Thankfully, with the right tools and strategy, your client or business can work towards streamlining their review management across multiple locations, and hair loss can be prolonged for at least another few years. Let’s get into it!

What is different about managing reviews at this sort of scale?

Several factors come into play with multi-location review management, which can vary depending on the locations your business may have.

Let’s say you monitor reviews for Cafe Mexicali in Colorado. They have five physical locations between Fort Collins and Boulder, five Google Business Profile listings, and profiles on sites like Facebook, Yelp, and Tripadvisor.

• The volume of reviews across different platforms will be less, making monitoring and responding to individual reviews much more manageable, but you may need to allocate staff time and budget for software services.
• You may still be able to have one person oversee all review management, and this approach can help them maintain consistency in tone of voice.
• The impact on the overall brand related to negative reviews is less likely to be affected at the same level as a business with many locations.
• Coordinating review management for five locations will be less complex, but each platform may still have its own management interface and requirements.

Now, let’s say you manage reviews for F45 Training. As of 2023, F45 had almost 650 locations around the US, meaning 650 Google Business Profile listings, Facebook profiles, Yelp, and Tripadvisor listings. 

• Ensuring consistency across all locations can be particularly challenging, especially if each location has a different customer base or operational practice. Not all locations will have the same local regulations, market conditions, or customer preferences.
• Managing reviews for 100s of locations requires extensive resources, including staff time and budget, and will require a dedicated staff member or even a team.
• Each location may have unique challenges or issues that require a much more tailored response. This can directly feed into maintaining a prompt response time, and there can be missed opportunities for engagement or resolutions.

Who manages your reviews?

If your client or business has a multi-location SEO strategy, this likely means they are a business with multiple locations spread across a large area or a corporate office with many franchise locations underneath them.

It’s essential to understand the two main models for review management.

Model 1: A Corporate Team Manages Reviews

This model refers to a marketing or customer service team managing reviews across multiple platforms or channels for all locations. Your client or business retains control over communications and branding while benefiting from streamlined data tracking through central management.

However, a potential drawback is that the business may lack visibility into the unique happenings at individual locations. Delays in response time may occur if location managers take time to communicate with the marketing or service team, especially when handling issues such as negative reviews.

For particularly large businesses with hundreds of locations, there’s also a chance this could be done region-by-region.

Model 2: Individual Locations Manage Their Own Reviews

The next model is to have individual locations manage their reviews. Within the franchise model, individual locations often have greater autonomy in shaping their marketing strategies and customer service approaches.

While they may need to adhere to strategy guidelines provided by the corporate office, they can promptly view and respond to reviews. Reviews can also be considered feedback, and a manager can make quick changes to address issues at their specific location.

The downside to having individual locations manage their reviews is the risk of brand dilution. Instances where certain locations underperform could detract from the overall brand image, especially if they stand out negatively amidst others performing well.

Do you have a multi-location review management process?

You need a standardized process for managing reviews. It ensures consistency across all locations and channels, fostering brand identity and trust with their customers. It establishes clear roles and responsibilities within your team and ensures that reviews are managed effectively and important issues are addressed quickly.

A standard process also helps save time and resources, allowing teams to focus on other marketing and customer service areas. It helps a business grow and expand when a framework that won’t sacrifice quality or consistency is in place.

An example of a standardized process could look like this:

1. Utilizing a review monitoring tool and platform to see reviews from various channels like Google Business Profile and Yelp in one place.
2. Categorizing reviews and prioritizing those based on urgency.
3. Collecting and analyzing data to identify trends or recurring issues.
4. Developing a clear protocol for responding to reviews, including timelines, tone of voice, and escalation procedures.
5. Create templates to maintain brand consistency.
6. Providing training and support to location managers on how to best respond to reviews and address customer concerns.
7. Establishing KPIs to track the performance of review management efforts and regularly reviewing these numbers to identify areas of effectiveness.

Where do you get reviews?

The most common review sites are Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and Trustpilot. If your client or business has listings on all these, you will want to ensure it manages and monitors reviews on each platform.

Each of these platforms has a number of notification settings you can take advantage of. However,  doing this at scale can get overwhelming, so consider the best way to centralize and speed up your approach.

Google Reviews

Gathering all location listings under one account or location group is helpful for handling reviews for multiple locations on Google Business Profile. This makes management smoother and ensures consistency, which is especially valuable for businesses with locations across different states or countries.

It is best practice to respond to all the reviews for each location as quickly as possible, and having all locations under one location group helps to streamline the process. However, continually managing and responding to reviews can be a heavy lift, which is where a tool like BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager can be extremely helpful.

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Responding promptly to complaints is crucial, and with just a couple of clicks, you can address Google reviews directly from your dashboard without any hassle.

Facebook Reviews

Facebook has 2.9 billion active users, with 2 out of 3 visiting local business pages at least once a week, making it an important platform for managing reviews and building a strong online presence.

When someone leaves a review on Facebook, you’ll get a notification you can click on to go to the review. To have a business account, you’ll need to have a personal Facebook account attached to it. For a small business, this may be the business owner. For a bigger business, it could be your community manager, customer support, or a whole team.

Guide to Facebook Recommendations

Learn More

Yelp Reviews

Yelp is a great review platform for local businesses, with nearly 50% of customers likely to look at Yelp before reaching out to a business. When managing reviews, ensuring your client or business checks its Yelp inbox is a good habit so they promptly respond to any messages or requests. They can also turn on email notifications to ensure they’ll be alerted when someone sends them a message or leaves a review.

Tripadvisor Reviews

Tripadvisor is one of the biggest review platforms, with over 1 billion reviews left by travelers to date. Your client or business can easily see reviews left by past customers within the “Respond to Reviews” section of the Yelp Management Center page.

Similar to Yelp, your review manager(s) can turn on notifications within their profile to get notified of when someone leaves a review, making it simple to respond to feedback quickly.

Trustpilot Reviews

Trustpilot has several tools to help you reply to and filter customer reviews. Navigating the services reviews page can be done by going to Trustpilot Business > Manage reviews > Service reviews > Inbox.

From here, you can see any of the reviews left by customers over the last 28 days. They are conveniently filtered by star rating, which makes it easy to prioritize which should be responded to first.

How to Get More Reviews for Multiple Locations

Getting reviews for your business is straightforward; you provide a top-tier product, service, or support, and customers will be racing to share their experience in the form of a shiny and new online review… right?

If only it were all that simple. Unfortunately, many people won’t leave a review unless they are prompted to or they have had a negative experience.

Obtaining reviews across multiple locations can be difficult, but they are significant, especially for local SEO! With automation tools and software, your client or business can send follow-up emails after purchases or service completion, nudging customers to share their thoughts and experiences.

How to Ask for Reviews

Learn More

They can send text messages to customers’ phones and include prompts in marketing materials or receipts. Additionally, you can include a banner on your website or pin a post on social media to encourage customers to leave a review. This can help ensure that customers know how much their feedback is appreciated.

Use customer feedback to turn potential setbacks into future opportunities. Your client or business can enhance customer experience by addressing training issues with their employees, utilizing technology to adapt internal processes, and creating new products or services to better meet their needs. This will create happier customers and better reviews for the business. 

How to Monitor Reviews at More Than One Location

Monitoring online reviews can be done manually and with software, so it is good to know which your client or business may prefer based on their specific goals and budget. 

If the business is concerned with budget, a more manual approach may be what they need, and that’s perfectly okay. This can require more time and effort, but it’s not impossible. A manual approach would require periodically checking review platforms and reading through reviews to identify new customer feedback or comments.

You can also use a spreadsheet or other document to track reviews at specific locations and actions taken in response to those reviews. While this is a less convenient option, it is still possible to establish a multi-location review management strategy that benefits the business and supports its goals.

These manual approaches are where many businesses will start, but as things scale up, they can become incredibly unwieldy to manage.

Using Tools to Monitor Reviews

Specific software can help businesses collect reviews across locations all in one place, making review management more streamlined. Tools like BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager can collate all of your reviews on all your review platforms and for all your locations into a single dashboard.

These tools also offer you the ability to add templated replies, helping you maintain brand consistency when you have many people managing review responses.

Power Your Review Replies with Templates and AI!

Read more

Remember, many other kinds of software and tools have different capabilities and functionalities, and some even use AI, so be sure to research and determine the best fit for your needs before you commit to anything.

Harnessing the Power of Efficient Review Management

Handling reviews on a large scale may seem overwhelming, but with the right tools and a carefully crafted strategy, you can create a review management system custom to your specific business needs. Implementing a new process requires time, so it’s crucial to approach review management with a patient mindset, knowing that success will unfold with the support of the right team and an occasional snack break.

Want to learn how to navigate corporate and become a preferred vendor?

Or are you just itching to understand what drives the hard-working (often surprisingly small) teams at the heart of franchise management?

In Local Search at Scale: Trials & Triumphs, a series of video interviews in partnership with Steady Demand, Ben Fisher takes to the mic to ask a guest about managing local search (and everything else besides) at scale within the USA’s biggest franchises.

These are the unsung heroes, the boots on the ground keeping everything moving. You won’t find flash-in-the-pan strategies or the latest fads in marketing—just inspiring stories about the people who really make things happen in the franchise and enterprise world.

In this episode, Ben speaks with Georgia Rei, ‘Queen’ of the Mr Duct Cleaner leadership team. Mr Duct Cleaner is a growing US franchise specializing in air duct cleaning, HVAC, and mold removal.

Watch to learn:

• The sorts of spammy tactics that will get you nowhere when approaching a franchisor

• The importance of understanding emotions and crafting effective messages in marketing

• The best ways to contact a franchisor (and what to avoid)

• The importance of referrals when it comes to winning new business

• and much more!

About Georgia Rei

Queen at Mr Duct Cleaner

Georgia is the ‘Queen’ of Mr Duct Cleaner (watch the episode to find out why!). Georgia’s background is in economics, family business, finance, and leadership development. She is experienced in strategic planning and team development. She successfully ran the first SBA loan diaper service and grew it into a commercial laundry operation. She taught economics, investment, finance, money and banking, sales, and marketing at several colleges and Universities.

Watch the Video

Liked this video? Join us over on BrightLocal’s YouTube channel and subscribe today to be first in line when the next episode drops!

Want more Ben Fisher? Check out his original series of articles on enterprise local SEO, Local Search at Scale, which covers everything from dealing with decision-makers to understanding where budgets are most impactful.

Want to learn how to navigate corporate and become a preferred vendor?

Or are you just itching to understand what drives the hard-working (often surprisingly small) teams at the heart of franchise management?

In Local Search at Scale: Trials & Triumphs, a series of video interviews in partnership with Steady Demand, Ben Fisher takes to the mic to ask a guest about managing local search (and everything else besides) at scale within the USA’s biggest franchises.

These are the unsung heroes, the boots on the ground keeping everything moving. You won’t find flash-in-the-pan strategies or the latest fads in marketing—just inspiring stories about the people who really make things happen in the franchise and enterprise world.

In this episode, Ben speaks with Premium Service Brands‘ David Raymond, an experienced Chief Operations Officer more than familiar with the highs and lows of franchise management and marketing.

Watch to learn:

• The mindset of a franchisee, and how understanding this can help you work with them

• How to learn your franchisees’ unique challenges and needs

• The power of active listening in vendor relationships

• Top tips that potential vendors need to know when speaking to potential franchisor clients

• How to use data to back up the value of local search marketing

• How to leverage technology to ensure scalability and exponential growth

• and much more!

About David Raymond

Chief Operations Officer at Premium Service Brands

David Raymond currently owns a ProLift Garage Doors franchise and just finished up a 5-year term as the Chief Operations Officer at Premium Service Brands. Prior to his time at Premium Service Brands, David served as a Franchise Business Consultant with College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving where he cut his teeth in franchising.

David’s experience running a large, multi-state garage door company headquartered in Florida was incredibly valuable to the home service-based franchisors and the franchisees he worked with and supported. However, David attributes most of his leadership lessons to the United States Marine Corps, where he served two separate enlistments as an M1A1 Tank Crewman and Commander.

Watch the Video

Liked this video? Join us over on BrightLocal’s YouTube channel and subscribe today to be first in line when the next episode drops!

Want more Ben Fisher? Check out his original series of articles on enterprise local SEO, Local Search at Scale, which covers everything from dealing with decision-makers to understanding where budgets are most impactful.

Want to learn how to navigate corporate and become a preferred vendor?

Or are you just itching to understand what drives the hard-working (often surprisingly small) teams at the heart of franchise management?

Introducing Local Search at Scale: Trials & Triumphs, a brand-new series of video interviews in partnership with Steady Demand.

Each month, Diamond Google Business Profile Product Expert and Steady Demand owner Ben Fisher takes to the mic to ask a guest about managing local search (and everything else besides) at scale within the USA’s biggest franchises.

These are the unsung heroes, the boots on the ground keeping everything moving. You won’t find flash-in-the-pan strategies or the latest fads in marketing—just inspiring stories about the people who really make things happen in the franchise and enterprise world.

In this inaugural episode, Ben speaks with SystemForward‘s Jill Villejoin, a seasoned marketing director in the franchise industry.

Watch to learn:

• How Jill manages franchise marketing with such a small team

• How to get franchisees on-board with local SEO

• Who does what in the world of franchise management

• Why scalability is so crucial for marketing vendors and technologies

• and much more!

About Jill Villejoin

Director of Marketing at SystemForward

Jill Villejoin, a seasoned marketing director for a franchisor of home service brands, leads strategic initiatives at SystemForward America, driving revenue growth and brand success for franchises like Pop-A-Lock and TemperaturePro.

Throughout her career, she has excelled in collaborative leadership, crafting effective marketing programs that resonate with customers and franchisees alike. Jill oversees national-level marketing strategies, training, and business consultation ensuring seamless operations across locations, while also balancing her passion for cooking, coaching softball, and family time as a devoted mother and spouse.

Watch the Video

Liked this video? Join us over on BrightLocal’s YouTube channel and subscribe today to be first in line when the next episode drops!

Want more Ben Fisher? Check out his original series of articles on enterprise local SEO, Local Search at Scale, which covers everything from dealing with decision-makers to understanding where budgets are most impactful.

While much of the physical economy has recovered since the pandemic, there is evidence that it caused a sharp disruption in brand loyalty. Purchase decisions fueled by convenience, value, and proximity have led to new shopping behaviors.

Of course, businesses in every sector will face unique challenges. But only multi-location marketers will know the ongoing chess game of managing a brand at local, regional, and national levels.

We wanted to understand the challenges multi-location businesses face in 2024, how they might differ based on their size, and what drives marketing performance.

To achieve this, we asked 200 marketing decision-makers working in multi-location brands in the USA, Canada, and the UK about their marketing performance, investments, and strategies to build a picture of the current multi-location landscape and understand the key to high performance in 2024.  

Throughout the report, we’ll discuss critical themes of marketing technology, the importance of customer satisfaction and retention, and areas of opportunity in marketing tactics.

Understanding Definitions Within the Report

In the second part of this report, we’ll talk about the ‘High Performers’ of multi-location marketing, creating a benchmark that we’ll refer to throughout. Readers will find this helpful in measuring their performance and that of competitors.

The third section of this research will highlight three key groups: Local Players (11-50 locations), Regional Challengers (51-100 locations), and Big Brands (101+ locations) and compare what they’re doing to the High Performers, so businesses of all sizes have a benchmark to look to.

The Multi-location Marketing Landscape: Key Trends

Let’s kick off with an overview of the market in general. We’ll look at how brand marketers feel they’ve been performing, what channels they’re investing in, and what local marketing looks like for them.

Looking Back: Marketing Performance in 2023

The great news is just 4% of multi-location marketers feel their marketing performance fell below expectations in 2023. With almost two-thirds reporting that performance exceeded expectations, it’s a highly positive perception of their teams’ capabilities. 

The Marketing Mix

The Top Five Channels That Multi-location Brands Are Investing In

A whopping 99% of multi-location brands are investing in social media, with 88% investing a medium-high amount in this channel. This result is significantly higher than the other marketing channels listed, so it’s clear that social media forms a vital part of multi-location marketing strategies.

Paid social, SEO, TV advertising, and local SEO follow as the next most invested in marketing channels. So, brands are investing in brand awareness channels (Paid social and TV) while also focusing on the importance of visibility (SEO and local SEO).

It’s interesting, then, that PPC is at the bottom of the list for channel investment. Sitting lower than traditional forms of marketing (direct marketing, radio, out-of-home advertising), this could suggest that brands do not see the best returns from PPC for brand awareness. Alternatively, it could just be that multi-location brands use PPC for smaller or more targeted strategies and are getting more from their campaigns for lower spend.

Marketing Team Capabilities

As mentioned earlier, multi-location brands will face different challenges than other business types. Consistency is a big theme here, as brands must replicate the same standards, service, and experience they are known for from location to location.

Another challenge is maintaining brand standards when adapting to new areas where local requirements and customs may differ.

We wanted to gauge how marketers felt their businesses were doing in keeping on top of these common obstacles.

The Top Five Business Challenges That Multi-location Marketing Teams are ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at Tackling

As with performance, marketing leaders generally reflect a positive sentiment towards their teams’ capabilities, and there don’t appear to be any glaring problem areas. 

However, while 80% of brands said their businesses were either ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at understanding ownership of marketing within organizations, we can see that 23% felt that the ability to manage the adoption of marketing initiatives and streamline external communications was just ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’. This suggests a potential breakdown between the communication and execution of some marketing as responsibilities fall to location levels. 

It could also show that, although 82% of our marketing decision-makers feel their organizations are ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at managing internal communications, the messages might not be being received or understood as well as they think further down the chain.

Let’s take a look at where local marketing strategy comes into play.

Local Marketing as a Strategy (Not Just a Tactic)

It’s positive to see that the vast majority (86%) of multi-location brands have dedicated local marketing strategies in place. That leaves 14% where either no dedicated strategy exists or the strategy is unclear

A lack of dedicated local strategy means that crucial business challenges, such as the ones mentioned above, can be much harder to overcome. With no local marketing strategy, how can you expect teams in different regions or locations to fully understand, be on board with, and adopt marketing initiatives?

So, if you’re reading this, you don’t have a robust local strategy, and you’re familiar with some of these marketing challenges, local strategy might be an excellent place to start.

Managing Local Marketing Activities

Now, the way multi-location businesses execute marketing activity at regional or local levels may vary for many reasons, based on industry, differences in area requirements, or franchising requirements. It’s interesting to look broadly at how multi-location brands manage this, though.

Again, if there are gaps in how well your business manages multi-location challenges, considering the different approaches may help you understand why.

Almost half (45%) of multi-location brands use a hybrid approach of centralized marketing teams (at the level of HQ) and branch or location-level local marketing.

What works for one business won’t necessarily work for another, and we’re not saying there is a correct answer. But it is worth considering that plenty of research around change management, business transformation, and product adoption shows that teams often react more positively to change, or are more willing to adopt new processes and initiatives if they feel they have some ownership of them.

Supporting Local Marketing with Technology

Next, we wanted to understand how widely technology was used in multi-location local marketing. 98% of brand respondents say they are using the technology to support local strategies.

Of course, when we refer to marketing technology that supports local marketing, this could include any number of tools, from monitoring local rankings and fluctuations to business location performance data, review management, and more. But what this does tell us is just how crucial marketing technology is in delivering on these tactics.

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The ‘High Performers’ of Multi-location Marketing

In this section, we will take the brands who reported that their marketing performance ‘exceeded’ expectations and use this group to create the benchmark for marketing performance.

Throughout the report, we’ll refer to this group as ‘High Performers.’ The remaining brands we compare against—those meeting expectations or falling short—we’ll refer to as ‘Average Performers.’

It’s important to note that both groups contain respondents representing multi-location businesses of all sizes.

High Performers: Key Findings

Marketing Channel Investments

• High Performers are 17% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in social media than Average Performers (57% vs 40%).
• High Performers are 15% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in paid social than Average Performers (42% vs 27%).
  High Performers are 10% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in local SEO than Average Performers (38% vs 28%).

Using Marketing Technology and AI

• 56% of High Performers are using marketing technology to ‘a great extent’, compared to 22% of Average Performers.
• 36% of High Performers are using generative AI to ‘a great extent’, compared to just 13% of Average Performers.
  

Local Marketing Strategy

• 94% of High Performers have a dedicated local marketing strategy, compared to 60% of Average Performers.
• 52% of Average Performers rate their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’, while 93% of High Performers rate their teams’ understanding as ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’.

High Performers: Top Trends

Marketing Channel Investment

• 95% of High Performers are investing a medium-high amount in social media.
• Just 1% of High Performers do not invest in social media at all.
• After social media (organic and paid), High Performers are investing the most in Local SEO.
• Of the responses offered, the channel High Performers invest in the least is PPC (pay-per-click).

This chart highlights the investments High Performers make across their marketing mix. You’ll notice a lot of green bars, which shows that High Performers are no slouches when it comes to putting their hands in their pockets and investing in a variety of channels. 

Organic social media stands out, with the most significant level of investment: 57% of High Performers rated their investments in the channel as ‘High.’ Just 1% said they do not invest in social media at all.

Behind organic social media, paid social sits as the second most invested in. Paid social is a popular choice for awareness and discovery campaigns to capture new audiences and entice customers away from competitors. These two channels being positioned at the top of the chart suggest that High Performers prioritize customer acquisition and retention equally.

Local SEO sees the third-highest level of investment from High Performers, with 76% making medium-high investments in this area.

As we’ll get into shortly, High Performers are much more likely than other businesses to have a dedicated local marketing or local SEO strategy in place, so it’s clear that a confident understanding and investment in this area is paying off for them, and that local marketing is fundamental to overall marketing success.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC), meanwhile, is the least invested in. 10% of High Performers aren’t investing in the channel at all, while 32% have stated only a low level of investment.

Local Marketing Focus: Strategy, Knowledge, and Tools

While we asked multi-location marketers about their level of investment in local SEO, we also wanted to understand whether this is an area that marketers fully understand. Namely, whether businesses have dedicated local SEO strategies in place and whether their marketing teams clearly understand the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

• 94% of High Performers have a dedicated local strategy in place—34% more than Average Performers

There is a clear contrast here, with just 2% of High Performers stating they don’t have a dedicated local strategy, compared to a third of Average Performers.

• 93% of marketing teams in the High Performers group have a ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.
• No one in the High Performers group rated their team’s understanding of local SEO as ‘Poor.’
• Less than half of Average Performers have a ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

Examining Local Marketing Teams

With over half of Average Performers stating their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor,’ we broke out their marketing team sizes to see how many people are working on local marketing.

• 59% of High Performers have dedicated more than 40% of their marketing team to local marketing.
• 40% of Average Performers have dedicated more than 40% of their marketing team to local marketing.
• Over a quarter of Average Performers dedicate up to 20% of their marketing function to local marketing.

From this, we can determine that the highest-performing multi-location businesses take local SEO seriously, as they dedicate more resources to teams and strategy in this area. 

Marketing Technology and Multi-location Businesses

From the above data, we’ve seen that High Performers and Average Performers treat local SEO differently. Would things change when we asked about the use of technology in local SEO? Would this uncover some opportunities for Average Performers to take note of?

• 98% of High Performers use marketing technology “to some extent” or “to a great extent” to support local marketing, compared to 77% of Average Performers.
• 29% of Average Performers use marketing technology to little or no extent.

The chart above highlights that 100% of High Performers use marketing technology to support their local strategies, with only 2% saying they use it ‘a little’ extent. This is compared to 29% of Average Performers using marketing technology to ‘little’ or no extent.

Only 22% of Average Performers use marketing technology to ‘a great’ extent, compared to 56% of High Performers, suggesting that High Performers see a more significant benefit from their tools. This could be down to team capabilities and whether they have the knowledge or training to use certain tools or have more team resources dedicated to local marketing. 

There is clearly an opportunity for underperforming businesses to identify how and where marketing tools can better support their local marketing functions—or where additional training is needed within teams.

High Performers: Further Analysis

Comparing High Performers’ and Average Performers’ business priorities highlights striking differences that could help us understand where that better performance is coming from.

Business Objectives and Future Priorities 

We asked marketers what business outcomes their marketing activities are designed around. These core performance areas influence goal-setting (KPIs, OKRs, and similar frameworks) and determine what marketing teams focus on throughout the year.

• 67% of High Performers focus on customer satisfaction—15% more than Average Performers.
• 68% of Average Performers focus marketing activities on customer acquisition —12% more than High Performers.
• High Performers are 15% more likely to focus on customer retention than Average Performers.

The results in the chart above reflect a more measured approach for the High Performers, with reasonably equal weighting across the business outcomes. This level only drops off as we come to location footfall, where fewer than one-third of High Performers have said they’re focusing marketing efforts here.

For the Average Performers, however, there are two stand-outs: revenue growth (80%) and customer acquisition (68%). 

It would be surprising for businesses not to rely on marketing to support revenue growth. Still, it’s interesting to see customer satisfaction (52%) and customer retention (49%) take more of a back seat for Average Performers.

A lot of research shows that your existing customers are better for your bottom line. Focusing on nurturing a loyal customer base can yield more impressive profits. According to Bain and Co., increasing customer retention by 5% can lead to a 25% profit increase. Meanwhile, evidence also suggests that acquiring a new customer can be up to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer.

So, while focusing on attracting new customers is good for revenue growth, it’s important to consider how marketing teams can contribute to the shared responsibility of customer satisfaction.

• 39% of High Performers are prioritizing customer satisfaction in 2024, compared to 27% of Average Performers.
• 38% of High Performers highlighted increasing locations as a top 2024 priority, compared to 25% of Average Performers.
• 35% of High Performers highlighted increasing AI and automation as a top 2024 priority, compared to just 17% of Average Performers.

Comparing the two charts above, we can see that High Performers are prioritizing things with a measured approach that aligns with their core marketing outcomes.

We see a continued commitment to strengthening existing customer relationships and building brand loyalty—and plans to increase locations (38%) and acquire new customers (35%).

The data from Average Performers, on the other hand, tells a markedly different story. Customer acquisition sits at the top of their 2024 priorities (63%), followed by increasing brand awareness (50%) and increasing overall efficiency (47%). 

Considering the Average Performers have reported only just meeting performance expectations—or even falling short—and are also looking to increase efficiency in 2024, you’d hope to see a more balanced approach in their priorities. Customer acquisition sitting squarely ahead of other key priorities, like improving customer satisfaction, suggests a misunderstanding of what it takes to achieve business (and revenue) growth.

As we’ve touched on, customer satisfaction and retention can be significantly more cost-efficient for brands. But from a reputation perspective, we mustn’t underestimate the sheer power of brand loyalty here, too. While your existing customers are often happier to try your new products and services, you should also consider how a base of loyal customers can lead to brand awareness via their advocacy.

Implementing Local Marketing Tactics

Let’s look at the marketing tactics businesses are working with. In doing so, we might be able to highlight just what the High Performers are getting right—and understand some areas where our Average Performers are missing opportunities.

• High Performers are 25% more likely to use video as a local marketing tactic than Average Performers (63% vs. 38%).
• High Performers are 16% more likely to focus on reputation management as a local marketing tactic than Average Performers (46% vs. 30%).
• Average Performers are 13% more likely to be using outreach for local marketing than High Performers (59% vs 46%).

Similar proportions of High Performers and Average Performers use social media, paid advertising, and local content as local marketing tactics.  

The key areas where the High Performers are focusing more are video, local rankings optimization, reputation management, and local citations. However, the local marketing tactic that Average Performers rely on significantly more than High Performers is outreach (59% vs. 46%). This finding, and their focus on customer acquisition above all else, suggests that Average Performers have been over-reliant on outreach marketing to fulfill this goal. 

Video marketing can be tricky to implement if the budget and talent are hard to find, but it’s clearly an area that High Performers are taking advantage of more than Average Performers. If you’re reading this and your brand isn’t currently working on video, it’s worth considering where you can start. Could you take a handful of your locations as a test and see what results it yields?

While video sits much more in brand awareness and engagement, the remaining three tactics that High Performers use more than Average Performers (local rankings optimization, reputation management, and citations) are fundamental to ensuring visibility in the right places, so that the right people can find you with the search terms you want to be found for.

Analyzing Multi-location Strategies by Business Size

Challenges, tactics, and strategies all change with scale. The more locations you work with, the more complex the marketing will be.

Now that we’ve looked at what marked High Performers out against the rest of the pack, let’s take a look at how multi-location businesses of different sizes compare.

First, let’s recap how we defined these business sizes:

• Big Brands: businesses with 101+ locations
• Regional Challengers: businesses with 51-100 locations
• Local Players: businesses with 11-50 locations

We’ll start by looking at business objectives for the coming year.

Business Objectives, Priorities, and Challenges

• Regional Challengers are prioritizing customer satisfaction (51%) and customer retention (54%) the least out of all groups, but prioritizing profit margin (57%) and location footfall (41%) significantly more than the other sizes.
• Big Brands are prioritizing profit margin the least out of all the groups (46%).

The Top Three Marketing Objectives Multi-location Businesses Have Been Working Towards

Much like the High Performers, Big Brands appear to show the most consistency in evenly weighting their business priorities. The two lowest priorities, where the percentages drop more, are profit margin and location footfall.

However, the biggest gaps between the groups appear to concern the Regional Challengers. 51% of Regional Challengers said their marketing activities focus on customer satisfaction, compared to the High Performers benchmark level of 67%. The next biggest gaps appear in gaining market share (41% against the High Performers benchmark of 54%) and customer retention (54% compared to the High Performer benchmark of 64%). 

If your brand falls within the Regional Challengers group, you might see this as a chance to review your current marketing output. Are there some missed opportunities around these areas?

As we’ve already found, a relationship exists between underperforming brands and their prioritization in attaining new business over satisfying existing customers. It looks like Regional Challengers are following a similar pattern.

Another interesting difference is how Regional Challengers appear to focus on specific location footfall over the other groups. Again, it does suggest a ‘quantity over quality’ imbalance. Are Regional Challengers focusing too much on increasing feet through the door when they could be increasing the average basket spend, for example?

• The High Performers benchmark for customer retention (45%) is significantly higher than individual business sizes.

The Top Three Marketing Priorities for Multi-location Brands in 2024

When looking at the different sizes of multi-location businesses and their priorities, we can see some interesting differences between the groups.

Firstly, the Local Players, Regional Challengers, and Big Brands are generally far behind the High Performers benchmark with customer retention. It’s a theme that keeps cropping up and provides all the more reason for multi-location businesses of all sizes to pay attention to this area.

You’ll notice that nearly half of our Big Brand respondents (49%) have highlighted AI and automation as a focus area for 2024.

Artificial Intelligence in itself is not a new concept. However, the constant—and very newsworthy—developments in generative AI throughout 2023 have put the words into every marketer’s mouth.

Since the boom of generative AI, larger brands and market leaders will likely face higher pressure to adopt new AI-driven technologies than smaller-sized organizations. There is somewhat of an expectation to “keep up” with the others in the big leagues. 

Retail, hospitality, and entertainment feel like obvious examples of where you might expect to see this in the mainstream. Plenty of brands are rolling out implementations of generative AI in digital environments to aid customer experiences. Will we start to see this in physical environments, too?

• 42% of Big Brands cite increasing labor costs as a key challenge for 2024, against 24% of Regional Challengers.
• 39% of Local Players feel increasing material costs will be a big challenge in 2024.
• 35% of Regional Challengers cite increasing competition as one of the biggest challenges in 2024.

We asked marketers about their top three challenges for the year ahead, and the groups have some notable differences.

As we’ve seen with Big Brands prioritizing AI in 2024, it’s a no-brainer that they’ve also placed emerging technology as one of the biggest challenges for this year. Their top challenge, however, is increasing labor costs, with 42% of this group agreeing that this is one of the biggest current issues. Without getting too conspiratorial, is one of these challenges seen as an opportunity to resolve the other?

It’s worth looking further at the responses around technology here: compared to the 42% of Big Brands, only 19% of Regional Challengers are worried about emerging technology in 2024. Yet when it comes to updating their existing tech stacks, 32% of Regional Challengers see this as a big challenge for 2024. This is higher than Big Brands (19%), Local Players (25%), and the High Performers benchmark of 29%.

What could this suggest? Perhaps Big Brands don’t view their tech stack as a problem, or maybe their focus is slightly clouded by the genAI race. If the latter is the case, it would be interesting to see what challenges they may encounter later, in terms of integrations and streamlining.

We can see that Regional Challengers aren’t currently getting the most out of their tech stacks, and may well seek to update these in 2024. 

Regional Challengers see increasing competition as the biggest challenge (35%). This goes hand-in-hand with their top priority for 2024:  brand awareness (51%). There’s clearly an awareness of, and a need to, raise brand profiles to remain competitive.

Local Players see increasing material costs as their biggest challenge in 2024. It makes sense, as smaller brands may have less bargaining power in the buying market and will likely feel the squeeze of increasing costs more than larger competitors.

If this is their biggest business concern, it also makes sense that they would be less concerned with technological advances, either in their tech stacks or in adopting emerging technologies.

Local Marketing Deep-Dive

The Importance of Strategy and Knowledge

When putting together our questions for respondents, we hypothesized that the bigger the brand size, the more mature its local marketing strategy would be—that is, having a dedicated local strategy in place and a team with a strong understanding of the nuances between local and traditional or typical SEO.

• 92% of Big Brands have a dedicated local marketing strategy, the closest to the High Performers benchmark of 94%.
• Businesses with 51-100 locations (Regional Challengers) are the least likely to have a local SEO strategy in place (16%), followed by Local Players (11-50 locations).

Proportionately, the Big Brands show more local SEO maturity, with 92% stating that a dedicated strategy is in place. This is just two percentage points behind the High Performers benchmark, which generally reinforces an assumption that Big Brands would have more mature local SEO practices.

As we found earlier, 10% of all businesses do not have a local marketing strategy (and 4% were unsure if they did). So, we can see from the chart above that this segment is mostly made up of representatives from Regional Challenger and Local Player-sized businesses.

However, you’ll notice that Local Players are more likely to have a local marketing strategy in place than Regional Marketers. Why might this be?

It could be that Local Players, having a smaller (and possibly more concentrated) portfolio of branches, have a better understanding of their markets and local area requirements. Brands in the Regional Challengers group are more likely to have experienced a rapid period of expansion in recent times, meaning that a more comprehensive strategy is needed—or that their previous one no longer fits.

• Regional Challengers appear to have the biggest gaps in local SEO knowledge, with 27% claiming their teams have a ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor’ understanding.
• Local Players are the closest group to the High Performers benchmark (94%), with 90% stating a ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

90% of Local Players rate their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Good’ to ‘Very Good’, compared to 83% of Big Brands, 73% of Regional Challengers, and against the High Performers benchmark of 94%. Why might Local Players be the most knowledgeable?

It could well be that that greater local marketing maturity is not achieved simply by being a larger business that has existed in the space for longer. Instead, it could suggest that local marketing maturity is ‘elastic’: it develops and changes as the requirements of a brand also change. 

Understanding of local area requirements will vastly differ when a business goes from 11-50 locations to hitting a milestone of 100 and scaling up further to the nationwide level. 

Local Marketing Tactics in Action

• Big Brands appear to be the biggest users of local-specific content (58%), while just 40% of Local Players implement this tactic.
• 69% of Big Brands and Local Players use paid ads as a local marketing tactic, compared to 59% of Regional Challengers and 61% of High Performers.

Analyzing local marketing tactics by business size, we can see that Big Brands broadly follow the High Performers benchmark by investing in a wide range of tactics rather than a select few. 

Citations and business listings are important for brands of all sizes to ensure that business information is consistent and uniform online. This challenge only gets greater for Big Brands, as having hundreds or even thousands of locations to update and maintain becomes more difficult and time-consuming.

We’ve covered just a few of the detrimental effects of incorrect business information on brand reputation in the Local Business Discovery and Trust Report 2023.

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There are some tactics that Big Brands appear to be investing in more than High Performers, which could suggest that they are spending too much time (or money) in some areas. The most notable example of this is local-specific content (58% vs. 46% for High Performers).

Too much content can be a problem, particularly if it confuses or cannibalizes your SEO efforts or jeopardizes your user experience. This could even be a legacy issue as SEO best practices have evolved. 

While content is still vital for boosting visibility and building trust by reflecting your expertise and authority (see: Google’s E-E-AT), there was a time when brands and agencies thought that churning out reams of ‘fresh’ content was the answer. Some brand marketers may not be up to date on the latest SEO best practices or no longer work with agency partners, so could be over-reliant on some tactics they feel they understand well.

In the data above, Regional Challengers appear to be using social media, email marketing, and paid advertising the most as local marketing tactics. Against the High Performers benchmark, the gaps that highlight some potential opportunities for them are video, local rankings, citations, and reputation management.

While we previously highlighted the difficulties of video marketing, this tactic may actually present an opportunity for some business sizes and types. Where Big Brands are pretty much using the tactic in line with High Performers, we notice a gap between them and Regional Challengers and Local Players, suggesting there may be a chance for the latter two groups to learn from what the most successful brands are doing.

Email marketing tells a similar story to video, highlighting how Big Brands use it more than Regional Challengers and Local Players. It’s always a good idea to look at what competitors are doing, or even brands in other industries, to highlight areas of opportunity and improvement in your own marketing. Could Big Brands be using email as a customer loyalty tool, nurturing customer segments with tailored content that isn’t just sales-led?

Gap Analysis: Search Marketing Tactics 

Local rankings and reputation management are two areas in which Local Players seem to be fairly behind, compared to both the High Performers benchmark and their peer groups. They’re also the least likely to use local content (40%) out of all the groups.

If we group all of the marketing tactics by the outcomes they’re designed to impact, we can see a theme as far as content, reputation, local rankings optimization, and citations are concerned: the importance of search visibility.

It’s worth remembering that your competitors aren’t necessarily just the biggest names or the market leaders in your industry. In the multi-location world, you must also consider who else is in your potential customer’s proximity.

Without focusing on key visibility tactics and hoping to get by on brand name alone, you run the risk of failing on other fundamental areas that can turn people away—being outranked in the local map pack, incorrect or inconsistent business information causing confusion, and avoidable negative reviews.

Other Findings: AI, Economic Outlook, and Channel Investment and Impact

Despite only hitting the mainstream at the start of 2023, generative artificial intelligence has already caused a dramatic influx of new ‘AI-assisted’ tools aimed at both business and consumer audiences.

In August 2023, our own Local Search Industry Survey found that 93% of local marketers had already experimented with AI tools. So, in the question below, we wanted to know to what extent generative AI is now used at the multi-location scale.

• 88% of multi-location businesses are already using generative AI.
• 28% of multi-location businesses say they are using generative AI “to a great extent”.
• Only 11% of multi-location businesses aren’t using generative AI “at all”.

70% of marketers state that generative AI is used “to some extent” or “to a great extent,” suggesting that the technology has made waves within these organizations.

Furthermore, when asking those who are investing about the returns seen so far, it appears that generative AI mostly exceeds expectations.

• 64% of multi-location businesses said the ROI of generative AI has exceeded expectations.
• 98% of multi-location businesses said the ROI of generative AI has “met or exceeded expectations”.
• Just 2% of multi-location businesses felt the return of their generative AI investments fell short of expectations.

We’ve seen many examples of brands using generative AI in fun and clever ways for digital and out-of-home advertising and social content. It can leverage strong brand USPs and positioning surprisingly cost-effectively: take this advertising battle between McDonald’s and Burger King, for example. 

So, where do multi-location see the biggest opportunities with the continually evolving tech? We asked marketers to select up to three areas.

It looks like marketers are looking for assistance with more technical endeavors than creative ones. 36% of marketers highlighted data analysis as an area that generative AI can impact the most, while 24% highlighted SEO, and 23% cited forecasting and prediction. 

While it’s easy to first think of generative AI’s capabilities to create new, original media, there are a whole host of genAI tools in the market specifically designed to assist with—and speed up—data analytics. Creating engaging data visuals and summarizing vast amounts of data to provide impactful insights are just two use cases for such tools. 

However, that’s not to say that ‘data analytics’ can’t lend itself to other areas, like personalization, in order to create unique experiences. Think about personalized menu recommendations for restaurants, virtual ‘try-on’ experiences in retail outlets, or custom fitness profiles in gyms and health centers. This term also encompasses ‘forecasting and prediction’, of which data analysis is the very heart.

As the technology continues to evolve, though, there’s no doubt we’ll see opportunities and use cases for all industries unfolding.

Economic Optimism in 2024

How are multi-location marketers feeling about the year ahead? The good news is that businesses say they are looking pretty resilient and, as we’ve seen above, are already making strides in how they’re adopting and adapting to new technologies.

Despite economic challenges, the sentiment among multi-location marketers for the year ahead is high, with 77% feeling optimistic about 2024’s economic conditions. 

Only 10% of multi-location businesses feel pessimistic about the economic conditions ahead of them in 2024.

On top of this, brands also have a good appetite for business expansion.

81% of multi-location businesses told us that they are likely to open new locations in 2024. So, despite the challenges discussed earlier in the report, the multi-location business landscape is staying positive and ready to tackle what comes its way.

Channel Investment and Impact 

We’ve previously discussed marketing channel investment at a high-performance level. In this next section, we’ll go further to take a look at the impact that marketers are seeing on their revenues as a result of channel investment.

We’ve summarized each group with some key findings below.

High Performers vs. Average Performers

• High Performers invest more than Average Performers in 9 our of 10 marketing channels.
• Average Performers invest more in PPC than High Performers.

• High Performers see a good impact on revenue from SEO, considering their investment level (7.0 Investment Score vs. 7.3 Impact Score).
• Despite lower investment than Average Performers in PPC, High Performers see a better impact on their revenue in this area (5.9 Investment Score vs. 6.6 Impact Score, against 6.3 respectively for Average Performers).

Local Players

• Local Players see the most impact on revenues from social media (7.6/10).
• The channels seeing the highest impact on revenues are PPC and Direct Mail.
• Local Players are investing the least in PPC among their marketing mix.

Regional Challengers

• Regional Challengers see the most impact on revenues from social media (8/10).
• The channels seeing the highest impact on revenues are Radio, Direct Mail, and SEO.
• Regional Challengers are investing the least in radio advertising out of all channels—but the impact for those investing is fairly strong (5.6 investment score vs. 6.5 impact score).

Big Brands

• Big Brands are seeing the highest impact on revenues from paid social (7.5/10) compared to the other channels.
• The channels seeing a higher impact on revenues are PPC and Paid social.
• Out of all the channels listed, Big Brands invest the least in radio advertising.
• Big Brands appear to see the least impact on revenues from SEO (7.7 investment vs 7.5 impact).

Summary

If your marketing performance fell short of expectations in 2023, we’re not here to tell you to increase your local marketing function by a certain percentage or that adopting new marketing tech will immediately boost your results.

But the beauty of benchmarking is that it allows you to lift your head out of the sand (or various other reports) and consider opportunities for improvement: to compare what competitors in the multi-location marketing space are doing and pinpoint why they may have been outperforming you. 

Perhaps your team has even had a hunch about implementing a particular tactic or tool and has not quite had a case to prove to unlock some budget. We hope that this report’s findings will help strengthen that case for you and highlight new areas to think about.

One thing stands out for sure, though, and that is the overarching importance of local marketing in contributing to brand performance. It’s clear from our benchmarking that brands with dedicated, knowledgeable local marketing teams and local-specific strategies in place are outperforming others. 

When looking at individual local marketing tactics, too, we can see that High Performers are implementing many that others aren’t yet. Local rank tracking and optimization, reputation management, and citations reflect the continued importance of ensuring and maintaining brand visibility in increasingly competitive local environments. 

So, how is your brand measuring up? If you have any thoughts about the Brand Beacon Report 2024 research and findings, we’d love to hear from you. You can share your thoughts with us on X, LinkedIn, or our own Facebook community, The Local Pack. Alternatively, you can contact research@brightlocal.com with any questions.

Publishers and individuals are welcome to share findings and charts from this report, crediting BrightLocal and the URL https://www.brightlocal.com/research/brand-beacon-report/. 

Methodology

This research was conducted in partnership with Sapio Research, a B2B market research company, to survey a panel of 200 marketing decision-makers for multi-location and franchise businesses in the USA, the UK, and Canada. A comprehensive screening system was implemented to ensure only respondents fitting the criteria could participate.

Breakdowns of survey respondents by geographical location, industry, and business type can be found below.

The biggest e-commerce companies typically deal with just a single website. Sure, there are potentially thousands of pages to track, but it’s all essentially the same entity they are trying to rank.

Meanwhile, multi-location brands must treat each of their locations as separate entities.

Every location needs to be managed, optimized, and reported on. This means marketers in large multi-location brands, like you, manage SEO for hundreds or even thousands of “websites.”

Marketers working within e-commerce are equipped with specialized tools to help them manage SEO at scale. However, the same cannot be said for their multi-location counterparts. Until now, marketers at multi-location businesses have had to rely on two less-than-ideal solutions:

1. General SEO Tools: Powerful for general SEO but lacking in local specificity. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush are excellent for website SEO but they’re not primarily focused on locations. This means they lack crucial local-level insights necessary to help you make informed decisions and enhance performance in local search.
2. Traditional Local SEO Tools: Fine for a single location but overwhelmed by scale. Multi-location marketers are left with hundreds or thousands of reports to wade through and no way to see the big picture.

You’ve lacked the right tools for the job. This has put multi-location marketers, like you, into a cycle you can’t escape.

You struggle to navigate measuring performance and uncovering insights to boost results. Engaging stakeholders to show how local SEO contributes to business growth is difficult. The result? Your teams are underpowered, overstretched, and underappreciated.

Thankfully, we’re breaking that cycle and rewriting the rules with the launch of BrightLocal Horizon: A Search Command Center for Multi-location Brands.

BrightLocal Horizon isn’t just another rank-tracking tool; it’s the only rank-tracking solution that’s purpose-built for multi-location SEO.

Let’s get to the good stuff.

A new Horizon for multi-location SEO

Horizon is more than just a report or dashboard. It’s a command center for tracking and understanding your performance. It’s the springboard for deeper analysis and prioritization. And, it’s a powerful communication tool for sharing insights and impact with stakeholders.

Measure real-world search visibility at scale

BrightLocal Horizon simplifies local rank tracking for multi-location brands. It consolidates rankings across hundreds and even thousands of locations into a single, intuitive dashboard. Instantly gain insights into your brand’s nationwide and regional search presence. And, measure performance over time with top-level ranking metrics.

Focus on what matters

Forget the days of sifting through endless ranking reports. BrightLocal Horizon turns noise into a signal by highlighting underperforming regions. Making it easy to home in on the locations that need action.

Our simple interface helps you navigate from a broad national overview to specific local issues in a few clicks.

Attention-grabbing reporting

Let’s face it, ranking tables don’t turn heads in the boardroom. Our visual reports are easily understood by stakeholders so that the value of local SEO is recognized across your organization.

You’re not just sharing numbers—you’re telling a story that everyone can get behind.

Identify your top search competitors

When competing across hundreds of different local markets, you’re likely to face off against thousands of distinct competitors in search.

Unlike traditional SEO, where major players can dominate search results, local search offers a more level playing field. It allows small businesses to compete directly with big brands in search results.

This situation makes it tough for businesses with many locations to figure out who their main search competitors are. It’s hard to know where to start when there are so many.

Luckily, Horizon finds the top competitor in search for each of your locations, as well as the top one in each state. This way, you can quickly see who you’re up against the most all over the country. Then, you can check out what they’re doing well, plan your strategies to do better, and stay ahead in the game.

Steer your strategy with the right data

We know that marketers don’t have the time to analyze each location on a regular basis. Which is why Horizon gives you a bird’s-eye view of performance.

This strategic overview is essential, but we also recognize the need for in-depth analysis in certain scenarios.

Each location tracked in Horizon is powered by its own Local Search Grid report. Local Search Grid is our geo-map rank tracker that gives marketers the ability to measure the real-world search visibility of a location.

Each report can be customized to ensure it reflects the customer catchment area and can track up to 30 keywords. With each keyword, you get benchmarking data on the top-ranking competitors against key local ranking factors.

Horizon equips you with the insights needed for impactful decisions. Whether that’s tweaking a Google Business Profile category or addressing a shortfall in reviews and ratings.

Because Horizon is powered by the most accurate and comprehensive ranking data and the best local-level insights, you can have complete confidence in where you point your strategy.

Local search is still an untapped opportunity

While the surge in online shopping is undeniable, it represents only a fraction—about one-fifth—of total retail revenue. The current trends, particularly in the post-pandemic era, show a big shift back towards in-person shopping, with a remarkable 81% of retail revenue still coming from physical store visits.

This raises a crucial question: Why is local SEO still eclipsed by traditional SEO strategies?

As brands intensify their focus on e-commerce, many are missing a huge opportunity. They’re bolstering their SEO and PPC to capture online revenue and overlooking local consumers. These consumers are predominantly shopping in physical stores. But, they are increasingly relying on online searches to discover and research brands ahead of purchasing.

Google itself revealed that 83% of U.S. shoppers perform an online search before visiting a store.

This oversight is costly: potentially billions of dollars in sales are being lost because brands aren’t visible during these crucial local searches.

BrightLocal Horizon is here to address this gap, equipping multi-location brands with the ability to turn overlooked opportunities into tangible business growth.

Ready to expand your Horizon?

BrightLocal Horizon is now available for brands with over 100 locations, as well as agencies working with them, in the US and UK. Fit the bill? Request a demo today and we’ll show you what’s possible.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore how multi-location businesses can effectively leverage BrightLocal to understand location performance, deliver on rankings and key performance indicators (KPIs), and showcase their value to stakeholders.

Understanding Location Performance

To ensure that each location is thriving, it’s vital to start with a top-level overview and identify weak spots. BrightLocal’s Horizon is an excellent starting point. Horizon is the only rank-tracking solution that’s purpose-built for multi-location SEO. It enables you to consolidate and visualize ranking performance across hundreds or thousands of locations into a single, intuitive dashboard.

Here’s how you can make the most of it.

Identify Weak Spots

Utilize Horizon to pinpoint locations that may not be performing as well as others. The visual representation helps you identify areas that require attention.

Anything marked in green is in a good position. Anything marked in red needs some attention. For instance, the business in the image below is ranking well in Idaho—3.3. But not so well in Massachusetts—10.1.

To get a better idea of what’s holding these states back, we can click on the square—let’s click on Massachusettes—and we can see which specific locations in that state are struggling to rank well. 

In order to dig deeper, we can simply click the locations on the map and we’ll be taken to their individual Local Search Grid reports. Here we can find out what we might be able to do to outrank them. 

Identify Top Competitors

Identifying who your main search competitors are becomes complex for businesses with multiple locations. Fortunately, Horizon streamlines this process by pinpointing top competitors for each of your locations, as well as the top one in each state. This allows you to gain insights into your competition nationwide, analyze their strengths, and strategically plan to outperform them, ensuring you stay at the forefront of the game.

What to Do With Local Search Grid Data

Read more

Drill Down for Details

Once you’ve identified locations that need improvement, use the single location tools within BrightLocal to dig deeper. Analyze the specific factors affecting performance and make necessary adjustments.

For example, you could check out their individual Local Search Grid report as mentioned above or run a Local Search Audit report to quickly see what’s holding a location back. With this information, you can work out the best course of action.

You can see here that the Location in the image above needs to work on their local listings. Their next steps could be to run a Citation Tracker report in BrightLocal to help them find and fix current listings and uncover new citation opportunities. 

Delivering on Rankings and KPIs

If you’re going to deliver on rankings and KPIs, as a multi-location business, you need to use a combination of strategies, tools, and techniques to enhance your online visibility, attract more local customers, and ultimately drive revenue. This often includes optimizing websites, managing online listings, maintaining an active and positive online reputation, and implementing effective marketing campaigns.

BrightLocal offers a range of tools and features to assist you in this area.

Review Generation and Responses

Review Inbox allows you to streamline your multi-location reputation management. You can view, sort, and filter every customer review by status or rating, for every location you manage in BrightLocal, via a single feed. If you have integrated your GBP or Facebook Pages to your reports, you’ll also be able to respond to reviews from these sources directly from Review Inbox.

Learn how to set up and understand Review Inbox here. 

Listing Management

Active Sync is a tool that helps you to keep your most important listings accurate and push out updates when you need to. 

Listings have changed over the last decade. Searchers used to use hundreds of different sites to discover local businesses. However, now just a few key listings dominate: Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), Facebook, Apple Maps and Bing. 

These listings have become the key sites that consumers actually use to discover, evaluate and engage with a brand. They also supply your information to other sites and voice-control devices such as:

• Google Business Profile – Google Maps, Waze, Google Home
• Facebook – Instagram
• Bing – Amazon Alexa

Consumers rarely use other listings sites, but they can help businesses to build authority with search engines. Which is where our Citation Builder service comes in. You may be using expensive listing management solutions that hold your data hostage for minimal output; Citation Builder is a managed service where we build out listings for your brand at scale and give you true ownership of your data moving forwards. 

Active Sync helps you to take care of those important listings—Google Business Profile, Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing—all in one place, making sure they are accurate and up-to-date. 

Once you have connected to the listings from your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings. 

What are Google Business Profile Attributes?

Read more

Once you’ve set Active Sync up it will then send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if a suggested edit is published by Google, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.

You can either accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, allowing you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.

Bulk Google Business Profile Posts

GBP Post Scheduler is a true game-changer when it comes to scaling up your Google Posts. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation.

As a multi-location business, there could be instances where you need to push the latest national promotions to every location at once. Rather than have to do this one location at a time, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you potentially hours of tedium. This ensures consistent content across your entire network of locations (or just a select few) in just a few clicks. 

You can schedule posts to go out at the exact right time and set the relevant expiry dates to ensure a consistent stream of content for potential customers to engage with. You’ll get full visibility of what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired from a single dashboard. It’s as easy as setting it and forgetting it! But if you need to make changes, then it’s just a case of editing anything that’s already scheduled or deleting anything that’s live.

You can also say goodbye to writer’s block with our AI-powered content generation. Our integration with ChatGPT ensures that you always have engaging and captivating content at your fingertips. Simply add a description of the message you want to put out, and in seconds, our AI writing assistant will give you content ideas to run with and optimize. 

Learn how to bulk post with GBP Post Scheduler here. 

Showcasing Value to Stakeholders

Demonstrating the value of your efforts to stakeholders is crucial. BrightLocal offers a range of reporting and auditing tools to help you showcase progress and results.

Rank Tracker Rollup Reports

Keep stakeholders informed about your MLB’s local search rankings with Rank Tracker Rollup Reports. The Rollup Reports feature allows you to present comprehensive ranking data in an easily digestible format.

They can be accessed by clicking the ‘Rank Tracker Rollup Reports’ tab on the Rank Tracker overview page.

Google Business Profile Audit Insights

Let’s imagine you had a location that was being held back by their Google Business Profile. You picked up on this issue using the BrightLocal GBP Audit tool and made the necessary changes which have improved the number of calls and clicks the location is getting via their GBP. Now, you can demonstrate this by sharing the Insights tab in the GBP Audit report.

For example, the business below optimized their GBP at the end of October and you can see that this has increased the number of website clicks and views on mobile and maps they’ve got since then. 

BrightLocal Horizon

Continue to utilize BrightLocal Horizon to visualize progress across your MLB. This tool helps you monitor overall performance and determine where additional focus may be needed.

BrightLocal for Multi-location Businesses

BrightLocal can equip your multi-location business with the tools you need to thrive in the competitive world of local search optimization. By understanding location performance, delivering on rankings and KPIs, and showcasing value to stakeholders, you can your own local SEO efforts to the next level. 

To get started and see how BrightLocal can benefit your business, we invite you to speak to our sales team. Start using BrightLocal’s tools and features strategically, and watch as your multi-location business reaps the rewards of enhanced visibility and success.

This first step involves ensuring your client’s business listing is in the right location.

The physical location of your office plays a pivotal role in today’s local search results. An incorrect location could potentially affect your local search rankings for as long as you remain in that location. Therefore, understanding its importance and how to optimize it is critical.

Today, we’ll discuss why the physical location matters, what the experts are saying about it, and how you can test its effectiveness. I will share straightforward techniques used by SEOs to ensure that your new address is beneficial for both your business and the customers searching for you.

We will begin by examining the importance of the searcher’s location in local search, and then flip the perspective to view it from the business standpoint.

Even if we can’t position an office in an ideal location, we can manage the client’s expectations, explaining the potential advantages or disadvantages of various locations, effectively helping them to make more informed decisions about the future of their business.

What if we could evaluate the location of your new office before you move in or sign any lease agreement? What if we could predict your potential competition and assess how beneficial or detrimental that location might be for your business, even before you commit to it? With some basic local SEO techniques, you can do just this.

Origin

This idea originated from the understanding that a user’s location is a local ranking factor. Back in 2016, Dave DiGregorio and I did a local location study where we concluded that the location of the searcher mattered when it comes to what appeared in the local 3 pack. In 2018, Darren Shaw shared his findings at SearchLove London, where he showed that walking from one end of the street to the other produced different local results. All this makes perfect sense now, but back in 2016, it was a bit of a revelation that lead to the technique I use today.

The Importance of Location

In the latest “Local Search Ranking Factors”, look at what ranks at No.3 and No.4 for factors that impact the local pack: “Proximity of Address to the Point of the Search” and “Physical Address in City of Search”.

Even Google tells us that location and distance from the searcher matters, it’s in the guidelines!

So, if location matters so much, wouldn’t it be a good idea if the client could position themselves in the best position they could from the start, instead of placing themselves somewhere and then trying to make that position work?

The Problem

The problem has always been that the client tells you where their office is. As local SEOs, we’ve all at some point had similar emails from clients like this:

We’re always told after the fact where their office is going to be.

So what’s the first thing we do as a Local SEO? We Google the address.

Now in my example, my client is a personal injury lawyer, so I think to myself “I wonder how many personal injury lawyers are close by?” 

I click on the map and do a search for “personal injury lawyers” nearby… and I can see it’s not good news.

I then zoom in for a little more detail and it’s really bad news.

You see that there are at least two firms in that building with sponsored listings, and a couple of others in the same building—and that’s not looking at who’s across the street or down the block!

How many times have we seen something like this?

Remember, this is a new office location and your client is moving in there with zero reviews!

And you think to yourself…

You know that client has not got a chance in hell to rank. Why?

Because they have failed in at least one of these two areas!

In terms of distance: you might be close to your clients, but you have no prominence! You have zero reviews. There may be similar businesses with many more reviews in the same building, which may also mean your business is also filtered from the local 3-pack due to Possum.

The company had no chance of success in the new office because they didn’t ask their local SEO first if it was a good location. They didn’t ask because they didn’t know to ask; we have to tell them and then remind them anytime they’re thinking about opening a new office or moving office location.

The Solution

As local SEOs, we should understand that not everything for the client revolves around local SEO when it comes to choosing their next location; there are many factors to consider, such as:

• Location and Convenience
• Price
• Size
• Infrastructure
• Style

But what we need local businesses to add to the list is:

• Am I going to rank based on this location? 

Ideally, we would like business owners to check the address first on Google Maps, which we will show you how to do below. Or, the business owner emails their local SEO specialist and asks at least the following two questions:

• I am looking at opening a new office. Where should I look?
• I’ve been looking at a new office and these are the top locations I’d like you to look at.

Techniques and Examples

So let’s look at the techniques I use with a few working examples. These will also show you some tools I use—some free and some paid—to get you the information that will help you make the right decision for your client or business.

Quick Check

So the first technique is the “Quick and Easy” check—no tools are necessary, just you, your browser, and the address you are considering.

In this example, let’s use 633 W 5th St—which we looked at earlier—and see what the client “should” or “could” have done before moving into that office.

1. Open your browser. Google your address or just paste it into Google Maps and see what appears.

   

2. Now click through on the result so that you see the address in Google Maps.

   

3. Now all we have to do for a “quick check” is select “Nearby”.

   

4. Now, just search for the business type that matches your business. In this example, I am going to do a search for “personal injury lawyer”.

   

5. Google Maps will now show you all the businesses of that type in the area, indicated by the red pins. The blue pin is the address we first searched for.

   

6. We can now zoom into that location for more information on local competitors showing at that address or just a few blocks away. In this example, moving here might not be a good idea, and we might want to look elsewhere. Again, don’t forget your new office will have ZERO reviews!

   

This is what I call the Quick and Easy technique, but it’s just for maps and can’t show me what the local 3-pack might look like so that I can see who they would be up against in the local search.

Get More Local

Using the quick and easy method is a great way of quickly checking a location, but you may have several addresses that you are interested in and they’re all pretty similar; they’re good, but you want to suggest the best one to your client, so you need to dig into the location a little bit more.

The quick and easy method does not show you who’s ranking in the three pack for searchers who actually live in the local neighborhoods. You’re seeing “local” search results from several hundred miles away, where ideally you want to be seeing what the local searchers see in their local SERP results, including the 3 pack and Google maps.

So, how do you get more local if you are several hundred miles away from the addresses you are looking at for your client? You could:

• Drive over there, some several hundred miles, which probably isn’t practical in most cases.
• Ask the client to drive to the address and do some testing, but, again, you’re relying on someone else to do the search work for you and then give you the results you need to make your decision.

Or…

• You could just fake your location.

It’s possible to make Google think I am searching from another part of the country—or even on the other side of the world! Remember, Google knows where most users are searching from, just look at the top of your Google search results.

So, having the ability to fake my location gives me the ability to see exactly what my clients potential customers are seeing when they do a local search. I don’t mean just zip code level; I mean down to the actual address location level. Being able to accurately set my search location now allows me to see not only who is ranking near me on Google Maps, but also what/who appears in the organic search results and the local 3-pack at the top of the page.

The first thing you need to do is install an extension that allows you to “fake your location”. I’ve already done a short video on how to install and use such an extension here, so take a look.

We’re using the brilliant GS Location Changer by Valentin Pletzer.

So we now have the ability to fake our location. Let’s now search as a local resident close to the address you are researching. In my example I’ve been using a business address in LA, so let’s stick with that. We want to see what people who live and work in that area during the day would see in the local search results.

The red pin again represents the location of the address we are looking at, 633 W 5th St, LA. Let’s look at the search results from someone searching close to Pershing Square, which we can see on the map.

Let’s zoom into the map and grab an address.

Now, just right-click on your mouse and a menu will appear. Choose “What’s here?”

Google Maps will now show you the address at that chosen location. In this example, it’s 606 S Olive St, Los Angeles, CA 90014. We can now use this address as our fake search location.

Copy the address and paste it into the GS Location Changer extension. Don’t forget to select the “enable overwrite” option.

Now that we’ve done these additional steps, we can run a few local searches as if we were a local resident searching from this location

I like to do several different local search variations, an implicit and explicit local search, and a near-me search, just to see what or who I see in the local 3-pack as sometimes this can vary.

So my results for this example for a personal injury lawyer are:

“personal injury lawyer” (implicit)

“personal injury lawyer los angeles” (explicit) 

“personal injury lawyer near me”

Note that no 3-packs are the same; there is a difference in each one. So now I can see who my clients’ local competition would be and recommend that they do not open an office at this address.

Be Careful, Not Everything Is as It Appears

When looking at office locations for clients, we can also take into consideration other factors that may or may not help the business, such as:

• Does it have good curb appeal?
• Are there opportunities for external signage?
• Could there be an issue with the office location that’s not been considered? 

We can’t see these from the Google Map view, but we can use Google Street View to answer some of these questions. Here are some examples to show you what I mean.

The address for this office space has no opportunities to use external signage, so passing traffic has no idea that your client/your business is inside this office building.

This office rental space in the photograph below was in the Salvation Army head office for the city we were looking at. So, again, no opportunity for external signage to advertise the business to passing traffic.

The final example shows us that the location has good opportunities for external signage and is visible from the road to passing traffic. We can also see that there is good parking for the business, so another plus point we can observe by just using Google Street View.

What if you’re moving office?

We’ve talked a lot about looking for a new location if you are opening a new office that will open with zero reviews. However, what if you’re moving an existing office that has a Google Business Profile and has 10s or possibly even 100s of reviews? You can still use the techniques outlined above, but you may now have a competitive advantage.

If your GBP is stronger than that of the local competition, you could very well move, update your address on your GBP, and, after validation, start dominating the local search results even better than you were at the previous location.

Tools and Resources

Google Maps and Google Street View are just some of the tools I use to try and decide if the address is suitable for the next business location. Listed below are a collection of other resources, free and paid, that will help in your location-making decision.

Google Earth

Along with Google Maps and Street View, I also use Google Earth. It offers a fantastic 3-Dimensional picture of the locations you are looking at. Look around at local neighborhoods, schools, and sports grounds. Is it close to highways? 

Remember, you can’t travel to these locations, so try and do the next best thing by visualizing yourself there. This might also lead you to ask more location-specific questions to the client or realtor.

Local Grid Tools

Among Brightlocal’s arsenal of paid tools is the Local Search Grid. Its primary purpose is to give you 3-pack ranking location data for your business listings. However, you can run “one-off” grid scans for any business. I’ve used it several times to run ranking results of competitors close to locations I have been checking to give me grid results like the one below so I can see how well competitors are performing in the area we want to move into.

This, and other Geo Grid tools on the market, can help give you an idea of the area’s competition.

PlePer Chrome Extension

A valuable tool to have for any Local SEOs and extremely useful when combined with the research done on Google Maps, the PlePer Chrome Extension offers category and review analysis all displayed in one place. It’s invaluable when doing this kind of location analysis.

City-Data Sites

Understanding the city your client is in or moving to is so valuable when trying to understand more about the people who live there. Here are some of the US sites I use:

• United States Census Bureau – Explore Census Data
• Population Density Maps – Map Viewer
• Livability Score – Find the best places to live
• ZipDataMaps – US Zip Code Data
• Home Town Locator – localmaps, data and resources
• Where U.S. housing is growing (2020.21) – Percentage change in housing units, by county
• Data USA – more data than you thought possible

Summary

It’s so important to research the location for any business, local or otherwise. For local, we can see what an important factor location can be to the success of a business. If you’re a local SEO specialist or business owner and you’re thinking about opening a new office or moving office, then just remember these things:

Do

• Check the address first in Google Maps
• Email/speak with your SEO specialist to ask:
  – I’m looking at opening a new office. Where should I look?
  – I’ve been looking for a new office and these are my top five, please check.

Don’t

• Sign a lease or contract without doing the above.