Category: Marketing Communications

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Branding Marketing Communications Digital Media Advice

4 Digital Platforms Your Home Services Brand Needs to Increase Online Visibility

4 Digital Platforms Your Home Services Brand Needs to Increase Online Visibility

In today’s digital age, online visibility has become critical for home services brands. With a fiercely competitive industry, it’s more essential than ever for companies to adopt effective digital marketing strategies. This blog will introduce you to four indispensable digital platforms that will significantly enhance your brand’s online visibility.

1. Google Business Profile (GBP)

A cornerstone of local search, claiming and optimizing a Google Business Profile listing is crucial. Not only does it ensure your brand pops up in local search results, but it also pins you on Google Maps, guiding customers right to you. But GBP isn’t just about the basics. It has features like detailed business information, customer reviews, photos and allows timely posts to serve as a magnet for potential customers. Learn more about its wonders here.

2. Social Media (Facebook and Instagram)

In the realm of digital engagement, few platforms rival Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is a powerhouse for sharing insightful content, broadcasting glowing customer testimonials and announcing time-limited promotions. On the flip side, Instagram, with its inherent visual focus, is perfect for flaunting those transformational before-and-after shots, giving a tour of completed projects and even offering peeks behind the scenes. Dive deeper into Facebook for Business and Instagram for Business.

3. Houzz

Tailored for home improvement aficionados and design junkies, Houzz offers an unparalleled platform. Here, professionals can parade their portfolio, share glowing reviews and share things like project ideas. A standout feature is the “Ideabook,” where users can collect inspiration and directly connect with experts. Discover the potential of Houzz for Professionals.

4. Yelp

In the digital age, word-of-mouth often means online reviews. Yelp stands as a beacon for customer feedback, serving as a testament to a brand’s commitment to quality. An active Yelp profile is more than just a listing—it’s a badge of trust and reliability. Engaging with all reviews, whether praises or critiques, portrays a brand’s genuine concern for its customers. Explore more about Yelp for Business.

Benefits of Utilizing These Platforms:

• Local Search Visibility: Platforms like Google My Business and Yelp are your tickets to appearing in local search results, reaching out to customers right in your vicinity.

• Engagement and Interaction: Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer a direct hotline to your customers, fostering trust and long-lasting relationships.

• Visual Showcase: With Instagram and Houzz, exhibit your work in all its visual glory, pulling potential clients closer.

• Credibility and Trust: Online reviews and ratings, especially on Yelp and Google My Business, solidify your brand’s standing and reputation in the eyes of the public.

Tips for Maximizing Online Visibility:

•  Consistent Branding: Maintain uniform branding elements across online platforms to paint a consistent picture.

• Quality Content: Offer content that not only informs but resonates with your audience.

•  Regular Updates: Fresh information, latest photos and engaging posts keep your brand top of mind.

• Engage with Customers: A timely response is more than courtesy, it’s a display of your commitment to customer satisfaction.

Conclusion:

In the ever-changing digital landscape, online visibility isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity for home services brands. By leveraging the power of the platforms mentioned above, not only can brands augment their online presence, but they can also reap a holistic benefit by integrating them together. So, dive in, make the most of these platforms and watch your home services brand take off.

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Tourism Branding Marketing Communications Advice

Do Your Out-Of-State Customers Know You’re Open?

Do Your Out-Of-State Customers Know You’re Open?

Your customers are online. And they are looking for you. Most likely their go-to search engine is Google, and this is beneficial because you can create Business Profile on Google to help your current and potential customers, in-state and out, easily find important information such as your business hours. It is also a quick way to communicate and interact with your customers before meeting face-to-face.

Follow along for some tips on how to successfully set up and maintain your tourism business profile and ensure your business is available to potential customers all over the country.

Understand GBP Guidelines

The first step to creating a Business Profile on Google is understanding the basic guidelines. There are certain rules all businesses must follow in order to get their profile posted. Some include having consistent representation of your business across all platforms and channels and making sure your address is correct and can be easily found. Then you have to ensure you do not have any other profiles floating around the internet.

person viewing analytics on a tablet

Understand GBP Restrictions

Once you meet all the requirements to get set up, you have to follow the content guidelines and restrictions. You can review all the nitty gritty details, but we’d like to walk you through the ground rules with the following tips: 

  1. Keep your content clean and cohesive. Don’t play clickbait. Display high-quality, relevant content and don’t focus specifically on special promotions or display offensive content.
  2. Provide specific, accurate information. Always. Make sure your business name, address and phone number is specific and correct. Keep your business hours up-to-date and change when necessary. Note that some businesses should not add hours of operation if they do not have a consistent schedule. An example of these would be schools, movie theaters, event venues, etc. However you do have the option to set seasonal hours, temporary closures and events. 
  3. Present your business with a purpose. Ensure you set up your Business Profile on Google under the appropriate categories. Try answering the phrase, “My business is” instead of “My business has,” to choose categories that describe your overall business. But keep it to a minimum.

Chains, Departments, and Individual GBP Settings

There may be specific guidelines for chains, departments and individual practitioners that have to be followed as well. In regards to names and categories, make sure you represent your department as the company first the department second. A couple good examples include: Walmart Vision Center and Publix Pharmacy. However, individual practitioners should have a profile separate from their location and organization. In this case, the location should have its own profiled. 

Setting up a Business Profile on Google is a resourceful tool to communicate important details and information with your in-state and out-of-state customers. Here’s more information on how you can customize your profile to rank better and bring in more customers. If you’re interested to see how Push has helped businesses plus up their online presence, check out our work here. Ready to get your business on Google? If you’re in need of a helping hand, guide or just want to ask a few questions, we’re here for you. Just send us a message here.

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Branding Marketing Communications Advice

Reuse and Repurpose: The Fastest, Most Effective Way to Create High Quality Content

Reuse and Repurpose

Creating brand new content can be time consuming. Instead, consider repurposing existing content to give it a new life online. This will not only save you a lot of time and effort, but it will also help you grab your target audience’s attention and direct them to your site.

In this post, we’ll take a look at how you can repurpose your previously published content into digital media that can be used again and again.

Tip #1: Curate Content

Content curation is becoming an increasingly popular tactic among healthcare marketers and professionals in an array of industries. You can curate content by collecting information available online from other people and publishers and using it to your advantage. This can help increase the amount of content you produce and lower the amount of time spent to create it. Content curation also helps to add credibility and third party validations to your marketing efforts.

While you are curating content, you’ll want to look for something called evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that can be reused often and will continue to stay relevant over time. When repurposing content from other platforms, no editing is usually required.

Tip #2: Switch it Up

If you’ve created content that has performed well, why not give it another chance to shine? Changing the format of your content gives your audience more opportunities to engage with it without feeling redundant.

For example, the amazing infographic you created that’s chock full of information, could be transformed into a blog post to present the same data in a new, different, and perhaps more enjoyable structure for your audience.

Additionally, you can transform content you have created to fit different online spaces. You can turn lengthy blog posts or infographics into bite-sized pieces of content to post on social media. Alternatively, you can expand on pieces of information used in social media posts to create more in-depth content like a newsletter or podcast.

Keep your audience interested by using your data in different mediums. This will help your information look new without investing too much time collecting new ideas for content.

business women working on digital tablet and laptop

Tip #3: Utilize Social Media Platforms

If you have content that is still valuable to your audience, consider using it on social media platforms. This will help direct viewers to your website while saving time and resources.

Content that is quick and easy to read will work best for social media use. By transforming your old content into more concise content that is better-suited for social media, you will be able to cross-promote across different platforms to reach more people without the hassle of creating brand new content for each profile you have.

Tip #4: Make Your Content Stand Out

Although you will be reusing similar information, you can still make your content impactful. Make sure the digital media content you publish is meaningful to your audience. Stay away from directly copying your curated content, but instead try to add your own ideas and insight. This will make sure your content will stand out from your competition.

Repurposing content can be an easy way to save time, but make sure you are creating content that is relevant to your content marketing strategy.

Want to learn more? For more marketing ideas, check out our work here  and get in touch  to hear how Push can help take your brand to the next level.

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Real Estate Social Marketing Communications Digital Media

How to Plus Up Your Real Estate Brand’s Online Presence

How to Plus Up Your Real Estate Brand’s Online Presence

Establishing a strong online presence is essential to any brand’s marketing success. In today’s digital age, consumers can interact with a business online before ever meeting face to face with it. In fact, 97% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses. And the real estate industry is no exception. With most home buyers and sellers starting their processes online, it’s imperative that real estate businesses have consumer-facing content to help potential clients navigate their services and offerings. Check out the following real estate tips and learn about the impact of digital marketing on real estate business success and how you can elevate your online presence to help make your brand stand apart from the competitors.

Tip #1: Create or update your website.

People want to work with brands they trust, and with so many people turning to the internet first, your website is may be your first introduction to potential clients. Essentially, your website should be a direct reflection of your brand, communicating everything from your services to your real estate expertise and business goals. It should also be as visually appealing as it is easy to navigate. This combined with concise content will draw in visitors and keep them on your page long enough to find out more about your offerings and your brand. Here are a few key content boxes to check off on your website:

Whether you need to build your brand’s website or your current one needs an update, hiring a professional website designer will help your website perform properly and connect potential clients to your business.

Tip #2: Establish a strong social media presence.

Social media has become a digital marketing power tool. It gives brands a way to connect with their audience on a personal level, build a reputation, trustworthiness and loyalty right at everyone’s finger tips. Upgrade your engagement with potential clients and new followers through these simple strategies.

SEO research

Tip #3: Create an SEO blog.

Practicing SEO on your real estate website is vital to reaching a larger audience of potential clients and scaling your rank on Google. You can do this by regularly posting and updating a blog with topics like, “Real Estate Marketing Trends 2022,” and even fun, personal accounts. However, in order to optimize your blogs, you have to include keyword in your content. Then, down the road, you can tweak your SEO strategy to find what works for your business. And don’t forget to add a bio at the end of your blog introducing your brand to your potential clients. With a balance of informational and engaging topics, you can establish your brand as an industry expert that is also relatable and approachable.

For more ideas on content for real estate marketing and how to elevate your brand’s online presence, check out these tips to build engagement on your social media profiles. You can also check out the work we’ve done for our brands here. We know creating and updating a website is no easy feat. If you’d like to connect with us for more information, don’t hesitate to reach out.

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Healthcare Branding Marketing Communications Digital Media

Urgent Care Branding Tips For 2023

Urgent Care Branding Tips

When it comes to urgent cares and medical assistant facilities, marketing may not seem like it should be a top priority. However, marketing is essential to ensuring financial success of the clinic, thus keeping your doors open to provide care for others in need. Some urgent care marketing strategies should include brick-and-mortar-business, out-of-home tactics, digital marketing and anywhere else your brand can be found by patients, to increase foot-traffic into your clinic. Follow these tips to learn how you can give a boost your urgent care advertising.

Tip #1: Create a user-friendly website and strong online presence.

Whether your business is in the restaurant industry or the health care space, a modern, professional and easy-to-navigate website is a necessity for any brand. However, urgent care sites add specific functions and design choices to increase your credibility and set up your website visitors for a seamless user-experience. Here are a few key components you should add on to your urgent care website:

• Clean & professional design: Just as your urgent care earns trust from patients being a clean and modern facility, your professional website does, too.

• User-focused experience: People looking for information from an urgent care most likely need to find it fast. You should have a simple navigation and responsive design to ensure your website can adapt to any device a potential patients could be using so they can find the answers they need now.

• Online paperwork: Speed up and streamline the process for your patients with online tools like online registration, medical records, test results, referrals, bills and more.

Whatever you decide to include on your website, information on clinic hours, location, services provided and insurance and payment types are non-negotiable and should be clearly stated and easily found by patients on your website.

Building SEO on a board

Tip #2: Implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO implementation is a great idea to increase traffic to your website. It’s also one of the best strategies to use for urgent care marketing. While it’s complex and can be complicated, SEO will get your urgent care found by far more people in need of health care. All you will need to do is utilize SEO-focused keywords, such as “urgent care near me,” and common conditions your clinic can treat to target people searching for those specific terms on the internet. This will make get your website found by those users.

Content on your website, such as blogs or landing pages, should also include rich keywords to increase the chances of your brand getting in front of the user. However, be mindful when determining topics to share under your brand because this will also increases the likelihood of it being shared. Make sure whatever you are writing about fits under your mission, values and brand guidelines.

Tip #3: Utilize Pay-Per-Click & Display Ads 

PPC can be one the of more effective urgent care digital marketing strategies to drive patients to your clinic. Because people who engage with PPC ads are 50% more likely to buy over visitors who found you organically, you can trust that this tactics will bring in more patients to your urgent care. Additionally, pay-per-click ads can help people address problems they are searching for, such as COVID-19 testing or on-site x-rays. By targeting specific terms, users will find your urgent care at the top of their results page, getting them the care they need quicker.

Tip #4: Have clear outdoor signage and billboards

The highest ranked tactic by perception of effectiveness for urgent care advertising is outdoor signage. This can be anything from billboards, to bus stops, to taxi toppers and more. The goal of this is to increase brand awareness and bring you clinic to the front-of-mind when patients are looking for care. You should ensure wherever you place your advertising it is in a high traffic area, convenient location and a clear space for it to be seen.

If you’re looking for more ideas on how to enhance your urgent care search performance check out these tips to bring in more patients and keep your doors open to care for others. You can also check out the work we’ve done our clients here and see how Push can take your urgent care to the next level.

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Social Marketing Communications Education

How To Plan a Marketing Campaign for a Single Degree Program at a University

How To Plan a Marketing Campaign for a Single Degree Program at a University

Most universities offer an impressive array of services, programs and resources for students. And while that’s a great benefit to students, sometimes the messaging can feel too broad, unfocused or even overwhelming. That’s why honing in on a single degree program that your university excels in can be a successful marketing strategy. Here are several tips for bachelor’s degree marketing and how to effectively communicate about one program or degree to prospective students. 

Identify Your Audience

The first step to college degree marketing is to identify your audience. Understand who exactly you are talking to and why they would be interested in the program you’re advertising. This helps you to identify the right messaging and media channels to pursue. As suggested by Parthenon Group, consider segmenting your audience into these six groups to better address their individual needs:

  • Aspiring Academics:  “Traditional students,” mostly 18-to-24-year-olds with a focus on academics
  • Coming of Age : Mostly 18-to-24-year-olds who have yet to decide on what to focus on.
  • Career Starters : 8-to-24-year-olds who are using college as a springboard for their future careers.
  • Career Accelerators : Older working students looking to advance in their field of work, usually online.
  • Industry Switchers : Older students looking to switch fields.
  • Academic Wanderers : Those who are getting into college later in life who believe that a degree will open up doors for them.

Market On Social Media

With 84% of 18-29 year olds using social media, it only makes sense to focus your efforts here to get your message out. Some tactics to consider for content could be to feature successful alumni on your social media channels or student and faculty achievements. Another way to reach potential students could be through student social ambassadors—think influencers for your university. These students can reach the exact audience you’re after with fresh, engaging content that gives people a closer look at the degree program you want to highlight. 

Create a Highlight Reel

A well-done video can go a long way to get people excited about learning a new skill or promoting the benefits of the degree program and what makes it unique and desirable. The content for the video could feature the technical and academic skills related to the program that will support students throughout their career, the hands-on experience that students get in the program and information about financial aid. This video by Middlesex Community College shows how students can learn a skill and land a good job in less than a year while having access to state-of-the-art machinery.

Design Landing Pages That Convert

Make sure your first impression is a good one. If you’re linking out to a landing page from a social post or ad, make sure that it is just as effective on mobile as it is on desktop, as 1 out of 5 potential students use mobile only to access the Internet. Your landing page should be SEO friendly as well and crafted to answer the questions students may already be asking themselves in order to capture the “warm” visitors who are seeking a program like yours. And don’t forget, the better your landing page, the more time prospective students are likely going to spend on your site.

If you are also looking for ways to execute a marketing campaign for your university, check out our article that discusses 5 Lessons From Successful University Marketing Campaigns. For more university degree marketing tips or ideas on how to market your single degree program, check the work we’ve done for universities in the past. And if you need more inspiration or help, we’re here to help take your brand to the next level, so don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more.

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Branding Marketing Communications Education

How to Stay Relevant to Business Students During Fall Enrollment

How to Stay Relevant to Business Students During Fall Enrollment

The fall semester is starting for most universities any day now, and many community colleges may be feeling like they fell short of enrollment goals. We know that over the past two years, community college enrollment has fallen, with an 11.3% decline being reported in 2021. But don’t give up on your enrollment numbers just yet. Consider the following tips on how to increase enrollment in community colleges as you make a last push for fall numbers or look towards the spring semester. 

Tip #1: Incentivize Enrollment 

With inflation eating into students’ budgets, they may feel like they can’t keep up with enrollment costs over time, even if they could afford a semester or two. Consider incentivizing enrollment today by offering grants that would cover tuition costs for one or two courses during a semester down the road. For example, students at Alamo Colleges District who complete 18 or 24 credits in the academic year receive one to two courses, respectively, tuition-free in the summer.  This model could help offer under-enrolled students set aggressive goals and stay on pace toward graduation. 

Tip #2: Refine Your Value Proposition for Students 

At a time when students may be questioning the value of a degree, it’s important for them to understand how their education would apply to real-world success. When marketing to college students in 2022, be sure to communicate how their path will lead to a brighter future. Some ways to communicate this could be through sharing alumni stories on social media, posting articles that speak to student successes and using hard data to back up any messaging about your programs and degrees. 

Tip #3: Optimize Your School’s Content Marketing Strategy  & Website 

Even though teens prefer consuming video content on social media, you can’t underestimate the power of a strong content marketing strategy. In fact, 64% of college prospects would rather consume content through text and articles on college websites.

Be sure to consider SEO when posting content or articles on your website—optimizing for local searches can be a powerful way to attract students that are more likely to enroll soon. With your website, you should also make sure it’s intuitive, easy to navigate and optimized for mobile.

And finally, another area to consider in your marketing mix is SMS—they have a staggering 98% open rate. Once a prospective student opts in, a well-timed message might be just the thing to help them take the next step. 

Tip #4: Improve Conversions with Responsive Chatbots 

Responsiveness to student inquires can be paramount to keeping a prospect engaged. Students are eager to hear back when they engage with a university, and according to recent a study, colleges and universities are actually 10 times more likely not to reconnect with a student if they fail to respond within five minutes. To ensure you get back to students in a timely manner, consider a chatbot that would be able to reply to frequently asked questions or escalate the question to a representative. 

If you’re looking for more ideas on how to connect with prospective students, Push is here to help with years of experience building enrollment campaigns for two- and four-year colleges and universities. View our work and contact us to see how we can help take your marketing efforts to the next level. 

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Marketing Communications Digital Media Fun

Using Real-Time Social Media Assets to Promote Beverages During the Summer

Using Real-Time Social Media Assets to Promote Beverages During the Summer

Summer is in full swing, and with the temperatures rising, people are looking for ways to cool down. If you’re a beverage company, that means an audience that’s primed to be even more receptive to your message. To really take advantage of the opportunity to share the story behind your brand during this time of year, we’ve put together the following tips to tap into insights and reach consumers who are ready to raise a glass. 

Tip #1: Pick an Actionable Hashtag for Endless User-Generated Content

If you have a popular beverage business or extra Instagram-worthy can or bottle, your customers may already be sharing your product across social media, so it only makes sense to capitalize on this user-generated content with a branded hashtag. If they’re not already sharing images of your product, a social media campaign that incentivizes them to do so could be the perfect solution. 

Promoting a branded hashtag and UGC not only gives you access to an unlimited supply of images and content, but it gives your audience a reason to interact with you on social media. A noteworthy example is the Sparkling Ice campaign that invited people to cast their vote on a mystery flavor for the chance to win prizes, including a VIP trip to a music festival. Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke is another great retail and social media campaign example of a branded hashtag campaign that was an extremely successful extension of a larger brand campaign.

Whichever hashtag you choose, be sure to consider your audience’s lifestyle and existing behavior online, make sure the hashtag is actionable and choose a hashtag that includes your brand’s name.

Tip #2: Utilize Facebook Networks and Sponsorships To Engage a Captive Audience 

Beverage brands are also going beyond ideas for retail and POS marketing campaigns to create content specifically for social media. This may take the form of leveraging existing relationships and sponsorships. If your beverage brand sponsors or partners with another brand in another industry, consider ways to rethink your beverage or packaging to engage another customer base. 

For example, to support Liverpool FC, beer company Carlsberg created a special red beer to match the team. To promote the campaign, Carlsberg leveraged the power of global fan Facebook groups to generate excitement for the new beer. As noted by the Digital Marketing Institute, this type of collaboration can be very effective in keeping a brand front of mind long after the campaign ends. 

Tip #3: Capitalize on the Senses with Instagram Reels

You already know that as the most visual social media platform, Instagram is the perfect fit for your brand, but don’t forget to explore the potential of Instagram Reels. With Reels, you can really drive home the sensory experience associated with your product like pouring, drinking, bubbling, brewing and more. Reels will also help boost your engagement and you can repost them elsewhere across social media, like TikTok. Overall, leveraging the short-format style of Instagram Reels can be an effective way to promote your beverage brand.

For more inspiration on the types of content to create, we have a few helpful tips on how to  boost engagement using photography and short videos here. You can also check out ongoing work we’ve created for brands here. And don’t hesitate to reach out to see how we can help take your beverage brand to the next level. Cheers!

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Marketing Communications Trends Education

3 Ways Small Universities Can Grow in 2022

3 Ways Small Universities Can Grow in 2022

Small universities provide students with a great environment to foster lifelong relationships, broaden their worldview, hone their craft and prepare them for the next step in their lives. But over the past few years, it’s been harder for these institutions to provide this experience for their students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like everyone else, they were constantly pivoting to find the best ways to keep their students safe while still providing them with a valuable education.

Some of those changes implemented during the height of the pandemic were out of necessity, but some were beneficial to students, especially those at small universities. As we move further away from this time, it’s important that universities use the information they learned from the pandemic to continue to improve their operations. Using our expertise in the higher education space, we’ve compiled a few ways universities can continue to innovate on their current experiences.

Embrace Your Size

A huge benefit to being small is the ability to make changes quickly and pivot back if necessary. This means it may be easier to rethink course structure or your academic calendar based on students’ needs. With a smaller student body, you may also be able to tap into their feedback more and actually apply those changes as you see fit.

Stop Chasing Rankings

An important skill that a young person can learn is that comparing yourself to others is an unfulfilling plight. This is something that many universities could benefit from as well. Rather than focusing on the competition, it’s important that institutions look inward and align their values with their students and faculty. Spend the resources that are put towards boosting your rankings on your faculty and students and celebrate their hard work and success. Yes, knowing your peer institutions and following their efforts and success can be very helpful, as well as having a finger on the pulse of the broader national higher education landscape, but focusing on your own academic program quality and student successes will reap your university the biggest rewards.

Celebrate Your Value

Higher education provides students with a great opportunity to receive an education that will prepare them for the first step into the career of their choosing. While this value is apparent to those that are in the industry, it isn’t as obvious to the public. It’s especially important that smaller universities are effectively communicating their commitment to affordability, convenience and career-readiness learning to prospective students. One way of showcasing this is through case studies, providing a look at how past students have found success post-graduation and how the university prepared them for that initial step.

Explore Immersive Technology

Due to the pandemic, nearly every student has now become familiar with an online class and how they differ from the traditional in-person class. For some students, their class structure didn’t stray too far from what they were used to in their in-person classes. But for others, it was a difficult transition. Many students who participated in labs missed out on valuable hands-on experience that you can’t get through a computer screen. The introduction of virtual reality (VR), the Metaverse and augmented reality (AR) combat this issue, providing technology that can immerse students within a scenario that an on-person classroom may not even provide. Students now have the ability to communicate and collaborate in their own virtual office, rather than a Zoom call. And with this technology still in its infancy, who’s to say that students won’t be able to put on their VR headset and walk the streets of Ancient Rome for their history class?

How Push Can Help

At Push we are always looking for new, innovative ways to market and support higher education institutions. Check out our work and get in touch to let us know how we can help you meet your goals. 

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Restaurant Marketing Communications Trends

Branding Opportunities for Multi-Location Restaurants 

Branding Opportunities for Multi-Location Restaurants 

Restaurant marketing is always changing, and when you have multiple locations, keeping up with how to best promote your restaurants can seem even more daunting. Today’s marketing trends lean towards local, with an emphasis on highly-targeted messaging.  Here we break down a few local marketing must-dos plus other trends that will help you gain a competitive edge. 

Update Information on Your Restaurant’s Website

One of the most important things you can do to increase your visibility online is to make sure your website is up-to-date and informative, as over a third of diners find restaurants through websites. The best website design includes relevant local content for each of your location’s pages, including location data, hours of operation, the address and the business name. Photos and information on local offers and specials can also go a long way in helping you show up in Google’s search results.

Take Full Advantage of Mobile Local Search

Speaking of search, you really can’t underestimate the power of it. Invest time and money if needed to make it work for you—and you will reap the benefits. As a multi-location restaurant, you likely compete for high-volume search terms like “bbq near me” or whatever is applicable to your restaurant. 

Let’s look at a few things you can do to improve your rankings:

  • Make sure your Google Business Profile listings are compete and accurate as Google prioritizes listings with no errors or inconsistencies.  
  • Ask for reviews on your Google Business Profile—your search result will also be prioritized if you have good reviews of 4+ stars or more.
  • Increase the number of mentions of your restaurants across the web and one your website. The more citations you have, the higher you will show up in local search. 
  • Post text and photos directly to your Google My Business listing. Keywords in that post can be found when a customer searches for a certain term. 

Step Up Your Social Media

Another important platform to attract new customers is social media, of course. It’s reported that more than 84% of all customer impressions happen on location pages for multi-location brands, rather than the brand’s corporate site.

As a multi-unit restaurant, make sure each of your locations has its own social media presence to engage with local audiences. Localized social media posts can also help to boost your SEO rankings. Another advantage of local restaurant pages is that you can get a great ROI on paid media posts if you have the budget to expand beyond your organic reach. In addition to local pages, don’t forget to embrace user-generated content and encourage your guests to share photos or use a branded hashtag. 

Go Back to Branding Basics 

If you’re not sure where to start when opening your second restaurant, don’t be afraid to take what worked from your original marketing strategy and try duplicate it for this new location, especially if it was a success with customers the first time around. Just be sure to keep a consistent look and feel across all locations to help strengthen your brand. You could also consider standardizing your menus at each location and promoting the most popular dishes that made you famous in the first place. But no matter what, don’t forget that the proof is always in the pudding—and whatever marketing tactic you use won’t be effective unless your food and service are at the highest quality they can be.

Looking to give you marketing efforts a boost but not sure where to begin? With years of experience helping multi-location restaurants succeed and grow, we’re here to help! Check out our work and don’t hesitate to get in touch.