Multi-location marketers are always looking for ways to increase their performance and hit the next benchmark. One minute you’re told to focus all your attention on paid social, and the next, you see chatbots are the future big thing. While all of this may be accurate, some tried-and-true tactics will always help your multi-location business boost marketing performance. Within this blog, we’ll provide you with an easy-to-follow plan your multi-location business can follow to improve your marketing performance.
- Gain Insight from Customer Testimonials and Reviews
Before you get started improving your marketing efforts, you need to understand what is working and what’s not. Customer testimonials and reviews are a great way to get a feel for what consumers are thinking. For instance, if you find multiple comments raving about your customer service, you know your multi-location business is doing something right. On the other hand, if customers leave reviews about your return policy or lack of communication, you know those are areas to work.
Consumer insight allows your multi-location business to understand where to focus your marketing efforts.
There’s no reason to fix something that’s not broken, which is why gaining insight from your customers is much needed.
Once you gather all the information, you can determine any common themes or trends. Your multi-location business can then use common themes to inform your marketing strategy. If customer communication is an issue, it’s time to emphasize responding to reviews and posts on local social channels. If consumers have questions about specific products, consider sharing more product-focused content on your website and social media.
As long as your multi-location business takes the time to analyze what consumers say about your business and then adjust and optimize, your efforts are well worthwhile.
- Know Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is also essential to level up your marketing efforts. Who are your potential customers? You want to appeal to the audience who wants to buy what your business sells. Often, a company tries to cast a wide net with its marketing efforts and talk to as many people as possible, but that’s not always the most impactful. If you determine who you want to reach and ensure that your branding and messaging attract that persona, you’ll see improvements in your marketing performance.
The way a yoga studio speaks to its target audience would differ from how a himgh-intensity workout facility speaks to its audience. Is your target audience millennials who are into the latest trends? Are you targeting people well into their careers who are looking to treat themselves, or a family who’s trying to save money to put their kids in college? Clearly defining your target audience helps you understand who you’re talking to and achieve the correct messaging and tone of voice.
- Put a Focus on Localization
While speaking directly to your target audience is critical, there should always be a local component. Whether you’re posting on social channels or updating your local listings, your consumers should be able to connect with your business at the local level. Seventy-two percent of user engagement and 66 percent of brand-related impressions happen on Facebook location pages and not on corporate pages. Consumers are telling businesses they care about localization, and it’s your job to deliver.
What does this mean for your marketing strategy? In terms of social media, ensure that your multi-location business has local social pages claimed for each business location. Your locations should then post local content on these pages. There are many opportunities to share what’s happening on the local level, from upcoming events to information about team members and location-based updates.
When looking at search, there are opportunities to focus on localization there as well. For instance, ensuring that your business has local listings for each location is crucial. Keeping the local listings updated with the most accurate information is even more critical. Similarly, you can make sure your local businesses monitor and respond to reviews at the local level. The more effort your company puts into your marketing efforts locally, the more you’ll get out of them.
- Determine and Track the Metrics That Matter
After you’ve found where your business is excelling and lacking, defined your target audience, and realized the importance of localization, you must determine which metrics matter. You can’t go in and implement a new localized marketing strategy without first deciding how you’re going to track its success. For example, are impressions important for your local social efforts, or do you care more about how many comments and shares you receive? What is your end goal in terms of leads and sales? These are things your multi-location business should decide before you implement any changes to your marketing efforts, so you can determine what’s working.
Your multi-location business should also decide how often you’re going to track the success metrics you’ve defined. Once a month is probably a good place to start, and we don’t recommend making any adjustments before the first three months. It often takes time for new marketing efforts to see results, so giving it a few months before making changes allows you to have a good idea of which actions drive results.
- Make Optimizations and Test New Ideas
If your marketing plan is working for your business, that’s great, but there’s always room to continue improving to ensure your multi-location business remains an industry leader. Continually optimizing your efforts and testing new ideas is the secret sauce to maintaining optimal marketing performance.
What does this mean for your multi-location business? As we mentioned above, the metrics that track can help inform your company of areas of opportunities. If your local social content isn’t getting the type of engagement you strive for, test new types of content. Similarly, if you notice that your business ranks higher on Google, go back and think about what attributed to that awareness boost. If you know what works and what doesn’t, you can then make optimizations to ensure your marketing efforts are worthwhile.
The same goes for testing new ideas. As a multi-location marketer, you need to stay on top of the latest industry trends and incorporate new platform updates into your marketing efforts. This will help give your multi-location business a competitive edge and allow you to determine what new updates work before everyone starts using them.
Check Out The New Martech Cube Podcast. For more such updates follow us on Google News Martech News
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darcy Bicham
Darcy Bickham is a graduate from Texas A&M University and has worked in education related fields for the past four years. Over the years she has developed experience writing on a variety of topics including business, local politics, transportation, and both primary and higher education.