Fortune 500 Marketers Weigh in on Local SEO and More Top Tech Solutions for Retailers
Technology has long been the catalyst for business growth and development. POS systems help automate sales processes, CRM software facilitates customer retention and drives monetization, and the latest, beacons, now enable retailers to provide hyper-targeted, proximity-based experiences for their customers.
These technologies continue to advance, helping retailers to decrease their workload, become more efficient in their operations and provide customers with more engaging and personalized experiences. At the heart of all these technologies is the promise of value delivered, predominantly, it is the promise to have a positive impact on their bottom line in one way or another. However, as consumer shopping habits change and the physical and eCommerce markets become more saturated, Fortune 500 marketers have begun to recognize the increasing need for generating more in-store shoppers.
Over 90% of all retail sales are still attributed to the physical retail space. Many retailers just need a little help tapping into this existing market. And thus, the question for marketers then becomes, “how do we drive a greater volume and share of the existing traffic into MY store locations, rather than my competitors?”
Winning the battle for more local customers
With 92% of local search traffic making a purchase within 24 hours, no solution has more of a direct impact and focus on increasing local store traffic than that of a local SEO and reputation management strategy. As customers continue to utilize local search to find nearby businesses, local SEO and reputation management not only ensures that each of your locations ranks highly in its local market, but also has an online reputation that promotes trust and encourages customers to actually visit it.
In a recent meeting with some of the top Fortune 500 marketing executives, Chatmeter, the leader in local SEO and reputation management, demonstrated the value and growth potential that is directly correlated with increasing store traffic. This demonstration, combined with Chatmeter’s all-in-one solution, led the marketing executives to rank Chatmeter as the #2 leading technology solution provider out of more than 60 other technology solutions.
Top Ranked Tech Solution Providers For Retailers on a 4 point scale:
#1 – 3.75 MaxPoint – Marketing Technology Company
#2 – 3.74 Chatmeter – Complete Local SEO and Reputation Management Platform
#3 – 3.71 ThinkTime – Retail Store Execution and Task Management Software
#3 – 3.71 FlexPrint – Managed Print Solutions
Chatmeter was received so positively by marketing executives because of its direct impact on increasing store traffic, the way it facilitates marketers ability to communicate with previous and potential customers, as well as being a powerful tool for improving the customer experience.
In today’s market, customers are spending far less time searching for specific brands or store locations, instead, they are using the power of the internet and location tracking to search a hyperlocal geographic region for a type or category of products/services.
For example, when a customer needs a new pair of shoes they aren’t searching for “Footlocker near me”, they will instead search for something like “Best Shoe Store”. Local SEO and reputation management drives in-store traffic by capitalizing on this type of search behavior that is now far favored by consumers.
While the priority of a local SEO and reputation management is to drive in-store traffic, it does so through simplifying tasks that both marketers and operations teams engage in, in order to improve the customer experience.
Simplicity and Large Scale Integration
Implementing a reputation management strategy that caters to the needs of large, enterprise-level retailers requires additional capabilities as compared to a solution for SMBs. Marketing and operations executives for such enterprise-level companies know first hand the struggles that coincide with managing multiple locations.
Reviews, photos, videos, comments and social posts. There is a constant influx of data that makes managing and tracking customer feedback a monumental task. Attempting to respond to customers and garner an understanding towards the bigger picture of what everyone is saying can be nearly impossible.
What’s necessary to handle this sheer amount of information is a platform that aggregates all of your customers social posts, reviews and photos for every location, into one single location. This immediately simplifies the task of responding to and engaging with customers, as well as helps businesses to track and analyze customer feedback.
Multi location retailers experience additional problems in the world of local search and search engine optimization. The reason being is that these brands are no longer competing on a national level where a recognizable brand name reigns supreme. Instead, each of their locations is competing on a local level with three to five unique competitors. It is on this hyper local level where brands will win their customers and increase store traffic. However, brand name recognition holds no power here; the only figures that matter are visibility in the local search rankings and the quality of online reputation in comparison to your local competitors.
Chatmeter’s local SEO and reputation management solutions help big brands, no matter if they have a hundred locations or thousands, to build local online visibility and strong reputations. Want to see how each of your locations stack up against their local competitors? Request one of our FREE brand audit reports!