Fourth annual Localized Marketing Benchmark Report offers look at competitive landscapes across industries and defines success for digital marketers

SOCi, the marketing platform for multi-location brands, announced the results of its fourth annual Localized Marketing Benchmark Report (LMBR), the industry measure of multi-location marketing strategy performance in search, social, and reputation. The report compiles an overall benchmark score for each brand, the Local Visibility Score, as well as benchmarks by industry across 15 focus areas to give a full picture of performance against other businesses.

“Digital marketing is fiercely competitive and becoming more so every day. Multi-location brands must have a localized online presence to succeed, but managing thousands of online profiles, pages, and local consumer reviews and engagements across search and social media is an impossible task to handle alone,” said Monica Ho, chief marketing officer of SOCi. “The LMBR, and associated Local Visibility Score, is an invaluable tool for marketers as it synthesizes engagements and ranking factors from top digital sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp into a score that informs marketers on where they have specific strengths and even opportunities in their local digital visibility. This is invaluable insight given that the top positioned local search brands enjoy over 90% more conversion oriented engagements vs. less visible counterparts.”

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The LMBR helps make sense of the complex digital marketing landscape and highlights the symbiotic nature between important digital channels. Data shows how consumers move seamlessly between digital channels and how they expect a consistent experience on and offline. Through the LMBR, brands can hone in on areas such as search, social, and local reviews where their Local Visibility Score may be lacking, signifying inconsistencies with their brand visibility and presence across channels. This provides brands with the targeted analysis needed to assess areas of strength and weakness in order to improve their competitive positioning across all digital channels.

In evaluating nearly 300 multi-location brands and over 12.9 billion data points, SOCi identified several key takeaways for brands looking to learn how a localized marketing strategy can help drive more visibility, traffic, and sales into their own businesses.

• Top performers ran the gamut, from restaurants and hotels to gyms and professional service brands, and are those that recognize a healthy digital visibility requires a balance of effort across search, local reviews, and social channels, and move beyond the table stakes of merely being present in local platforms.
• Multi-location brands are growing gradually in their mastery of localized marketing across channels, as the average Local Visibility Score for all businesses rose nearly 10% from the 2021 report to this year.
  • Brands are responding to more Google reviews (up from 31% to 37%) but fewer Google questions (down from 12% to 7%).
  • The average local Facebook page has 523 followers and 7 posts per month, with 10 reactions, 2 comments, and 1 share per post.
• Top performers are experiencing superior results across digital channels:
  • They earn 66% more Facebook engagements (likes, comments, and shares) than the average.
  • They receive 215% more reviews than the average.
  • Businesses in Google’s 3-Pack receive 126% more traffic and 93% more actions (calls, website clicks, and driving directions) than businesses ranked in positions 4-10.

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