5 Reasons Why Including Social in Your Local SEO Strategy Drives Revenue

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 16-64 say they logged onto at least one social media platform in the past month. Even brick-and-mortar businesses 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 having 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In the event they check your social media accounts and the information is out of date, or dare I say…non existent, they will begin to question the authenticity and even the existence of your business.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 for In-Depth Market Insights

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 Chatmeter’s 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, 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 is the most important.

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

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, nine in 10 companies in the United States are using social media for marketing purposes.

It’s clear that competition is stiff and it’s 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. Stay above the competition with a Chatmeter demo where we will complete a brand analysis on your individual locations.