The document provides insights from industry leaders on developing an effective local marketing strategy. It discusses four key insights: 1) Maximizing local search visibility at scale, focusing on connecting a brand's website, locations, and brand identity. This includes optimizing store locator pages and managing location data. 2) Driving local sales with video marketing, noting that video can increase purchase intent and that brands should track engagement and integrate calls-to-action. 3) Three secrets to converting visitors - identifying targets, understanding intent, and intelligently engaging consumers. 4) The new search behavior and importance of the "Zero Moment of Truth" as most purchase decisions are made online before entering a store. Brands must optimize their digital presence and win consumers

1. LOCAL
MARKETING
GUIDE
Insights from Industry Leaders on
Developing a Thriving Omni-channel
Local Marketing Strategy

2. CONTENTS
Introduction....... 03
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LOCAL MARKETING GUIDE: INSIGHTS FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS
Key Insight #1:
Maximizing Your Local
Search Visibility
at Scale....... 04
There are three main factors
involved in the opportunity
and importance of local search.
First, the size of the potential
audience; second the purchase
intent of that audience. And
lastly, the competitive landscape.
Learn more about each from
internationally-recognized Local
Search Marketing consultant,
David Mihm.
Key Insight #2:
Driving Local Sales with
Video Marketing...... 06
Online video is both a content
medium and a strategic tool for
for driving demand generation,
sales, and actually impacting the
bottom line. Understand how
to harness the power of video
marketing from the CMO of
Vidyard, the world’s leading video
marketing platform.
Key Insight #3:
3 Secrets to Converting
Visitors....... 08
VP of Product at LivePerson, Alon
Waks, shares industry secrets
for identifying the profile and
intent of a high stakes website
visitor, how to intelligently
engage that visitor at the right
time to increase conversions
and decrease bounce rates,
and presents the audience with
real-world examples from Home
Depot and Verizon.
Key Insight #4:
The New Search
Behavior....... 09
Shoppers make up their minds
about a product in the blink of
an eye, leaving national brands
scrambling to be front and center
when a consumer is researching
their product. Google’s Strategic
Partner Manager, covers key
trends driving new behavior,
today’s search landscape, and
delves into strategies that can
help your national brand win the
moments that matter using the
Zero Moment of Truth.
About Balihoo....... 12

3. INTRODUCTION
Last year, Balihoo launched our free, live Local Marketing Webinar Series focused on emerging ideas and trends in the
local marketing landscape. We partnered with industry experts, including MOZ’s David Mihm and Google’s Cecelia Choi
to empower attendees to stay abreast of new technology, consumer behavior, and shifts in the digital marketing space,
and provide them with actionable solutions.
This informative guide features key data, insights, and recommendations from four of our most popular fall webinars:
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LOCAL MARKETING GUIDE: INSIGHTS FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS
Maximizing Your Local
Search Visibility at
Scale
David Mihm
MOZ
Driving Local Sales
with Video Marketing
Tyler Lessard
Vidyard
3 Secrets to Converting
Visitors
Alon Waks
LivePerson
The New Search
Behavior
Cecelia Choi
Google
For full recordings and transcripts of each of the featured webinars, as well as look at our newest sessions, visit
Balihoo’s Webinar page.

4. KEY INSIGHT #1: MAXIMIZING YOUR LOCAL SEARCH VISIBILITY AT SCALE
Webinar Presenter: David Mihm, Moz
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LOCAL MARKETING GUIDE: INSIGHTS FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS
There are three primary factors that play a role in
businesses getting visibility and results - Website,
Location, and Brand. Your national brand’s ultimate goal
should be to connect all three.
Let’s talk about where to focus your brand’s efforts in order
to get visibility and results. Essentially, your goal is to connect
the three ideas. You need to start by connecting your website
with your physical location. By associating your physical
location in the real-world with the webpage or website, you
are enabling those locations to be found digitally.
BEST PRACTICE
You want one click off the homepage to your store locator,
and then that store locator needs to contain a set of pages
that include one unique page for each location.
The key things to keep in mind here is that you want a
unique page for each location.
UNIQUE PAGES SHOULD INCLUDE:
Your brand name
The keywords of what you’re trying to rank for
Full map for each location
NAP (the Name, Address, Phone Number)
Rich content, not only for local results, but for the
pages to rank organically
The second thing you want to think about is connecting your
website with your brand. In the past few years, Google has
increasingly favored brands in the local search results.
BEST PRACTICE
In order to create that second connection, the one
between the website and brand, there are a couple of
things you can do with Google Plus. First, is activating
the real publisher tag via Google Plus. This is as simple as
putting one small piece of code in your homepage, and in
your Google Plus account you identify the account, making
sure the two match up. This really is primarily helpful for
branded searches, it will help you get a little more visibility
and much nicer looking search results when people look
for your brand.

5. The second piece of connecting your website and brand
is to look at your inbound links. Your individual store
managers and the employees at your individual stores
should be active in the community, they should host events
at the store, they should be sponsoring the little league
baseball team, those sorts of things. And getting links that
include your brand name pointing at your store pages. This
impacts several key factors, including your store locator,
how data aggregators scrape your website and funnel that
information back to search engines, including Google.
Lastly, you need to tie your brand to your physical locations.
Essentially, these are signals you send that are associated
with your website, but they can again reinforce that brand
location connection, saying, for example, Target stores are
located at these physical locations in the real world.
BEST PRACTICE
GoogleMy business, formerly called Google Places for
Business is the best place to start. Upload a spreadsheet of
all your locations giving Google an accurate picture of your
brand allowing the search engine to identify your domain
dot com and all of its associated physical locations in the
real world. From there, you can add things like categories,
hours of operation, etcetera. Note that this is a really
critical piece of your overall local search visibility and
really in terms of things you can do off your site, at scale.
To recap, your national brand must prioritize resources to
truly maximize its presence on local search. Square away
your store locator, one location, one page, get the map, the
name, address, and phone number for each location in HTML.
Secondly, manage your location data via Google My Business,
along with other major data aggregators. Lastly, streamline
the review process. Look at the top sites in your industry and
make sure that you are segmenting your email list for Gmail
and non-Gmail customers and integrate that kind of process
into whichever CRM system your brand is using.
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On desktop searches - about
20% of all searches have
local intent.
Meaning that the searcher is
looking for a local business,
local news, local events,
anything which is some or
other way related to their
geographic location.
On mobile phone that
number jumps to 50%.
Basically one out of every
two searches.
PROOF POINTS SUPPORTING
THE POWER OF LOCAL SEARCH

6. Online video is both a content medium and a strategic tool for driving
demand generation, driving sales, and impacting the bottom line. By using
video as an engagement tool national brands have the opportunity to bring
customers into the brand and ultimately convert them into not only paying
customers but into advocates.
THE POWER OF VIDEO
“Enjoyment of video increases purchase intent by 97%.”
- Wall Street Journal, 2005
“Over 70% of marketers report that video converts
better than other content types.” - Vidyard + Demand Metric
Gone are the days where people would rely on individual sales reps to learn
about a product. People are doing all of their research online, and in some
cases, 60% to 90% from recent reports. During this research phase, a lot of
the purchase decisions are being made, or a lot of the next step actions are
being made.
Vidyard’s data captures the power of video. For example, joining a video
conference increased purchase intent by up to 97%, because users are
presented with the opportunity to get a better feel for what they are
actually looking at buying, and either seeing it in action or watching real
people talk about the product.
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KEY INSIGHT #2: DRIVING LOCAL SALES WITH
VIDEO MARKETING
Webinar Presenter: Tyler Lessard, Vidyard
WE’RE NATURALLY
DRAWN TO VIDEO
We’re physically hard
wired to respond
to movement, the
intonation and pitch
of voices, and body
language, all of which
create
strong emotional
connections.
There’s a part of the
brain, the fusiform
facial area, which
causes us to look
at faces to gather
information and
determine someone’s
credibility. This is why
we’re so intrigued
by live action videos
featuring people.
-Susan Weinschenk
The brain processes
visual data 600,000
times faster than text.
-Social Media Today
NOTE When a video is information
-intensive, consumers will watch
the video 2 or more times!
This means more time spent on
your site! -Internet Retailer

7. Online video is about bringing out the personality of your company
and bringing a face to it that really draws consumers in. Video allows
those same consumers to truly see what your brand offers, learn about
who your brand is, why they should visit a local store or take that next
action with you. However, not all video is created equal. There are
several key factors to ensuring that you are presenting your target
audience with value, and maximizing returns for your national brand.
Other things to consider are three key factors for understanding how
your brand’s videos are performing, and if any updates need to be
made to ensure that, ultimately, you’re driving conversions and sales.
First, tracking actual engagement makes a big difference. It gives
your brand a glimpse into what’s working and what isn’t, providing
you with the opportunity to alter the content - i.e. content too
long? Shorten the intro and bring the call-to-action up.
Second, analyze engagement and conversion data.
Lastly, and arguably, most importantly, identify how people are
converting at the end of a video. Today, most people will end a
video with a change to a screen that may or may not have a URL.
While it seems like an obvious, having some form of a call-to-
action at the end of videos is imperative for continued interaction.
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TIPS, TRICKS
& FAQs
How long should my video content be?
As short as possible to get the message across!
Aim for no more than 60-90 seconds.
What metrics should I be tracking
beyond view counts?
Viewer engagement and drop-off rates, views
by channel, new leads captured, etc.
Should I be using YouTube?
Yes, as a place for people to discover. BUT you
also want your videos on your own website and
this is where you should send people to as a
destination!
How do I determine the right
style and mood?
Depends on type of video, target audience,
stage of ‘buying cycle’, and your brand. But
don’t be shy to have fun, feature your local
employees, and ‘humanize’ your brand.
How can I increase output without
blowing my budget?
Hire an in-house video producer! Leverage
new platforms for turnkey animated videos.
Find the right production agency partner and
leverage scale to your advantage.

8. KEY INSIGHT #3: THREE SECRETS TO CONVERTING VISITORS
Webinar Presenter: Alon Waks, LivePerson
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At a high level the three secrets to converting online
visitors to customers are:
Identify your brand’s target consumers
Learn as much as possible about the
consumer’s intent
Intelligently engage those same consumers
Now, let’s look at each of the three secrets in more depth.
To identify your brand’s target consumer,
you need to identify the target with the right
tools and at the right time. In an ideal world
everybody will come to get everything they
need with one click, two clicks and done but
we’re not there yet.
The second piece is understanding the
consumer’s intent. They are coming to your
website with a purpose, maybe the purpose
changes along the dynamic of the journey,
making it important for your brand to be
flexible enough to help them in driving them
along what is called the positive purchase.
Third, when the consumer needs help with
something along their journey, your brand
must have tools in place to help complete
the journey. These three together are truly
the focus of driving online conversion to
excellence.
CONSIDER THIS DATA
Today, around 7% of all e-commerce is driven
by everything online and 25%, very soon, will
be driven by mobile which will go up to 75%
by the end of the century.
We’ve seen that with conversion rates of over
25% increase if a brand personalized offers
and personalized the consumers’ experience
along their journey with your brand.

9. KEY INSIGHT #4: THE NEW SEARCH BEHAVIOR
Webinar Presenter: Cecelia Choi, Google
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We no longer live in a linear world where we are
reactively receiving information. Instead, we are proactive
information seekers and we want to seek that knowledge
first hand and right on the spot very, very quickly. In fact,
80% of decisions are formed before entering the store
and that’s an indicator how crucial the moment before the
store is.
There has been this mental model we, as marketers, have
used for over 50 plus years of marketing. You have the
stimulus which is perhaps the advertisement that drives
the first moment of truth where we’re actually in front
of the product at the shelf. The consumer then takes the
product home, they use it, and they are either dissatisfied
or satisfied. They form an opinion and they choose to
either repeat that purchase or not repeat it. However,
a lot of newly published data leaves us to question that
traditional three-step mental model.
Google did a consumer barometer study that shows that
61% of Internet users actually research online prior to the
purchase. This could be purchasing online or offline, going
into the store, and interacting with the product, but 61% of
Internet users do their research and they form an opinion
even before interacting with that product.
Among those, almost 70% use a search engine somewhere
along that path whether it’s Google or Yahoo. Motorola
Solutions shared a report looking at smartphone users and
reported that 50% research forofferswhilethey’reactuallyin
thestoreatthatpointoftime.
Traditional Three-Step Mental Model
“According to Procter&Gamble, shoppers make
up their minds about a product in three to seven
seconds, just the time it takes to note a product on
the store shelf.
This time lapse is called (by P&G) the “First Moment
of Truth,” and it’s considered the most important
marketing opportunity for a brand.”
- Wall Street Journal, 2005

10. All of this leads us to believe that the three-step model needs to be updated. And in 2011, Google introduced
a four-moment model.
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You can see here you have a stimulus that leads to a Zero
Moment of Truth, that leads to a first moment of truth,
and then to a second moment of truth. As a marketer, the
questions that you should be asking is, are we still thinking
with a three-step mental model that bypasses the research
phase, the Zero Moment of Truth? And are we doing things
to win consumers at that point of research which is almost
as crucial as winning at the point of purchase.
Consumers don’t really move in a left to right motion. They
can actually circulate and research as long as they want
really and the key is that the consumer is self-directed.
And as a marketer and thinking about your brand and your
business, you really can’t leave any part of that research
phase unattended.
So when you think about a search query, especially on
a mobile device, it’s hyper local and they want to make
sure that that business or that product is conveniently
found within their area. So it’s clear that search is a critical
component of the overall consideration and purchase cycle.

11. Now, for you as a marketer, what does that mean? Well,
you have to invest in a great website because you want
to think about it as your digital storefront, just like you
would think about your brick and mortar store, thinking
about the design and attracting consumers that are
walking along the street to come in. A digital storefront
is just as empowering if not more so just because of the
sheer amount of users that are online today. The things
you want to think about are clear headings, very high
quality photos, promoting special offers. You also want
to have your contact info, your address, any sort of social
media so that they can look at different reviews, very easy
navigation throughout the website, making it a seamless
user experience.
If you have videos, that’s also highly interactive and
engaging. And you want to keep your content on your
website very fresh, updated, easy, relevant and if you do
have an e-commerce type of site, you want a very simple
checkout process. This is your digital storefront.
Mobile devices are everywhere and mobile really matters.
One in five searches actually originate from a mobile device.
If you think about specific services or products, that number
can be as high as 50% or even above 50%. Mobile searches
have increased by 500% over the last two years, so you
really want to think about the number of Zero Moment
of Truths that are happening on a mobile device. Are you
optimized as a business and ready to do that?
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YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE ALREADY ONLINE
Shopping starts
online
94% of consumers research
products online before buying
Customers rely on online
sources for local information
97% use online media when
researching products or services locally
Online shopping
continues in store
75% search before or during
a shopping trip

12. ABOUT BALIHOO
COPYRIGHT © 2015 BALIHOO. All RIGHTS RESERVED.
12LOCAL MARKETING GUIDE: INSIGHTS FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS
Balihoo’s Local Marketing Cloud redefines how national brands reach
local consumers. The Balihoo LMC enables national brands to automate
and scale targeted, local multi-channel marketing campaigns ensuring
a consistent, quality experience at every step of the customer’s purchase
journey - from the national website to the local store.
The Balihoo Local Marketing Cloud encompasses all of the modern local
multi-channel marketing needs of national brands, including digital
channels such as Display Advertising, Social Media, and Paid Search,
as well as traditional channels, including Direct Mail and Co-op.