At Yext’s Location Lounge, panelists from across the marketing industry probed the burgeoning link between location data and offline sales — and why its growth is only just beginning.
Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location — or so said Frank Underwood on House of Cards. But the sentiment doesn’t just apply to politics: for the marketing industry, location is power when it comes to getting consumers to actually make a purchase.
At Tuesday night’s Yext Location Lounge (full disclosure: Yext is GeoMarketing’s parent company. More details on that relationship here) marketing professionals from AMP Agency, iPullRank, Scorpion, and Yodle broke down the impact of growth in “near me” location searches — a 146 percent YOY increase — and why 76 percent of them result in a visit to a business within a day.
“You need to find your customers where they are,” said AMP Agency’s Jena Kovacevic, speaking to the importance of both using location data to target campaign messages as well as the need to appear at the top of location search results. “If you’re not finding them in the right place, you’re going to fail — that’s the reality. Every single plan we’ve created for clients in the past two years has had location and mobile as a crucial part.”
But why is location search — and thus, making sure ensuring that a business ranks at the top of such searches — so inextricably linked to physical sales? It’s simple, really: Customers search for a product or service in a particular place on their mobile device when they actually have the intention to go there.
This is the impetus behind the growing field of location management: If a store’s location information details are incorrect or inconsistent across its online presence, it’s likely that the business could lose out on a sale.
But not all business locations are created equal, Yodle’s David Michala reminded. Including extra information that is relevant to a business’ category and its contextual location is an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to winning the attention of on-the-go consumers.
“You have to use location and data in such a way that you understand what the customer is looking for,” Michala said. “What information someone wants about a lawyer isn’t what they want about a restaurant.”
This means that in fields like Google’s “attributes” section, a restaurant should probably state whether or not it takes reservations — that’s something that will inform a searchers decision to visit. On the other hand, a lawyer would likely want to list his or her education credentials or other relevant information.
The future of location and location search is open to many possibilities. Will “near me” voice searches continue to grow? What about the practice of businesses “geo-conquesting” by targeting ads around competitors’ locations?
But the panelists appeared to agree on one point: location will continue to be more and more integrated into everything; its power is only on the rise.
“I think the future of search is getting a reminder of something that’s in your mobile shopping cart — that you’ve probably forgotten about — when you walk by the physical store that sells it,” said iPullRank’s Michael King. “Location will be baked into everything.”
Michele Klawitter is a ghostwriter, health advocate, former real estate agent, Paso Fino horse enthusiast, and professional thriver. For over five years, she’s been writing SEO content both humans and search engines love. She knows what it’s like to need real answers, not just optimized fluff.
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