The 2022 Localized Marketing Benchmark Report: A Look Into the Data

As a multi-location business, localized marketing is a must. The data speaks for itself. Localized content performs 12x better than content that is not localized, and 74 percent of consumers conduct a local search at least once a week. If your multi-location business isn’t leveraging local to its fullest potential, you’re missing out on potential customers and sales. 

So which tactics are a must when it comes to localized marketing? Data from our 2022 Localized Marketing Benchmark Report (LMBR) provides guidance. 

What is the 2022 Localized Marketing Benchmark Report?

SOCi’s 2022 LMBR is the most comprehensive report for multi-location marketers today. The report analyzes how leading multi-location businesses perform in the most influential digital channels that impact modern consumer buying decisions, including local search, social, and ratings and reviews. 

This year’s report has almost 3x the data as reports in years past and scores multi-location businesses on their performance in search, social, and reputation. SOCi created this report to develop multi-location brand presence and promotion standards on the top localized marketing channels that influence consumer buying decisions. It also quantifies top multi-location brands’ digital presence and performance to establish benchmarks for performance in search, reputation, and social at the local level. 

How businesses score in search, social, and reputation are combined to derive an overall Local Visibility Score. There are approximately 100 metrics that make up the Local Visibility Score for each business and are grouped into the three categories mentioned above across Google, Facebook, and Yelp. 

Metrics within search, social, and reputation fall into these classes:

• Search: claiming, profile optimization, engagement, reviews, onsite SEO, and ranking
• Reputation: rating, volume, velocity, variety, and response
• Social: claiming, profile optimization, audience, content, and engagement  

The overall Local Visibility Score for all brands studied this year is 47 points out of 100. This demonstrates modest but notable progress over last year’s benchmark of 43. Next, we’ll break down how this translates into each of the three categories. 

Local Search 

When looking at search, top multi-location businesses are scoring an average of 48 out of 100 points, one point higher than the average Local Visibility Score. The data shows that while brands are reasonably thorough in claiming and completing all available fields in their Google profiles, Yelp lags in both areas, leaving room for improvement. 

If you’re looking for specific metrics for your multi-location business to follow, consider the following:

• Multi-location businesses studied in the report had 23.8 percent of their locations ranking in the Google 3-Pack, while top performers had 61.1 percent of their locations ranking. 
• On average, businesses studied in the report had 97.7 percent of their profiles optimized on Google, 85.7 percent on Facebook, and 89.7 percent on Yelp. 

As a multi-location business, you should be striving to meet or exceed these averages. Top scorers in search achieved 60x the 3-Pack visibility compared to the lowest performers. Google 3-Pack listings get 126 percent more search traffic and 93 percent more clicks and calls than listings that are hidden under the “More places” button. 

For a more in-depth look at what it takes to level up your business search efforts and boost online visibility on Google, check out our Top 10 Things You Should Be Doing in Local SEO Now guide. 

Local Social 

With three out of four consumers now discovering new products and services through social media every day, good brand visibility on social media is now a table stake. What metrics should your multi-location business focus on to level up its local social efforts and compete with the top performers in the 2022 LMBR? 

The report looked at how multi-location businesses are leveraging social on both Facebook and Google and found the following:

• The average brand analyzed this year has about 523 per page and posts an average of seven times per month. 
• On average, brands are receiving about 12.9 engagements per post. 
• Top performers in social media also understand the importance of Google. For instance, top performers post an average of 12.5 times per month on Google, while the standard for all brands studied is only 0.2 times a month. 

So what does this mean for your multi-location business? Again, you should be meeting or exceeding these averages. The closer you can get your social metrics to those of top performers, the more you’ll differentiate your business from the competition. 

Brands ranking at the top in social know that success comes from a combination of relevant local content with a consistent post frequency. To learn more about what it takes to build a solid local social strategy, check out our Localized Social Content Guide. 

Online Reputation Management 

Online reputation management, a new section in the report this year, was the third category studied in the 2022 LMBR. Ratings and reviews are growing in weight as a search ranking factor for Google. As a result, the higher the average star rating your locations have, the more chances increase for ranking in the 3-Pack or highly in the local finder. Multi-location businesses studied in the report scored 48 out of 100 points when looking at reputation, which aligns closely with the average Local Visibility Score. 

The metrics were tracked across Google, Facebook, and Yelp for reputation management. 

Data from the report found that:

• Average star ratings were consistent with last year’s findings, with an average of 4.2 stars on Google, 4.3 stars on Facebook, and 3.2 stars on Yelp. 
• In terms of response to reviews, businesses are improving. For instance, on average, companies respond to 36.2 percent of reviews on Google and 28.3 percent of recommendations on Facebook. 
• Top performers in the reputation management category understand the importance of responding to reviews on time, as their response times were about half the average response times. 

The impact of ratings and reviews on how consumers make buying decisions, combined with their power to influence ranking, has a real influence on business success. As a general rule of thumb, your multi-location business should aim to respond to as many reviews as possible, as quickly as possible. 

For a more detailed look at what it takes to strengthen your business’s reputation management efforts, check out our Multi-Location Marketer’s Guide to Online Reputation Management. 

Start Improving Your Business’s Localized Marketing Efforts 

As you can see, the 2022 LMBR is packed with essential data. While we touched on the overall performance metrics across search, social, and reputation, the 2022 LMBR also breaks down the data by 12 different industries. This could give your multi-location business a more granular picture of how multi-location companies are performing within your industry, giving you insight into which localized marketing tactics can help differentiate your business from competitors. 

While all of the data is great, many multi-location businesses are overwhelmed at the thought of managing localized marketing efforts across 100s or 1,000s of business locations. That’s where SOCi comes in! SOCi is the marketing platform for multi-location brands and has all the tools your business needs to create a winning localized marketing strategy. From scaling your local social efforts to maintaining updated and accurate local listings across business locations to comprehensive reputation management solutions, SOCi has you covered. 

For a more in-depth look at how SOCi can help your business manage its localized marketing strategy while saving your team time and effort, request a demo today! And don’t forget to download the full 2022 LMBR to understand where your business is succeeding, and where there’s room for improvement.