Local laggards. Despite the fact that they make most of their money in stores, multi-location brands have typically been slow to focus on local-digital marketing tactics such as local SEO, GMB optimization, review management and localized social media marketing. Many have traditionally relied on national strategies despite evidence that consumers engage with these entities primarily at the local level.

A new survey (registration required) from Forrester, commissioned by SOCi, finds that 60% of multi-location marketers agree local ratings and reviews and social media have “a direct impact on their customers’ decisions to visit a store and make a purchase.” And 61% now say that improving local marketing effectiveness is a high priority “next year.”

But the gap between aspiration and implementation is significant. While extolling the benefits of a coherent localized marketing strategy, the study identifies a number of common operational barriers to effective tactical execution.

Operational barriers. The majority (61%) of Forrester’s respondents (154 multi-location brands) admit that local digital marketing remains for them “a largely untapped opportunity.” And 77% complain that executing a local-digital marketing strategy across all their stores is very challenging.

All of the marketers surveyed are doing some form of local-digital marketing, albeit incompletely or inadequately. The organizational challenges and pain points the study identifies include:

• Not enough resources to scale marketing programs locally across hundreds of stores and locations
• Siloed operations: a lack of internal cooperation and coordination among teams
• Lack of interaction between in-house marketers and external agencies that are managing different channels or campaigns
• Gaps in strategy: 31% reported no locally targeted paid social media strategy
• Use of distinct software solutions that aren’t integrated for a global or holistic view of performance
• Inability to respond quickly to customer engagement or complaints at the local store level

The survey also asked marketers to identify a multi-location marketing priorities wish list. Interestingly, vendor SLAs that enable tighter publishing schedules and review management response times was the top request, followed by claiming and managing local search pages (e.g., GMB, Yelp, Facebook).

Multi-location capabilities wish list