give the user a list of local electricians. This feature can be used on smartphones or Google Home devices. It’s unclear in Google’s post if this feature will extend to other local businesses that aren’t home-service based.

How Local Search Can Make The Register Ring This Holiday Season

In an article for Franchising USA Magazine, Location3 CEO Alex Porter details how a local search marketing strategy can maximize revenue for franchise brands. While e-commerce continues to grow, it’s still dwarfed by in-store purchases. In fact, 90 percent of retail purchases are made in-store.

That means retail brands and other franchise systems that rely on in-store visits still have a massive opportunity to capitalize on holiday sales. Porter shares a couple of overlooked strategies, including making sure your business location is accurately listed online and creating ads using non-branded industry keywords.

Read here for further analysis and insight.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEO?

Source: Google

Google Expands Featured Snippets In SERP Reboot

Google recently announced via The Keyword blog three new additions to its results page. These include “expanded Featured Snippets, improved functionality of Knowledge Panels, and suggested content as you search for a particular topic.” Here are a few details:

• Featured Snippets: These appear at the top of page and provide quick answers or solutions for select queries. This feature has been expanded to include more images and suggestions for related searches. This creates a richer experience for the user, but as mentioned in the post, Featured Snippets will remain limited to select queries.
• Knowledge Panels: Similar updates were applied to Knowledge Panels, expanding options for related searches within the primary search Knowledge Panel.
• Suggested Content: Aimed at providing relevant information for users during discovery, Related Topics will be featured after multiple related searches.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN PPC?

How To Increase Your Franchise’s In-Store Revenue

The holiday season is go time for retailers and franchisees hoping to cash in on a seasonal sales boost. So what are the best strategies for these brands to ensure the holidays boom instead of bust in 2017? In a recent post on Business.com, Location3 CEO Alex Porter says the answer is a hyperlocal paid search marketing strategy. Porter shares three tips for finding that strategy and then executing it for maximum revenue. The three tips:

1. Figure out your hyperlocal targeting strategy
2. Consider the new and improved customer journey
3. Make sure customers can find you online

Here’s an excerpt from the post:

“Eighty-two percent of customers research online before visiting a store or making a purchase, whether online or in-store. If you fail to incorporate hyperlocal trends and tactics in your current strategy, you might notice a considerable drop in both online and in-person traffic. Consumers are savvier than ever, so it’s important to connect with them using search early on in the research process. You can do this by qualifying them with the right keywords and ad copy, and then moving them through a quality experience on your website or other digital channels, to increase the likelihood of a store visit.”

For further analysis, the entire post can be read here.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CONTENT?

How To Spy On Your Customers For Blog Ideas

Coming up with blog ideas isn’t necessarily difficult. The beauty, or curse many would say, of the internet is the ability to publish almost anything we want. But for marketers, that doesn’t mean your audience wants to read it. You must meet your target audience on their terms.

So how can content marketers find out what their audience really wants to read? Keyword tools can help, but as Katy Katz points out in this post on Search Engine Journal, keywords only tell part of the story. For more context, content marketers should use forums in addition to tools like Answer The Public, BuzzSumo, and SEMRush.

Forums like Quora are chock full of relevant questions and detailed answers that are qualified by forum “likes” or “upvotes”. Supplement your keyword research with forum research to bring full context to your next blog post.