In case you haven’t heard, Amazon Prime Day starts July 15th.  With deals lasting up to 36hrs, Prime Day has become almost as popular as Black Friday. Unfortunately, many brick-n-mortar stores believe that this event will deter shoppers from making purchases in-store. However, this isn’t exactly true.

Studies show that 23% of the time people will abandon their online shopping cart. In addition to cart abandonment, 34% of people choose to shop in-store to avoid waiting for delivery and 55% of people want to touch or try on the item before buying. Amazon Prime Day can actually be quite lucrative for brick-n-mortar business if they prepare ahead of time.

Via Amazon

How to Prep Your Local Stores For Amazon Prime Day

88% of consumers who search for a local business on their phone will visit within 24hrs. When 8 out of 10 consumers use their phones to shop, brands need to be prepared for an overflow of Amazon shoppers looking for same-day purchases. Prepping your brand to be found locally is one of the best things a brick-n-mortar store can do to compete with Amazon Prime Day.

Step #1 – Brand Audit

Start with an Instant Audit. Crush It Local’s Free Instant Audit tool will tell you how visible your brand is online in only a matter of seconds. See how your brand is performing in the search rankings, business listings, and reviews. Before you can begin working on the following steps you have to know where your brand currently stands – this starts with an audit.

Go ahead and give it a try right now, the blog will still be here when you finish.

Brand Audit

Step #2 – Listing Management

Now that you know what your listings look like, you can go through and clean them. This means getting rid of duplicates, claiming or creating missing listings, and adding any missing information. The most common forms of missing information are often business name, address, phone number, website, category, hours, and description (a.k.a NAPWCHD).

By cleaning your local business listings people will have a much easier time finding your business. Accurate listings not only help you rank higher in searches but it builds trust with the customer when the information you have listed is correct.

Step #3 – Review Management

Are you replying to all of your reviews? Amazon shoppers rely on reviews and ratings to know they’re getting the best deal and this is no exception when searching for a local business. Responding to reviews can impact your search rankings by 15%. Not to mention responding to reviews actually leads to earning more positive reviews.

Have too many negative reviews? That’s ok; when businesses respond to negative reviews, 33% of the time the reviewer will update their review to a positive one and 34% of the time they’ll delete the original negative review. Managing your review is an important step if you want to compete with Amazon.

Step #4 – Local Pages

Get your local pages up-to-date. Local pages are a great way to not only increase your SERP appearance, but they help connect consumers with local information straight from the source – your website.

Local pages are the perfect place to connect consumers with the location nearest them, share in-store promotions, and list the items you have in-stock. Local pages are a must-have for any multi-location business looking to convert online shoppers to in-store shoppers because those shoppers will be using product keywords to find your locations.

Step #5 –  Social Media

Ramp up your social media presence. Social media is a great way to get your deals and discounts in front of consumers, in fact, 72% of consumers follow brands on social media for discounts. Consumers are already looking online for great discounts on Prime Day, by utilizing location accounts on social media, brands can drive online visitors in-store.

For multi-location brands looking to compete with Amazon Prime Day by capitalizing the moment-of-need shopper, following these steps at scale may seem like a huge project. Fortunately, tools like Crush It Local’s all-in-one Local Brand Management platform makes it easy for small merchants to take control of the online presence of their brick-n-mortar stores.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal posted an article exposing an estimated 11 million fake business listings on Google Maps. That same day, Google released both a response to the article and updates to Google My Business (GMB). For the real businesses that are dealing with fake listings on Google Maps, these latest updates appear to be a quick solution to Google’s ongoing battle with fake business listings.

The Reality of Google Maps’ Fake Listing Problem

With over 150 million businesses listed on Google Maps, fraudulent listings take up about 7.3% of all businesses on Google Maps. Using a combination of Google’s own internal system and flagged listings by users, Google has been working to decrease the appearance of fake listings. Last year alone, Google took down over 3 million fake listings but fake listings continue to grow year after year.

Why are people making fake listings? We have some thoughts.

• Competitors: There are cases will the competition will create fake listings in order to provide consumers with inaccurate contact information.
• Scammers: Some people are creating fake listings to scam people, like the woman profiled in the WSJ article who unknowingly hired a fake contractor off Google and charged her double.

Fake listings are causing consumers to lose trust in Google Maps and the real businesses that rely on GMB to acquire customers, which is why it’s so important that Google is making updates to combat fake listings.

Google Maps Latest GMB Update

Google’s recent Google My Business update includes several features that are designed to help both consumers and Google distinguish fake business listings from the real ones. This update introduces some features that reward active and accurate businesses:

• Logo Feature: Google is rewarding businesses who complete theirNAPWCHD information by displaying the business’ logo to the right of their profile. This will help consumers identify real listings from fake ones. 

• Cover Photos: It looks like Google is giving back the power to choose a cover photo to the business.

• Photo Displays: Google is introducing a new module that will prominently display photos uploaded by the business. 

• Welcome Offers: Businesses can now reward customers who follow the business’ GMB profile with custom discounts or offers.

• Short Name Searchability: Coming soon, consumers will be able to search for a business by their short name.

• Offline Marketing Materials: Google launched a new website that allows businesses to purchase offline marketing materials like stickers, posters and other items that are generated from GMB profile content.

Source: GMB Marketing Kit

Coming Soon: Google will be highlighting the top 5% of GMB profiles in a particular category as a “Local Favorite”. These businesses will earn both digital and physical badges of honor. This is Google’s way of recognizing brands who “consistently deliver a great experience for people”.

If these latest updates sound a little familiar, you’re not alone. Google seems to be taking inspiration from other similar applications. Welcome offers are a page straight out of Yelp’s playbook and we’ve all seen the favorite lists and business stickers from Yelp and TripAdvisor before. As for the short name searchability and following business features, that has social media written all over it. Google is clearly dedicated to becoming a consumer’s one and only source for business information.

How to Take Advantage of Google’s Latest GMB Updates

Google has made one thing clear with these most recent updates – the businesses who actively update and maintain their GMB profiles will be rewarded. Show you’re active on GMB by doing the following:

• Respond to all your reviews.
• Participate in Google Q&A.
• Utilize Google Posts to updates, deals, and events.
• Implement a Listing Management platform to stay on top of it all.

For multi-location brands or agencies working with many small businesses, maintaining multiple GMB profiles is impossible without the help of a listing management platform like Crush It Local. Crush it Local’s platform relentlessly monitors your local business listings across hundreds of directories and offers recommendations for optimization. With 25% of the Google Search Ranking Factors coming from GMB signals, keeping your GMB profile up-to-date is one of the biggest factors in a brand’s online visibility.

Want to see how your GMB profile compares? Try our Free Instant Brand Audit!

In a recent study, 41% of companies said they had no idea whether or not their social media efforts were actually paying off. When it’s difficult to see or attribute the immediate return social media has, it could be hard to justify its importance.

However, make no mistake, social media has become a major element in the marketing and local search industry; especially when 97% of adults between the ages of 16-64 say they logged onto at least one social media platform in the past month. Even brick-and-mortar business need to go where the customers are and that means being on social media.

These are five reasons why social media has become a key ingredient to a profitable local SEO strategy.

1. Social Media Drives In-Store Traffic

This is the big one. At the end of the day, brick-and-mortars need to drive customers through their doors and social media visibility is incredibly important when attempting to increase foot traffic.

92% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated more online exposure for their businesses and at a time when 97% of customers are researching physical stores online, your social presence could be the difference between a customer choosing you, or choosing one of your competitors.

When customers are researching online, they value transparency and have updated, relevant content on your social media accounts demonstrates that. They look through your Facebook page, your Twitter feed, and Instagram stories in order to validate their decision to choose your business.

In the event they check your social media accounts and the information is out of date, or dare I say…non existent, they will begin to question the authenticity and even the existence of your business. Keeping your content updated and relevant to your unique services builds trust with customers and shows that you are active and engaged online, which has become a prerequisite for customers looking to make a trip to your physical location.

If you have already implemented social media into your marketing routine, another reason it should be valued is the invaluable information it provides.

2. Social Media allows for in-depth Market Insight

It was found that, of those with at least 1 year of experience using social media, 69% or more found social platforms provided deep marketplace insight Social Media has become an amazing opportunity for companies to understand exactly who their market is. When you’re using this to your advantage, you see the pool of customer information is at your disposal.

Marketplace insight is incredibly vital if your business wants to grow and target the right customers. It’s essential to gather all information from your community to find out what is working and what needs to change with your products or services.

We understand that social media has become this huge opportunity to mine data, but within its vastness, it’s difficult to separate all relevant data from useless information. However, using Crush It Local sentiment tool and geofencing social media capabilities located on our dashboard, mining all this information is much easier.

The market insight you’re able to uncover is endless. You’re able to measure:

• Sentiment towards staff, new products and services, each location and your brand as a whole
• Customer satisfaction
• Users experiences
• Regional trends
• Possibilities for expansion to new cities

Not only does listening to customers allow you to harness that feedback into profitable results, but it’s also a great way to show customers that you care about their relationship with the brand.

3. Social Media Builds Stronger Customer Relationships

Nowadays you follow the brands you trust because they have come through for you. When customers follow your social media channels, they begin to feel a greater connection to the brand.

Many brands make the mistake of using their platforms just to market and that is a rookie mistake. When building and maintaining your social media accounts, you need to go in with the objective that customer relationships are the most important.

However, when building stronger customers relationships on social media, it’s not enough to just post content; the interaction is key.

By simply commenting on someone’s post or “retweeting” you make a huge difference with your community. In fact, customer churn can increase by up to 15% if businesses fail to respond to customers over social media. Brands need to actively join the conversations online.

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are allowing for great opportunities for open dialogue with your online community. Just like any relationship, you need to take the time and communicate with your audience. Maintaining this relationship causes them to become loyal and continue giving you their business.

4. Social Media Increases Customer Retention

What is another word for a loyal customer? Customer Retention.

“In a study, it was found that Loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5 times as likely to forgive,

4 times as likely to refer, and 7 times as likely to try a new offering than non-loyal customers.”

Social media platforms were made for increasing retention because its a gentle reminder to customers of their great experience and an invitation to come back.

Using social media effectively can have some great ROI opportunities, more than 50% of marketers who’ve been using social media for at least three years report it has helped them improve sales.

They aren’t going to follow you on social media when they have a terrible experience, which means that customers following your accounts are probably just looking for another reason to come back. Posting new products, and recent offerings will be received well and get them in the store more often.

5. Social Media Boosts your Organic SEO ranking

More than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for one year or longer improved search engine rankings because it caused a bump in traffic to their websites.

Why is this important?

A higher Organic SEO ranking is the number one correlating factor to strong local SEO performance.

The higher your business lands on the search engine ranking, the better chance they choose your business over others. It’s crucial that on all your accounts, you have your website somewhere in the bio so customers can easily visit your website. Your social media is essentially a second home for your content and when people are searching for your accounts, that raises your search engine visibility.

In the end, it’s all important

Increasing your business traffic comes right down to customers choosing you over your competitors and having an online presence is a large portion of that. If you’re not playing the game, then customers will continue to walk past your business and into someone else’s; especially when 9 in 10 companies in the United States are using social media for marketing purposes.

It’s clear that competition is stiff and its no longer a choice to have a social media strategy, but rather a necessity. It’s clear that there are many major ROI opportunities when you choose to use social media, strategically.

Since the creation of Facebook in 2004, social media has grown to over 3.25 billion users across the globe. However, in the United States, this past year marks the first year since the creation of social media that we’ve seen stagnant growth in user adoption. For brands that rely on social media marketing to reach their customers, now may be a good time to take a step back and reassess your approach to social media.

For the past 15 years, brands have been perfecting their social media strategy, and while some brands like Nike, Domino’s, and Coca-Cola have perfected the art of social media marketing, other brands are still trying to figure out how Twitter works. Whether or not your brand is a social media pro, social media is an essential part of every marketing strategy.

Social Media Growth Over The Years

What is the fastest growing social media platform? According to Pew Research, the growth in social media users from 2018 – 2019 is mostly unchanged. Although platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram have grown in users over the past year, other platforms like Snapchat, Twitter, and Pinterest have fallen. Leading social platforms, YouTube and Facebook have for the most part stayed the same accounting for 73% and 69% of US adults who have used the platform in the past year, respectively.

Source: Pew Research

Why is social media growth stagnant? Many people attribute it to concerns about fake news and privacy. According to Malwarebytes Labs, 95% of people distrust social media when it comes to protecting their privacy. As social media platforms work to gain back the trust of their users, brands should take this time to rethink how they approach social media marketing.

5 Reasons to Rethink Social Media Marketing

1. Social Media Platforms Attract Different Demographics

Today there are 7 main social media platforms; Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, and Pinterest. And each attracts different demographics of users. Gone are the days of trying to reach your audience on every platform, brands need to focus on the platforms their target audiences are using.

Snapchat is almost entirely made up of users under the age of 34 at 75%.

Pinterest has 25% more women users than men.

LinkedIn is more popular with people who have higher education and income, only 9% of people who use LinkedIn have a High School Diploma or less.

Facebook is the only platform to appeal widely to the same amount of users under the age of 65.

Instead of trying to reach consumers across every platform, focus on the platforms your target audience is on. This can help stretch your budget further and focus your efforts on the right audience.

2. Visual Content is More Important Than Ever

With the launch of Instagram shopping across the entire platform earlier this year, visual content has become more valuable than ever. You can literally put a price tag on your photos now.  Not only is it important for brands to have visual content but it’s important for you to have high-quality visual content. People can take high-quality photos and videos on their phones these days, there’s no reason why a brand shouldn’t either.

Source: Nike

People want to like and share content that is visually pleasing and according to Animoto, videos are consumers the favorite type of social media content. In fact, 54% of consumers want to see more video content from brands. If your brand is not yet integrating video into their marketing strategy, you could be losing out on valuable customer engagement.

3. Influencer Marketing is Growing

As consumer trust in social media privacy is decreasing, influencer marketing is increasing. Where social media ads fall short, influencer marketing is succeeding. Today’s highly targeted ads remind people that their personal information is not safe. We all know that creepy feeling when you talk about a product and then see an ad for it the next day… before you’ve even started an online search.

However, when an influencer shares a brand or product with their fans, it doesn’t feel like an ad. It feels like a personal recommendation from a friend or family member. In fact,  22% of 18-34-year-olds have made a large purchase after seeing an influencer recommendation online. Which is why it comes as no surprise that 75% of marketers plan to increase their spend on influencer marketing.

Source: ClickZ

4. People Trust Search Engines More Than They Trust Social Media

Remember that stat mentioned earlier: 95% of people distrust social media? Well, it turns out consumer trust in search engines is much higher. In fact, only 34% of people distrust search engines. With features like Google Posts and Follow, brands could be expanding their social media strategy to Google. Google’s wider reach and increased trust with consumers make it the perfect place to reach to more consumers, even ones who aren’t necessarily searching for them.

5. Consumers Want Local Social Media

As more and more customers reach out to brands on social media for information, it’s becoming clear that national social media strategies are not designed to retain local customers. It’s not easy to comment on or promote in-store promotions for location-specific customer service issues if you only have one social account for 100s of locations.

Local brand social media pages give brands the opportunity to engage with customers on a more personal level. Instagram’s recent switch to location pages makes it easier for brands to engage with their local audience and drive more in-store traffic through on-page CTA buttons like driving directions.

Social media is changing and although we can’t predict the future, we do know that marketers need to be constantly adapting. The recent plateau in the number of social media users is an indication that brands should be rethinking their social media strategy. Instead of chasing followers or likes, brands should take this opportunity to come up for air and asses their current strategy If you’re a multi-location business and would like to learn more about the effectiveness of your social media strategy request a free brand audit today.

What’s New To Google My Business

Over the past few years, Google My Business has added multiple features to business listings. Many of these features are designed to help build engagement with customers.

GMB Customer Engagement Features:

• Short Names
• Follow a Business
• Reviews
• Google Posts
• Q&A
• Photo & Videos

Although these features help create seamless interactions between consumers and the business, they do have their pros and cons.

The Pros and Cons of GMB Features

Pros:

• Increases consumer engagement with the business.
• Allows businesses to reach customers through multiple touchpoints.
• With over 5.6 billion searches a day, Google has the largest reach.

Cons:

• User-generated content is a threat to brand consistency.
• Features are constantly being added and removed.
• Requires more work from brand’s to keep up with the features.

How User-Generated Content is Threatening Brand Consistency

Google officially launched its Local Guides program in 2015. This gamified user-generated contribution program was designed to get people more involved in Google Maps and help fill in some missing map information. Unfortunately, this program has come at a price for brands. User-generated content added to business listings is a threat to brand consistency.

How to Protect Brand Consistency and Build Customer Engagement

Respond to Reviews

Responding to reviews helps to stop rumors from spreading. The last thing you want is one bad experience ruining your entire reputation. By responding to reviews not only does it show you listen to your customers, but it also gives you a chance to right the wrong.

Google My Business Reviews Best Practices:

1. Respond as soon as possible.
   1. Most people expect a response within 24 hours.
2. Thank the customer for leaving feedback.
3. Take negative reviews offline.
   1. Offer a support email or phone number for people to reach out to.

Participate in Q&A

Participate in Q&A to prevent people from spreading misinformation. In the example, the Local Guide who is answering is sending someone to a competitor because they don’t know the answer. Get in front of this by answering questions on your listings from the business directly.

Google Q&A Best Practices:

1. Monitor and answer questions daily.
   1. Google will send the owner email alerts of new questions asked.
2. Flag inappropriate or wrong questions/answers.
   1. If they violate Google’s guidelines they’ll be removed.
3. Ask and answer your own questions.
   1. You can ask questions as the owner or in your personal account – up to you.
   2. Always answer the questions logged in as the owner.

Create Google Posts and Events

Google Posts are a great way to share content and events with people who are searching for your business. Introducing Google Posts into your GMB strategy is one of the easiest ways to attract new customers to your business.

Best Practices for Google Posts:

1. Posts only last 7-days so be sure to post continuously.
2. Events last until the event is over, take advantage by posting early.
3. Post content that inspires consumers to take action. We’ve seen posts with offers drive the most engagement.
   1. Use one of the 6 available CTA buttons:

• Book an Appointment
• Order Online
• Buy
• Learn More
• Sign Up
• Get Offer

Unfortunately, you are not yet able to bulk schedule posts for multiple locations over 10 through the Google API. However, expecting this to change soon and are always monitoring updates to Google’s API.

Keep Your Content Fresh

Along with Google Posts, you’ll want to make sure all your content on your listing is constantly being updated. Keeping your content fresh comes with more benefits than just driving engagement. Keeping your listing updated can earn you higher rankings by contributing to the 25% of how Google ranks a business is from GMB signals. When you post fresh content your followers will get updates bringing the listing to them even if they weren’t looking for it. Lastly, new content helps to push down the user-generated content. This is especially important for those unwanted photos and videos.

Best Practices for Keeping Your Content Fresh:

1. Post on a consistent basis.
   1. Not only will this keep the people who follow your profile updated but it can help improve rankings as well.
2. Don’t have time to create new content – recycle it.
   1. Repost photos that have fallen to the back of the album or repurpose social media content
3. Don’t forget to audit your listings and flag inappropriate or inaccurate photos or videos regularly.
   1. Don’t forget to check and see what users have added as you upload your own content.

Create and Share Your Google Short Name

Creating a short name makes it easy for people to find your Google business listing every time. Share it on your website, social media, and in-store. Using a short name is especially helpful for multi-location businesses or businesses with competitors who have similar names. Although we don’t suspect short names to have any SEO impact, it can’t hurt to claim and distribute yours.

Best Practices for Google Short Names:

1. Create a short name with your brand name followed by location. For Example: g.page/ChatmeterSanDiego
2. Keep your short name consistent with other social media names. For Example: Your Facebook Business Page Link
3. Claim your short name ASAP… even if you don’t plan to use it. You don’t want anyone to claim it before you can.

How to Build Engagement for Multi-Location Brands on Google My Business

Crush It Local’s Local Listing Management service helps brands to stay on top of all the latest GMB features no matter how many locations they have. We help monitor, remove, and suppress those unwanted user-edits so you can have peace of mind when it comes to your GMB listings.