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How Your Multi-Location Business Can Determine the ROI of Your Local Listings

 

By now, you’ve probably heard that local listings are a crucial component of a robust localized marketing strategy, but how important are they? Wouldn’t it be helpful if you were able to determine the return on investment (ROI) your local listings brought to your multi-location business? Within this blog, we’ll dive into how you can evaluate the ROI of your local listings while also providing tips on how to maintain a healthy local listings strategy. 

 

Determine The Health of  Your Local Listings

 

Local business listings are online portfolios that contain information about your business, such as your name, address, phone number, and other relevant information. For this blog, when we refer to local listings, we are referring to the listings created through Google My Business. Before you’re able to determine the ROI of your local business listings, it’s essential to determine the health of your listings. There are two things to keep in mind when considering your listings, are they claimed for each business location, and are there duplicate listings? 

 

Claim all local listings 

 

Claiming all of your local business listings is critical for your multi-location business if you want to ensure that your listings or even your digital presence produce revenue. If you haven’t claimed your local business listings, someone else can. Nine out of 10 search results pages include the Google 3-pack at the top of search results, which highlight the information provided in your listings. If your local listings aren’t claimed, this will hurt your chances of appearing in the Google 3-pack results. Based on the prominence of the 3-pack, businesses that appear in the top search results are awarded the majority of search traffic and conversions. In fact, we know that 75 percent of consumers do not look past the first search engine results page. 

 

 The first step in building a strong local listings strategy is claiming all of your business listings. To do this, you can find your business on Google Maps and click “claim this listing.” Google will then ask you for specific information to verify your listings, and once verified, you will be able to include relevant information about your business. 

 

Remove any duplicate listings 

 

When you claim all of your local listings, you could find that someone else has already claimed them. If this is the case, you want to ensure that you’re the owner of your local listings and remove duplicates. Your business can report duplicate listings that aren’t owned by your business on Google. There are tools like SOCi Listings, which we’ll dive into later, that can help your multi-location business remove or suppress any duplicate listings. 

 

Once your multi-location business has claimed all of your local listings and removed any duplicates, you can start optimizing them to boost your ROI. 

 

Update Your Local Business Information 

 

One of the easiest ways to optimize your local listings is to ensure that all of your local business information is up to date for each listing. The NAP, or name, address, and phone number should be correct for each business location When the information is consistent across all local listings, search engines will be more likely to serve your listings within local search results. 

 

Once you have this information updated, you can begin looking at other information you need to update. For instance, have your hours of operation been affected by COVID-19? If so, this should be reflected in your local listings. Similarly, if your business is offering take-out or curbside as a result of the pandemic, this information can be shared through your local listings as well. The more information a consumer can get about your business by looking at your local listings, the better. 

 

Updated local listings can save consumers confusion and provide them with everything they need to know about your business in a single search. If consumers are confident that your company provides them with the most accurate information, they will be more likely to trust your business and ultimately purchase. This will help boost the ROI of your local listings.  

 

 

If Google has authorized that the information in your local listings is correct and up-to-date, your business will appear in more local searches, increasing your overall brand visibility. This ties into EAT, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, which are three factors Google uses to measure how much it should trust your brand or website. If you have claimed all your local listings and included accurate information, this will help boost your authority and trustworthiness, boosting your online visibility. The more visible your business is online, the more likely it will reach your target audiences, increasing your sales. 

 

Include Rich Imagery on Your Local Profiles 

 

Another opportunity for your business to enhance your local listings is through imagery. Let customers discover more about your business by adding photos of both outside your business location and photos from inside. This again sets the consumer’s expectations about your business and leaves no room for surprises. 

 

Google also found that listings with photos or a virtual tour are twice as likely to generate interest. Among that interest, 41 percent of these place searches result in an on-site visit, increasing the chances that your business will generate revenue that can be linked back to your local listings. If your multi-location business isn’t including images in your local listings, it’s not too late! Without rich imagery on your local profiles, you are missing out on reaching a larger audience and sales. 

 

Post Localized Content 

 

Another great way to boost your local listings and track your ROI is through Google Posts. While this is not directly correlated to listings, Google Posts are found in your GMB accounts – the same place where your listing information is stored. Google Posts allow you to post directly from your local GMB profile. Your posts will appear when someone searches your business’s name in Google Search or Google Maps. Although Google Posts may not have a direct benefit to your listings, building localized content-rich keywords through Google Posts does help build your expertise.

 

Google Posts also provide more insight into your business than the typical information provided in a Google Search. If your business is hosting an upcoming event or running a promotion, this could be useful information to include in a Google Post. The call-to-actions in a Google Post can drive more traffic to your website, again contributing to your ROI. For more information on the importance of Google Posts and why they should be incorporated into your localized marketing efforts, read our blog on the topic. 

 

Utilize a Listings Provider and Track Your ROI

 

While it’s clear that updated local listings can positively impact your business’s ROI, we understand that it can seem daunting to manage local listings across 100s or 1,000s of business locations. A listings solution can help your multi-location business manage your local listings across all of your business locations while also helping you track your ROI. 

 

Our previously mentioned SOCi Listings can help you do just that. SOCi Listings will help your multi-location business increase your listings data accuracy and improve local search rankings, resulting in stronger brand awareness and visibility. Learn how to easily maintain accurate, consistent listings across all your business locations with SOCi Listings. 

 

 

Not only can SOCi help you maintain your local listings, but SOCi can help with other aspects of your localized marketing efforts as well. SOCi is the central command for multi-location marketers and the all-in-one platform for your localized marketing needs. For more information on how SOCi can help your multi-location business create a winning localized marketing strategy and boost the ROI of your local listings, request a demo today!

 

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