Cori Shirk will be speaking on “Lifting Your Local Brand Above the Internet Cesspool” at SearchFest 2016, which is being held March 10th, 2016 at the Sentinel Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’m a Senior SEO Manager at Seer Interactive in Philadelphia, where I specialize in local search for our enterprise and multi-location clients. I spend my days managing location data and helping our clients improve their overall digital customer experience.
2) How does a national brand gain traction in local search markets?
So many national brands are intimidated by the idea of needing to appear “local” to compete in local search. Really, these companies actually have a unique advantage over their SMB competitors: instant brand recognition in pretty much local market where they open up shop. National brands can gain traction in local markets by making sure the power of that brand is communicated through every digital touchpoint they have with their customers. Communicate that brand promise by taking the time to make sure your address and store hours are listed correctly as often as possible, or producing content that helps customers along on their decision journey.
3) What are the top 3 local search tactics that you think marketers might overlook?
Hmm. Naming the “top 3” is tough because there’s a lot to choose from, but I think it’s easy for marketers — specifically local search marketers — to get hung up on checking off boxes and miss out on actually marketing to people. Like, “I claimed my client’s listings and cleaned their citations, built out those location pages on-site, put out this awesome industry guide on “how to do X in Y city” that’s gotten some great links, and gave my client a template to use to respond to negative reviews. Let the ranking commence!” Your local marketing strategy is a living, breathing thing that is meant to interact with your customers. It should react to the outside world and evolve as necessary. On the flip side, don’t sacrifice the foundational elements of a local search campaign in favor of a more glamorous marketing strategy. Sometimes you have to spend time scrubbing citations and sleuthing out duplicate listings, and that’s okay!
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.