Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

But we need to ask a question: how do you capitalize on this sales-ready segment of the population? How can you make sure your business is placed front and center before their eyes?

 

It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, if you use these four tools, you’re virtually guaranteed a position at the top.

 

I’ve seen businesses rise from having zero online presence to dominating their local markets simply by using these tools. You can do it too. Here are five tools you should be using....

Marketing to consumers at the local level has always been challenging for large national brands — or for any organization — with multiple locations. Corporate managers want centralized control while combining brand consistency with geo-specific local messaging. Imagine being the brand manager, checking addresses and phone numbers for hundreds of retail stores or monitoring social media comments at the local level. Each location is its own business, but it’s not.

Thankfully, there is software that can automate many of the tasks involved in marketing at the local level....

An article in HBR today discusses what we've known and been writing about for some time now: location analytics is a major "must-do" opportunity for retailers and others (airports, hospitals, casinos, colleges, mall owners, entertainment venues). See also: Report: "Mapping the Indoor Marketing Opportunity."

The HBR piece discusses various provider-vendors (RetailNext, Placed, Euclid) and retail scenarios (operations, staffing, merchandising) that will benefit from indoor and offline analytics. However one of the major issues in the space is privacy and consumer acceptance. The article neglects to discuss privacy at all, although many of the comments raise the issue.  

Location analytics can be done in such a way to avoid any PII collection while giving customers the ability to opt out of any indoor tracking (save closed circuit TV). The Future of Privacy Forum has introduced an opt-out (a kind of do not track indoors) website SmartStorePrivacy.org. This is a voluntary thing at the moment, though with many analytics firms signing on. But it will likely become mandatory at some point in the near future....

FA primer on location-based marketing on mobile.Location-based marketing blurs the line between the digital and physical world. To drive foot traffic and sales at bricks-and-mortar stores, marketers target shoppers on their devices.

To do that though, marketers need to effectively identify and utilize consumers' locations. New services are giving people a much better incentive to share where they are, while new technologies are emerging to make location-based marketing a more exact science. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at the three of the primary types of location-based marketing approaches: geofencing, geoconquesting, and geoaudiencing, each of which uses location somewhat differently. We also look at some the latest and most effective location-based apps that are giving consumers' good reason to share their location....

Type in a generic search term for nearly any local service and you’re likely to see listings for national brands and retail chains. Local businesses have largely been pushed out of the first page of organic results for generic product/service keywords. Although Google displays a higher percentage of local search results for generic search terms than Bing or Yahoo, non-local, non-SMB websites still take up roughly 50% to 65% of the page-one space, according to a study by BrightLocal.

In order to get back on top, local merchants have to make a change in their SEO strategies. That means using more geo-modified terms, and it means relying more heavily on long-tail keywords — for example, “top hair stylist” or “wedding hair stylist” rather than just the generic “hair stylist.”

Here are six strategies for local merchants looking to compete for page-one real estate on Google, Yahoo, and Bing....

There are many ways to increase visibility and market your small business but nothing is more effective than Internet marketing. The problem is that most small business owners don’t have the time or know how to effectively market their business. The following apps and services are what I have found to be the most effective in my many years of Internet marketing....

Are you creating your first Google+ Local Page? Let us show you the proper steps in the latest 'How to' guide only on UpCity!

...Google is the most popular search engine in the world, so it goes without saying that utilizing Google Plus Local will increase your business’s web presence and SEO. It allows you to achieve greater brand awareness and visibility, which is important among your local competitors. Additionally, many local page features are similar to that of Google+ Business pages, receiving the same benefits with the added boost to local search results.

Many beginner features are available to learn how to use throughout Google Plus Local. We’re here to make the process easy and get your site set up and ready to go. Ready to create a new Google+ Local page? Follow along with the instructions below!...