Which Digital Marketing Strategies Produce The Best ROI?

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At the end of the day, the main factor that matters most to businesses utilizing digital marketing is return on investment (ROI). There are several digital marketing strategies available, but some are geared towards short term ROI and quick sales while others are long term focused. SEO, SEM, content marketing, social media, and email marketing can all be beneficial digital strategies, but depending on the main goals of an organization some work better than others. This post will explore the different digital strategies, benefits, and which have the potential to produce the best long term ROI.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Many businesses claim to have effective SEO strategies in place, yet are they sustainable? SEO is all about optimizing your website to increase organic search rankings and overall online visibility. This includes both on-page and off-page optimization factors. The ultimate purpose of SEO is to drive more traffic to an organization’s site, which hopefully results in increased sales. Some long term benefits of efficient SEO include:  sustainability of rankings, precise keyword targeting, brand credibility, flexibility, data is traceable, and it typically costs less than other digital strategies. If implemented and monitored correctly, SEO is clearly an efficient digital strategy that can boost ROI.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Depending on the industry, SEM campaigns can be hit or miss. SEM is a digital strategy that allows organizations to rank ahead of their competition on search rankings through sponsored advertisements. It is typically associated with short term ROI and obtaining quick leads, but does have some long term implications. Google AdWords and Bing Ads are the clear front runners in the SEM world. AdWords is the more popular option among PPC marketers, but the quality of Bing Ads can’t be ignored. SEM offers some major benefits such as increased visibility, higher quality leads, precise targeting, development of audiences, and campaign data that can be tracked. Ultimately, SEM is a great digital strategy if done right, but it typically coincides better with organizations seeking short term ROI.

Content Marketing
The importance of content marketing can often times be overlooked by businesses. Content marketing is essentially the development of online content that provides value to visitors, and is typically created with intentions to drive traffic. It is an integral part to SEO and building long term online visibility. Some important benefits of content marketing according to Forbes include: reputation, building trust, conversion potential, cost effectiveness, and lasting value. At Onimod Global our content marketing strategy for clients is about quality and consistency. We develop content with the purpose of ranking for relevant search queries, increasing site traffic, and converting visitors to leads.

Social Media
Social media is an interesting digital strategy when it comes to ROI. Whether paid or organic, social media marketing is all about constructing an organization’s reputation through channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. It can be difficult to derive ROI from organic social media marketing efforts, but don’t underestimate its value. Paid social media advertising on the other hand can produce ROI sometimes unmatched by other digital strategies. Benefits of social media marketing can include: ease of entry, development of target audiences, cost effectiveness, precise targeting, and massive potential for brand awareness exposure.

Email Marketing
Although Email marketing is one of the earliest digital strategies to come about, it has yet to disappear. There is a reason for this – it still produces ROI. According to Smart Insights, “67 percent of businesses list email marketing as their highest ROI online marketing strategy.” Email marketing strategies today typically consist of newsletters, promotional offers, and other ways to build subscriber lists. The superior benefits that email marketing offers according to Forbes are retaining previous customers, attracting new customers, pure ROI focus, traceable data, and overall simplicity compared to other digital strategies.

Contact Onimod Global
Is your business in need of superior digital marketing services to increase ROI? Reach out to us at Onimod Global and see what digital solutions we can provide for you!

Spotify to Launch a Redesigned App That is Optimized for Advertisers

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Spotify recently became a publicly traded company. Now that stocks are available, it is more important than ever for Spotify to prove its worth to potential investors.

It has been somewhat of a mystery as to how the company managed to continue operating with a deficit of $3 billion. Spotify reported that much of this loss was due to the significant costs of licensing content streamed through the app.

Leveraging Current Assets

At this point, leaders within Spotify are attempting to leverage Spotify’s current technology and large user base to create meaningful insights through the redesigned app for advertisers. Such resources include:

  • Large audience: Spotify reports an active user base of 157 million users. Of these, the platform reports that 71 million pay a monthly subscription to stream their music free of ads.
  • Highly sophisticated algorithm: Spotify has made significant investments into machine learning. This expense is meant to improve the connection between Spotify and their users by suggesting songs or playlists that peak the user’s interest.
  • Data Saver: A new feature to this updated version of the Spotify app is the Data Saver. This feature stores all kinds of data on specific users as well, which can always be leveraged to assist in digital marketing efforts.
  • Simple creative: Digital marketers will not need any sort of training on how to advertise within the Spotify platform. All of the current video, audio, and display ads will remain unchanged so that campaigns are easy to set up and optimize.

Concluding Thoughts

Spotify has proven their potential. Now it is time for them to execute a perfectly planned strategy in order to capitalize on advertisers’ desires to reach target consumers. The platform’s rapid growth and machine learning advancements are their core competencies, which will need to be exploited in the near future in order to maximize potential profits.

Spotify’s global head of partner solutions, Danielle Lee, explained the platform’s current strategy in an interview with Adweek by saying, “We’re consulting our advertising partners on how to deliver a more relevant experience—even thinking about audiences that they didn’t know [about]. It’s not enough to find the right person, but to find them in the right moment where they’re going to be most receptive to your message.”

As a digital marketing specialist from Onimod Global, I personally feel that the future looks quite bright for Spotify and its investors. However, I think it is also entirely possible for the platform to quickly sink itself with ineffective strategies. If Spotify can come up with a plan for success that amplifies their greatest strengths while minimizing their current debt, then they just might be able to come out of this on top.

Restaurant Digital Marketing Strategies That Will Increase Traffic

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Managing a restaurant in today’s fast paced, digital environment can be very difficult to keep up with. It’s well known how competitive the restaurant industry is, so how can your venue stand out from the crowd? Implementing effective digital marketing strategies is critical when it comes to increasing restaurant traffic and overall revenue. If your restaurant is unfamiliar with SEO, social media marketing, or any other aspect of digital marketing, this post will provide strategies to help your business stand out.

Invest in a Highly Functional Website
Investing in a responsive, professional website may seem like a major expense to restaurant owners, but it’s essential in today’s digital world. According to a survey from OpenTable “86 percent of consumers go online to view a restaurant’s menu prior to visiting the venue.” This demonstrates how today’s consumers are visiting venues online before physically entering restaurants. Because of this it’s also important to ensure your restaurant’s website is optimized for mobile, as the industry is known to experience a massive amount of mobile traffic. Be certain to never hide important information from potential consumers on your site such as menus, hours, contact information, photos, and any call to actions (reservations).

Prioritize Social Media Advertising
Having an effective social media strategy is essential to restaurant success. This seems obvious, but many restaurants don’t know how to reach the right audiences or execute their overall plan. According to an article from Forbes, some common mistakes seen in the industry are “not connecting Facebook and Instagram accounts, marketing to a national audience instead of local, using hashtags on Facebook, and many others.” This mistakes are not too difficult to correct, yet it requires an investment of both time and money to be properly executed. Ultimately, because social media marketing is such an integral part to restaurant success and takes time, outsourcing to an experienced digital marketing agency like ours is probably your best bet.

Pay Attention to Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is an important tool that provides local businesses with an opportunity to appear in Google search and map results to essentially increase local SEO rankings. Having a GMB listing and being active is critical in today’s digital world for local restaurants in order to stand out from the crowd. Including restaurant information, uploading appealing images, optimizing your GMB listing, and frequently posting updates will greatly improve a restaurant’s digital visibility. Utilizing Google My Business allows your organization to take charge of what people see when conducting a local search for your business, and it should never be overlooked.

Analyze Website Traffic and SEO Rankings
Having a professional website is great, but does it rank well on Google? The survey from OpenTable also found that “87 percent of potential consumers go online to find a restaurant in their area prior to visiting any venue.” Therefore, an enhanced SEO presence is critical, especially for local businesses. Not ranking on the first page of search engines for relevant search queries in the restaurant industry can potentially set your business up for failure. Monitoring website traffic is also crucial so be sure to install Google Analytics on your website to help with traffic analysis.

Bar & Restaurant Case Study
Wondering what kind of bar & restaurant digital marketing experience Onimod Global has? Take a look at our Case Study and read about how one of our clients in downtown Chicago is outranking their competition and seeing sales soar as a result. We developed a highly functional website, increased organic SEO rankings, and spread the word about their incredible services across all major social media platforms. As displayed in the chart below, in the first 3 months alone of 2018 our client has been found 146,000 times in Google Maps and a total of 321,000 times on Google.

Contact Us
Is your restaurant in need of superior digital marketing services? Reach out to us at Onimod Global and see what digital solutions we can provide for you!

Vero: The Social Media Platform Free of Data Mining, Bots, and Ads

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Could this be the next big thing in social media? Or is it all too good to be true? The jury is still out, but the future does look considerably promising for Vero.

Comparison

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg was under fire again this week for the platform’s privacy policies. Zuckerberg simply stated that users all agree to meet each of Facebook’s terms and conditions when they sign up for a Facebook account.

Facebook is very clear about how the platform stores information about users, and this information is then used to better target consumers through the Facebook Ads platform. Since this is the primary source of income for Facebook, it is obvious that this is of primary concern to them as well. As a digital marketer, this kind of information is absolutely amazing, but as a consumer, this is concerning to say the least.

Many consumers are becoming more and more drawn to the idea of keeping their lives truly private. It is often found to be “creepy” and “invasive” when consumers are served ads for items they recently viewed or even those that they merely spoke of. All of these irritants provide a prime opportunity for a social media platform like Vero to strike.

What is Vero?

As stated on their website, Vero claims itself to be, “a social network for anyone who loves anything enough to share it – and wants control over who they share it with. Just like we do in real life.”

The whole purpose behind Vero is to allow people a space to share their interests, free from the worry of being bombarded by ads once they do. For example, if you were to make a post on Facebook about a designer dress, you would likely receive lots of advertisements afterward trying to sell you similar dresses or similar pieces from that designer.

Vero does not do this. Instead, anything posted on this platform is serving no other purpose than to please you by expressing and exploring things you personally connect with.

Vero is also very specific in the types of connections you would wish to make. The platform offers four separate groupings every time you post. These groupings consist of close friends, friends, acquaintances, and followers. Ever wanted to post something for your friends to see but not for your boss to see? Yeah, Vero thought so too.

Each and every feature of Vero is designed with the consumer’s typical social media frustrations in mind. This new platform is clearly trying to break away from the pack by offering everything that others aren’t, and so far it has been working to Vero’s advantage.

Concerns For Vero

In light of all of the positive features to Vero, there are also a few problems to consider. The company recently experienced troubles with their terms of service. This conflict was resolved by an updated version of the agreement that made it clear to users that Vero does not own their own content like they had previously suggested.

The company’s CEO, Ayman Hariri, has also brought a fair amount of controversy to the company. According to Gulf Business, Hariri’s family was sued by 30,000 workers at their construction firm for unpaid wages. Hariri claims to have cut all professional ties with his family and also claims to have divested from Vero to keep the brand image more reputable.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Vero can actually manage to capitalize on the public’s discontent with platforms like Facebook, or if they too will fizzle out in the near future like so many other “next big thing” platforms have in the past.

For more articles on social media and digital advertising please visit the Onimod Global news section. There you will find relevant and recent information about the incredible industry of digital marketing. Enjoy!

5 Tips for Your Instagram Advertising Strategy

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More than a year ago, Instagram made a huge change to their algorithm. This change resulted in switches from chronological posts to more relevant posts that users were more likely to engage with.

Many users expressed their discontent with the change, and many advertisers did as well. It was believed that the switch made it more difficult for brands to interact with their audience, and with frequent tweaks still being made to the algorithm it can be hard to know what type of strategy will help or hurt your brand on Instagram.

Insta Basics

First, it is crucial to know the key influencing factors that the platform’s algorithm takes into account:

  1. The relationship between you and the person (or company that) posted the photo: The more that users regularly engage with your content, the more the algorithm will highlight your new content to those interested users.
  2. Timing: Even though the new algorithm is not in chronological order, Instagram will still take timing into account to make sure that it is showing content that has been posted fairly recently.
  3. Likes and comments: Although the platform said that the new algorithm will not result in a “popularity contest” it is still making efforts to push content that possesses many different engagement factors such as likes and comments. The more interaction your post receives, the better!
  4. Direct shares: Instagram will also be taking note of posts that you share with others since this is another type of interaction that clearly shows a user is interested in the content from a particular brand.
  5. Profile searches: Recent searches will also prompt the platform to suggest new users to follow, or if you currently are following them then even more of their content will be pushed to the top of your feed.

Primary Focus

The entire point of each and every one of these factors is engagement. The more that users engage with your content, the more that the algorithm will make sure to update users when new content is available.

Much of the idea behind the algorithm can be related to the same operations of search engines like Google. The most important aspect that Google’s algorithm considers is relevancy. In this same respect, Instagram’s algorithm is trying to ascertain whether or not users will find your content interesting and relevant, which can be judged by how often they show interest in your brand through likes, comments, searches, etc.

Additional Suggestions

When optimizing your content for Instagram, it is absolutely necessary to make it as interactive as possible. Utilizing unique forms of motion based content can help to increase interactions by posting a video, story, or Boomerang.

Adding hashtags to your post can significantly boost its impressions. In fact, Adweek states that adding even one hashtag can increase engagement by an average of 12.6%.

It is also worth including some advertising dollar in your Instagram strategy in order to make certain that your content is being pushed to target users. In light of Facebook’s recent organic content changes, it would not be out of line to suspect that Instagram may also adopt a similar strategy when it comes to sponsored content versus unpaid posts.

4 Simple SEO Content Marketing Strategies to Drive Traffic

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Producing strong content is great, but does it drive relevant traffic? The ultimate purpose behind content marketing should always be driving as much relevant traffic as possible to your website, landing pages, or any other form of conversion method. At the end of the day, paying attention to basic SEO fundamentals will enhance content marketing efforts. Ignoring the basic, technical SEO issues that arise will come back to haunt you in the long run. Listed below are four basic, but essential SEO content marketing strategies to increase organic traffic.

Pay Attention to Meta Descriptions
It’s no surprise how important meta descriptions are when it comes to organic search results and ranking well. Well developed meta descriptions can result in better engagement rates and generate more online visibility for your content. The downside is however once a meta description is created, most people never think about it again. Why does this matter? Well according to an article from Search Engine Land, “Google increased the maximum length of search results snippets from 160 characters to 320 characters.” Therefore, this could be a missed opportunity, as adding more enticing content to descriptions has great potential to increase traffic.

Include Internal Links
Although having relevant outbound links is important, including internal links in your content is crucial when it comes to SEO purposes. According to an article from Yoast, “adding internal links connects your content and ensures that Google can crawl your site to help with better rankings.” Like outbound links, internal links can also become nonexistent and point to irrelevant or missing pages. This can cause major problems regarding search engine visibility and can upset visitors to the site. Overall, implementing proper inbound links will boost organic rankings and improve content marketing efforts.

Monitor Page Speed
In addition to the other factors previously listed, page speed is also important when it comes to content marketing and increasing SEO rankings. Many organizations fall behind in this aspect because their belief is to implement WordPress themes with plenty of plugins, which just decreases site speed. The Search Engine Land article points out that “CSS and JavaScript files the plugins load add unnecessary HTTP requests. The more HTTP requests, the slower your website will load.” Ultimately, if page speed is not consistently monitored, organic rankings will suffer as a result.

Check Broken Outbound Links
This one seems obvious, but websites come and go overtime with ownership changes and domains shutting down. This means that any links that were directed to a meaningful source at one point may now be irrelevant. The Search Engine Land article recommends utilizing tools like “Screaming Frog” that will scan all outbound links in your content to ensure broken links don’t exist. Moreover, checking broken links is often times forgotten about, and this has a detrimental effect on both content quality and SEO efforts.

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For more information on content marketing and other digital marketing news, visit the Onimod Global Website! Our content creation specialists regularly publish new content relating to current industry events and trends.

The Ultimate Marketing Strategy for Your E-Commerce Company

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Many e-commerce companies cower in fear of its industry leader, Amazon. In just a few short years this online retailer has grown to gather nearly $178 billion in 2017.

Through several key strategic moves such as its recent acquisition of Whole Foods, Amazon has been able to successfully eliminate or minimize the impact of its competition. This wild success leaves many within the e-commerce industry to wonder where exactly they fit.

Fortunately, changing consumer purchasing patterns are helping to provide and even bigger market for all online retailers. But how exactly does a small e-commerce company successfully compete in this type of fierce environment?

Niche Market Strategy

Many e-commerce companies have found a solution with a niche marketing strategy. This type of strategy focuses on an unmet or underserved need of consumers. Since the need is not being met appropriately, these niche brands are providing services that do just that!

Many would assume that a company as large as Amazon would have it all, right? Wrong. Brands like Boxed, Brandless, and Dote are all filling in this needs gap, and as a result that have each seen pretty remarkable results.

Boxed

Boxed works to deliver bulk consumer goods without any sort of a membership fee. This company recognized that urban consumers struggle to purchase in bulk because of a lack of transportation.

Many people living in large cities do not own or regularly use a vehicle, instead opting for public transportation. This makes it impossible for such travelers to lug home bags upon bags of products.

Boxed perfectly caters to this need by providing large amounts of bulk goods delivered right to your door in a conveniently short amount of time. By carving out this specialized section of the market, Boxed has been able to enjoy substantial profits after finding ways in which they can reduce damage rates to packages, according to Adweek.

Brandless

The company Brandless has been able to achieve many of the same positive results by implementing its own unique niche marketing strategy. Brandless primarily operates as a company that provides complete honesty and transparency to their customers.

Brandless carries thousands of products that do not have any association with a particular brand. This generic packaging and advertising cuts significant costs and allows consumers to bypass the usual marketing jargon and head straight to the actual product and its contents.

This strategy is effective for two reasons: it saves money and it makes the consumer feel more informed and aware of the products they are purchasing. Such abilities have been incredibly popular with the Millennial generation.

Dote

This company specifically targets young women by creating a “mobile mall” that they can shop through using their phone. This single platform combines apparel from more than 130 retailers, which allows consumers the ability to shop through thousands of different items all at once without having to travel to each individual website.

Dote has succeeded in creating a personal and comprehensive experience for their users, and it is all easily accessible to boot. Consumers have become so enthralled with Dote that according to Adweek, they visit the app an average of 3.9 times a day.

Conclusion

All of these brands have achieved greatness, even in the wake of powerful e-commerce giants like Amazon. The key is to differentiate in any meaningful way that you can. While this may not necessarily be the one and only strategy, it does seem to be quite effective.

For more information on marketing strategy, please visit the Onimod Global news page! Our content creation specialists regularly publish new content relating to current industry events and trends.

4 Effective E-Commerce Strategies to Boost Your Local Business

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In the competitive world of E-commerce business, organizations are always trying to find tricks and strategies to increase online visibility and stand out from the crowd. Implementing effective E-Commerce strategies is becoming an essential factor for local businesses, and this trend will likely continue with the increasing number of online consumers. So the question becomes: How can local businesses utilize E-Commerce strategies to drive traffic and ultimately increase business?” This post will explore some of those E-commerce tactics that will benefit local businesses.

Major focus on website
Many brick & mortar businesses often times struggle when it comes to investing in a professional website with E-commerce capabilities. However, local businesses must realize that they will likely experience far more visits to their website than the actual storefront. It’s also important to point out that most in-store consumers will actually visit a business’s website prior to entering the store. According to a survey in 2016 conducted by Google, it was found that “58 percent of consumers visited a retailer’s website or mobile application before making an in-store purchase.” Moreover, the importance of E-commerce websites for local businesses is huge, and the investment is most likely worth it in the long run.

Don’t ignore 3rd party listings
Having an E-commerce storefront is a great starting point to drive business. However, 3rd party sites such as Amazon, Ebay, Google Shopping, and many others present a massive opportunity for local businesses to further increase online visibility of products. Although 3rd party organizations obviously take a share of your profit margins, the likelihood of selling a larger quantity of products greatly increases. According to the same 2016 Google survey mentioned previously, “37 percent of consumers visited a non-retailer website before an in-store purchase.” Therefore, the importance of having local business listings on 3rd party E-commerce sites should not be overlooked, as the potential for growth is huge.

Don’t hide important information
It’s clear that consumers typically spend time online before the point of purchase, so providing clear information is essential. A study from the Market Track found that “80 percent of consumers compared prices and product reviews online before buying offline.” However, some local businesses are worried that posting prices and reviews online could have a negative effect on sales and traffic. Not posting prices or reviews is seen as a red flag for many online consumers, therefore many shoppers may put your business out of consideration if important information is missing.

Personalization still key
Regardless of other E-commerce factors, personalization is crucial when it comes to driving traffic and increasing long term sales. In today’s digital world, online visitors enjoy personable experiences catered to their interests and needs. Specific examples of personalized marketing strategies can include remarketing ads, email newsletters, and social media interaction. In the end, personalization marketing helps build strong, lasting customer relationships that will in return generate the possibility of brand loyalty.

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For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!

How to Digitally Optimize Your Campaign for the Hotel Industry

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One of the most inspiring aspects of digital marketing is that it can be useful across an incredible number of different industries. Each industry comes with its own unique strengths and caveats, and the industry of hospitality is no different.

Step One: Strategize

Of course, digital marketing success cannot be achieved by simply setting up a campaign through Bing or Google. This action does not make you a search engine marketing expert. In order for any marketing campaign to be successful, there needs to be a certain amount of effort put into formulating a strategy.

This basic and primary phase is so often understated or ignored, and unfortunately this ignorance can cause serious problems down the road. It is not enough to just generate leads. Instead, you should be focused on gaining quality conversions. What is the use in having thousands of respondents who will never actually book a stay in your hotel?

Step Two: Make Use of Your Resources

When it comes to advertising for your hotel, there are many different digital tools that you can utilize. A major advantage to digital marketing is that it gives you the ability to generate quality leads for a relatively low price.

In the world of digital advertising, two major brands dominate; Google and Facebook. These will be your go-to ad platforms as you begin to construct a digital marketing campaign for your hotel.

These two platforms possess several strengths such as:

  • Low cost per conversion.
  • Localized ads to target consumers currently located near you.
  • Mobile ads that appeal to the preferences of consumers today who are looking for ease and convenience in their purchases.
  • Native advertising throughout the regularly used social media and search engines that consumers use in their every day routine.

The list goes on, but these four reasons alone are enough to peak the interest of any hotel brand. There are also many other platforms that your brand can utilize, but these two advertising platforms should serve as a good baseline for your first steps in digital marketing.

Step 3: Review and Revise

It is always important to review a campaign before it is launched. This final step helps to rid the campaign of any minute errors that may not have been noticed the first time around. Taking a second look also provides the marketer with the chance to make sure that all ads align directly with the campaign’s mission. It can be fairly easy for a digital campaign to split off into a slightly different direction as it is making its way through the construction process.

This stage also provides a period in which you can review your other marketing sources and make sure that they are up to date. For example, many brands neglect their website and the incredible impact it has upon their brand. Brilliant and engaging ads will do little to convince a consumer of quality when all ads lead back to a broken and outdated website.

More From Onimod Global

As always, the digital marketing experts from Onimod Global are here to make sure that you receive the best information possible regarding the digital marketing industry. Our content specialists frequently publish new content pertaining directly to industry news and trends.

To access our full compilation of news articles, please click here. Thank you, and we look forward to providing you with more digital marketing insights soon!

How to Manage Local Listings for Enterprise Brands

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When it comes to local listings management, there’s a direct correlation between the number of listings you manage and the amount of grumbling, cursing and general hand-wringing you do.

It isn’t easy for enterprise brands to get their location data in order. Juggling the info for hundreds or thousands of locations can quickly become overwhelming. And it’s not uncommon for enterprise brands to feel like they’re playing SEO whack-a-mole, constantly beating down duplicate listings, inaccurate data and any local search changes that inevitably pop up from Google.

Fortunately, there are steps enterprise brands can take to tame their unruly location data and prevent it from getting out of hand in the future.

The unique challenges facing enterprise local listings management

For enterprise brands just starting to get their location data in order, local listings problems can typically be boiled down into two categories:

  • An overwhelming, baffling, disparate, inaccurate and outright maddening heap of location data; and
  • Human nature’s basic resistance to change.

Overwhelming location data

Perhaps the biggest challenge for enterprise brands trying to manage their location data is the overwhelming number of sources that their location data comes from. A large organization will typically have multiple databases that contain various elements of location data from departments such as accounting, shipping, legal and so forth.

Furthermore, while all of this data likely meets the individual needs of the department that it comes from, it’s highly unlikely that the data meets the stringent quality standards Google and the other search engines require. In other words, their location data isn’t actionable beyond their originally intended purpose.

The location data problem for enterprise brands is also compounded by the fact that many of the addresses for their various locations aren’t standardized. Often, before an enterprise brand decides to bring all of their location data management under one roof, those responsible for entering location data into Google My Business and the like are the individual store managers and franchise owners. How many of those individual store managers and franchisees know how to properly format an address that Google will like? The answer: not as many as you would hope.

Most people don’t put much thought into addresses beyond whether or not the mail arrives. If your mail gets to its intended location, the address must be correct, right? Not necessarily. It’s a human who delivers your mail, and, while Google is getting better at predicting user intent, they still have a way long way to go before they are on par with humans.

Resistance to change

The second major obstacle that enterprise brands must overcome when beginning to clean up their location data is humanity’s general resistance to change.

When a corporation decides to start managing their local listings and their respective social media accounts, individual store managers and franchise owners are often reluctant to relinquish control over those accounts, especially if they’ve been managing them since day one.

Franchisees, in particular, are especially resistant to relinquishing control. They will often come around when they start seeing improved rankings and more local search traffic. But that doesn’t make it any easier getting over the hump of that initial change.

Large enterprise brands can also face resistance from within the corporate office itself. This is especially true if a department makes a unilateral decision to start making changes to the location data management process without consulting the rest of the company.

So how do you overcome the problems of overwhelming location data and our general resistance to change?

First and foremost, there must be buy-in from the top of the organization. The exec team must make it a priority to clean up the location data, and they must provide those who will actually carry out the change with a mandate that has teeth to it.

Second, there should be an education period in which the coming transition is explained to the rest of the company, or at least to those the change will affect. The long-term benefit must be made apparent to the owners and managers of individual locations. But be aware, even the most eloquent explanation will still be met with resistance. However, laying some of the groundwork beforehand by doing education can help ease the transition.

Consolidating your data

Once you’ve got corporate buy-in and have explained the coming changes, the next step is to consolidate your location data before beginning the process of cleaning and standardizing it.

The goal is to gather your location data into a single database and establish it as the single source of truth for syndicating out to aggregators and round-tripping that data back into the various departments so that they are working with accurate and up-to-date information.

Standardize and cleanse your data

If you have all of your location data in a single place, and you’ve established that database as your source of truth, the next step is to standardize your addresses and begin cleaning up inconsistencies.

I recommend standardizing your addresses using a validator tool such as USPS ZIP + 4 or any other address tool that scales easily. However, simply because you’ve standardized your addresses doesn’t mean your addresses are necessarily correct.

You’ll need to visually verify the pin placement for each and every location across Google, Foursquare, Bing, Yelp and the other third-party sites. Every. Single. Pin.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy way to do this. There’s no good way to automatically adjust geocode pin placement. If you find an error, you’ll have to go in and manually fix it.

Visually verifying pin placement typically requires going into Google Street View and making sure the pins match with the actual location. But be careful. Sometimes Google Street View hasn’t been updated recently, and rural areas, highways and country roads can prove especially tricky when it comes to determining correct addresses and pin placement.

Additionally, it’s not always easy plotting individual locations contained within larger and multi-level locations. Until indoor mapping takes off, shopping malls and skyscrapers might require you to look at the map on the location’s web page to find out where individual stores are located within the larger structure. From there, good geospatial reasoning should help you put the pin in the general vicinity.

Claim duplicate and closed listings

Once you’ve standardized and verified your location data, it’s time to claim rogue pages that are out there on the web representing your brand but aren’t owned by you.

Keep an eye out for pages that your customers created for individual locations, as well as those that store managers or franchisees might have created.

Likewise, be sure to claim any pages for closed locations, thus ensuring that they appear closed in local search results and will remain so. You don’t want these orphan pages competing against valid nearby locations for search results or leading potential customers to an empty storefront.

Syndicating and the virtuous cycle

Once you’ve consolidated your location data, cleaned it up and established it as your single source of truth, it’s time to focus on syndicating the data and making sure the changes you made are actually reflected in the local search ecosystem. In short, you’re looking to make sure the data you’re syndicating out has been accepted, processed and pushed out correctly.

Fortunately, if you’ve made it this far into the location management process, most of the initial grunt work should be behind you and you’ve built a solid foundation for managing your local listings going forward.

But the process never truly ends. As your data constantly changes and evolves, it needs to be constantly updated, syndicated and round-tripped back internally to the company. As new locations open up, treat those locations like you did during your initial cleaning: standardize them and verify their location information.

Unfortunately, no matter how aggressively you keep on top of your location data, inaccurate data will inevitably crop up, and duplicate pages will emerge. As always, compare what gets created out there in the local search ecosystem to your source of truth and make adjustments accordingly.

Automation

My final word is on the importance of automating the local listings process (Disclaimer: I work for a local marketing automation company).

While brands with only a few locations can get away with manually running the location data process, this isn’t feasible for enterprise brands. The moment you throw a few hundred or a few thousand locations into the mix, your location data gets so complex and overwhelming that it becomes a nightmare.

Fortunately, if you’re an enterprise brand, the necessities of the digital age make it likely that you’re already automating at least some parts of this process. Continue down that path.

As location data becomes more critical to things like location-based advertising, augmented reality and tracking the ROI of store visits, the need for automation will only increase.