ROPO: 2018's Most Important Multichannel Digital Marketing Report

Posted by RobBeirne

Digital marketers have always had one drum they loudly beat in front of traditional advertising channels: "We can measure what we do better than you." Now, we weren't embellishing the truth or anything — we can measure digital advertising performance at a much more granular level than we can traditional advertising. But it's not perfect. Multichannel digital marketing teams always have one niggling thought that keeps them awake at night: online activity is driving in-store sales and we can't claim any credit for it.

Offline sales are happening. Sure enough, we're seeing online shopping become more and more popular, but even so, you’ll never see 100% of your sales being made online if you're a multichannel retailer. Whether it’s a dress that needs to be tried on or a TV you want to measure up before you buy, in-store purchases are going nowhere. But it's more important than ever to make sure you don't underestimate the impact your online advertising has on offline sales.

ROPO: Research Online Purchase Offline has plagued multichannel retailers for years. This is when awareness and hot leads are generated online, but the customers convert in-store.

There is one other problem hampering many multichannel businesses: viewing their online store as "just another store" and, in many cases, the store managers themselves considering the website to be a competitor.

In this article, I'll show you how we've improvised to create a ROPO report for DID Electrical, an Irish electrical and home appliance multichannel retailer, to provide greater insight into their customers' multichannel journey and how this affected their business.

What is ROPO reporting?

Offline conversions are a massive blind spot for digital marketers. It's the same as someone else taking credit for your work: your online ads are definitely influencing shoppers who complete their purchase offline, but we can't prove it. Or at least we couldn't prove it — until now.

ROPO reporting (Research Online Purchase Offline) allows multichannel retailers to see what volume of in-store sales have been influenced by online ads. Facebook has trail-blazed in this area of reporting, leaving Google in their wake and scrambling to keep up. I know this well, because I work on Wolfgang's PPC team and gaze enviously at the ROPO reporting abilities of our social team. Working with DID, we created a robust way to measure the offline value of both PPC and SEO activity online.

To create a ROPO report, multichannel retailers must have a digital touch point in-store. This isn't as complicated as it sounds and can be something like an e-receipt or warranty system where you email customers. This gives you the customer data that you'll need to match offline conversions with your online advertising activity.

As I mentioned earlier, Facebook makes this nice and simple. You take the data gathered in-store, upload it to Facebook, and they will match as many people as possible. Our social team is generally seeing a 50% match rate between the data gathered in-store and Facebook users who've seen our ads. You can watch two of my colleagues, Alan and Roisin, discussing social ROPO reporting in an episode of our new video series, Wolfgang Bites:

Clearly, ROPO reporting is potentially very powerful for social media marketers, but Google doesn't yet provide a way for me to simply upload offline conversion data and match it against people who've seen my ads (though they have said that this is coming for Google AdWords). Wouldn't this be a really boring article for people working in SEO and PPC if I just ended things there?

Google ROPO reporting

DID Electrical were a perfect business to develop a ROPO report for. Founded back in 1968 (happy 50th birthday guys!), a year before tech was advanced enough to put man on the moon, DID strives to "understand the needs of each and every one of their customers." DID have an innovative approach to multichannel retail, which is great for ROPO reporting because they're already offering e-receipts to customers purchasing goods for over €100. Better still, the email delivering the e-receipts also has a link to a dedicated competition. This sits on a hidden landing page, so the only visitors to this page are customers receiving e-receipts.

They were nearly set for ROPO reporting, but there was just one extra step needed. In Google Analytics, we set the unique competition landing page URL as a goal, allowing us to reverse-engineer customer journeys and uncover the extent of Google PPC and SEO's influence over in-store sales. Before I unveil the results, a few caveats.

The ROPO under-report

Despite our best efforts to track offline conversions, I can't say ROPO reporting reflects 100% of all in-store sales influenced by digital ads. In the past, we've been open about the difficulties in tracking both offline conversions and cross-device conversions. For example, when running a social ROPO report, customers might give a different email in-store from the one attached to their Facebook account. For an SEO or PPC ROPO report, the customer might click a search ad on a work computer but the open their e-receipt on their smartphone. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the beast, ROPO reporting just isn't 100% accurate, but it does give an incredible indication of online's influence over offline sales.

I expect to see improved reporting coming down the line from Google, and they're definitely working on a ROPO reporting solution like Facebook's upload system. While our approach to ROPO reporting does shine a light on the offline conversion blind spot, it's entirely likely that digital advertising's influence goes far beyond these (still mightily impressive) results.

It’s also important to note that this method isn’t intended to give an exact figure for every ROPO sale, but instead gives us an excellent idea of the proportion of offline sales impacted by our online activities. By applying these proportions to overall business figures, we can work out a robust estimate for metrics like offline ROI.

Results from ROPO reporting

I'm going to divide the results of this ROPO reporting innovation into three sections:

1. PPC Results
2. SEO Results
3. Business Results

1. PPC results of ROPO reporting

First of all, we found 47% of offline customers had visited the DID Electrical website prior to visiting the store and making a purchase. Alone, this was an incredible insight into consumer behavior to be able to offer the team at DID. We went even further and determined that 1 in 8 measurable offline sales were influenced by an AdWords click.

2. SEO results of ROPO reporting

This method of ROPO reporting also means we can check the value of an organic click-through using the same reverse-engineering we used for PPC clicks. Based on the same data set, we discovered 1 in 5 purchases made in-store were made by customers who visited the DID site through an organic click prior to visiting the store.

3. Business results of ROPO reporting

ROPO reporting proved to be a great solution to DID's needs in providing clarity around the position of their website in the multichannel experience. With at least 47% of offline shoppers visiting the site before purchasing, 1 in 8 of them being influenced by AdWords and 1 in 5 by SEO, DID could now show the impact online was having over in-store sales. Internally, the website was no longer being viewed as just another store — now it's viewed as the hub linking everything together for an improved customer experience.

Following the deeper understanding into multichannel retail offered by ROPO reporting, DID was also able to augment their budget allocations between digital and traditional channels more efficiently. These insights have enabled them to justify moving more of their marketing budget online. Digital will make up 50% more of their overall marketing budget in 2018!

Getting started with ROPO reporting

If you're a digital marketer within a multichannel retailer and you want to get started with ROPO reporting, the key factor is your in-store digital touchpoint. This is the bridge between your online advertising and offline conversion data. If you're not offering e-receipts already, now is the time to start considering them as they played a critical role in DID’s ROPO strategy.

ROPO Cheat Guide (or quick reference)

If you're a multichannel retailer and this all sounds tantalizing, here’s the customer journey which ROPO measures:

1. Customer researches online using your website
2. Customer makes purchase in your brick-and-mortar store
3. Customer agrees to receive an e-receipt or warranty delivered to their email address
4. Customer clicks a competition link in the communication they receive
5. This action is captured in your Google Analytics as a custom goal completion
6. You can now calculate ROAS (Return On Advertising Spending)

The two critical steps here are the digital touchpoint in your physical stores and the incentive for the customer’s post-conversion communication click. Once you have this touchpoint and interaction, measuring Facebook's social ROPO is a simple file upload and using what I’ve shown you above, you’ll be able to measure the ROPO impact of PPC and SEO too.

If you do have any questions, pop them into the comments below. I have some questions too and it would be great to hear what you all think:

• If you're a multichannel retailer, are you in a position to start ROPO reporting?
• Does your company view your website as a hub for all stores or just another store (or even a competitor to the physical stores)?
• Have you seen a shift in marketing spend towards digital?

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Trump’s EPA to Roll Back Obama Fuel Efficiency Standards

Among the many regulatory policies that the Obama administration imposed on American industry was the near doubling of the mandated average fuel economy for passenger vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. While one may think that higher fuel efficiency is a good thing, its negatives include increased prices, decreased safety, and decreased mobility due to a lack of electric vehicle infrastructure.

Further, it puts U.S. automakers in a bind where they are forced to manufacture automobiles U.S. consumers do not want. U.S. consumers are purchasing more SUVs and pick-ups and fewer small efficient cars, making it more difficult to reach the sales necessary to satisfy the mandate. If the standard is not met, automakers have to pay fines. The fines, in addition to having retail sale lots full of unwanted new vehicles, could push the U.S. auto industry into financial trouble once again, as well as drive up consumer costs for vehicles they choose to purchase.

Trump’s EPA, under Administrator Pruitt, has announced a roll-back of the Obama standards for model years 2022 to 2025. They will revise the targets so that consumers can choose which vehicles they want to buy regardless of gas mileage, based on their individual wants and needs.

Obama’s Fuel Efficiency Standard 

Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards were first introduced in the 1970s to reduce gas consumption due to gasoline shortages. The standard remained at 27.5 miles per gallon for many years, but in 2012, Obama’s EPA mandated a fleet wide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 with a midpoint review in 2017. But once President Trump was elected, Obama’s EPA performed a quick review and upheld the 2012 targets despite economic and technological obstacles that the U.S. auto industry faces. The standards were finalized on January 12, 2017, a week before President Obama left office.

Source: New York Times 

In 2012, when gasoline averaged $3.60 a gallon, passenger cars were about half of vehicle sales. Passenger cars’ share of the market, however, has been declining amid low gasoline prices and last year, they made up only about a third of the fleet. This trend as well as the fact that less than one percent of gas-burning vehicles could meet the 2022 target indicates that it would be almost impossible to meet the 2025 standard.

To meet the intermediary targets, automakers have sold small and electric cars at a loss, and/or shifted production to Mexico, where the cost of production is lower. Fiat Chrysler, for example, estimated that it loses $14,000 on each Fiat 500e. This means that buyers of trucks and SUVs pay much more to make up the losses for the company.

In 2016, most manufacturers complied with the standards by using regulatory credits that the Obama EPA provided for efficient air-conditioning systems, electric cars and flex-fuel vehicles that can run on ethanol. These regulatory credits can be stored for later use and/or traded. In that model year, Fiat Chrysler bought 21.9 million credits while Honda sold 20.7 million credits. This credit scheme is a subsidization where SUV and truck consumers indirectly subsidize electric and small car consumers, which generally means rural and suburban residents subsidize city residents.

Vehicle Cost and Safety

New car prices fell rapidly in the 1990s and the 2000s until the Obama Administration imposed the strict fuel economy standards. Since then, new car prices have dramatically increased. Since 2009, the price of the average car rose to $6,200 above the previous trend. (See chart below.) A study by the Heritage Foundation found that regulations that force ever-increasing automobile fuel economy standards cost consumers thousands of dollars more than savings from using less gasoline. Obama’s new standards were estimated to add at least $3,800 to the cost of a car in 2016 and at least $7,200 in 2025 after adjusting for gasoline savings, shutting out almost seven million people from the new car market. At higher vehicle prices, consumers demand fewer vehicles, and automakers hire fewer workers.

Source: Daily Caller 

In order to meet fuel economy standards, cars have to be made smaller and lighter, making them less crashworthy. A 1989 Harvard-Brookings study estimated the death toll at between 2,200 and 3,900 a year for the earlier CAFE standard of 27.5 miles per gallon. Similarly, a 2002 National Academy of Sciences study estimated that CAFE at 27.5 miles per gallon had contributed to up to 2,600 fatalities in 1993. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which closely monitors crashworthiness, states: “Bigger, heavier vehicles are safer,” which is precisely why consumers are purchasing SUVs and light duty pick-ups.

Obama’s Standard Has U.S. Fuel Economy Approaching European Standards

According to an analysis by the International Center on Clean Transportation, which compared standards for different countries, the Obama Administration standards on fuel economy would be some of the most aggressive in the world by 2025 and rival those of the European Union. (The charts below break out standards for cars and light trucks separately.)

Fuel Economy Standards for Passenger Cars

Source: The International Council on Clean Transportation

Larger SUVs and light trucks face less stringent standards than smaller passenger cars. 

Fuel Economy Standards for Light Trucks

Source: The International Council on Clean Transportation

If automakers complied with the rules solely by improving the fuel economy of their engines, new cars and light trucks on the road would average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025. Since automakers in the United States can get credit for using specified refrigerants in vehicle air-conditioning units or by selling more electric vehicles, it is expected that new cars and light trucks sold in the United States would average about 36 miles per gallon on the road by 2025 under the Obama Administration CAFE standard—up from about 24.7 miles per gallon in 2016.

SUVs and light trucks make up a far larger proportion of new vehicle sales in the United States than they do in Europe. In the United States, light trucks make up 45 percent of the market compared to about half that in the European Union (24 percent).

Conclusion

Despite automakers arguing that the fuel economy standard was onerous, forcing them to invest heavily in building hybrid and electric vehicles, the Obama Administration pressed on with its favorable review and lock-in of the standard. That took the review away from the incoming Trump Administration and forced Administrator Pruitt to roll back the standard to ensure that automakers are being treated fairly and that the American public can still have a choice in it vehicle purchases without giving up safety, quality, capability and price.

 

The post Trump’s EPA to Roll Back Obama Fuel Efficiency Standards appeared first on IER.

A New Low in the Media’s War on Fracking

This article originally appeared at Forbes.

Rolling Stone just dropped a bombshell — or so it claims in its article, “‘The Harms of Fracking’: New Report Details Increased Risks of Asthma, Birth Defects and Cancer.”

Highlighting what it deems an “authoritative study,” Rolling Stone concludes that fracking is “contaminating the air and water — and imperiling the health of millions of Americans.”

Dig into the details, though, and it becomes clear that the study is not scientific. There remains no proof that fracking is dangerous to the general population.

‘Authoritative’ Hogwash

Fracking is a drilling technique used to access energy reserves that are trapped deep underground in shale rock deposits. Developers drill into the shale formations and inject a mixture of water and sand at very high pressures. This infusion of liquid breaks up the rock deposits to free oil and natural gas for extraction.

This process typically takes three to five days. Once a well is fracked, it can produce fuel for years.

The Rolling Stone piece centers on a new report from two activist organizations, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Concerned Health Professionals of New York. These organizations didn’t conduct original field research but extrapolated data from existing studies to draw a hyperbolic conclusion.

According to Rolling Stone, the report’s central claim is that “residents living near an active [fracking] site breathe air laced with carcinogens,” which leads to an “increased risk of asthma, a decrease in infant health and worrisome effects on the development of a fetus.”

But the vast majority of studies used in this report examine fracking-related emissions out of context. They don’t look at how often, how long, or how much humans were actually exposed to these emissions.

And their report has not been subject to rigorous scientific review. It’s easy to see why. The preponderance of existing evidence directly contradicts the hysterical claims. The new “study” only reconfirms the adage: garbage in, garbage out.

The Fracking Reality

The gold-standard fracking assessment comes from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which evaluated some 10,000 air samples from fracking sites and found that the emissions levels were “safe.” Department officials reported that there is “no substantial or moderate evidence for any health effects” caused by fracking.

That’s no surprise. Fracking fluid is 99 percent water and sand. Small amounts of chemicals are added to preserve the drilling equipment.

The Rolling Stone report also claims to substantiate the long-standing activist gripe that fracking releases hazardous chemicals into nearby drinking water, putting the people in surrounding communities at risk.

But two dozen studies have looked into the water contamination issue and determined that fracking is safe.

Even the Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency, which harbored little affection for the energy industry, concluded that fracking is “unlikely to generate sufficient pressure to drive fluids into shallow drinking water zones.” Lisa Jackson, the former head of the EPA under President Obama, plainly stated that “in no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater.”

The Media’s War

Rolling Stone’s fake exposé  is just the latest in a long and growing list of specious anti-fracking studies. For a decade, activists have trotted out shoddy science in hopes of discrediting new-generation fossil-fuel extraction.

There’s Gasland, the 2010 documentary from Brooklyn-based filmmaker Josh Fox. It’s a master class in sophistry.

Just consider its most infamous scene, in which a man living near a drilling site in Colorado lights his tap water on fire, supposedly demonstrating that it’s full of dangerous fracking chemicals.

Colorado regulators have since determined that the man’s water contamination was “not attributable” to energy exploration. Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, has said: “We can’t find anywhere in Colorado a single example of [fracking] that has polluted groundwater.”

There’s also a paper published this spring in the journal Endocrinology. It claims fracking chemicals can disrupt hormone production in lab mice. But the researcher’s chemical concoction doesn’t even resemble the mixtures used in real-life fracking operations.

Then there’s a 2017 report from the NAACP which claims emissions from fracking and other energy industry activities drive up rates of asthma, cancer, and other deadly conditions in African American communities. NAACP researchers make the basic mistake of assuming correlation equals causation. They conclude that, because some African Americans communities near fracking sites suffer higher rates of disease, fracking must be causing those conditions.

But there are other factors at play. For instance, 40 percent of asthma risk in minority children is caused by allergens in the home. That has nothing to do with fracking.

Conclusion

Ironically, activists’ obsession with discrediting fracking blinds them to the well-established truth that fracking is an ecological and environmental godsend. Fracking has enabled an unprecedented boom in American natural gas production. Natural gas isn’t just cheaper than coal; it also burns much cleaner.

It’s no wonder that as a power plants have switched from coal to natural gas, air quality has improved. Air pollutants, as well as carbon dioxide emissions, have dropped. And a recent increase in natural gas exports has done wonders for energy market competition.

Activists ought to be celebrating a new era of energy plenty and reliability. Instead, they remain determined to smear fracking with shoddy science. It’s almost as if they have a hidden agenda — one that has nothing to do with what’s good for people and the planet.

The post A New Low in the Media’s War on Fracking appeared first on IER.

Marketing Lessons Learned from 16 Years of Building Moz - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

The lessons Rand has learned from building and growing Moz are almost old enough to drive. From marketing flywheels versus growth hacks, to product launch timing, to knowing your audience intimately, Rand shares his best advice from a decade and a half of marketing Moz in today's edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we are going to chat about some of the big lessons learned for me personally building this company, building Moz over the last 16, 17 years.

Back in February, I left the company full-time. I'm still the Chairman of the Board and contribute in some ways, including an occasional Whiteboard Friday here and there. But what I wanted to do as part of this book that I've written, that's just coming out April 24th, Lost and Founder, is talk about some of the elements in there, maybe even give you a sneak peek.

If you're thinking, "Well, what are the two or three chapters that are super relevant to me?" let me try and walk you through a little bit of what I feel like I've taken away and what I'm going to change going forward, especially stuff that's applicable to those of us in web marketing, in SEO, and in broader marketing.

Marketing flywheels > growth hacks

First off, marketing flywheels, in my experience, almost always beat growth hacks. I know that growth hacks are trendy in the last few years, especially in the startup and technology worlds. There's been this sort of search for the next big growth hack that's going to transform our business. But I've got to be honest with you. Not just here at Moz, but in all of the companies that I've had experience with as a marketer, this tends to be what that looks like when it's implemented.

So folks will find a hack. They'll find some trick that works for a little while, and it results in this type of a spike in their traffic, their conversions, their success metrics of whatever kind. So they've discovered a way to game Facebook or they found this new black hat trick or they found this great conversion device. Whatever it is, it's short term and short lasting. Why is this? It tends to be because of something Andrew Chen calls — and I'll use his euphemism here — it's called the "Law of Shitty Click-through Rates," which essentially says that over time, as people get experienced with a sort of marketing trend, they become immune to its effects.

You can see this in anything that sort of tries to hack at consciousness or take advantage of psychological biases. So you get this pattern of hack, hack, hack, hack, and then none of the hacks you're doing work anymore. Even if you have a tremendously successful one, even if this is six months in length, it tends to be the case that, over time, those diminish and decline.

Conversely, a marketing flywheel is something that you build that generates inertia and energy, such that each effort and piece of energy that you put into it helps it spin faster and faster, and it carries through. It takes less energy to turn it around again and again in the future after you've got it up and spinning. This is how a lot of great marketing works. You build a brand. You build your audience. They come to you. They help it amplify. They bring more and more people back. In the web marketing world, this works really well too.

So most of you are familiar with Moz's flywheel, but I'll try and give it a rough explanation here. We start down here with content ideas that we get from spending lots of time with SEOs. We do keyword research, and we optimize these posts, including look at Whiteboard Friday itself.

What do we do with Whiteboard Friday? You're watching this video, but you'll also see the transcript below. You'll see the podcast version from SoundCloud so that you can listen to the text rather than watch me if you can do audio only for some reason. Each of these little images have been cut out and placed into the text below so that someone who's searching in Google images might find some of these and find their way to Whiteboard Friday. A few months after it goes up here, hosted with Wistia on Moz, it will be put up on YouTube.com so that people can find it there.

So we've done all these sorts of things to optimize these posts. We publish them, and then we earn amplification through all the channels that we have — email, social media, certainly search engines are a big one for us. Then we grow our reach for next time.

Early in the days, early in Moz's history, when I was first publishing, I was writing every blog post myself for many, many years. This was tremendously difficult. We weren't getting much reach. Now, it's an engine that turns on its own. So each time we do it, we earn more SEO ranking ability, more links, more other positive ranking signals. The next time we publish content, it has an even better chance of doing well. So Moz's flywheel keeps spinning, keeps getting faster and faster, and it's easier and easier. Each time I film Whiteboard Friday, I'm a little more experienced. I've gotten a little better at it.

Flywheels come in many different forms

Flywheels come in a lot of forms. It's not just the classic content and SEO one that we're describing here, although I know many of you who watch Whiteboard Friday probably use something similar. But press and PR is a big one that many folks use. I know companies that are built on primarily event marketing, and they have that same flywheel going for them. In advertising, folks have found these, in influencer-focused marketing flywheels, and community and user-generated content to build flywheels. All of these are ways to do that.

Find friction in your flywheels

If and when you find friction in your flywheel, like I did back in my early days, that's when a hack is really helpful. If you can get a hack going to grow reach for next time, for example, in my early days, this was all about doing outreach to folks in the SEO space who were already influential, getting them to pay attention and help amplify Moz's content. That was the hack that I needed. Essentially, it was a combination of the Beginner's Guide to SEO and the Search Ranking Factors document, which I've described here. But that really helped grow reach for next time and made this flywheel start spinning in the way that we wanted. So I would urge you to favor flywheels over hacks.

Marketing an MVP is hard

Second one, marketing an MVP kind of sucks. It's just awful. Great products are rarely minimum viable products. The MVP is a wonderful way to build. I really, really like what Eric Ries has done with that movement, where he's taken this concept of build the smallest possible thing you can that still solves the user's problem, the customer's problem and launch that so that you can learn and iterate from it.

I just have one complaint, which is if you do that publicly, if you launch your MVP publicly and you're already a brand that's well known, you really hurt your reputation. No one ever thinks this. No one ever thinks, "Gosh, you know, Moz launched their first version of new tool X. It's pretty terrible, but I can see how, with a few years of work, it's going to be an amazing product. I really believe in them." No one thinks that way.

What do you think? You think, "Moz launched this product. Why did they launch it? It's kind of terrible. Are they going downhill? Do they suck now? Maybe I should I trust their other tools less." That's how most people think when it comes to an MVP, and that's why it's so dangerous.

So I made this silly chart here. But if the quality goes from crap to best in class and the amplification worthiness goes from zero to viral, it tends to be the case that most MVPs are launching way down here, when they're barely good enough and thus have almost no amplification potential and really can't do much for your marketing other than harm it.

If you instead build it internally, build that MVP internally, test with your beta group, and wait until it gets all the way up to this quality level of, "Wow, that's really good," and lots of people who are using it say, "Gosh, I couldn't live without this. I want to share it with my friends. I want to tell everyone about this. Is it okay to tell people yet?" Maybe it's starting to leak. Now, you're up here. Now, your launch can really do something. We have seen exactly that happen many, many times here at Moz with both MVPs and MVPs where we sat on them and waited. I talk about some of these in the book.

MVPs, great to test internally with a private group. They're also fine if you're really early stage and no one has heard of you. But MVPs can seriously drag down reputation and perception of a brand's quality and equity, which is why I generally recommend against them, especially for marketing.

Living the lives of your customer/audience is a startup + marketing cheat code

Last, but not least, living the lives of your customers or your audience is a cheat code. It is a marketing and startup cheat code. One of the best things that I have ever done is to say, "You know what? I am not going to sequester myself in my office dreaming up this great thing I think we should build or I think that we should do. Instead, I'm going to spend real time with our customers."

So you might remember, at the end of 2013, I did this crazy project with my friend, Wil Reynolds, who runs Seer Interactive. They're an SEO agency based here in the United States, in Philadelphia and San Diego. They do a lot more than SEO. Wil and I traded houses. We traded lives. We traded email accounts. I can't tell you how weird it is answering somebody's email, replying to Wil's mom and being like, "Oh, Mrs. Reynolds, this is actually Rand. Your son, Wil, is answering my email off in Seattle and living in my apartment."

That experience was transformational for me, especially after having gone through the pain of building something that I had conceptualized myself but hadn't validated and hadn't even come up with the idea from real problems that real people were facing. I had come up with it based on what I thought could grow the company. I seriously dislike ideas that come from that perspective now.

So since then, I just try not to assume. I try not to assume that I know what people want. When we film a Whiteboard Friday, it is almost always on a topic that someone I have met and talked to either over email or over Twitter or in person at an event or a conference, we've had a conversation in person. They've said, "I'm struggling with this." I go, "I can make a Whiteboard Friday to help them with that." That's where these content ideas come from.

When I spend time with people doing their job, I was just in San Diego a little while ago meeting with a couple of agencies down there, spending time in their offices showing off a new links tool, getting all their feedback, seeing what they do with Open Site Explorer and Ahrefs and Majestic and doing their work with them, trying to go through the process that they go through and actually experiencing their pain points. I think this right here is the product and marketing cheat code. If you spend time with your audience, experiencing their pain points, the copy you write, what you design, where you place it, who you try and get to influence and amplify it, how you serve them, whether that's through content or through advertising or through events, or whatever kind of marketing you're doing, will improve if you live the lives of your customers and their influencers.

Whatever kind of marketing you're doing will improve if you live the lives of your customers and their influencers.

All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. If you have feedback on this or if you've read the book and checked that out and you liked it or didn't like it, please, I would love to hear from you. I look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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The Crazy Crude Oil Price Controls of the 1970s

In August 1971, President Richard Nixon enacted comprehensive wage-and-price controls in a misguided effort to contain inflationary pressures. (Contrary to the faulty memories of some Americans, this initial round of controls wasn’t due to the OPEC oil embargo, which didn’t occur until 1973.) Free-market economists like to use the long lines at the gas pump as a great teaching example of the problems with price controls. Yet the controls at the consumer and employee level were relaxed, and didn’t interfere with the market as much as, say, we are seeing in Venezuela today.

However, the federal government’s controls on crude oil (and natural gas) were not relaxed. In fact, as problems kept popping up with each round of interventions, the government would enact a new flurry of rules and regulations. Yet perhaps surprisingly, by the end of the decade President Jimmy Carter signed a deal to (gradually) liberalize energy markets, and President Ronald Reagan accelerated the process when he took office.

In the Spring 2018 issue of the Journal of Private Enterprise, I have an article detailing some of the major events and causes in this fascinating chapter of energy history. In the present blog post, I’ll relay just one of the stories, which I learned from the research of Robert Bradley (founder of the Institute for Energy Research).

Specifically, I will tell the story of the “reseller boom,” in which financiers in the oil market made phony trades in order to evade the spirit (and sometimes the letter!) of the price control rules. Thus, clever traders instead siphoned off the ostensible margin of profit that was supposed to go to the American public. The episode was just one of the reasons that even Congress threw in the towel and realized that price controls were a very poor instrument.

The Context: Price Limits on Crude Oil

Due to a combination of factors, including aggressive U.S. monetary printing (Nixon had abandoned the gold standard back in August 1971, along with his other shocking announcements) and the OPEC embargo, the world price of crude oil increased sharply during the 1970s. The U.S. government slapped price ceilings on crude oil in an effort to prevent the price of gasoline skyrocketing for American motorists.

However, the problem was that the U.S. was a net importer of crude oil. Importing refiners had to pay the world price for crude; otherwise, exporting countries would sell the barrels elsewhere to the higher bidders. In order to keep it profitable for refiners to obtain foreign crude and process it into gasoline, American firms needed to be able to charge a high enough price on that crude and related products.

However, the authorities thought they could still compel older, domestic American crude suppliers to continue providing their barrels at a lower, controlled price. The point was to limit the “windfall gains” that these U.S. owners of oil fields would experience, simply because the world price had jumped up. Since they had been perfectly happy to supply oil to refiners in the 1960s at a much lower price—so the thinking went—it shouldn’t cripple supply from these old, domestic sources if they were only allowed to charge a below-market price.

Now we have to add another twist. The process of obtaining crude oil, refining it, and distributing it to retail gasoline stations could involve several different players in the market. As different parties took legal possession of the oil or product and passed it along to the next stage, they would naturally need to be able to earn a “mark up” along the way, or else it wouldn’t be worth doing. So the detailed price controls contained provisions for such mark-ups.

Armed with this context, we can appreciate the reseller boom that Bradley described in his 1996 treatise, Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience, which is the definitive text on this topic.

The Phony Trades of the Reseller Boom

Bradley informs us that “[o]ver 100 new firms, the great majority of which did not have storage facilities or transportation equipment, would enter in the 1973–77 period” (p. 690). This is interesting, because ostensibly the function of these firms was to trade oil. But if they didn’t have storage or transportation abilities, what was going on?

Bradley explains with the following hypothetical “daisy chain” of trades, which is fictitious but based on plausible numbers. (Note that “old oil” means oil coming from established, domestic producers who were subject to the price ceiling, while “new oil” referred to either imports or oil from new producers who were able to charge the world price.)

Assume that Class A gathering margins are $0.15 per barrel and Class B telephone-trading margins are $0.50 per barrel in August 1974, at which time old oil was at $5.25 per barrel and new oil was at a market price of $10.00 per barrel. The following scenario was typical:

Step one: Gatherer A buys old oil at $5.25 per barrel at the lease and transports it to a pipeline connection point where it is sold to Reseller [B] for $5.40 per barrel.

Step two: Reseller B sells to Reseller C for $5.90 per barrel.

Step three: Reseller C sells to Reseller D for $6.40 per barrel. . .

Step eight: Reseller H sells to Reseller I for $8.90 per barrel.

Step nine: Reseller I sells to Gatherer A for $9.40 per barrel.

Step ten: Gatherer A ships the crude in his facilities to [a refiner] who purchases it for refining at $9.55 per barrel. (Bradley 1996, p. 690)

In the above sequence, the only truly “economic” transactions were Gatherer A getting the oil and transferring it to the pipeline, through which it can be delivered to a refiner. But because of the price control regime in place, this move would only allow Gatherer A to reap 15 cents of a markup, with the windfall gain—the difference between the world price of crude at $10 and the controlled domestic price of $5.25—accruing mostly to the refiner (and possibly the consumers, depending on how much was passed along).

Rather than let this large gap in potential mark-ups get away, financiers came up with a clever way to “trade” barrels of “old oil” around in a circle, without physically moving them. These were all telephone transactions on paper. But technically, each change of possession allowed for a 50-cent markup. Thus, rather than Gatherer A turning over the barrels to the refiner at $5.40 each, he can instead charge them $9.55. He and the other paper-traders have pocketed the gap between the “old oil” controlled price and the world market price of crude.

Conclusion

The crude oil “daisy chain” reseller boom is just one example of the absurdity of the 1970s price controls on the oil and gas sector. For more, consult my article. Price controls always carry unintended consequences, but in this episode, the tradeoffs were particularly disastrous. Far from taking “windfall profits” from domestic oil producers and distributing them to the consumers, the price control regulations instead gave opportunities to shrewd speculators to reap income from “regulatory arbitrage.”

The post The Crazy Crude Oil Price Controls of the 1970s appeared first on IER.

Would you walk a mile for water?

“Before going to school, her children would have to walk a mile each morning to fetch water for daily use. They would be late for school and were often punished for being tardy.”

Solar Energy International alum Bilal Ahmed believes that everyone deserves access to clean water. A trained physician, Bilal took SEI classes so he could use solar energy as a tool to provide access to clean water in rural Pakistan.

“Now they have access to water literally in their back yard. Their mother shared that her mind is now at ease because her children can get to school on time.”

You can increase energy access to those who need it most.

Bilal’s company Stellargenesys works to provide access to water in rural Pakistan. Recently he came across a local community that had no access to a usable water source. The local well was abandoned and unusable because the water table was deep, and there was no electricity to help draw water.

The closest source of usable water was about a mile away from the community. Stellargenesys successfully installed a solar powered water pump to provide water access for the local community. “On our last check, a few weeks ago, the project was delivering the much-needed water to the community!” The solar water pump provides running water to approximately 50 households in the village near Karachi, Pakistan.

Please donate to SEI today to invest in the next generation of solar heroes.

“When we think about the impact that our alumni are having across the world, it gives us all goosebumps. Though we’re not in Pakistan setting up wells or powering schools, our alumni are. And they are doing this work everywhere in the world. With our 60,000+ alumni, we are getting closer every day to a world powered by renewable energy. Keep up the great work!” – Kathy Swartz, Solar Energy International Executive Director

An aerial video of the solar-powered water pump, installed in rural Pakistan by Stellargenesys. This video was provided by Bilal Ahmed. 

The post Would you walk a mile for water? appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).

Enterprise Local SEO is Different: A Checklist, a Mindset

Posted by MiriamEllis

Image credit: Abraham Williams

If you’re marketing big brands with hundreds or thousands of locations, are you certain you’re getting model-appropriate local SEO information from your favorite industry sources?

Is your enterprise checking off not just technical basics, but hyperlocalized research to strengthen its entrance into new markets?

Before I started working for Moz in in 2010, the bulk of my local SEO experience had been with small-to-medium business models. Naturally, the advice I was able to offer back then was limited by the scope of my work. But then came Moz Local, and the opportunity to learn more about the more complex needs of valued enterprise customers like Crate & Barrel with more than 170 locations, PAPYRUS with 400, or Bridgestone Corporation with 2000+.

Now, when I’m thumbing through industry tips and tactics, I’m better able to identify when a recommended practice is stemming from an SMB mindset and falling short of enterprise realities, or is truly applicable to all business models. My goal for this post is to offer:

• Examples of commonly encountered advice that isn’t really best for big brands
• An Enterprise Local SEO Checklist to help you shape strategy for present campaigns, or ready your agency to pursue relationships with bigger dream clients
• A state-to-enterprise wireframe for initial hyperlocal marketing research

Not everything you read is for enterprises

When a brand is small, like a single location, family-owned retail shop, it’s likely that a single person at the company can manage the business’ Local SEO, with some free education and a few helpful tools. Large, multi-location brands, just by dint of organizational complexities, are different. Before they even get down to the nitty gritty of building citations, enterprises have to solve for:

• Standardizing data across hundreds or thousands of locations
• Franchise relationships that can muddy who controls which data and assets
• Designating staff to actually manage data and execute initiatives, and building bridges between teams that must work in concert to meet goals
• Scaling everything from listings management, to site architecture, to content dev
• Dealing with a hierarchy of reports of bad data from the retail location level up to corporate

I am barely scratching the surface here. In a nutshell, the scale of the organization and the scope of the multi-location brand can turn a task that would be simple for Mom-and-Pop into a major, company-wide challenge. And I think it adds to the challenge when published advice for SMBs isn’t labeled as such. Over the years, three common tips I’ve encountered with questionable or no applicability to enterprises include:

Not-for-enterprises #1: Link all your local business listings to your homepage

This is sometimes offered as a suggestion to boost local rankings, because website home pages typically have more authority than location landing pages do. But in the enterprise scenario, sending a consumer from a listing for his chosen location, to a homepage, and then expecting him to fool around with a menu or a store locator widget to finally reach a landing page for the location he’s already designated that he wanted is not respecting his user experience. It’s wasting his time. I consider this an unnecessary risk of conversions.

Simultaneously, failure to fully utilize location landing pages means that very little can be done to customize the website experience for each community and customer. Directly-linked-to landing pages can provide instant, persuasive proofs of local-ness, in the form of real local reviews, news about local sponsorships and events, special offers, regional product highlights, imagery and so much more that no corporate homepage can ever provide. Consider these statistics:

“According to a new study, when both brand and location-specific pages exist, 85% of all consumer engagement takes place on the local pages (e.g., Facebook Local Pages, local landing pages). A minority of impressions and engagement (15%) happen on national or brand pages.” - Local Search Association

In the large, multi-location scenario, it just isn’t putting the customer first to swap out a hoped-for ranking increase for a considerate, well-planned user experience.

Not-for-enterprises #2: Local business listings are a one-and-done deal

I find this advice particularly concerning. I don’t consider it true even for SMBs, and at the enterprise level, it’s simply false. It’s my guess that this suggestion stems from imagining a single local business. They create their Google My Business listing and build out perhaps 20–50 structured citations with good data. What could go wrong?

For starters, they may have forgotten that their business name was different 10 years ago. Oh, and they did move across town 5 years ago. And this old data is sitting somewhere in a major aggregator like Acxiom, and somehow due to the infamous vagaries of data flow, it ends up on Bing, and a Bing user gets confused and reports to Google that the new address is wrong on the GMB listing … and so on and so on. Between data flow and crowdsourced editing, a set-and-forget approach to local business listings is trouble waiting to happen.

Now multiply this by 1,000 business locations. And throw in that the enterprise opened two new stores yesterday and closed one. And that they just acquired a new chain and have to rebrand all its assets. And there seems to be something the matter with the phone number on 25 listings, because they’re getting agitated complaints at corporate. And they received 500 reviews last week on Google alone that have to be managed, and it seems one of their competitors is leaving them negative reviews. Whoa – there are 700 duplicate listings being reported by Moz Local! And the brand has 250 Google Questions & Answers queries to respond to this week. And someone just uploaded an image of a dumpster to their GMB listing in Santa Fe…

Not only do listings have to be built, they have to be monitored for data degradation, and managed for inevitable business events, responsiveness to consumers, and spam. It’s hard enough for SMBs to pull all of this off, but enterprises ignore this at their peril!

Not-for-enterprises #3: Just do X

Every time a new local search feature or best practice emerges, you’ll find publications saying “just do X” to implement. What I’ve learned from enterprises is that there is no “just” about it.

Case in point: in 2017, Google rolled out Google Posts, and as Joel Headley of healthcare practice growth platform PatientPop explained to me in a recent interview, his company had to quickly develop a solution that would enable thousands of customers to utilize this influential feature across hundreds of thousands of listings. PatientPop managed implementation in an astonishingly short time, but typically, at the enterprise level, each new rollout requires countless steps up and down the ladder. These could include achieving recognition of the new opportunity, approval to pursue it, designation of teams to work on it, possible acquisition of new assets to accomplish goals, implementation at scale, and the groundwork of tracking outcomes so that they can be reported to prove/disprove ROI from the effort.

Where small businesses can be relatively agile if they can find time to man-up to new features and strategies, enterprises can become dangerously bogged down by infrastructure and communications gaps. Even something as simple as hyperlocalizing content to the needs of a given community represents a significant undertaking.

The family-owned local hardware store already knows that the county fair is the biggest annual event in their area, and they’ve already got everything necessary to participate with a booth, run a contest, take photos, sponsor the tractor pull, earn links, and blog about it. For the hardware franchise with 3,000 stores, branch-to-corporate communication of the mere existence of the county fair, let alone gaining permission to market around it, will require multiple touches from the location to C-suites, and back again.

Checklist for enterprise local SEO preparedness

If you’re on the marketing team for an enterprise, or you run an agency and want to begin working with these larger, rewarding clients, you’ll be striving to put a checkmark in every box on the following checklist:

☑ Definition of success

We’ve determined which actions = success for our brand, whether this is increases for in-store traffic, sales, phone calls, bookings, or some other metric. When we see growth in these KPIs, it will affirm for us that our efforts are creating real success.

☑ Designation of roles

We’ve defined who will be responsible for all tasks relating to the local search marketing of our business. We’ve equipped these team members with all necessary permissions, granted access to key documentation, have organized workflows, and have created an environment for documentation of work.

☑ Canonical data

We’ve created a spreadsheet, approved and agreed upon by all major departments, that lists the standardized name, address, phone number, website URL, and hours of operation for each location of the company. Any variant information has been resolved into a single, agreed-upon data set for each location. This sheet has been shared with all stakeholders managing our local business listings, marketing, website and social outreach.

☑ Website optimization

Our keyword research findings are reflected in the tags and text of our website, including image optimization. Complete contact information for each of our locations is easily accessible on the site and is accurate. We’ve implemented proper markup, such as Schema or JSON-LD, to ensure that our data is as clear as possible to search engines.

☑ Website quality

Our website is easy to navigate and provides a good, usable experience for desktop, mobile and tablet users. We understand that the omni-channel search environment includes ambient search in cars, in homes, via voice. Our website doesn’t rely on technologies that exclude search engines or consumers. We’re putting our customer first.

☑ Tracking and analysis

We’ve implemented maximum controls for tracking and analyzing traffic to our website. We’re also ready to track and analyze other forms of marketing, such as clicks stemming from our Google My Business listings traffic being driven to our website by articles on third party sources, and content we’re sharing via social media.

☑ Publishing strategy

Our website features strong basic pages (Home, Contact, About, Testimonials/Reviews, Policy), we’ve built an excellent, optimized page for each of our core products/services and a quality, unique page for each of our locations. We have a clear strategy as to ongoing content publication, in the form of blog posts, white papers, case studies, social outreach, and other forms of content. We have plans for hyperlocalizing content to match regional culture and needs.

☑ Store locator

We’ve implemented a store locator widget to connect our website’s users to the set of location landing pages we’ve built to thoughtfully meet the needs of specific communities. We’ve also created an HTML version of a menu linking to all of these landing pages to ensure search engines can discover and index them.

☑ Local link building

We’re building the authority of our brand via the links we earn from the most authoritative sources. We’re actively seeking intelligent link building opportunities for each of our locations, reflective of our industry, but also of each branch’s unique geography.

☑ Guideline compliance

We’ve assessed that each of the locations our business plans to build local listings for complies with the Guidelines for Representing Your Business on Google. Each location is a genuine physical location (not a virtual office or PO box) and conducts face-to-face business with consumers, either at our locations or at customers’ locations. We’re compliant with Google’s rules for the naming of each location, and, if appropriate, we understand how to handle listing multi-department and multi-practitioner businesses. None of our Google My Business listings is at risk for suspension due to basic guideline violations. We’ve learned how to avoid every possible local SEO pitfall.

☑ Full Google My Business engagement

We’re making maximum use of all available Google My Business features that can assist us in achieving our goals. This could include Google Posts, Questions & Answers, Reviews, Photos, Messaging, Booking, Local Service Ads, and other emerging features.

☑ Local listing development

We’re using software like Moz Local to scale creation of our local listings on the major aggregators (Infogroup, Acxiom, Localeze and Factual) as well as key directories like Superpages and Citysearch. We’re confident that our accurate, consistent data is being distributed to these most important platforms.

☑ Local listing monitoring

We know that local listings aren’t a set-and-forget asset and are taking advantage of the ongoing monitoring SaaS provides, increasing our confidence in the continued accuracy of our data. We’re aware that, if left unmanaged, local business listing data can degrade over time, due to inputs from various, non-authoritative third parties as well as normal data flow across platforms.

☑ In-store strategy

All public-facing staff are equipped with the necessary training to implement our brand’s customer service policy, answer FAQs or escalate them via a clear hierarchy, resolving complaints before they become negative online reviews. We have installed in-store signage or other materials to actively invite consumer complaints in-person, via an after-hours helpline or text message to ensure we are making maximum effort to build and defend our strong reputation.

☑ Review acquisition

We’ve developed a clear strategy for acquiring reviews on an ongoing basis on the review sites we’ve deemed to be most important to our brand. We’re compliant with the guidelines of each platform on which we’re earning reviews. We’re building website-based reviews and testimonials, too.

☑ Review monitoring & response

We’re monitoring all incoming reviews to identify both positive and negative emerging sentiment trends at specific locations and we’re conversant with Net Promoter Score. We’ve created a process for responding with gratitude to positive reviews. We’re defending our reputation and revenue by responding to negative reviews in ways that keep customers who complain instead of losing them, to avoid needless drain of new customer acquisition spend. Our responses are building a positive impression of our brand. We’ve built or acquired solutions to manage reviews at scale.

☑ Local PR

Each location of our brand has been empowered to build a local footprint in the community it serves, customizing outreach to match community culture. We’re exploring sponsorships, scholarships, workshops, conferences, news opportunities, and other forms of participation that will build our brand via online links and social mentions as well as offline WOM marketing. We’re continuously developing cohesive online/offline outreach for maximum impact on brand recognition, rankings, reputation, and revenue.

☑ Social media

We’ve identified the social platforms that are most popular with our consumer base and a best fit for our brand. We’re practicing ongoing social listening to catch and address positive and negative sentiment trends as they arise. We’ve committed to a social mindset based on sharing rather than the hard sell.

☑ Spam-ready

We’re aware that our brand, our listings, and our reviews may be subject to spam, and we know what options are available for reporting it. We’re also prepared to detect when the spammy behaviors of competitors (such as fake addresses, fake negative/positive reviews, or keyword stuffing of listings) are giving them an unfair advantage in our markets, and have a methodology for escalating reports of guideline violations.

☑ Paid media

We’re investing wisely in both on-and-offline paid media and carefully tracking and analyzing the outcomes of online pay-per-click, radio, TV, billboards, and phone sales strategy. We’re exploring new opportunities, as appropriate and as they emerge, like Google Local Service Ads.

☑ Build/buy

When any new functionality (like Google Posts or Google Q&A) needs to be managed at scale, we have a process for determining whether we need to build or acquire new technology. We know we have to weigh the pros/cons of developing in-house or buying ready-made solutions.

☑ Competitive difference-maker

Once you’ve checked off all of the above elements, you’re ready to move forward towards identifying a USP for your brand that no one else in your market has explored. Be it a tool, widget, app, video marketing campaign, newsworthy acquisition, new partnership, or some other asset, this venture will require deep competitive and market research to discover a need that has yet to be filled well by your competitors. If your business can serve this need, it can set your brand apart for years to come.

Free advice, specifically for local enterprises

It’s asserted that customers may forget what you say, but they’ll never forget how you make them feel.

Call me a Californian, but I continue to be amazed by automotive TV spots that show large trucks driving through beautiful creeks (thanks for tearing up precious riparian habitat during our state-wide drought) and across pristine arctic snowfields (instantly reminding me of climate change). Meanwhile, my family have become Tesla-spotters, seeing that “zero emissions” messaging on the tail of every luxury eco-vehicle that passes us by. As consumers, we know how we feel.

Technical and organizational considerations aside, this is where I see one of the greatest risks posed to the local enterprise structure. Insensitivity at a regional or hyperlocal level -- the failure to research customer needs with the intention of meeting them — has been responsible for some of the most startling bad news for enterprises in recent recall. From ignored negative reviews across fast food franchises, to the downsizing of multiple apparel retailers who have been unable to stake a clear claim in the shifting shopping environment, brands that aren’t successful at generating positive consumer “feelings” may need to reevaluate not just their local search marketing mindset, but their basic identity.

If this sounds uncomfortable or risky, consider that we are seeing a rising trend in CEOs taking stands on issues of national import in America. This is about feelings. Consumers are coming to expect this, and it feeds down to the local level.

Hyperlocalized market research

If your brand is considering opening a new branch in a new state or city, you’ll be creating profiles as part of your research. These could be based on everything from reading local news to conducting formal surveys. If I were to do something like this for my part of California, these are the factors I’d be highlighting about the region:

California	Enterprises
We’ve been blasted by drought and wildfire. In 2017, alone, we went through 9,133 fires. On a positive note, Indigenous thought-leadership is beginning to be re-implemented in some areas to solve our worst ecological problems (water scarcity, salmon loss, absence of traditional forestry practices).	Can your brand help conserve water, re-house thousands of homeless residents, fund mental health services despite budget cuts, make legal services affordable, provide solutions for increased future safety? What are your green practices? Are you helping to forward ecological recovery efforts at a tribal, city or state level?
We’re grumbling more loudly about tech gentrification. If you live in Mississippi, sit down for this. The average home price in your state is $199,028. In my part of California, it’s $825,000. In San Francisco, specifically, you’ll need $1.2 million dollars to buy a tiny studio apartment... if you can find one. While causes are complex, people I talk with generally blame Silicon Valley.	Can your brand be part of this conversation? If not, you’re not really addressing what is on statewide consumers’ minds. Particularly if you’re marketing a tech-oriented company, taking the housing crisis seriously and coming up with solutions for even a modest amount of relief would certainly be positive and newsworthy.
We’ve turned to online shopping for an interesting variety of reasons. And it’s not just because we’re techie hipsters. The retail inventory in big cities (San Francisco) can be overwhelming to sort through, and in small towns (Cloverdale), the shopping options are too few to meet our basic and luxury desires.	Can your brand thrive in the gaps? If you’re located in a metro area, you may need to offer personal assistance to help consumers filter through options. If you’ve got a location somewhere near small towns, strategies like same-day delivery could help you remain competitive.
We’ve got our Hispanic/Latino identity back. Our architecture, city and street names are daily reminders that California has a lot more to do with Mexico than it ever did with the Mayflower. We may have become part of the U.S. in 1850, but pay more attention to 2014 — the year that our Hispanic/Latino community became the state’s largest ethnic group. This is one of the most vibrant happenings here. At the same time, our governor has declared us a sanctuary state for immigrants, and we’re being sued for it by the Justice Department.	Can your brand celebrate our state’s diversity? If you’re doing business in California today, you’ll need bilingual marketing, staff, and in-store amenities. Pew Research publishes ongoing data about the Hispanic/Latino segment of our population. What is your brand doing to ensure that these customers feel truly served?
We’re politically diverse. Our single state is roughly the same size as Sweden, and we truly do run the political gamut from A–Z here. Are citizens removing a man-made dam heroically restoring ecology or getting in the way of commerce? You’ll find voices on every side.	Can your brand take the risk of publicizing its honest core values? If so, you are guaranteed to win and lose Californian customers, so do your research and be prepared to own your stance. Know that at a regional level, communities differ greatly. Those TV ads that show trucks running roughshod through fragile ecosystems may fly in some cities and be viewed with extreme distaste in others.
Money is top of mind. More than ⅓ of Californians have zero savings. Over½ of the citizens have less than $1000 in savings. We invest more in Welfare than the next two states combined. And while our state has the highest proportion of resident billionaires, they are vastly outnumbered by citizens who are continuously anxious about struggling to get by. Purchasing decisions are seldom easy.	Can your brand employ a significant number of residents and pay them a living wage? Could your entry into a new market lift poverty in a town and provide better financial security? This would be newsworthy! Have ideas for lowering prices? You’ll get some attention there, too.

Obviously, I’m painting with broad strokes here, just touching on some of the key points that your enterprise would need to consider in determining to commence operations in any city or state. Why does this matter? Because the hyperlocalization of marketing is on the rise, and to engage with a community, you must first understand it.

Every month, I see businesses shutter because someone failed to apprehend true local demand. Did that bank pick a good location for a new branch? Yes — the next branch is on the other side of the city. Will the new location of the taco franchise remain open? No — it’s already sitting empty while the beloved taco wagon down the street has a line that spills out of its parking lot all night long.

Summing up

"What helps people, helps business." - Leo Burnett

The checklist in this post can help you create an enterprise-appropriate strategy for well-organized local search marketing, and it’s my hope that you’ll evaluate all SEO advice for its fitness to your model. These are the basic necessities. But where you go from there is the exciting part. The creative solutions you find to meet the specific wants and needs of individualized service communities could spell out the longevity of your brand’s success.

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