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What do Consumers Pay Attention to When Judging a Local Business by its Reviews?

A recent study shows that online reviews for local businesses are the norm for many consumers: 82% report reading reviews and over 90% say that a positive review makes them more likely to use a business.

Reviews have a vital impact on the behavior of local consumers.

Following are key findings:

Recency:
Recency of reviews impacts consumers’ decisions:

Nearly 3 in 5 consumers judge a review by how recent it is.
Almost half say a review should be within two weeks of when they view it in order to impact their decision, while one-fifth say it can be as recent as one month.

Star Ratings:
Consumers consider a minimum number of stars before using a business:

The majority of consumers pay attention to overall star ratings.
Seventy percent say a business should have either 3 or 4 stars, 53% would consider 3 stars or less, and 12% insist on a 5-star rating.

Quantity:
The quantity of reviews influences consumers’ trust:

Half of consumers pay attention to the quantity of reviews.
Consumers read an average of ten reviews before trusting a business.

Posting Reviews:
Consumers are more likely to post positive reviews:

Three-fifths left a review for a local business after having a positive experience.
Only 25% say they left a review after a negative experience.

Reading Responses to Reviews:
Consumers place value on businesses that respond to reviews:

Just over 70% of consumers are more likely to use a business that responds to existing reviews.
Businesses should respond promptly, politely and helpfully to both positive and negative reviews.

Reviews can have a vital impact on the behavior of local consumers–an online reputation strongly affects whether customers choose to use a business.

Source: The Local Consumer Review Survey-BrightLocal.com, reported by MarketingCharts.com

Ready to Reopen: Marketing and SEO Strategies for Small Businesses

Reopening and adjusting to the “new normal” will involve researching, communicating and executing plans to pivoting strategically. Following are steps small businesses can take:

Lay Out Your Marketing Strategy

Update your marketing strategy to reflect your customers’ current needs:

• Assess how your competitors are handling marketing and gauge how customers are reacting.

• Address the current reality your customers are facing.

• Communicate important reopening announcements, changes and information.

• Stay on top of your website, blog, email lists, social media channels, etc., to deliver consistent messages about your business plans.

Strengthen SEO Strategies

Clean up areas of your site and prioritize initiatives:

• In-Depth Technical Site Audit: Tackle technical issues with your site.

• Site Migrations and Redesigns: Although it takes time to recover search traffic/rankings while Google indexes your “new” pages, it puts you in a great position with a new, improved site.

• Site Speed Improvements: Improving site speed is a well-known ranking factor and is even more important in the mobile-first indexing era.

• Site Tools, Features, and Functionality: Focus on projects — improve ecommerce functionality, enhance design, etc. — which will pay dividends in the future.

Be prepared with new content:

• Customer Support and FAQ Content: Assess how your business appears in search results and ensure that your content satisfies the immediate needs of customers.

• Warranties, Return Policies and Protection Plans: Create content explaining how customers are protected – consider adding a section to your return policy addressing COVID-19.

• Safety and Cleanliness: Update your business practices in response to the new normal and educate your customers on how you’re keeping them safe.

• Fill Your Site’s Content Gaps: Address content gaps on your site and fill them.

Remain cohesive and stay aligned:

• Daily Standups for Your Team: Meet for 15 minutes each day to discuss what you finished yesterday, today’s priorities, and what may be blocking progress.

• Stay on Track with Your Content Calendar: Keep on track with an updated content calendar.

• Daily Tracking on New Content: Track metrics of new content to make sure it is gaining traction.

• Monitor COVID-19 Content from Your Competitors: Track the new terms related to COVID-19 and the market share for those keywords to stay one step ahead of competitors.

Small businesses need to plan and understand changes to be made and any new growth opportunities that may exist in a post-pandemic world.

Source: USChamber.com, Nicole Fallon; conductor.com, Joe Taylor

Mastering Google My Business Means More Sales

97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.

With the vast majority* of people using online to learn more about a local company, it’s not surprising that 18% of local mobile searches (mainly using Google) lead to a sale within one day.¹ As a result, it’s important your business is easy to find online. Google My Business (GMB) is a local business listing platform that enables you to do so.

Following are tips for using this important tool:

Claim Your Google My Business Listing

Create a profile from scratch or claim a business that’s already on GMB’s list.
Update your page and verify your business with a code Google will send to your business address.

Include All the Essential Info

Choose a category (from over 2,000 available), name, address and other essential information.
Add a description with relevant keywords and attributes that will attract customers.

Upload Quality Images

Add images of your storefront and/or team to help build a rapport and entice people to visit.
Ensure the images are high quality and show your business in a positive light.

Attract Visitors to Your Page; Garner Positive Reviews

Reviews affect your SEO**: GMB reviews with relevant keywords were the second most influential factor in rankings for local searches².
Include signage in your store/business, add a link to review your business in your email signature and/or share positive reviews on your social media pages.

Respond to All Reviews

Respond to all reviews on an ongoing basis, showing consumers that you’re responsive.
By providing a satisfactory response, customers may leave a more favorable review than they did initially.

Post Content Continuously

Google Posts enables GMB account owners to post content directly into the search engine results page.³
Keep your listing fresh by sharing content continuously, including special offers, blog posts, events, photos, videos, etc.

“One solid way to attract visitors to your website and to your business … is by having an optimized Google My Business page.” – Seth Rand, Founder/CEO of Rand Marketing

*97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.

**SEO is a set of practices used for optimizing a website’s content, structure, and other integral parts with the goal of manipulating search engines’ result pages. (SEO Tribunal)

Source: smallbiztrends.com, reported by Annie Pilon;

¹A study from Glo-Globe; (moz.com);

²A study from Local SEO Guide;

³hallaminternet.com

Out-Of-Home Ad Forecast Sees Sharp Gain In 2020

Both U.S. and global Out-of-Home (OOH) ad growth is expected to rise at a fast pace in 2020, with U.S. Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) increasing even more rapidly.

Out-of-Home Ad Growth:

Global: Out-of-Home is expected to see an 8.5% growth in 2020, the fastest increase in 13 years, and will continue to ramp up until 2023.
U.S.: Out-of-Home’s compounded annual growth rate (CAGR)* will be 5.4% from 2018 through 2023.

U.S. Digital Out-of-Home Ad Growth:

In the U.S., Digital Out-of-Home (ex. billboard, DMV, elevator, gas station) will rise even more rapidly at an 8.5% CAGR from 2018 through 2023.
In 2023, DOOH will have a 38.3% share of all Out-of-Home media in the U.S.

U.S. Consumer Exposure:

U.S. consumer exposure to OOH advertising is expected to rise 1% to 2.96 hours per week through 2023.
DOOH consumer exposure will rise at a 5.1% compounded rate to reach 1.23 hours by 2023.

*The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is the proportional growth rate from year to year, used to calculate growth over a time period.

Source: MediaDailyNews, reported by Wayne Friedman

What is Your SEO Strategy for 2020?

“The future of the industry lies in understanding the customer’s intent.” –thinkwithgoogle.com

With the rise of voice assistants, chatbots, and conversational search, the customer journey more often starts with a question, a desire, a need, and AI-powered¹ discovery services (ex. search engines, apps, maps, etc.) are responding with more relevant, detailed information. With this shift in consumer search behavior, following are insights for SEO² (Search Engine Optimization) strategies:

IF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY STARTS WITH A QUESTION: HOW DO MARKETERS ANSWER?

To ensure your business appears in search results as the answer to your customers’ questions, manage your brand data, which is made up of hundreds of facts, concepts, and details about your products/services.
The ideal architecture for AI-powered search and discovery services emerging today is to consolidate brand information in a single location. It must be accessible and structured to align to the changing digital ecosystem.

THE NEW CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Search engines are retraining consumers to ask instead of search; the customer journey starts with a question, which leads to new, different questions as a part of the research process
Google search results pages include a feature that shows what “people also ask”, with a set of questions to click on for answers, and to click through for a full search.

QUESTIONS ARE THE NEW KEYWORDS

To keep up with the shift from keywords to questions, marketers must structure their brand data to provide direct answers, on and off the brand website.
Question = Search = Intent: search marketing has moved beyond keywords to searcher’s intentions, and consumers’ questions state exactly what they want.

UNDERSTANDING INTENT ALONG THE JOURNEY

To understand the customer’s journey and what’s important to them, examine their searches and the questions they asked.
Map the journey by looking at when those questions were asked, and strategize to meet similar customers along the way.

BUILDING AN INTENT MODEL

Build an intent model, which creates the basis to answer consumers’ questions, and identifies which search terms to target to get the best return for your customers.
The goal is to understand and optimize marketing strategies for the customer’s path of intent.

DEMOGRAPHIC VS. INTENT MARKETING

Demographic targeting studies who your customers are, but not what they do or how they feel. Relying only on demographics to reach consumers risks missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers.
Research customers’ intent based on signals of interest in a product/service. Intent marketing is more effective at reaching and converting customers, and is reactive to their stated needs and raises fewer privacy concerns.

The customer journey starts with a question, and consumers expect answers. Provide accurate, consistent, brand-verified answers to consumer questions, no matter where or how customers are searching.

¹Artificial intelligence (AI): the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems (searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com). ²SEO (Search Engine Optimization): the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through search engine results (moz.com).

Source: Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer at Yext; thinkwithgoogle.com; how-to-build-buyer-intent-model

U.S. Media Advertising Outlook 2019-2023

PwC’s Entertainment & Media Outlook Report contains projections for U.S. advertising growth through 2023. Following are highlights for major media:

	Online Advertising Online is expected to have a +8.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)¹ through 2023. Mobile online is projected to grow at a +13.1% CAGR, with wired forecast to decline at -16.6%.
	Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Digital out-of-home (ex. billboard, DMV, elevator, gas station) remains strong with a +7.1%. Out-of-home has the strongest forecast of traditional media with a +3.1% CAGR, buoyed almost entirely by digital out-of-home’s.
	Cinema Advertising Cinema is predicted to grow at a CAGR of +3.6%. Cinema advertising revenues are much smaller than box office takings, although its CAGR is higher.
	Radio Advertising Radio is expecting a slight increase with a CAGR of +0.7%. Online radio will be the fastest-growing segment at +7.1%.
	Television Advertising TV continues to grow slowly at a +0.3% CAGR, in part due to declining TV viewing. Online TV is also growing slowly at a +4.6% CAGR, below the forecasts of the past several years.
	Magazine Advertising Consumer magazines remain pessimistic with a -2.8% CAGR; digital’s +3.9% is not enough to offset print’s -8.3%. Trade magazines -1.1% CAGR expects digital’s +4.8% to make up for print’s -7.6%.
	Newspaper Advertising Newspapers are expected to see a decline with a -4.7% CAGR. Digital’s CAGR of +2.5% is not growing quickly enough to offset print’s -9.3%.

¹The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is the proportional growth rate from year to year for a business, used to calculate growth over a time period.

Source: PwC’s Entertainment & Media Outlook, reported by Marketingcharts.com

Website Trends for Small Business Owners

Website refreshes mean more business and happy customers. — Website pages should be accurate, easy to read, and full of calls-to-action.

A website is your online business card. It’s what customers see first when they look for your services. Trends are constantly shifting based on what customers want to see.

How do you know if your website in on-trend? Take a look at some of the most popular design elements for small business sites:

From Flat to 3-D (Again)

Gradients, drop shadows, video, motion graphics, scrolling effects, etc., bring new life to a website.
Add realism and depth to graphics, bridging the gap between the digital and the real world.

Video Home Page Headers

Videos replace standard sliding images to convey a message and grab visitors’ attention quickly.
Videos can run on auto-play, or be prompted to play, and text could be added over the video for further description.

Large, Attention-Getting Text

Large, eye-catching text has become front and center, with much smaller subtext as needed to direct users to additional information/actions.
Pair a video background with bold or large text to get the attention of visitors instantly.

Large “Hero” Images

Hero images are the main banners placed on a website*, on the home page and inner pages.
High quality, relevant images are key for this design.

Responsive Design

Responsive websites are sites that are functional on any screen—no pinching and pulling required.
Non-responsive sites turn off users, and get penalized by search engines for not being user-friendly.

Micro-Interactions

Micro-interactions are touches which surprise and/or encourage users in an area of the website.
Notifications, text pop-ups or a button turning another color, etc., can help foster engagement.

Great Written Content

Quality content should focus on storytelling and communicating effectively with your audience.
Promote knowledge, products and services while implementing SEO** keyword research into your text.

Website pages should be accurate, easy to read, and full of calls-to-action to draw readers into the next step of your marketing/sales funnel.

**SEO (Search Engine Optimization): methods used to increase traffic to a website by increasing its search engine page rank (techopedia.com).

Source: OpenVine.com, reported by Kelly Thomas Mango; *omniconvert.com

3 Ways to Drive Customer Engagement

Customer engagement – attracting and influencing customers — is earned through trust and over time. There are three layers to effectively nurture prospects into customers:

Emotion: Customers need to feel something for your brand and trust your proposition.
Rationale: Lock in commitment and ensure that what you’re offering makes logical sense.
Ethics: Communicate your brand virtues.

Customer engagement is achieving the right balance of compassionate and rational marketing.

Following are the best tactics to conquer all three layers:

1. EMOTION: Trust-building — Inspire emotions to engage customers:

Tell, don’t sell.

Use storytelling to activate desires.

Put your social proof to use.

Shout about your endorsements: ratings, reviews and testimonials.

Personalize your message.

Seventy-four percent of marketers say personalization increases engagement.

2. RATIONALE: Commitment-building — Align your proposition as a solution to an existing want, need, or problem:

Position your product to meet a need or desire.

Content should paint a picture of where customers will be after their purchase.

Use data to segment your audiences.

Use preferences and behaviors to customize content: 91% of consumers are more likely to purchase brands that provide recommendations and 83% are willing to share their data.

Leverage different channels.

Use multiple media channels to ensure consistent communication throughout the buying cycle.

3. ETHICS: Promotion-building — Putting ethics before profit inspires: 66% of consumers spend more money with ethical businesses:

Make a commitment – and stick to it.

Showing that you’re making a difference earns consumer trust and confirms your reputation.

Make customers feel your dedication after they’ve purchased.

Inform customers of your local commitment.

Make it about more than the transaction.

Convey your community involvement; customers are appreciative if their purchase helps others.

Customer engagement is achieving the right balance of compassionate and rational marketing. Authentic narrative inspires prospects to become customers.

Source: dotdigital.com, reported by Chris Cano; jasmconsulting.com

Give Your Business a Fall Marketing Tune-up

“The key to setting achievable marketing goals is to spend time evaluating your current position.”

Marketing remains essential for businesses in order to successfully compete, sell products/services and become profitable and grow. Following are effective marketing best practices.

Set Attainable Goals

Determine your position in the market and decide what you want to achieve.
Keep your goals realistic, making them something you will be able to accomplish.

Establish Brand Identity and Target Market

Brand Identity: Communicate what your business does with the right name, logo, colors, imagery.
Target Market: Consider the age, gender, interests, location, etc. of your target customer.

Maintain a Website

Nearly two-thirds of small businesses rely on websites to connect with customers.
In this digital era, websites are the window to virtually any type of business.

Combine Online and Offline Strategies

Combine online channels such as blogs, social media, etc., with offline marketing practices.
Be mindful of SEO (Search Engine Optimization¹): incorporate relevant keywords into websites/online portals to rank higher on search engines.

Use Google Tools

List your product/service on Google My Business² to gain search visibility, customer insights and display useful information to help customers find you.
Prepare for a Google Ad Words³ campaign by setting a budget, finding the right keywords and creating landing pages that bear significance.

Don’t Discount Email Marketing

Every new subscriber to your email list is a potential paying customer.
Sixty-six percent of emails are opened on mobile devices; use mobile responsive templates that automatically adapt emails to mobile formats.

Prioritize Content Marketing

Eighteen percent of marketers said content marketing had the greatest impact on their business.
Create and share quality, unique content through webinars, blogs, social media posts, etc.

Join Local Business Groups / Solicit Customer Reviews

Network and showcase your business and meet like-minded people to share stories/goals by joining local groups.
Ask your customers for a review: feedback is a powerful tool for small business owners;

“The key to setting achievable marketing goals is to spend time evaluating your current position.” — Shanelle Mullin, Director of Marketing-Onboardly

¹SEO: methods used to increase traffic to a website by increasing its search engine page rank (techopedia.com).
²Google My Business: a tool to manage your online presence across Google.
³Google Ads: an online advertising program (support.google.com).
Source: smallbiztrends.com, reported by Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

Digital-Out-of-Home Trends Dominate Top Stories

Digital-out-of-home (DOOH) has been dominating advertising news with key trends and innovative technology. Following are the top five stories:

1. What’s driving the digital-out-of-home market?

Advertisers realize the value of trading static images for digital, delivering content that responds to the audience directly.
Two factors driving the expanding DOOH market are improved targeting and dynamic content — content that is continually updated¹.

2. Eye tracking tech delivers DOOH ads:

Dynamic content has the potential to engage audiences in a deep way because it addresses customers’ needs.
Displays can track users’ eyes to deliver content.

3. Three ways to bring DOOH content to life:

Out-of-home continues to outpace other traditional advertising, fueled by the fast growth in DOOH.
Three basic tips for DOOH: adding motion, delivering contextual content and carefully handling the timing.

4. Businesses are using big data to deliver the best DOOH experience for customers:

Big data is information that is analyzed to reveal patterns, trends, and associations relating to human behavior and interactions.²
The key to using big data is to offer good deals and a good product. It’s about the customer’s journey, not just the aggregated data.

5. Three tips for successful indoor digital signage:

When you deploy digital signage indoors, consider factors such as space, branding and messaging.
To be successful, have key strategies in place for all three factors.

When delivering digital signage experiences, experts recommend focusing on broader audiences, which will lead to increased sales and brand awareness.

Source: Digitalsignagetoday.com, reported by Bradley Cooper; ¹Braze.com; ²Google dictionary