10 Best Practices to Future-Proof Your Multi-Location Business

A strong, future-ready local marketing strategy is your foundation for getting found, your basis for converting customers, and your pathway to building consumer trust and loyalty. And a mature strategy helps your multi-location business win time and time again, even in a trying economic climate.

After getting a peek into the state of local marketing maturity, you know how important it is to craft a seamless customer experience across all online and offline touchpoints. But what best practices can you employ to deliver a journey your customers won’t forget?

1. Make Use of Managed Listings

The first step in leveling up your local marketing game is to stay on top of your online profiles and listings. Your Google Business Profile is generally the most important profile (according to the New Face of Local Report, 77% of consumers use Google to search for company information).

But to make yourself the obvious choice for picky consumers, you’ll need to professionally manage multiple channels, not just one. And to get the most out of listings, be sure to leverage posts, attributes, chat functions, and other feature offerings.

2. Go Local With Social

Say goodbye to the one-post-fits-all mentality and go local with your social media strategy. According to our survey, 34% of businesses either don’t use social media at all or ignore the local aspects of social—making it the perfect area to differentiate yourself from the competition. Focus on building community at a local level, whether that’s through location-specific posts, special offers, or hashtags.

3. Bridge the Gap Between Online & Offline CX

Today’s consumers demand a frictionless transition between online and offline channels, making the new hybrid customer experience the new normal. Customers expect to check product inventory online or reserve a dinner table from the comfort of their homes. By the same token, they appreciate the digitalization of physical stores in the form of in-store QR codes and curbside pick-up, for instance.

Some additional ways of bridging the gap include:

• VR “try-ons”

• buy online and return in store

• online orderings, bookings, and purchases

4. Design a Stand-Out Local Website Experience

Because 56% of businesses don’t optimize for local search, here’s another trick: Expand on your local approach with location-specific web pages. By optimizing local pages for SEO and avoiding common local SEO mistakes, you make it easy for nearby customers to find and choose you.

Pay special attention to the UX your site delivers—by incorporating tools like interactive store locators, for example, you ensure your customers can find the information they need.

5. Engage With Your Customers

At the end of the day, the relationship you have with your customers is one of your best assets. Happy customers become repeat customers who recommend you to others. Even during challenging economic times, loyalty is a lifeline for your business—just look at how Texas Roadhouse gained +200% added social followers during peak COVID closures.

To build stronger customer loyalty, it’s also essential you offer the best customer support possible—that means quick response times and attentive service.

Not sure of the best way to reply to your customers? Tools like our Review Response Templates, automated review responses, and chatbots can be lifesavers in increasing customer engagement without weighing down your team.

6. Listen to What Your Customers Think and Feel

If you can’t gauge customer satisfaction, how will you know where there’s room for improvement? Employing automatic sentiment analysis allows you to easily evaluate and classify your reviews. This tool makes it simple to address any business shortcomings and reward positive customer experiences across all channels.

7. Incentivize Your Customers to Come Back

It’s five times cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one. And loyal customers come with additional perks, like higher selling success rates and free word-of-mouth marketing. Attentive, automated multi-channel review management is a must to win over these faithful customers and outshine the competition, but your loyalty strategy shouldn’t stop there.

Drive loyalty by targeting customers in store as well as online, through initiatives such as review incentives, raffles, loyalty cards, and referral programs. (Hint: These days, discounts and special offers are key to winning over price-conscious consumers.)

Did you know that 75% of businesses we surveyed don’t leverage referral programs to win new customers? Are you one of them?

8. Take Your Local Strategy to the Next Level

Paid local social and local webpages are good starting points, but if you want to develop a seamless customer journey, it’s time to get up to speed on local ads, product inventory, and more. Create local relevance on an intent level so that all paid and organic traffic leads to your product or service.

9. Dig Into the Data

To set your business apart from the competition, dare to venture where most don’t—into the data. Only 56% of businesses monitor review ratings, and that’s the most commonly-viewed metric amongst those we surveyed.

However, review ratings alone don’t paint the whole picture—review response rates, website and social views, and online survey tools all contribute as well. When you pay more attention to the data, you’ll know where to invest your resources for maximum ROI.

10. Market With More Efficiency and Less Stress

Marketing smarter, not harder, is the key to delivering a memorable, future-first customer experience. That means automating where possible, ensuring data is updated in real time across platforms, and—most importantly—having a single source of truth.

After all, managing listings, social posts, review sentiment, local ads, and more can be a tall order when you’re juggling information silos across multiple platforms. But when you manage everything from one convenient location, it’s easy to control your online presence at scale.

Take Your Local Marketing Strategy to New Heights

Ready to level up your local marketing game? With Uberall CoreX, developing a winning, future-ready CX is a breeze. See for yourself why businesses choose us to help manage everything from listings to global analytics—Uberall empowers you to get found, be chosen, and drive loyalty across all your digital and physical touchpoints.