What Leading Personal Care and Fitness Brands Are Doing to Crush Localized Marketing

With so many personal care and fitness brands out there, it can be hard to stand out from the competition. That’s where localized marketing comes in. Our newly released Top Personal Care and Fitness Brands in Localized Marketing report looks at the leading personal care and fitness brands and analyzes which tactics are used to dominate localized marketing. We analyzed fitness brands, salon and beauty franchises, and other personal care businesses such as tanning salons and massage spas for this report. Within this blog, we’ll break down which local search and social tactics are used most frequently by those leading the industry and explain how your brand can implement these strategies into your localized marketing efforts. 

The Personal Care and Fitness Industries and Localized Marketing 

The personal care and fitness industries were some of the most impacted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. As cases rose and went back down, many fitness and personal care brands were forced to temporarily shut and re-open their doors. Some of these businesses learned that to survive, they had to get creative fast and turned to digital marketing to host online workout classes, makeup tutorials, or something similar. Those that leveraged video conferencing tools and social networking platforms were able to maintain engagement with their customers even while their doors were closed. 

As these businesses began to re-open on a more permanent basis, it was vital for them to communicate what safety measures they were putting in place to keep both employees and customers healthy. Localized marketing has provided essential tools and tactics for communicating temporary closures and reopenings, as well as for offering details on health and safety practices. It also plays the more fundamental role of showcasing business services and unique differentiators to consumers deciding where to exercise or get their nails done. 

Top personal care and fitness brands have realized the importance of localized marketing and implemented it into their daily marketing tactics to stand out from the competition. While many understand that localized marketing is a must, personal care and fitness brands are in the building stage of their localized marketing journey. This means that although localized marketing efforts are starting to pay off, there is still much to learn from the highest performing brands in each category. 

Local Social: What’s Working and Where There’s Room for Improvement 

Let’s start with local social and look at what leading personal care and fitness brands are doing well. Multi-location personal care and fitness brands have a significant amount of their business locations posting regularly. For instance, personal care brands have an impressive 93 percent of their business locations postings on Facebook, while fitness brands are close with 90 percent of their businesses posting on Facebook. The frequency of posting from business locations is impressive as well. Personal care brands post an average of 11 posts per month on Facebook and 14 times per month for fitness brands. 

While you likely think of posting when it comes to local social, we can’t overlook ratings and reviews as well. Personal care and fitness brands are doing an excellent job responding to consumer reviews on Facebook and Google. To get more detail on what percent of locations respond to reviews, download the full report here, and see how your multi-location business compares. 

Although there are many areas where personal care and fitness brands succeed in local social, there’s always room for improvement. For instance, while posting frequency is strong on Facebook and Google, personal care and fitness brands could work on their engagement. On average, personal care brands received nine engagements with each Facebook post, while fitness brands earned 15. It’s also important to note that the highest-performing brands in each category slightly skew these metrics. When looking at personal care, Great Clips dominated with an average of 138 engagements per post, and Anytime Fitness crushed the fitness industry with an average of 140 engagements per post. Studying these two brands would be smart while your multi-location business develops a local social strategy. 

Local Search: Where Personal Care and Fitness Brands are Succeeding and Falling Short 

After analyzing local social, the Top Personal Care and Fitness Brands in Localized Marketing report looked at local search metrics. When looking at local search, personal care and fitness companies show strong performance in claiming and completing their local listings. On average, personal care brands have claimed 95 percent of their listings on Google and 98 percent on Facebook. Personal care brands also have an impressive 95 percent profile completeness rate on Google and 94 percent on Facebook. Fitness brands are also doing well in this area, with 96 percent of listings claimed on both platforms and an equally strong 95 percent profile completeness on both. As a multi-location business, local listings are a must to rank higher on Google and increase your online visibility. If your personal care or fitness brand doesn’t have claimed and updated local listings, think of all the opportunities you could be missing out on. 

While local listings are an essential component of local search efforts, your average star rating is also something to consider. Leaders in the personal care and fitness industries maintain solid local ratings and reviews across Facebook and Google, which should be no surprise. Personal care brands have an average star rating of 4.43 out of 5 on both Facebook and Google, and fitness brands averaged 4.53 out of 5 stars between the two. 

As you might have noticed, Yelp hasn’t been mentioned yet. Yelp is still an essential local search channel for personal care and fitness brands, and provides excellent areas of opportunity. When looking at the top personal care and fitness brands, Yelp could use some extra attention, especially when it comes to claiming and optimizing local listings. Again, our recent report breaks it down more in-depth. 

Elevate Your Personal Care Brand’s Localized Marketing Strategy 

Overall, personal care and fitness brands have a better handle of local search than local social. However, both search and social represent significant channels and areas of opportunity for driving overall brand visibility. How does your personal care or fitness brand compare? Now that you understand what it takes to dominate your localized marketing efforts, it’s time to get started. While managing local search and local social across 100s or 1,000s of business locations can seem overwhelming, SOCi is here to help. 

From reputation management to local listings to local social and beyond, SOCi has you covered. SOCi’s tools are built specifically for multi-location marketers and can help you seamlessly manage your localized marketing efforts across business locations. Request a demo today, and learn how SOCi can differentiate your multi-location business from the competition!