Today at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL, real life national brands stressed the importance of social media and local reviews in any location-based ad strategy. This is an always-welcome perspective, given that the BIA/Kelsey stage is usually filled with media companies (sellers) rather than buyers.

Mark Hardison, VP Marketing, El Pollo Loco
Elnora Cunningham, Director, Local Search, Uhaul International

As always in the multi-location franchise world, an important distinction is how much campaign fulfillment happens at the centralized corporate level versus the de-centralized franchisee level. Both Uhaul and El Pollo Loco lean towards the former.

“We encourage franchisees to take a role in community through clubs or sponsoring baseball teams,” said Hardison, “but we supplement that through posting activity on Facebook to communities near the restaurant. We localized that but from the central base.”

Uhaul is similar in providing direction to franchisees, while handling the heavy lifting and quality control from the corporate level: “Everything is centralized in the dealer network,” said Cunningham. ” We don’t give them the tools, we take that burden off them.”

Where Uhaul has spent the most energy is developing social marketing around the experience of moving. Cunningham reminded us that moving can be an emotionally fueled time that is tied to certain life moments — a ripe opportunity for brand association.

“Something in your life is changing when you get a Uhaul,” she said. “It could be a mother aging, someone changing jobs, or having a baby. Whatever their life situation is, we’re trying to give them a way to have a customer experience. It’s successful because it focuses on the journey.”

Specifically, this includes developing blogs to chronicle the experience, and sometimes posting on customers’ behalf. It also includes collecting and curating pictures that then populate social channels, as well as more analog media (i.e. the side of Uhaul vans).

Lastly, user reviews have a huge impact on both moving/storage and quick serve restaurants. Uhaul has five million cumulative reviews, and they’re very impactful says Cunningham. Meanwhile, El Pollo Loco’s business is swayed heavily by Facebook and Yelp, especially when negative.

“The first goal is to respond quickly,” said Hardison. “We want to move the conversation offline as quickly as possible. We need better ways to manage those reviews and search out bad reviews.”

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This morning Yodle announced two new features that will be added to the services it provides its clients as part of their online marketing solutions package: online reviews management and photo syndication.

“Our goal is for Yodle to be the CMO for our clients,” says Court Cunningham, CEO at Yodle. “We want to automate and simplify all marketing processes into one bundle.”

The online reviews management solution enables Yodle clients to generate, promote and respond to reviews from their customers. “We have found that there is a gap between consumer importance of reviews and SMB’s perceived importance of reviews,” says Cunningham.

According to BIA/Kelsey‘s Local Commerce Monitor�, only 40.5% of SMBs consider websites with customer opinion to be very or extremely important on average. However, BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor�, shows us that ratings on sites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor were consumers’ third most trusted source when it comes to information about the products and services of local businesses. Only friends or family members and Facebook friends were rated as more trusted, according to the CCM data.

“We are hoping to educate SMBs on the importance of reviews. It is important to know that negative reviews are actually an opportunity and should not be hidden,” says Cunningham. Yodle’s new review management solution will have a specific tool to assist SMBs with responding to negative reviews.

The photo syndication feature uses automated technology to distribute photos that have been uploaded. Cunningham highlights the importance of photos being used by pointing out that “photos can be syndicated out to many directories that may not take reviews,” and so give SMBs more exposure. Not only that, but according to Cunningham “we have found that more photos and less text drives higher engagement from consumers on a site.”

These new features are currently available to Yodle’s customers. On the horizon, Yodle has additional features including offers management and email communication that will be available in early April.

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Yodle, a leader in local online marketing, announced results from its first “Small Business and Online Reviews Survey.” The study polled 300 U.S. small business owners across a large array of industries for their opinions of online reviews.

The survey asks SMB owners if they think online reviews are important, the extent to which they ask for and get reviews, if they monitor for and respond to reviews, and whether they think reviews are fair.

Survey highlights include:

— 50% of respondents think that it’s important or very important for their business to receive positive online reviews.

— 55% of SMB owners don’t receive any online reviews, while one in five (19%) attract between one and five reviews per month. Despite the low number of reviews small businesses are receiving, only 13% of owners ask their customers to post reviews.

— 68% of SMB owners don’t spend any time monitoring online reviews. Most of the remaining SMB owners (29%) spend just one to five hours per month on this activity.

— Only 20% of survey respondents respond to online reviews written about their business. Of those that do respond, more than 3 in 4 generally respond to all reviews.

— Only 14% of survey respondents post customers’ reviews to their websites. The remaining SMB owners that have received reviews and have a website (37%) do not post this content.

— 61% of SMB owners think that review sites favor businesses that pay to advertise with them, while only 10% don’t believe that to be the case. Half of SMB owners believe small businesses are more unfairly impacted by negative reviews than larger business; only 20% disagree.

— More than four in 10 survey respondents (43%) believe that online reviews are unfair because they do not verify that people who leave reviews are actual customers. A similar number, 41%, are “Not sure” if they’re unfair.

BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ shows SMB advertisers are increasing their engagement with consumer reviews. Currently, 65% of SMBs surveyed monitor comments about their business, with another 15% planning to do so in the next year. Among those that do monitor reviews, 56% use a free or Do-It-Yourself service. Of those that do spend money on review monitoring, half spend between $25 and $100 per month.

While there’s no clear cut answer to whether or not online review sites being fair to SMBs, these statistics speak for themselves. Regardless, review sites are here to stay and force businesses to surrender their power to the consumer. They must rethink how they treat their customers.

For more information about Yodle’s Small Business and online review study please read the press release.

The post Yodle Releases First Ever “Small Business and Online Reviews Survey” Results appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Yodle, a leader in local online marketing, announced results from its first “Small Business and Online Reviews Survey.” The study polled 300 U.S. small business owners across a large array of industries for their opinions of online reviews.

The survey asks SMB owners if they think online reviews are important, the extent to which they ask for and get reviews, if they monitor for and respond to reviews, and whether they think reviews are fair.

Survey highlights include:

— 50% of respondents think that it’s important or very important for their business to receive positive online reviews.

— 55% of SMB owners don’t receive any online reviews, while one in five (19%) attract between one and five reviews per month. Despite the low number of reviews small businesses are receiving, only 13% of owners ask their customers to post reviews.

— 68% of SMB owners don’t spend any time monitoring online reviews. Most of the remaining SMB owners (29%) spend just one to five hours per month on this activity.

— Only 20% of survey respondents respond to online reviews written about their business. Of those that do respond, more than 3 in 4 generally respond to all reviews.

— Only 14% of survey respondents post customers’ reviews to their websites. The remaining SMB owners that have received reviews and have a website (37%) do not post this content.

— 61% of SMB owners think that review sites favor businesses that pay to advertise with them, while only 10% don’t believe that to be the case. Half of SMB owners believe small businesses are more unfairly impacted by negative reviews than larger business; only 20% disagree.

— More than four in 10 survey respondents (43%) believe that online reviews are unfair because they do not verify that people who leave reviews are actual customers. A similar number, 41%, are “Not sure” if they’re unfair.

BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor? shows SMB advertisers are increasing their engagement with consumer reviews. Currently, 65% of SMBs surveyed monitor comments about their business, with another 15% planning to do so in the next year. Among those that do monitor reviews, 56% use a free or Do-It-Yourself service. Of those that do spend money on review monitoring, half spend between $25 and $100 per month.

While there’s no clear cut answer to whether or not online review sites being fair to SMBs, these statistics speak for themselves. Regardless, review sites are here to stay and force businesses to surrender their power to the consumer. They must rethink how they treat their customers.

For more information about Yodle’s Small Business and online review study please read the press release.

The post Yodle Releases First Ever "Small Business and Online Reviews Survey" Results appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.