LocalVox Launches First-Ever Retail 150 Annual Local Marketing Report Card

NEW YORK, April 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- When it comes to using local marketing to attract and retain customers and beat out the competition, many of the top 150 U.S. retailers are falling behind on local search, mobile, social media and content marketing efforts, according to a new report launched by LocalVox, an integrated local, social and mobile marketing platform that helps to drive online customers into brick-and-mortar stores.

This indicates that companies either don't understand local marketing or are choosing not to invest in it, even though the magnitude of online interaction creates a mandate for retailers to invest in local Internet marketing. The industry is growing 13.8 percent year-over-year, from $26.5 billion in 2013 to over $44.5 billion in 2017, and half of in-store sales are influenced online, according to Forrester.

On average, businesses earned a failing grade of 3.58 out of 10 for comprehensive local marketing efforts: only 11 of the companies scored above a 5, and 12 companies scored less than a 2. Despite the fact that no company is engaging with local marketing correctly, a handful of them are at least starting to make an effort.

When it comes to SEO (grade: 4.95), a third of retailers are beginning to focus on optimizing for local search but are still missing the key criteria to win terms. Google Place page optimization and data cleansing is the first step, and over half of the retailers haven't even started with these basics.

Also, while most retailers chose to actively invest in local mobile marketing (grade: 6.20), 20 percent of them have ignored it completely: 16 percent of retailers scored between a 0 and 1 in the mobile category, but brands that actually invested in mobile efforts scored high marks, with 78 percent earning above a 5.

Retailers are continuing to struggle with local marketing fragmentation, especially when it comes to social media (grade: 0.28). National retailers have adopted social media at the brand level but are failing across the board on enabling and responding to local social media channels, such as review sites and Facebook location pages. As a result, the local social gap continues to be a challenge for many businesses.

Content marketing (grade: 2.69), however, continues to struggle to scale: creating content on a local level limits scale without the aid of local technology platforms or regional- or store-level enablement programs. With limited resources, marketers are more focused on scaling less-effective cost-per-click advertising.

"Given that national brands that integrate local marketing processes are expected to increase revenues 10 to 15 percent by 2015, according to Gartner, it's astonishing that so many major retailers are leaving a billion-dollar opportunity off the table for their businesses," said Trevor Sumner, founder and president of LocalVox. "And with 91 percent of retail still local, companies have an obligation to influence consumer purchase behavior in-store by driving online messaging. This is imperative to not only achieve success but also to simply survive in today's economic climate."

For more information on the LocalVox platform and to learn more about its agency partners, click here.

About LocalVox
LocalVox is an online marketing platform solution that allows businesses to easily and efficiently manage and publish native content to every local digital touch point. LocalVox is based in New York City with offices in Boston and Charlotte, and has been named the third hottest startup in NYC by Business Insider and the best high tech tool for new business entrepreneurs by Good Day New York. Check out the LocalVox blog, Facebook and Twitter for more news and insight.

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SOURCE LocalVox