Physical or online companies, local SMEs, freelancers … business is increasingly local and digital. What digital tools should be implemented to develop the business of local brands? How to improve promotions, make better use of mapping resources and align physical store and online presence? Details of Georges-Alexandre HaninCEO of Mobilesoft and author of local digital marketing.
Local digital marketing refers to many tools. But which ones have priority?
Before looking at the tools, it seems important to me to remember that Local Digital Marketing has an important component, the word Local. This involves highlighting a point of sale (store, bank branch, therapy office, restaurant) on the Internet to generate traffic. The focus will therefore be on creating one page per store. Many brands have not yet perceived this important point, as evidenced by the number of Store Locators designed in “single page” mode.
The base consists of the creation, on the brand website, of a Store Locator consisting of two standard pages. The “homepage” which presents the list of the shops of the brand and the local pages, one for each point of sale. This page collects all its information: identity (contacts, contacts, hours) promotions, news, etc. This Store Locator needs to be optimized for smartphone upload and include precise schema.org tagging to allow Google bots to crawl accurately.
For customer acquisition, the most important medium to manage is Google Business Profile. This tool, made available by Google, allows you to manage the pages of the points of sale on Google Search and Google Maps. Each month correctly referenced points of sale receive tens of thousands of impressions on their pages and thousands of conversions (routes, calls and clicks to the pages of the Store Locator).
For loyalty, we find the media of the Meta group, namely Facebook and Instagram. Good management of these helps build a community of loyal customers.
How can a store promotion campaign be accompanied by digital tools?
One of the first principles of communication is that a message must be recalled 7 times before its recipient remembers it. In Marketing, therefore, it is important to repeat the messages as many times as possible. Take a brand that is opening a new store. In the “traditional” world it will advertise in the local newspaper, perhaps at the box office, and have a team distribute flyers to passers-by. If he’s on a budget, he’ll make an announcement on local TV / radio and some 4 × 3 displays. In 2022, 84% of consumers start the purchase process with an online search. If the store is not “scanned”, it will not be found. At the same time, a new store will take time to create a good natural reference. He will need opinions, post posts, etc. At the time of launch, its presence will therefore be almost nil.
Digital media can, however, help it get started through local digital advertising. The merchant can easily create geolocated campaigns on Google, Facebook or even Proxistore. As a result, consumers in his neighborhood will have an additional channel to receive promotions. Furthermore, this channel will potentially be targeted (on Google), to consumers looking for a product, service or point of sale related to their business. We must therefore consider digital media as a complement to traditional media. Simultaneous pressure from both sides can make sense.
The same principle can be applied when a store launches promotions on certain products. He will refer to them on the pages of his shop through publications (“posts”) or catalogs of digital products. These catalogs and posts can also be used as the basis for paid campaigns. Once the consumer is in store, a good display of promotions on the shelf will reinforce the message for maximum activation.
How to best use the mapping resources?
Google Business Profile, the new name of Google My Business, optimizes the display on Google Maps based on the signals identified by Google to define a quality score. Here is the recipe for optimizing the Google business profile:
- Make sure your POS data is always up to date
- Update times on holidays
- Regularly post new photos of the store
- Collect as many opinions as possible, hoping they are as positive as possible
- Respond to all reviews and user questions
- Publish a post at least twice a week
- Create and manage a product catalog with at least 15 featured items
At the same time, Google maintains a strong link between the local Store Locator and Facebook Pages. If these are handled in the same way, the store’s Quality Score will increase further.
In a local digital marketing campaign, isn’t it the key point to monitor alignment with physical store marketing?
Absolutely, it is important that what is presented digitally is in the point of sale.
If a brand wants to be efficient from the point of view of Local Digital Marketing, it will be forced to decentralize this activity to managers and / or franchisees. They have a better understanding of the news and how their business fits into the local community.
In the case of a supermarket chain, for example, if a mozzarella brand comes to show the product on the shelves, this is an opportunity to communicate digitally as well. Since not all of the brand’s stores have the same day demonstration, adapting to each store’s calendar will be essential to push information into digital media.
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Buy local digital marketing, from Georges-Alexandre Hanin
(c) Fig. DepositPhotos
