“How do you find new businesses when you’re on vacation? If you’re like most people, you search on your phone for specific types of businesses near you. In fact, from 2014 to 2015, “near me” searches increased 130%, with the 88% of those searches happening on mobile devices.”

Source: Mobile Near Me: Attracting Consumers on Vacation

“A recent study commissioned by Real Estate Webmasters has discovered the top marketing tools used by real estate professionals and reveals spending trends that will likely occur in 2018.

In 2017, a 53 percent majority of real estate professionals spent less than $5,000 on their annual marketing efforts, including both online and offline avenues. However, 1 in 8 real estate agents spent more than $20,000 in the year, with the top three percent spending more than $80,000 on their marketing.” Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/3727858#ixzz5CMrXP6Ew

BrightLocal’s Local Citations Trust Report explores the importance of correct citations in local business listings and online directories. How do they affect consumers searching for local businesses, and what does this mean for local SEO?

Source: Local Citations Trust Report: How do business listings impact consumer trust? | BrightLocal

Understand exactly what Google is looking for to rank your local business higher than your competition in your city.  Source: Beginner Local SEO | The Foundations of What Google Wants

Google changes something related to Local SEO very frequently. This timeline is updated weekly and contains all the known updates to Google My Business or Local SEO since 2018. We will also include algorithm updates that impact the 3-pack (local results). Source: Timeline of Local SEO Changes in 2018 | Google My Business Update History

Online reviews are super important for local businesses, but which sites should you focus your efforts on? Source: Which Sites Should You Focus on for Reviews? – Whitespark Weekly – Whitespark

Content marketing has taken on a life of its own as a buzzword in our industry. With reduced organic reach over both search and many social channels, it’s never been more important to focus on promotion strategies that cut through the noise and get content discovered. Source: https://searchengineland.com/7-marketing-and-promotion-tactics-to-get-your-content-discovered-293734

Loyal customers are both your cheerleaders and bodyguards. Contributor Wesley Young shares six ways to boost local search results using customer loyalty. Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

via Customer loyalty: A key ingredient for successful local search results — blogsieve

Website usage in the US has stalled. And with at least 90% of the US adult population already using the internet, growth in website usage is unlikely to come from new users. New data from Adobe – showing a 2% drop in website visits between January 2015 and December 2017 – has the analysts arguing… Read More: The Battle for Website Visits is Increasingly Being Fought on Smartphones – Marketing Charts

“According to Brandmuscles’s 2018 State of Local Marketing Report which surveyed over 2,700 “dealers, agents, franchisees and distributors of national and global brands,” 64% said that the actual SMB owner executes all marketing efforts. Another 26% said marketing is a team effort but not anyone’s full-time job and 7% have a dedicated marketing professional on staff. Only 3% said they outsource marketing to an agency or vendor.

Based on this study, roughly 97% of SMBs execute some form of DIY marketing. Two years ago we discussed a survey of 1,000 SMBs that put this DIY figure around 71%. This suggests a significant increase, and the Brandmuscle study went on to say that the percentage of owners that execute all marketing efforts themselves went from 51% in 2017 to 64% this year.

While the data show an increase in DIY marketing in the SMB space, other data points indicate serious flaws with this approach. For example, Brandmuscle shared a stat from another study (not clear which study) that said 60% of SMBs do not know who owns their Google My Business listing. Additionally, the survey found 36% of SMBs aren’t sure if their website is mobile responsive.”

Source: Study: 97% of SMBs DIY Marketing, Most Don’t Get It

Mike Blumenthal shares this:

This is our Deep Dive Into Local from February 7th, 2018. In our Deep Dive series, we take a closer look at one thing in local that caught our attention and deserves a longer discussion.

Go to the source to read the transcript: Video Deep Dive: Google Posts Impact Study

Watch here:

More data that supports paying attention to those pesky customer reviews:

Recently, industry analyst Brian Solis wrote a column that speaks volumes about the importance of customer reviews in a business’s location marketing strategy. In “Empowered Consumers Are Searching for the Best and Worst Brands Before They Buy,” he noted that:

• According to Google, mobile searches that include “best” have grown by more than 80 percent in the past two years.
• Searches ending with “to avoid” have grown 1.5 times in the same span.
• Searches for “worst” are also on the rise.
• “Is ____ worth it” mobile searches grew by more than 80 percent.

Solis believes the increase in these kinds of searches indicates that consumers trust brands less and trust each other more. In addition, the proliferation of more powerful mobile phones makes mobile consumers better equipped to do in-depth research on the fly in their social networks and the channels they trust.

Go to the source for more: Improve Your Location Marketing Game With Customer Reviews – Adweek

An analysis of tens of thousands of hotel reviews on TripAdvisor. Source: Study: Replying to Customer Reviews Results in Better Ratings

BrightLocal shares this:

In our recent webinar on local ranking factors, our expert panel agreed that it’s going to be important to make use of Google My Business’ native features in the coming year. Today, Steady Demand’s Ben Fisher explains. Go to the source: How to Create a Google My Business Post That Will Win You More Customers – BrightLocal