When you look at marketing trends for 2021, the overarching theme is harnessing technology to automatically provide an immediate, personalized customer experience. An important part of this is creating flexible systems that can quickly respond to changing demands. Fortunately, by selecting local marketing software with integration capabilities, you will be able to simplify the process of future-proofing your marketing strategy.
Integrations allow your marketing platform to connect to third-party applications so they can share information. Pulling information from these various sources into a single dashboard allows you to complete multiple marketing tasks from within one centralized place. Furthermore, you get a 360-degree view of your customer journey – from initial discovery to final sale and retention.
Top 12 Local Marketing Software Integrations
Here are twelve functions and integrations that your local marketing platform should support for you to manage a successful digital marketing strategy in 2021.
1. Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a critical service for any business that operates on the local level – such as home renovation, HVAC contractors, etc. You can learn important information about your customers by tracking how they engage with your profile. For instance, their location, what types of services they’re searching for, questions they’re asking, etc. Linking Google My Business to your marketing platform allows you to access and incorporate this valuable local search data into other marketing tactics while also taking action, such as uploading new photos, getting more reviews and creating Google Posts.
2. Google Analytics
Another important application integration is Google Analytics (GA). Analytics is a web-based analysis service that helps you track your website performance. This includes the ability to create custom website goals that matter most to your business, such as appointment bookings or online purchases. By sharing this website data with your other marketing tools, you’re able to build a comprehensive picture of how your PPC, SEO, social, and content marketing efforts lead people back to your website and generate conversions.
3. Google Ads / Bing Ads
Automation technology, powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), can improve digital ad campaign efficiency beyond human capability. It can more accurately target people at the optimal moment, predict click-through rates (CTR), and optimize ad performance for conversions.
However, all of this depends on having information. As such, the ability to integrate Google Ads and Bing Ads into your marketing platform is a must-have. Doing so will allow your PPC campaigns to access important data about your target audience from across your various marketing and sales tools to optimize performance.
Suggested Reading: 4 Critical Tips to Write Effective Search Ad Copy
4. Facebook Ads
When selecting digital marketing software, you want to ensure it can play nice with Facebook Ads. There are currently over 223 million regular monthly Facebook users in the United States, making it an important part of any local marketing strategy.
Being able to integrate Facebook Ads data directly into your marketing platform will help you understand which ads impact your bottom line. For example, accurately attributing performance by tying sales information back to specific ads.
Suggested Reading: Facebook Boosted Posts vs. Facebook Ads: Which is better for local lead generation?
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most effective methods for mobilizing customers moving into 2021. However, it is not a successful marketing strategy on its own. Rather, email needs to be tied into your broader digital marketing strategy.
When your email service is integrated into your marketing platform you can optimize email marketing performance and make the most of your relationship with every subscriber. For example, by automatically sending a follow-up email after a prospect submits a lead form on your website. Or further engaging customers by emailing them relevant content based on their interests on social media.
Suggested Reading:
- How to Build Lasting Customer Relationships Through Email
- Email Marketing Tips & Strategies for Small Businesses
6. Digital Asset Management
Often marketing content is created using media that comes from many different devices. For instance, a project video taken on a crew member’s phone. Branded content you created on your office computer. Before and after pictures sent in by a happy customer. It’s important to have a way to store and organize all these different pieces of media in a centralized location. Otherwise, you’ll quickly lose track of things.
The solution is to have digital asset management built into your marketing platform. For example, when you take a project photo on your phone, it is automatically indexed, tagged, and added to your platform gallery. This makes it much easier to collect, store, organize and share media across multiple devices with ease.
Suggested Reading: Digital Asset Management Guide for Small Businesses
7. Content Publishing
Effective content management lays at the heart of modern digital marketing. However, using different tools for each step – writing, approval, formatting, and scheduling – can make content publishing extremely time-consuming. Instead, you want a marketing platform that integrates all of these functions into a single online tool. Beyond speeding up the publication process, managing content through your marketing software also allows you to easily track how people engage with your content across different networks. Using this information, you can more effectively create and publish even more relevant, personalized content to engage your ideal prospects online.
8. Social Media Management
When purchasing local marketing software, you want to pick a solution that supports social media integration. Trying to manage your presence on each social network separately is incredibly inefficient. A centralized management tool will greatly improve your strategy implementation. For instance, you’re able to plan and publish content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other channels, all from one place. Furthermore, you’re able to view cross-channel engagement metrics on your marketing platform, to determine what social posts and channels are driving the results you want. A centralized view of your social media presence also makes it easy to monitor user mentions about your business across different networks. This allows you to quickly respond to comments and manage your online reputation.
9. Competitive Analytics
Conducting regular competitor analysis helps you identify gaps in the market and uncover trends for how to engage your audience more effectively. But to conduct competitor analysis you need to have data. For instance, monitoring how your direct competitors are performing in local search and how your online visibility compares in local markets.
Competitive analytic integrations allow you to gather all of this information in one spot, making it easy to generate reports and uncover important data-driven insights. By keeping an eye on the market you’re able to stay ahead of the curve, identify new opportunities, and adopt best marketing practices to increase ROI.
10. Lead Conversion Tracking
Another critical function you want from your local marketing software is the ability to effectively manage your leads pipeline. This means your platform should be able to pull in information from your call tracking, web form leads, and off-line leads from your CRM, etc. The goal is to have a centralized place to keep track of how many leads you generate, where they’re coming from, and how they’re being managed. Collecting and analyzing this information can reveal important insights for improving lead quality and increasing your conversion rates.
Suggested Reading: Simplify Lead Tracking with an All-In-One Local Marketing Platform
11. Website Chat
The ability to chat or text in real-time with website visitors means you’ll never miss out on a customer. By integrating your chat tools with your marketing platform, you have access to contextual data to provide a more relevant customer experience. For instance, you can instantly know if someone is a returning customer or a new prospect. Moreover, you can view chat activity to see how your team is handling interactions and what types of questions are being asked to further improve your customer service.
12. Website Automated Appointment Scheduling
Part of optimizing marketing performance is removing unnecessary obstacles that might deter your prospects from converting. This is especially true when it comes to scheduling appointments. Incorporating automated website appointment scheduling into your marketing software makes it much easier for people to convert. They no longer have to take time to coordinate a meeting over the phone. Instead, they can immediately see and book a time that works best for them.
Get Started with Surefire Local
Grow your business with a cost-effective, scalable platform custom-built around the needs of local marketers. Our software integrates with all the necessary marketing tools you rely on each and every day. This means no more having to sign into a dozen different sites just to accomplish one marketing task. From a single platform, you’re able to manage leads, online reviews, online business listings, content marketing, social media, paid advertising, local SEO, and more. Having a centralized platform helps you more quickly get a sense of what is working with your marketing and what is not. The result is a more transparent, productive marketing approach that will generate a higher ROI.
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