BrightLocal Spotlight is a brand-new series exploring the human side of digital marketing. This month we’re hearing from BrightLocal CEO and Co-founder, Myles Anderson, about his personal experiences dealing with the crisis in Ukraine, going head-to-head with Google, and what he’s learned about leadership.

BrightLocal itself was born out of my own personal crisis. Losing my job resulted in an all-time personal low, and it was a huge learning experience for me. In the time since BrightLocal was born, we’ve had four instances of true crises. Each of these has helped shape both who I am as a person and BrightLocal as a business itself.

The crises I’ve worked through since starting BrightLocal have made me acutely aware that people look to you much more in these times to see how you react and behave. I’ve had to accept that responsibility.

Now, a year on from the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, I wanted to reflect on what leading through a crisis means for me.

And it’s simple… it always comes back to the people.

When I think about the crises we’ve been through over the last 13 years, there are four distinct moments or periods of time that come to mind.

The first of these came when Google made major changes to how they work. Many in the SEO industry worry about algorithm updates, but for us as an SEO tool provider, the important part is access. Rarely, Google changes how scraping happens on their platform, and on two of these occasions, they’ve completely blocked us out.

As we go to Google to provide data, not only for rank tracking insights and monitoring but also for reviews and Google Business Profile audits, you can imagine how much of a nightmare this was

None of our tools worked.

No data was coming through because of bot detection. That’s an instant crisis.

We had to work out:

• How could we get this data back?
• What did it mean for our customers?
• What does it mean for our business and people?

To better focus our efforts, and to avoid butting up against future Google changes, we diversified our data sources.

These are crises that, while predominately technical, have a big human impact, which to some may not be easy to see.

The other two times of crisis are more immediately obvious for their human impact. And, while the Google fixes could generally be resolved in a few fractious days, these have taken huge chunks of time.

First came COVID-19. While there were rocky days early on (we lost a full 15% of our customers in the first three weeks), we were lucky to be working in an industry that thrived during the pandemic. After eight weeks we’d already regained what we’d lost, as local businesses turned to their websites, offered curbside pickup, and other workarounds.

We were lucky that this crisis allowed us to play specifically to our strengths, offering market-leading local marketing tools when people were pivoting to online, during a time of digital transformation.

Finally, and most critically, there’s the Russia-Ukraine invasion and subsequent escalation into war: a crisis that we are still well within. With 30 members of our team based in Ukraine, this introduced a completely different set of circumstances that affected us and our wider team directly. It has led to intensely personal and professional stress for them and those within BrightLocal.

Not only that, but the war itself has caused wider shockwaves across the marketing world and economy, with price increases all over the world.

Each crisis provided its own unique set of challenges and stresses. Each offered me the opportunity to step up and lead in a way I’d not had to before.

Being a Leader During Times of Crisis

If I’m being honest, these times really bring out the best in me.

I functioned well during these periods. I’ve discovered that I function at my best with time pressure. I always did university papers last minute and thrived in time-pressured exams. Having all the balls up in the air lets me dial up my skills to their maximum potential.

I completely understand that this way of working isn’t for everyone. It’s perfect for me, but understanding that there are all sorts of different types helps me lead more effectively.

Personally, though, I come alive and deliver my best work when under pressure.

It’s imperative not to try and manufacture these situations though. While pressure brings out my best qualities as a leader, it’s not something I seek out.

The crises I’ve worked through as a leader since starting BrightLocal have made me acutely aware that people look to you much more in a time of crisis to see how you react and behave. I’ve had to accept that responsibility. This focus means you need to take a lead and assess how bad the situation is.

I have a habit of internalizing my panic and fear. The concern is very real and something that impacts me—my sleep and my stress levels in particular. While this is the case, I know I can’t panic everyone around me.

I have to moderate my own outward behavior to be much calmer. While I will make sure I don’t completely hide my stress and concern, I strive to make it clear that I’m not visibly shaken. I exude calmness to keep the team steady.

The theory goes: if the people around me see I’m not panicking, then they’ll have faith that they’re okay and that the situation is fixable.

For example, on the two occasions that Google effectively shut down our key tools, members of the team were naturally questioning their immediate and long-term employment.

What if Google blocking the scrapes simply meant “that was it”, and we’d have no other way to find the data? I had to show my team that I understood the situation and that I shared some of their stresses. But, at the same time, I had to show I was calm and that I was working toward a solution.

Communication is key to successfully navigating any crisis.

Regular, detailed, and clear communication is imperative, especially internally within the business. You can’t let people feel like something major has crept up on them. Control your own narrative and you’ll stop people from creating their own myths about what’s going on.

Be open. You never want hidden skeletons suddenly emerging from the closet. 

I’ve always found that you need to make sure you work with a group to solve key issues, too. You want to involve enough people, but not everyone. If you’re not careful, you burden everyone with the responsibility, and the rest of your business can grind to a halt.

You need to let most people carry on doing what they do best, to help keep everything running, then dedicate the right focused resource to fixing the problem.

All of this allows for trust in leadership. It shows you have at least some element of control over the situation at hand. Trust and authenticity are key.

Be truthful. Don’t hide anything. Show that you understand the situation.

Communicating with our customers during a time of crisis is also critical. It’s important that we make sure we’re open and honest, but, it needs to be said, it does work a little differently.

We don’t always give our customers the full insight immediately. We don’t want to panic them, or cause alarm. We want to show them that, whatever the situation, we can rectify or minimize the impact of it, and that we are always able to find a solution and get back on track.

It’s essential to make sure they aren’t impacted.

We’re lucky that we have an incredibly loyal customer base that has supported us through thick and thin over the years—especially during those early issues with Google, as I mentioned earlier.

The key, we’ve found, is that you can be a lot more open in a retrospective sense. Once you’ve found a solution, you can talk about a positive future and avoid causing customers completely undue concern.

Company Culture Is Essential at Times of Crisis; Don’t Let It Slip

We’ve been big on culture at BrightLocal right from the start. It’s always been about treating individuals as individuals and caring on a personal level. We are generous and considerate to each other, and to our customers and suppliers.

We’ve always wanted a combination where we offer long-term value to our customers that provides great value, while we create a good environment for people to work in.

Time and effort go into recruiting and developing our people. We have to make sure we get stronger with each addition to the team.

In good times, it’s very easy to maintain this and to invest in culture, whether that’s training, coaching, expanding your benefits, or company socials.

But, when bad times come along, it’s easy for panic mode to kick in.

It becomes easy to lose sight of the culture you’ve been building. It’s when a good company culture is tested the most. Can you be as strong and true to your culture when you’re grappling with major issues? When the sun isn’t shining, and everything isn’t rosy, are you still investing in your culture?

A great test of our own culture has been when people have really come together around a challenge or problem. It’s been excellent proof of our investment in culture paying off. People are willing to put in hard shifts to solve problems. The openness has made communication and collaboration smooth and made people willing to put in the effort to solve challenges.

The way our team dug in to solve the Google blocking issue is one example of this, as is our transition to virtual teams during COVID-19.

There’s no greater example, however, than how our teams have reacted to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022—how we rallied and came together.

When the invasion began, we helped people to flee. We had to get properties in western Ukraine to give them a safe place to go, and we had to help them get there. We supported our Ukrainian brothers and sisters to do what they needed to do.

We had to help in every way we possibly could.

On the other side of things, we also had to keep the lines of communication open with our customers to show them that not only were we still operating, but that we were keeping our people safe.

It was a true test of, and proof of, our strong culture.

When the bad times hit, we still saw investing in culture as valuable. We never stopped providing training and coaching. We continued to support our team members in whatever ways we could. We leaned into the strongest parts of our culture.

Never Forget the Human Aspect of a Crisis

Dealing with a crisis can make you laser-focused on a solution, especially if it’s a technical problem. You want to instantly know what’s gone wrong and how you can fix it. It makes it easy to ignore the human impact and the toll it can have.

The instant urge is ‘to do anything’ to get a fix in place. This can put intense pressure on team members: asking them to do extra hours, drop other tasks, skip breaks, and all sorts of other things. Leaders at these times can forget that there are always people they’ll be impacting.

Niceties can go out the window. They shouldn’t.

It can be simple to find a solution that resolves the crisis at hand but that has huge human capital damage. When this happens:

• People lose faith in the leader
• There’s no trust left in you or the business
• You’ve likely acted in complete contrast to the culture you preach

People will think, justly, “Well, you didn’t look after me during a testing moment. My humanity was thrown out the window. Why should I trust you?”

You must recognize their contribution. And recognize if something is too much for someone. Don’t put them in a situation where they can’t cope. At these times, pressure can make people reluctant to speak up as they feel the need to go “all-in”. You need to make sure they aren’t put in this position to begin with.

Keeping an eye on the long term allows you to recognize the human impact. If you let it slip, it could tarnish people’s view of you and your relationships with them.

Focus on teamwork and collaboration. Understand this is a real test for your culture. You must keep doing what’s important. People around the crisis will see that culture means something to you when they can see you’re focusing on the human aspect.

Morale is important and should be protected.

Don’t Ignore the Impact on You as a Person

Each of these crises has impacted me on a personal level, particularly during the Ukraine war, which began a year ago this week.

During the Christmas of 2022, I took a long break. I hadn’t realized just how exhausted I was. I’d taken holidays, and had time away from work over the year, but at the end of it, I was truly shattered.

What I worked out was that even though I’d taken time off, I’d never truly disengaged from the crisis.

I realized that my daily routine had become update-centric. I’d wake up earlier than usual. Often 5 or 6 am. First things first: check the news and social media stories. Work out what’s going on in Ukraine and see whether our colleagues are affected.

Across the day I’d be taking any chance I could to get updated. It would also be the last thing I was doing before attempting to sleep. It took a big emotional toll.

It was always in the back of my head.

Of course, it hopefully goes without saying that this was nothing compared to the realities of our colleagues in Ukraine. But, when you can’t switch off, it’s constantly chipping away at your energy and undermining your mental and physical health. It makes it harder to lead.

Even when I’d take holidays, I’d be checking in, or arranging some aspect of our Local SEO for Ukraine supply trip. I simply wasn’t having a real break.

When Christmas finally came around, I slept. Finally.

I spent some time reflecting on how I dealt with the crisis and came away with some key learnings.

Next time I’m in such an intense crisis, I’m going to properly manage my energy levels and make sure I maintain what’s important to me. I realized that sleep and exercise are key to my own wellbeing, and I’d let those slip.

I didn’t exercise for the first three months of the Ukraine war. I slept horrendously, often getting to bed at 1 am and waking up at 5 am.

And I’d go from that straight into the news cycle…

I left myself no chance to recuperate. It made me a bad husband and father. It reduced my effectiveness as a leader. All this took a remarkable toll on me.

I learned that while I am desperate to be engaged, you have to take breaks occasionally. If I’m not careful, being consistently “on” actually makes me less effective. I have to understand that those around me can also provide support.

Self Belief is Key

Each of the four crises I’ve mentioned in here has shown me that people can, and will, come through these things. Maintaining that belief is important.

BrightLocal was born out of this deep, personal crisis.

Before Ed [Eliot, BrightLocal Co-founder] and I jumped off the deep end and founded BrightLocal, I’d just been made redundant. I had been working at eHarmony for 11 months, looking after business development in the UK. I loved it all, from the ethos to the culture, but unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.

When I lost my job, I questioned everything about myself. It hit my self-esteem hard. I felt like a total failure. Hated myself. Hated the experience. I had two young children and was desperate that they wouldn’t look at their father as a loser, and say “you can’t do this!”. What if they thought I’d never amount to anything?

At this point, I decided I had to do something for myself. I had to put myself in control of my life to make my kids proud of me. And so BrightLocal was born out of this deep, personal crisis.

The truth is, we tend to come out the other side. We always have done.

This means I always have faith that the good times will come and that better things lie ahead.

I’ve learned how important it is to let others in, and to share responsibility with the right people. Not everyone needs to be involved in solving a problem directly. Make sure you keep enough people focused on what they’re good at too.

But, and I cannot stress this enough, do not do it alone. Share the responsibility. Done properly it will provide real empowerment for others.

And finally: never, ever, lose sight of the people, as without them, what are you?

Over that time we have been working hard to support our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, whether that’s relocating them, providing generators, emergency aid, or through other means. We made it clear that we’d support our colleagues however they decided to cope with the invasion.

We are consistently reminded of the strength, bravery, resilience, and unwavering commitment of our colleagues. Among air raids, power outages, and hours of waiting through debilitating uncertainty, they have carried on and continued to show up for the rest of us. We are immensely proud of and thankful for them.

People from our team have bravely shared their stories on how the last year has affected them, their loved ones, and the nation of Ukraine.

Slava Ukraini!

Valentyna, Yana and Alex

Dima L

My story began as for many on February 24 at 5 am.

We lived in Kharkiv on the northern part of the Salotovka, on this year’s day we woke up and did not understand what is happening. We thought that someone was doing bad jokes and that on the street, someone was launching fireworks.

But, it became louder and louder. Opening the window, we saw that it was not a joke. The war had begun. Our parents called us and asked us to leave Kharkiv for safer places. More missiles flew.

Having collected a disturbing suitcase which included: dry rations, documents, funds, and a laptop, we began to move.

The way from Kharkiv to Transcarpathia took 4 days. It was a long four days. Columns of civilian cars were moving from refueling to refueling, fuel was becoming less and less. All cars were cautious when near large cities and critical infrastructure.

I remember very well that in those first two weeks, significant attention was paid to the news. All the news in the telegram channel was filled with pain and despair, and from time to time reflected the courage and resilience of our soldiers.

Hope is alive!

Friends offered their home where we moved. I went to the military Committee and became registered. Since I had a military education in one of the specialties, I became a reserve, and waited until I may be useful.

The evening of one of the Friday rallies, a phone rings, which will turn my life upside down.

Having picked up the phone, there is a proposal from which you will not be able to refuse, to appear immediately at the military commons. Having come to the military commons I was given directions for selection and training.

At the end of the study, it was possible to choose where I could serve–without delay I chose the city closer to my home. The feeling was this was where I had to serve. From that moment it became clear that everyday life ended with an inherent routine.

Lived in cold rooms where there were always constant draughts and dampness. During the rain, I counted droplets that were seeping through the ceiling. But we paid no attention because everyone had one wish–to stop the enemy and win.,

The company in which I work very strongly supports me and my country at the whole stage, it has provided help of the funds for the purchase of necessary things for the Armed Forces and food for civilians. This impressed me very much how everyone in the company got into our pain, everyone wanted to help.

This supports us!

At present, the true face of the enemy is already known–we are not afraid. There is already a plan to begin rebuilding construction–we are approaching our victory together.

Mykola B

Zdorovia (Бажаю здоров’я)! It is the Ukrainian military greeting, my friends. It translates to ‘I wish you health!’

So almost one year passed after Russia started the big, unprovoked war against us (Russia started a hybrid war 8 years ago). I remember how everyone talk about what would they do in that scenario. And, to be honest I didn’t know my answer to that question.

I just knew I can’t step aside. What should I do?

On the 3rd day, I realize I want to help to defend our capital. But, as I had never been in the army before and didn’t know how to use weapons I was sent home, as I could harm myself or a friendly unit.

Then I came to TRO and left my phone number, but they didn’t call me yet. There were hundreds of men and women waiting for their turn.

I remember a girl, who was a student at the medical institute, she didn’t live close, and she walked over 20 kilometers to get there to leave her phone number in case they need her as a war paramedic. She was so small, and tiny but she has a big heart and desire to help our country. I hope she is well now.

I stayed in the capital for 2 weeks. There were a lot of explosions, air alarms, and nights in a basement with other neighbors. Finally, me and Katya, my girlfriend, decide to move to my relatives in Ivano Frankivsk. After we came there on the third day I came to the military commissariat and was sent to a training camp where my military life started.

I remember the first night. Air alarms at night, four hours of waiting, that sound of Russian missiles that fly above our heads and struck a barracks of friendly units just 1.5 kilometers from us, more than 30 people died that night.

That spring everything changed. And as soon as I could I took vacation for 3 days and got married. I realized how much I love my Kateryna and want to create a family with her. Her love and support give me the strength to be in my place.

In August my squad finally went to war and now we are 7 months there. Most of that time we spend defending Bahmut, we were in Soledar and somewhere in Lugansk Oblast. During that time I learned how to deal with different kinds of weapons, military tactics, and medicine.

I know how to do my work. It is definitely not easy, but it is my way. Here, there are a lot of great people, even from different countries, who joined our military force.

I know what I do and for what. For freedom, for our families, for our children, for our future.

If we gave away it will ruin not only our country. Russian greed doesn’t know borders. So the only way is to defeat them on our land, once and for all time.

I’m very lucky I joined Brightlocal a few years ago. It is more like a family than a usual company, which consists of great people. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how strong their support would be.

Cars, armor, warm clothes, medicine, sweets, drones, chemical heaters, and far more things were sent to me and my squad here. Hard to imagine what would I do without you guys. Brightlocal even continues to pay my salary while I’m here, which is great support for my family. Guys, you are awesome! Thank you for all, can’t wait for when we will defeat those enemies and I could hug you all. Cheers guys!

We stand together, united with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, against this unprovoked and unjust attack by Russian forces. We will do everything we can to support and protect them, their families, and their loved ones through the uncertain times ahead.

Kyiv: A Peace-loving, Prosperous, and European City

We have been working with Ukrainian software engineers for almost as long as BrightLocal has existed. In that time we have had contributions from over 80 different Ukrainian team members, almost all of whom I’ve had the good fortune to spend time and socialize with, even meeting their wonderful families on occasion.

Through all these experiences I’ve learnt more and more about the proud culture of Ukraine.

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Kyiv over a dozen times over the past ten years and have watched it emerge from its Soviet-era shackles and evolve into a vibrant, fun, and diverse city, full of passionate and peace-loving people.

It has an abundance of cafes, bars, and restaurants offering cuisine from around the world. It has a buoyant commercial center, full of thriving businesses, both Ukrainian-owned and international.

It has busy shopping centers, where global brands and local retailers vie for hard-earned hryvnias from its growing community of skilled and determined young professionals.

All in all, it is much like any other exciting, prosperous, and democratic capital in Europe—which makes the scenes that we are witnessing today all the more shocking and terrifying.

How are we Supporting Our Team

The safety of our team members is our number one concern. Over the past few weeks we have been looking at various options to help them relocate so they can live and work safely should the worst happen.  Well, the worst has happened and we’re accelerating these options and looking for more permanent solutions as far away from the conflict zones as possible. Here’s where our energies have been focused:

• Finding homes for team members and their families to move to in western Ukraine – and now in Europe
• Finding an office or co-working space for team to use close to these homes
• Supporting team members in their physical relocation
• Giving all team members full flexibility to work from wherever, and whenever they want (in Ukraine and abroad)
• Giving money and support to charities that support Ukrainian people and military personnel (learn more below)

To Our Loyal Customers

While the events in Ukraine are troubling and distracting for my team and I, I want to reassure you that we remain totally committed to delivering the best possible service and experience to you.

My message to our wider team is that the best way we can help our team members in Ukraine is to stay focused on our tasks and priorities, and keep delivering on our commitments to our customers.

We have software engineers and technical support team members stationed across multiple countries and locations outside of Ukraine. They are doubling the efforts during this period of uncertainty to ensure that we continue to give our customers a great experience.

Raising Money to Support Ukraine

Support Ukraine

Unicef in Ukraine savelife.in.ua With Ukraine

I sincerely hope that you, your family, your friends and colleagues are safe and well, and that they stay that way while we get through this tough time.

I’ve been trying to find the right sentiment and words for this message ever since it became clear just how much coronavirus would impact us, our customers, their businesses, and their livelihoods. We have all worked so hard to build our businesses, and to see them put in jeopardy by something beyond our control is incredibly frustrating and downright unfair. 

Therefore, I didn’t want to send a simple ‘business continuity’ message – although I should point out that we are fully functional, just from our home offices. Instead, I wanted to wait until we had something unique and positive we could offer to really help agencies and businesses get through this.

We can’t do everything, but we’re committed to doing what we can to give the local search community what it needs to weather the storm ahead, and to put you in a position to kick-start your business and get back to growth as quickly as possible.

First up, here are a couple of helpful things for our agency customers, but if that’s not you, scroll down to see our new learning and education offerings that we’re confident will help businesses and agencies alike.

1. We’re helping agencies and consultants close sales easier, faster and with reduced costs

Closing a sale quickly and cost-effectively is essential for agencies and consultants at the best of times, but now it’s more critical than ever. To help agencies do this, we’re making two significant changes:

Free white-label agency pitch decks and sales walkthroughs

We’re giving away our prized white-label pitch decks (normally reserved for our premium agency customers) that make it easy for agencies to pitch and sell local marketing services to prospective clients. These decks come with a full sales script, and can quickly be branded to suit your agency and provide a compelling proposition for SMB clients. You can view and download the pitch decks here.

If you’re not sure how best to use these, don’t fret: we’re also offering a free online walkthrough to all agencies who need it. Simply get in touch and one of our agency experts will be in touch to arrange a time to talk.

Reduced cost of local SEO audit/sales reports

Many of our agency customers make use of our comprehensive Local Search Audit reports to pitch and win new clients.

We recognize the value and importance of these reports at a time like this and so we’ve reduced the cost of credits by up to 90% (for example, it’s now just $1 per report if you buy 50). Just log in to BrightLocal now to purchase your credits.

2. We’re providing more free learning opportunities for future growth

For many of us, time is usually a scarce commodity, but now we have more of it than we know what to do with! Why not take the opportunity to develop your skills and services now so you emerge from this crisis in a stronger position?

Here are some of the learning and knowledge-sharing initiatives we’re putting in place:

A Local Search Clinic every week

From next week, I’ll be joined by a local SEO expert for a live, online Q&A-style webinar every week. You can submit your questions in advance or ask them live and we’ll help you with your biggest challenges.

We think it’ll be a fantastic opportunity to regularly come together as a community with shared interests and needs, get some expert advice, chat to each other, and just stop being so in our heads for an hour or so a week.

The first of our weekly Local Search Clinics will be with Dan Leibson (Local SEO Guide’s VP of Search) next Wednesday, April 1st, at 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 4pm BST. Click here to save your seat!

BrightLocal Academy

We were planning to develop this later in the year, but in light of what’s happening we’re fast-tracking our dedicated online training center to help you up your local SEO game.

The training materials are being created in conjunction with well-known and highly experienced local SEO experts, and will be made available free of charge to BrightLocal customers upon launch and for the foreseeable time after. Watch this space for news on our launch date. 

3. We’re cutting through the information overload

One thing we’re not short of right now is information! There is so much being thrown at us that it’s hard to know what to focus on and what to ignore.

To save you time and headspace, we’ll be publishing a weekly roundup of only the most important updates, announcements and creative ideas emerging from the world of local marketing. The first roundup just went live today – take a look for yourself!

We’re confident this roundup will help keep you abreast of what you need to know about what the big tech companies are up to, as well as inspire you and your clients to find innovative ways to make the most of the current situation.

We’ll be including these roundups in our newsletter, so if you’re not already subscribed to our mailing list, there’s never been a better time to get us in your inbox.

What more can we do to help you?

Along with our staff’s safety, helping you is our top priority right now. So if you think we could, and should, be doing more to support you during this time, I would really like to hear your suggestions – please email us at contact@brightlocal.com and help us to help you.

I’d just like to finish by thanking you for being a BrightLocal customer or subscriber, thanking my colleagues across the world for their tireless efforts during this difficult time, and by offering my sincerest best wishes to you, your businesses, and those close to you (even though they might be a little too close right now).

Many thanks,

Myles Anderson

Founder and CEO, BrightLocal

Conversely, having incorrect or duplicate listings can hamper a business’s ability to rank well in local search and reduces their ability to get in front of a huge number of local customers. And that’s not to mention how frustrated consumers get when they find inaccurate information online.

As with many aspects of SEO, there is more than one way to achieve your goals. The same is true of citation management, and in this post we’ll take a deep dive into the two most common routes of citation building: manual submissions and local data aggregator submissions.

We also look at outsourced submissions services and services like Yext to provide an all-round view of the options available to you.

Once you’ve read this post, you’ll have a clear understanding of how each approach works, their pros and cons, and also which approach is best for you and your clients.

What are Manual Citation Submissions?

Manual Citation Submission is the updating or inputting of business information directly onto a third-party website by hand.

It’s typically done one site at a time and involves a person physically:

• visiting a website,
• searching to see if a business is listed on that website,
• creating an account on the site,
• submitting business information to update or create a listing
• verifying their account through either email or phone verification steps.

What are Local Data Aggregator Submissions?

Local Data Aggregators (LDAs) are companies that gather data about local businesses and then sells or distributes that data out to a network of local search engines, third-party directories, mapping services, GPS services, and mobile apps.

Submitting via LDAs involves creating a separate account for each one and updating or submitting business data into the LDA’s database.

The LDA then performs a verification of the business information before making this business information available to the third-party services that buy or take its data.

LDAs use a number of means to distribute their data, including FTP file dump, data feeds, and APIs.

How Long Does It Take to Complete Submissions?

Manual Citation Submissions

It takes anywhere between 5-20 minutes to submit to one site—approx 10 minutes on average.

So if you want to submit or update to 50 sites = 500 minutes = 8.3 hours

Ouch! That’s a long time which could be better spent on more valuable and interesting business tasks!

Outsourcing to Manual Citation Submission Services

Because of the time-consuming, and frankly tedious, nature of manual submissions, many businesses and SEO agencies outsource this task to specialist third-party services.

If you use a Manual Submission Service, then you only have to provide your data to them one time and they’ll submit it directly to other sites for you.

In terms of time saved, we estimate this as:

• 20 mins to upload your data one time to a Manual Submission Service
• Time saved = 8.3 hours – 20 mins = 8 hours saved

But the value of using a Manual Submission Service is not just in the time you save. Manual Submission Services often have a large database of sites that they submit to, and have detailed knowledge of the issues and requirements of each site.

For instance, almost every online business listing or directory site is different and has unique terms and conditions, rules and guidelines. A high-quality submission service will be familiar with these nuances and therefore ensure that your business listing submissions are done correctly.

BrightLocal (that’s us!) is one of the best-known and most trusted manual submission services. We are the trusted citation partner for more than 1,000+ SEO agencies and have a team of 70+ in-house submissions experts who handle more than 100,000 submissions every month. Our listings management toolkit makes it easy to build your citations, send them out into the world, and keep them up-to-date while they’re out there. 

Local Data Aggregator Submissions

Submitting to one LDA takes about 20 minutes, so if you want to submit to all five main LDAs in the USA this should take you about 100 minutes.

Are there Third Parties that Submit to All Local Data Aggregators?

Please pardon the leading question… but yes, there are!

There are a number of well-known services such as BrightLocal or Moz Local that enable you to submit to all LDAs at once.

The benefits of using a service like this include:

• Saves Time: it only takes 20 minutes to submit to Brightlocal or Moz Local and we submit to all five LDAs
• Saves Money: it only costs $120 to submit to all five LDAs using BrightLocal. Submitting directly to the LDAs is typically more expensive
• Free Updates for 12 Months: you can update your business information for free within 12 months of purchasing via BrightLocal or Moz Local

If you’d like to see a full comparison of these services, then head over to this post where we compare local citation services and well-known Local Data Aggregator services.

What Do Listing Submissions Cost?

Manual Citation Submissions

Most citation sites offer a free listing option which allows you to submit some basic information about your business to create a simple listing on the site. The amount of information that a site accepts or displays for free varies from site to site. (FYI: This is something that a good Manual Submission Service will be aware of for all the sites they submit to.)

So, financially, manual submissions can cost $0. The only cost is the cost of your time: the 8.3 hours it takes to do 50 citation sites. 

What Do Manual Submission Services Charge?

You typically pay a per-site fee for every listing they create or update. The range of fees is from $1 – $5 per listing (i.e. per citation site). You then need to calculate how many sites and how many locations you want to submit to to get the total cost.

This is typically a one-time fee and you don’t pay any recurring charges. If you want to make updates at any point in the future (if you move locations, for instance), then you simply pay for the service again.

Some Manual Submission Services operate a monthly recurring subscription fee which spreads the cost over a year and does offer free updates while your subscription is active.

Here is a comparison table for six Manual Submission Services:

Service	# Sites	Cost	Bulk Rate/Discount	Recurring Cost
BrightLocal	1000	$3.20/site	$2/site
Yext	202	$499/year	10-30%	$499/year
Whitespark	100	$4-5/site	5%-20%
Synup	43	$30/month	$20/month	$20/month
AdviceLocal	50	$150	n/a	$20/month
The Hoth	30-90	$149-$549	n/a	$79/month

Local Data Aggregator Submissions

Here’s a table of the current charges for the three big USA aggregators: Foursquare, NeustarLocaleze, and Data Axle.

Can I Choose Where My Listings Appear?

Manual Citation Submissions

When you submit by hand yourself, then yes, you can choose which sites you use. The only restriction may come from sites that don’t offer a free submission option. So it’s your decision whether you submit to a paid-only site, but you should evaluate these carefully to be sure they’re worth the cost.

Check out our list of top citation sites to see which we value most highly

Bundled Sites via Manual Citation Submission Services

Most citation services will bundle certain sites together and allow you to purchase that bundle. Usually, you can’t pick and choose which sites they use and you simply select the bundle or package that works best for you. To only have this option can be frustrating and restrictive for businesses and SEOs who want to hand-pick the sites they use.

At BrightLocal we have a database of 1,000+ local, niche and national directories. We allow you to select exactly which sites you want to get listed on—as long as they’re applicable for your business type (i.e. no florist directories if you’re a plumber and no San Diego directories if you’re located in Orlando).

Aggregator Citation Submissions

Short answer… no.

The LDAs make their data available to their network of sites and you don’t have any control over which sites pick up your data and which do not.

Can I Remove My Listings?

It’s typically not possible to remove a listing unless the business has closed down or moved. This is the same for both Manual and Aggregator Submissions.

Directories have a clear objective: to provide a complete set of business listings to their users. So removing a listing goes against that objective, and because your business information is in the public domain, it’s hard to get them to remove it.

Can I Remove Duplicate Listings?

Manual Citation Submissions

You can claim and update listings, but removing them usually requires contacting or messaging the site editors. Many sites don’t let you remove a listing unless there is a very good reason. Spotting a duplicate listing is usually good grounds for them to remove it as long as you can show that there is another listing that is correct and up to date.

To do this, you typically need to submit a request to the site editors to explain that the listing is a duplicate and provide evidence to support this.

Aggregator Citation Submissions

The LDAs themselves will always look to remove any duplicates within their own database. However, their automated logic is limited and they struggle to relate listings that have significant differences in name and address. So if a business changes name or moves location, the LDA usually won’t connect the two separate listings together.

If you have duplicate listings, this problem transfers down to their networks with both the correct and incorrect listing information being pushed to them.

Which Method Allows Me to Submit My Data to the Widest Set of Sites?

The answer here is simple: Data Aggregator Submissions!

Manual Citation Submissions

How widespread your data becomes really depends on how many sites you have the time and patience to submit to. The latest wisdom says that as long as you have your data correct on the top 40-50 sites, then that’s enough—at least in everything but the most competitive industries and/or locations.

Data Aggregator Submissions

Because of the networks that LDAs distribute to, they push their data into many different third-party sites and services. This ‘push’ is automated and by submitting just one time to an LDA your data will appear in lots of other sites.

Another useful aspect about data aggregators is that they distribute your data to services that don’t offer a manual submission route. For instance, certain GPS services and mobile apps don’t provide a way for you to amend or add your business data. In these cases, LDAs are your only option.

Which Approach Updates/Creates Listings the Fastest?

Manual Citation Submissions will definitely get your business information listed the fastest. Manual Submissions generate live listings faster than aggregator submissions. This has been proven many times over.

Manual Citation Submissions

Because you’re submitting your information directly to each site, the information either goes live immediately or is put into a queue to be reviewed and verified by a site editor.

On higher-quality sites that are well-staffed, you should see your business data go live within 1-5 days. However, on sites with smaller teams and resources, it may take longer to process your request—some particularly slow sites can even take over a month.

Data Aggregator Submissions

When you submit to an LDA, there are a number of steps that your information has to pass through before it appears on network sites.

The exact steps and timing varies for each LDA, but the result is that your information can take between 1-6 months to start appearing on the sites within an LDA’s network. And because each site is independently run, not all sites will put your data live at the same time.

This can be frustrating for business owners who want to see more immediate results for their time and money, but this is the way the system currently works and it does work. Eventually, your business information will appear across the web.

Steps Your Data Takes from LDA Submission to Live Listing

1. Submit to LDA
2. LDA verifies data accuracy
3. LDA inserts data into their database
4. LDA makes data available to network sites (FTP, feed, API)
5. Data accepted by network sites
6. Data verified/scrubbed by network sites
7. Data pushed live by network sites

Do I Have Ownership of My Listings?

Manual Citation Submissions

Yes, you do. When you create a listing you are usually (although not always) asked to create an account with your email and password.

Your listing is then associated with this account, over which you have control. This has two great benefits for you:

1. Your listing can’t be claimed by someone else
2. The directory/site gives your data a higher level of trust/authority so that it won’t be overwritten by data from another source (e.g. a data aggregator)

What About Manual Submission Services?

Different local citation services have different approaches here. More bona fide services will give you the login details for all your listings so that you own them, and they will simply manage them on your behalf.

Some services may not do this and you could find that, a little down the line, they hold your listings to ransom and force you to pay to get access to your credentials. You should definitely ask about this before you select a manual submission service to use.

I hope it goes without saying that if you choose to use BrightLocal, we give you your login details and never withhold them for any reason, giving you complete control of your listings.

Data Aggregator Submissions

When you submit via an LDA, an account does not get created and your listing is usually marked as ‘unclaimed.’

This means that it can be claimed by someone else, who may be acting on your behalf or who might be doing it for malicious intent (i.e. a competitor.)

Should I use Both Manual and Aggregator Submissions?

Many SEOs recommend a hybrid approach for the best possible results when managing your local citations.

1. LDAs – Distributing via LDAs pushes your data far and wide and gives you maximum reach, even if it does take a few months to percolate through.

2. Manual – Doing a manual submission and claiming on the most valuable sites (30-50, depending on industry.)

Claiming your listings on the top directory sites is really important. That’s where the most benefit (or damage) is done to a business’ citation profile, so having direct control and ‘ownership’ of these listings is important.

What Happens after a Year?

Manual Citation Submissions

Nothing really

Your listings remain claimed and owned by you, and your data should remain as it is without being altered by data from other sources. Some sites may prompt you to log in and check your data or they may try to up-sell you to a paid account, but that’s not mandatory.

Data Aggregator Submissions

After 12 months your data loses it’s ‘trusted’ status within the aggregators. This means that they may alter the data if they find different information from a different source. This effect trickles down to the sites in their network.

To avoid this from happening, it’s useful to revisit or repurchase your listings with the LDA every 12 months.

This is part of the LDA business model and is their way of ensuring that data remains accurate as well as generating a recurring revenue stream.

But if you choose to use BrightLocal, then the cost is only $60/year. (That’s not a lot of money to ensure that your business data remains accurate across the web.)

What about Services like Yext?

Yext is neither a Manual Submission Service nor an LDA. Yext is a real-time listing management platform. Let me explain….

Yext’s model is to get businesses to pay them so they can update their data in real-time on the sites within the Yext network. Yext, in turn, pays the sites in their network to allow them to do this.

…And it works pretty well, on the whole. The real-time update solution is very useful for companies whose information changes frequently (e.g. seasonal opening hours, changing menus, new services, etc.)

Why Wouldn’t I Just Use Yext?

Here are five reasons:

1. It’s expensive. Yext charges between $200-$500 dollars per year, depending on your order volume. That is too pricey for some business owners, especially when considering the benefits they get.
2. There are recurring charges. Yext’s fee is recurring every year, and if you don’t pay the charges, your business information is removed from the sites in their network*
3. You don’t own your listings. Your listings become “locked” when they’re controlled by Yext. That means they can’t be claimed by other people, but it also means that you don’t own them, so you can’t access your listings directly on the site or set up your own logins.
4. Your business doesn’t change that often, so why would you need it? Your business doesn’t change frequently enough to warrant paying for real-time updates.
5. They have quite an aggressive sales approach. Yext have been widely criticized for their aggressive sales approach, which puts some business owners off using them.

*I think of Yext as the PPC of local listings. You pay for inclusion in their listings and when you stop paying you lose that inclusion.

So Which Approach Is Best for Me?

We typically advise customers to use a hybrid approach.

• Manual Submissions:
  • Submit and claim your listing on the most important 25-50 sites
  • Get quick listings and benefit from these sites
• Aggregator Submissions:
  • Get wide distribution to hundreds of sites/services
  • Results are slower but you get wider coverage long term

To help you decide the right approach for your business and situation, we’ve put together a table so you can score your requirements against each submission service:

Requirement	Variance	Manual	Manual Submission Service	Aggregator	Yext
Number of Locations	<10
	<200
	>200
Budget	Low
	Medium
	High
Urgency	Low
	Medium
	High
Frequency of Updates	Low
	High

Manual Submissions and/or Aggregator Submissions via BrightLocal

Using BrightLocal, you can purchase both Manual Submissions and Aggregator Submissions.

1. Flexible Service

We try to provide the most flexible service that we can. This means that you can select how many submissions and on which sites we handle these for you. You can also choose whether you want manual submissions, aggregators or both.

And with our LDA submissions, you can select one, some or all of the aggregators.

2. Cost-Efficient and No Hidden Charges

With Manual Citation Submissions from just $2/site and Data Aggregator Submissions costing just $60/year, BrightLocal is one of the most cost-effective solutions on the market. Also, we don’t force you to repurchase your aggregator submissions after 12 months, although we do make it easy for you to do this if you’d like to.

Plus we don’t charge you for citation research if you want us to find additional niche or local sites for your campaign. We do have a large database of 1,600+ sites, but there’s no doubt that there are some towns, cities and industries that we don’t have total coverage over (but we can add them for you).

3. We Do It but You Own It!

We’re here to do the grunt work for you and deliver the result, but we don’t own the listings we create and the listings are yours to take over at any time you want.

Click here if you’d like to see a sample report for a typical BrightLocal citation campaign.

Since launching this powerful and customizable new way to get leads through your agency website in March, we’ve had some excellent feedback from our agency customers, including ChoiceLocal, Somnowell, Nifty Marketing, and Missional Marketing.

The tool allows visitors to your marketing agency website to download a local SEO audit for their business, which sales teams can then follow up with insights and solutions on the lead’s situation and turn them into a paying client.

The reaction to this revolutionary tool has been excellent, so we thought we’d share our customers’ thoughts on the Lead Generation widget to highlight how valuable agencies are already finding it!

$50,000 Generated Annually for Local Marketing Specialists

Automated Local Search Audit Generation Saves Nearly $500 Per Month

Intuitive Interface and Simple Installation Means Significant Increase in Leads with Ease

70% of Leads Generated Converted into Paying Customers

That’s just a few success stories out of hundreds! Want to know more about how the Lead Generation Widget works and how BrightLocal can help you grow your agency? Take a look at this short webinar which covers the tool.

If you’re already subscribed to BrightLocal and want to try this feature out, just log in and head to the Leads section to get started!

Online reviews about local businesses, products and services can help with search engine rankings, increase click-through rates and impact a potential customer’s buying decisions. Reading online reviews has become an integral part of today’s consumer buying journey, so for local businesses, it’s become critical to maintain a strong and positive reputation online.

Consumers Read Online Reviews Before They Make a Purchase

Reading reviews online is an important part of a consumer’s buying process. Each year we survey consumers about how they read and use the information they glean from online reviews. In our Local Consumer Review Study we discovered:

• Positive reviews make 91% of consumers more likely to use a business
• The average consumer reads 10 reviews before feeling able to trust a local business
• 32% of people will visit a company’s website after reading positive reviews, and 16% will visit the business itself

Reviews Also Impact Google Local Pack Results and Organic Local Search Rankings

Can online reviews and ratings help a business rank higher on the search engines? Two studies by Moz (2017) and Local SEO Guide (2016) show the ranking factors that influence local search rankings. They found that online reviews can help how a website ranks in the Google Local 3-Pack and in organic local search results.

How Do Online Reviews Impact Trust and Landing Page Conversions?

We know that customers pay attention to online reviews, but do these reviews help build trust? And how would leveraging and promoting a business’s great reputation help improve their online marketing efforts? We recently conducted a survey to see how online reviews impact a consumer’s trust and how promoting a 5-star reputation impacts landing page conversions.

In Q4 2016 we asked 6,283 North American consumers (72% from the USA and 28% from Canada) to participate in a research survey. We divided them into two groups:

• Control Group – A control group (30%) were showed landing pages with no ratings or reviews displayed
• Test Groups – The rest of the participants (70%) were split into test groups and shown different landing pages — some showed reviews and others didn’t

The panelists were asked to imagine they were searching online for a local plumber, florist or realtor. We showed the consumers two landing pages – one page that highlighted an actual customer’s review about the business and another page where the business said they were the “dependable” company.

For this research study, we tracked whether consumers picked the businesses with or without the customer review on the landing pages. Additionally, we asked consumers to give us feedback on a variety of other factors that impacted their decisions and opinions of these “sample” businesses.

We looked at the Impact Reviews Had On Consumer Trust and Landing Page Conversions

Here are the results!

The Impact Reviews Have on Trustworthiness and Landing Page Conversions

How do reviews and highlighting a company’s reputation impact a business’s trustworthiness? To test this we showed consumers two landing pages for each industry. One of the pages showed a picture of a real customer and their actual 5-star review about the business. The second landing page displayed a “Your Dependable…” page where the business promoted their “dependability” – but without any user-generated reviews.

Next, we asked consumers how trustworthy they thought these two companies were based on the design and content of the two test landing pages:

How Trustworthy Do You Find This Business?

In the results of this question, 83% of the people thought the business with the user-generated review on the landing page was trustworthy. Additionally, 15% of the people said they did not find the business without reviews to be trustworthy. 

This is important because it shows that the pages with real reviews from customers created a more trustworthy feel from the participants. But did it make them more likely to contact the business?

How Likely Are You to Contact This Business?

Next consumers were asked how likely it would be for them to reach out and contact the businesses. Of the businesses with reviews on their landing pages, a whopping 74% of people said they would contact the business (vs. only 62% who would contact the business without reviews.)

These results are especially important for businesses because it shows a direct relationship between online reviews and the perceived trustworthiness of your business. The consumers surveyed equate online reviews with the business being one they can trust.

In a world of mixed messages, a lot of options and overwhelming data, getting online reviews is a great way to differentiate your business from your competitors in the market. Reviews also promote trustworthiness in potential new customers.

If you’re convinced that having an online reputation marketing strategy is important, read our blog post that explains reputation marketing and why it’s so important in this customer-centric world.

There are an abundance of posts about the best practice & effectiveness of regular Adwords to drive traffic & leads to all types of businesses.

But there are very few posts that specifically focus on Adwords Express (AWE) and examine its effectiveness for local businesses, its pros & cons & best practices for using it.

In this post we’ll properly explore AWE and cover 4 areas –

• What is Adwords Express?
• Does Adwords Express provide good ROI for local businesses?
• Pros & Cons of using Adwords Express
• Best practices for using Adwords Express for local businesses

What is Google Adwords Express?

AdWords Express (AWE) is essentially a simplified version of Google AdWords (aka PPC ads, or paid-search ads)

Google has struggled to get small business owners to use Adwords because it’s complex. It requires both time & knowledge to make it work cost-efficiently, and small business owners are time-strapped folks!

Adwords Express (AWE) is specifically designed for small, local businesses. It has a guided set-up process that makes it quick & easy to get up & running with paid ads on google. A business can target potential customers based on interests, location & language in just 3 clicks and put their advert live in under 5 minutes!

Sounds too good to be true. Is it? Let’s find out…

Here are few key facts about AWE that you should know.

1. Businesses need to have a Google My Business (GMB) listing

To use AWE a business needs to have an active Google My Business listing. When you create an AWE campaign you first select the business’s GMB profile & then create the ad campaign. Once your campaign is running you can see top-level results displayed in your GMB dashboard & can click through to your AWE dashboard to see data on views, clicks & keywords.

2. Where do Adwords Express ads appear?

They appear in all the places that normal Adwords ads appear – at the top of Google Search pages, on Google Maps pages & across the Google partner site network.

AWE ads also look identical to normal Adwords ads, so there’s no telling them apart.

3. Is there a minimum budget & duration for running Adwords Express?

The minimum budget is very low – approx $1.5/day or $45/month.

You set a daily budget and Google converts this into a monthly amount. So your campaign will run for 1 month with your ads displaying each day until your daily budget is hit.

At that point your ad stops showing until the next day when your daily budget renews.

AWE also provides a guide to what your competitors are spending & the maximum size of your market. This gives an upper limit to your monthly spend which varies for each type of business & location.

Does Adwords Express deliver ROI for Local Businesses?

In March 2016 we ran an online survey of SMBs & Local Search marketers, asking them about their usage & experiences of AWE.

We contacted over 2,000 people but only 305 completed the survey. The main reason for the low response rate is simple – not that many people are using AWE so can’t comment knowledgeably about it.

The following 5 charts give a clear view of what AWE users think about it.

How familiar are you with Google AdWords Express?

Key Findings:

• 64% of respondents are very familiar with Google AdWords Express
• 26% of respondents are unsure how Google AdWords Express works
• 10% of respondents have never heard of Google AdWords Express

Do you use AdWords or AWE for your business/clients?

Quick distinction for you –

• AWE = Google Adwords Express (see explanation above)
• Adwords = regular ‘full-featured’ Google Adwords service

Key Findings:

• 51% of respondents use Google AdWords for most or all of their clients
• 29% of respondents use AWE for at least some of their clients
• 9% say they have been unsuccessful with Google AdWords vs 30% with Google AdWords Express

Analysis:

So it’s clear that many more people are using Adwords vs. AWE for reasons that we’ll explore below.

Interestingly over 3x as many people found AWE to be unsuccessful vs Adwords.

So far Adwords is the favorite ahead of AWE.

How effective is AdWords Express at generating website traffic?

Key Findings:

• 57% say AdWords Express is NOT EFFECTIVE at generating traffic
• 39% say AdWords Express is EFFECTIVE at generating traffic
• Just 4% say AdWords Express is VERY EFFECTIVE at generating traffic

Analysis:

Here we see why Adwords trumps AWE – AWE isn’t very effective at driving clicks for the majority of people who have used it. Just 4% of respondents said it was ‘very effective’ at bringing customers to their site – hardly a glowing commendation!

Damon Gochneaur

Flower Mound, Texas

One of a handful of tools that we couldn't live without. From Rank tracking, to citation bursts and tracking, BrightLocal is an invaluable local seo tool.

4.8 / 5 from 125+ reviews on Capterra

Try for free

 Does AdWords Express deliver good ROI for your business/clients?

Key Findings:

• 78% of respondents say AdWords Express delivers LOW ROI
• 20% of respondents say AdWords Express delivers MEDIUM ROI
• 2% of respondents say AdWords Express delivers HIGH ROI

Analysis:

More fuel for the fire here! We already saw that AWE does a poor job of driving website traffic, and that translates through to ROI.

78% of people said that AWE delivers Low ROI. Ouch!

Is AdWords or AdWords Express more effective for your business/clients?

Key Findings:

• 88% of respondents say that AdWords is more effective
• Only 8% of respondents say that Google AdWords Express is more effective

Analysis:

We have a clear winner – Adwords clearly outperforms AWE.

But 8% of people said that AWE outperforms Adwords. So clearly some people find success with it.

Next we’ll examine the Pros & Cons of Adwords Express.

Pros & Cons of AdWords Express

In the survey we also asked respondents to tell us the best & worst things about AWE. We had a ton of great comments and I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who left comments – we salute you!

Within those comments were a number of recurring themes which we have distilled down into main Pros & Cons of AWE.

Is AWE it’s own worst enemy?

Google designed AWE to be simple & make it easy for business owners to use. In doing so they stripped out many of the controls & targeting features that PPC practitioners use to optimize Adwords to make it cost effective.

All of the ‘Cons’ above relate to the ‘missing’ controls & features. And without these controls it’s hard to make Adwords deliver positive ROI.

So AWE is in a ‘catch 22’ situation.

• It’s simple to use;
• But being so simple it’s very hard to make it deliver ROI

So where does that leave local business owners?

I think the situation is pretty clear; you have 4 options –

1. Leave PPC advertising well alone
2. Invest time in learning how to use regular Google Adwords
3. Understand that it takes money to make money & pay a professional (e.g. agency or freelancer) to manage it for you
4. Give AWE a try and see if it works for you, but limit your budget until you see if it does

Marc Harris

Santa Rosa, CA

BrightLocal makes our job as SEO specialists easier and faster. We would not be as successful without it.

4.8 / 5 from 125+ reviews on Capterra

Try for free

Best Practices for using Adwords Express to attract customers?

So if you opt to give AWE a try then what can you do to give it the best chances of success?

I turned to my friend & well known Local Search expert Joy Hawkins to find out, and this is what she said.

1. Read all ‘Help’ guides before you start

Google provides some useful & concise documentation to help you use and get the best results from AWE.

So before you jump in and commit to spending your hard earned dollars, take 30 minutes to read through the docs.

Start here – Help Guides for Google Adwords Express.

2. Limit your Spend or go ‘Pro’

AWE is really only good for businesses who spend <$500/month on PPC. If you find yourself spending more, then you should seriously consider switching to regular Adwords and hiring a professional to help you optimize your campaigns to deliver better ROI.

3. Link your AWE account to your Google Analytics Account

Google makes it easy(ish) to link your AWE account to Google Analytics. Doing this allows you to view the number of site visits & conversions generated by your AWE ads so you get a clear picture of performance.

To view conversions you will need to have ‘Goals’ set up in GA for the different conversion points – e.g. Contact Us form, Contact Us page etc…

See how to Link Adwords Express to Google Analytics here.

4. Regularly Monitor Keywords & Remove Poor Performing Terms

If you do link AWE to GA then you will see performance data for all the keywords that drive clicks via AWE.

This is invaluable because you can identify poor performing terms & irrelevant terms.

Once you have this data you can go back into your AWE dashboard and un-tick these terms so Google won’t use them any more.

But the key is to do this regularly. Don’t do it just once and think you’re done. Google may introduce new terms into your campaign which don’t work for you. Ideally you should schedule a weekly review of your terms and prune the ones that don’t work for you.

5. Make Use of Free Call Reporting

AWE has a neat feature that allows you to insert free call-tracking numbers into your ads. This enables you to track both clicks & calls for your ads so you get the total picture of how it’s performing.

Disclaimer – Call reporting is currently only available in a limited number of countries – see more here.

6. Use AWE as a test bed & Upgrade to Adwords if Successful

If you find success with AWE then great. This means that you can expect even more success using regular Adwords. At this time you might want to consider investing more and jumping over to Adwords.

Thank You!

A huge thank you to all 305 people who participated in the survey.

And a special thank you to Joy Hawkins from Imprezzio Marketing for her time & wisdom.

About ‘Local Clicks & Calls’ Survey

The objective of this survey is to understand & share which online marketing channels are driving the most traffic, calls & offline visits to local businesses. This covers all types of local, physical businesses from Plumbers to Accountants to Cosmetic Dentists.

With insufficient data in Google Analytics, no consolidated call tracking data & the fact that many consumers convert offline, there is limited concrete data on the ROI & quality of leads generated by each channel which business owners & search marketers can base their decisions on.

We hope that these findings will provide useful insight to help our customers & readers make more informed decisions about where to allocate their marketing effort & dollars

Who took part in the 2015 survey?

For this year’s survey we had 477 respondents who had worked on optimizing over 8,200 locations in the last 12 months.

And what type of business are they?

*NB. We added ‘Web Designer’ as a new response in 2015.

Key Findings:

• 38% of respondents are Search Agencies
• 28% are Small Business Owners
• 26% are Search Consultants
• 8% are Web Designers

In a typical week, how much time / effort do you allocate to the following channels?

Key Findings:

• Most time / effort is spent on Local SEO & Organic SEO
• Least time / effort is spent on Email marketing, Mobile marketing & Display advertising
• Biggest drop in time-spent was on Mobile Marketing

Analysis:

Search Engine Optimization, whether local or organic is a long-term time game, often involving meticulous and time consuming tasks. It’s therefore little surprise that these channels come out on top for pure effort / time spent.

More time is spent working on social media than other key direct response channels such as PPC & email marketing.

Despite 2015 being another big year for mobile, most participants are spending even less time on mobile marketing vs 2014. This drop is surprising given the increase in consumers using mobile devices to find local businesses.

In a poll we ran in April, 60% of SEOs said they were very focused on getting customers’ sites mobile-optimized. It is conceivable that their focus has since moved on after the ‘mobilegeddon‘ scare passed without the seismic affect that was feared. Alternatively they may classify mobile-optimization tasks under the banner of ‘Organic SEO’ rather than mobile marketing, and so have attributed their time spent to this channel accordingly.

Rate the effectiveness of each channel to deliver a return on effort/money spent

Key Findings:

• Local search & Organic search deliver the greatest ROI
• Social media, Display advertising & Bing ads are considered to deliver the lowest ROI

Analysis:

In the 1st chart we saw that respondents allocate the most time & effort to Local & Organic SEO, and it’s clear they do this because both channels deliver the greatest ROI for them/their clients. These channels allow a business to put themselves in front of high intent users at a time when they’re looking for their business or services. This is the same result we saw in the 2014 survey, so there’s little change year on year.

Interestingly, the results suggest that business owners & SEOs are spending a good slice of their time on social media optimization – more than they currently spend on PPC, Email marketing & Mobile marketing. However the ROI of social channels is considered to be lower than PPC or Email.

Does this mean that social marketing is more time consuming than other channels (to do it right I would say ‘Yes, definitely’) but that the value and conversions of social are not as clear or consistent as PPC or Email?

I suspect there is a ‘fear factor’ at play here. With so much persuasive chatter about the need for local businesses to actively engage & promote themselves on social platforms, many businesses do so out of fear of missing the opportunity, rather than because it delivers tangible results for them.

Google AdWords is considered marginally more ‘effective’ than in 2014, although there is typically less time / effort spent on this channel year on year.

Rate the effectiveness of each channel to deliver high quality leads

Key Findings:

• Organic search & Local search deliver the highest quality leads
• Mobile marketing, Social media & Display advertising deliver the lowest quality leads

Analysis:

The quality of leads is crucial to the success of all local businesses, much more so than quantity of leads, which is important up to a point.

Again we see that Organic & Local search come out on top as they reach consumers at the point they’re researching or purchasing a service, resulting in higher conversion. This is further justification for a majority of time allocated to these channels by business owners & SEOs.

Google AdWords is also seen as a strong source of high quality leads which is why more local businesses and local marketeers are using it. It’s another high-intent channel but one that offers more control & predictability than organic & local search – a marketeers dream!

Respondents believe that Facebook & Twitter deliver low quality leads. But these channels shouldn’t be looked at as simple lead-generation opportunities. Some marketers believe they are, and know how to drive leads from them, but for many businesses, extracting value from social channels is a longer term play. It lies in engaging existing & new customers, building relationships and keeping their business in the minds of consumers, for when their product or service may be required.

Approximately what percentage of calls are generated by each channel?

Key Findings:

• Local search delivers 26% of calls on average
• Organic search delivers 15% of calls on average
• Google AdWords delivers 12% of calls vs 4% from Bing Ads

Analysis:

Phone Calls are the most important local search KPI, and for the majority of local businesses they are the most valuable type of lead.

Local search offers visibility to high-intent local customers, many of whom will grab a phone number, or click-to-call from mobile to contact a business. So it’s not surprising that conversion from this channel is high. However this may drop over the next year if Google persists with obscuring phone numbers and forcing searchers to click deeper into its pages to get the info they want.

The effectiveness of Google AdWords has increased since 2014, and it enables advertisers to target customers looking for specific products & services on a local, national or international scale. If fully optimized it can be a valuable source of phone leads.

Approximately what % of site traffic is generated by each of these channels?

Key Findings:

• Local search delivers 23% of website traffic on average
• Organic search delivers 17% of website traffic on average
• Twitter & Facebook combined deliver just 10% of website traffic

Analysis:

For some businesses, website traffic is the most important metric – and Local search & Organic search are the most effective channels at driving it.

It’s a little surprising to see Local search outperforming Organic search in terms of volume here. Google doesn’t always display local results in SERPs and now limits the local results to just 3 in most cases. So the opportunity to drive traffic from organic results is greater.

But if successfully optimized, then a local business appearing in the local ‘snak pack’ is likely to generate a high volume of traffic because there is less competition for searcher attention now than before.

Social media, whilst being a good communication tool is not a good source of website traffic / phone calls. It’s very low down in priority but is probably seen as more of a retention / brand strengthening / customer service tool by many business owners / SEOs, rather than a source of new business.

If you only had 1 channel that brought people to your business/site, which channel would you choose?

Key Findings:

• 34% of respondents would choose Local search above any other channel
• 28% of respondents would choose Organic search
• 19% of respondents would choose Google AdWords

Analysis:

There is a clear ‘Top 3’ with Local search, Organic search & AdWords as the channels which most business owners & SEOs would choose to bring traffic to their site.

All 3 channels are targeted and reach customers at the point they’re looking for a specific service or business – ‘high intent’ users. All 3 offer plenty of scale and a high volume of leads without sacrificing quality so it’s not surprising that they stand out above other channels.

Of these channels Local Search is the clear winner, as it has been throughout the survey findings. This is great news for those involved in the local search industry and provides great ammunition to convince local business owners to invest more in local search.

Interestingly Direct Traffic, which provides excellent ROI & delivers high quality leads, is not a channel that many respondents choose above others. Direct Traffic is driven by brand awareness, word of mouth, reputation and returning visitors (to name just a few). It’s a less definable channel and not so easy to influence or control as the ‘Top 3’. The same can be said with Referral traffic, whereby you are ultimately relying on other sources to deliver traffic to you.

Once again Social channels such as Twitter & Facebook perform badly, with respondents not trusting them to deliver quality leads and decent ROI.

Got a different viewpoint on this subject or some useful insights you want to share? We’re interested in publishing unique content written by smart marketeers on our blog. Contact us with your details & ideas and we’ll get back to you ASAP!

With this research we want to gain a better understanding of the attitudes & usage of internet & mobile marketing by small & medium sized businesses (SMBs).

We conducted the survey in partnership with ChamberOfCommerce.com, and we’d like to thank them and all of the participating businesses for their time & assistance. Without them this survey & insights would not have been possible.

About the SMB Internet Marketing Survey 2014

The survey was conducted in October / November 2014. 736 SMBs completed the survey with 95% located in North America (Europe 4%, RoW 1%). In follow-up to this survey we will publish further insights comparing Company Size and Company Type.

This survey has been split into two distinctive parts:

1. Engagement & Opinion – this part explores the current usage of internet marketing by small & medium sized businesses. We find out what works for them and their opinions on how this might change in the future.
2. Marketing Support – this section explores how many SMBs use internet marketing consultants / agencies and how effective these working relationships are.

Engagement & Opinions

Q1. How many employees do you have?

Key Findings:

• 58% of those surveyed had between 0-3 employees
• 16% of those surveyed had between 11-50 employees

Analysis:

In this survey, we invited small and medium businesses to take part. For the purposes of the survey we pre-defined ‘SMB’s as having 0-50 employees and as can be seen in the chart above, 97% of respondents fall into this bracket. The majority of businesses surveyed, have between 1-3 employees, including the business owner.

Q2. How much money do you allocate to marketing your business each month?

Key Findings:

• 70% are spending less than $500 on marketing per month (vs. 73% in 2013)
• 83% are spending less than $1,000 on marketing per month (vs. 85% in 2013)
• Just 16% are spending more than $1,000 on marketing per month (vs. 16% in 2013)

Analysis:

The results show very little change year on year, with 70% of SMBs spending less than $500 on marketing each month. For a company with an average of 0-3 employees this is not surprising as you expect revenue & service capacity to be limiting factors on marketing.

Looking deeper at the assumption that ‘Bigger Business = Bigger Budget’, this chart explores the correlation.

So we can see that there is a correlation between size & budget. Although looking into the raw data I can see that some small businesses have much bigger budgets, and some larger businesses claim to have no budget at all. So there are exceptions that disprove the rule which is important to bear in mind.

I think this insight is useful for both SEOs and SMBs reading this write-up:

• SEOs – you can use this to guide your own sales strategies and target businesses who are more likely to spend more $$.
• SMBs –  you can benchmark your marketing spend against similar sized businesses (although this doesn’t take business type into account)

Q3. What percentage of your marketing budget is spent on internet or mobile marketing?

Key Findings:

• 34% allocate less than 10% of their marketing budget to online channels (vs 33% in 2013)
• 50% allocate less than 30% of their marketing budget to online channels (vs 49% in 2013)
• 29% allocate more than 70% of their marketing budget to online channels ( vs 28% in 2013)

Analysis:

In similar results to 2013, half of all SMBs spend less than 30% of their marketing budget online. We’ve already learned that 83% are spending less than $1,000 a month on marketing, which means that 50% are spending less than $300 a month on internet marketing.

Key Stat: 50% of SMBs spend less than $300/month on internet marketing

In fact, 61% of those surveyed spend less than half of their marketing budget online. The question that we don’t answer here (sorry!) is if this is a considered marketing strategy or simply a continuation of old habits / tried & trusted tactics which determines where marketing $ are spent.

Q4. In the next 12 months do you plan to increase the money you spend on internet marketing?

Key Findings:

• 37% do plan to increase their internet marketing spend over the next 12 months (vs 21% in 2014)
• 47% are unsure (vs 47% in 2013)
• 16% have no plans to increase their internet marketing spend in the next 12 months (vs 32% in 2013)

Analysis:

Here we can see the first obvious change in usage & attitudes from 2013. There has been a 16% rise in SMBs that plan to increase their internet marketing spend over the next 12 months, giving those of us involved with local search/marketing a positive indicator for our businesses in 2015.

47% of businesses are unsure about whether they will change their spend level in 2015 – so maybe this figure of 37% will actually increase if business conditions are positive in 2015.

Q5. How effective is internet marketing at attracting customers to your business?

Key Findings:

• 32% find internet marketing to be ‘very effective’ at attracting new customers (vs. 27% in 2013)
• 75% believe that internet marketing is ‘effective’ or ‘very’ effective at attracting new customers (vs. 68% in 2013)
• 4% don’t do any internet marketing (vs 8% in 2013)

Analysis:

Attitudes towards internet marketing have brightened over the last 12 months. 75% of SMBs are now positive about the effects of internet marketing compared to 68% in 2013. Only 4% do not do any internet marketing vs. 8% last year.

It is this increase in trust towards internet marketing that has persuaded 37% of SMBs to up their spending levels over next 12 months. It shows that if more SMBs can be convinced about the effectiveness of an internet marketing campaign, then it is likely that they too will spend more of their budget in online channels.

Q6. Which of the following marketing channels are most effective at bringing you new leads & customers?

Key Findings:

• 28% find word of mouth to be the most effective channel at attracting new customers (vs. 26% in 2013)
• 20% find SEO to be the most effective channel at attracting new customers (vs. 19% in 2013)
• 51% say online channels are the most effective at attracting new customers (vs. 49% in 2013)

NB – word of mouth is considered as an offline medium/channel in this survey.

Online vs Offline:

Analysis:

Similar to last year, the majority of SMBs find word of mouth to be the most effective channel at bringing in new leads & customers.

In Chart 3 we learned that 61% of SMBs spend less than half of their marketing budget online. This looks likely to change in 2015 (37% plan to increase spend) but with word of mouth considered such a powerful means to reaching new customers, some SMBs may continue to rely on WoM rather than open their wallets and spend additional budget on online marketing.

But I think this represents a solid business case for consultants / agencies who offer Reputation Management services. This is an extension of WoM with customers sharing their experiences online as opposed to verbally. The impact of a great reputation which is shared widely online can earn businesses lots more customers.

More good news for search consultants & agencies is that of the top 4 most effective marketing channels, 3 of them are online; SEO, Online local directories & Email marketing. These 4 channels make up 73% of the total results.

The perceived effectiveness of SEO has marginally increased year on year, whilst there is slightly less faith in PPC.

Q7. Which of these success metrics are you most concerned with?

Respondents were asked to select 2 options from the 5 choices provided.

Key Findings:

• 31% – Phone calls are the most valued success metric
• 20% – Both website traffic & Search Engine rankings

Analysis:

Different types of businesses will be concerned with different KPIs as success metrics. An Ecommerce business for example, will be more concerned with online metrics, whilst a local bakery might be more concerned with customers walking through the door.

In this survey we had a wide-range of small & medium businesses take part; from plumbers, event planners and private investigators, to locksmiths, mechanics and party entertainers. It’s fair to say that the participants don’t come from any one industry alone, and so the results should be treated as such.

For the majority of SMBs, the amount of phone calls to a business is considered the most important metric. A call is considered a more solid lead because the customer has taken the time to track down a phone number and make a call. There is more friction in taking this action than in searching-clicking-completing an online form. So if a customer is prepared to take this step then they are more committed to using that business. And it gives the business owner / manager / sales guy the chance to provide more information and close the deal.

The results also show us that SMBs are concerned with their online presence. 20% said that traffic to their website was the most important metric for success, while 20% also said that their position in the SERPs was very important.

This continued focus on Search Ranking as a KPI will no doubt frustrate some search consultants who want to move to more concrete metrics, but it shows the appetite that business owners have for this which can’t be ignored.

*NB – we didn’t ask this question in 2013 so don’t have Y-on-Y comparison data.

Q8. Do you have a mobile ready / mobile optimized website?

Key Findings:

• 66% do have a mobile ready / optimized website (vs. 59% in 2013)
• 19% do not have a mobile ready / optimized website (vs. 26% in 2013)

Analysis:

In 2013 we highlighted the fact that many SMBs were falling behind in mobile marketing. We can now see that to an extent this has been addressed in 2014.

In November 2014, Google officially launched the mobile-friendly label in mobile search results. The added benefit of receiving such a label is that sites which are considered mobile friendly may receive a ranking boost. The importance then, of having a fully mobile optimized site cannot be underestimated.

Q9. Which of these statements best applies to your feelings about Google+ Local / Google My Business?

Key Findings:

• 41% find Google+ Local / GMB clear & easy to use
• 20% know that it is important but do not understand it
• 17% are frustrated by the amount of changes

Analysis:

The majority of those surveyed find Google+ Local / GMB clear & easy to use, and almost 1 in 10 think it’s great for their business – although it’s clear that there is still some confusion about these products.

17% state that constant changes make Google+ Local / Google My Business confusing. On 11th June, Google rolled out Google My Business – a significant upgrade to Google Places /+Local – with the hope that a new product update would seriously address the main concerns of small businesses. It was a large, yet necessary change that was generally met with positive reaction.

One positive is that there has been a decrease in SMBs thinking that Google+ Local / Google My Business is not important, or that Google simply doesn’t understand small businesses.

2. Marketing Consultants & Agencies

Q10. Do you handle internet marketing yourself or use a freelance marketing consultant/agency?

Key Findings:

• 64% of those surveyed handle their internet marketing in-house (vs. 68% in 2013)
• Just 18% use a consultant / agency (vs. 15% in 2013)

Analysis:

There has been a slight shift towards SMBs utilizing the expertise of SEO agencies / consultants for their internet marketing, and a similarly small shift away from SMBs that don’t do any internet marketing.

However, it’s still obvious that most small and medium sized businesses do everything in-house. And we’ve already seen that 75% of SMBs believe internet marketing to be ‘effective’ or ‘very’ effective, so it’s more likely to be down to their smaller budgets, as opposed to a mistrust of agencies & consultants.

We do have to consider that 50% of SMBs are spending less than $300 a month on internet marketing. How far does that go with the average SEO consultant or agency?

It’s also worth considering that in the Local SEO Industry Survey 2014, 41% of local SEOs handle more than 10 clients personally, and a further 24% handle more than 21 clients. If SMBs are concerned that about how far their budgets will go, they may also be concerned with how many man hours their account will receive when SEOs have this many clients to look after.

Q11. How do you rate the performance of your marketing consultant/agency?

Key Findings:

• SMBs that do not use an agency / consultant have been excluded from the above chart
• 39% love the work their agency / consultant does! (vs. 9% in 2013)
• 76% were positive towards the performance of their marketing consultant / agency (vs. 85% in 2013)

Analysis:

Whilst the uptake in SMBs outsourcing to an agency or consultant is fairly low – those that do so are generally more than satisfied with their results!

Clearly performance levels are not the problem. So instead, is it the case that SEO agencies & consultants need to do better at demonstrating their expertise to potential small business clients?

Q12. How many times per week are you emailed/called by an internet marketing or SEO company wanting to sell you their services?

Key Findings:

• 35% are contacted every day by a consultant / SEO agency (vs. 32% in 2013)
• 90% are contacted at least once every month (vs. 86% in 2013)

Analysis:

Above we considered that whilst agencies are providing such pleasing results for SMBs, then they should make considerable effort to communicate this to potential clients. We can now see that they are doing just that – with 35% of SMBs being contacted on a daily basis.

Daily contact has actually gone up year on year, and on average, 90% of SMBs report that they received some contact at least once per month.

SMBs are not short of choice if they want to outsource their internet marketing, but clearly they are deterred by something.

Q13. If you use/were to use an internet marketing consultant which of these factors are most important to you?

Key Findings:

• 18% say low cost is the most important factor when choosing an SEO consultant / agency (vs. 19% in 2013)
• 14% say performance guarantees are the most important factor (vs. 12% in 2013)
• 13% say having a good reputation in the most important factor (vs 13% in 2013)

Analysis:

Just above, we noted that despite positive results & frequent contact, few SMBs are outsourcing their internet marketing.

From the perspective of an SMB, low cost is the most important factor. 83% are spending less than $1,000 a month on marketing, and for 61% of SMBs, only half of that is spent online. This is the point at which any potential working relationship can break down.

From an SEOs perspective, agencies or consultants can provide really good results for SMBs but they also must also cover their own costs. A good SEO will be aware that there are many potential SMB clients out there but they must also be mindful of underselling their own services. SMBs may be attracted by low costs but that doesn’t always equal top results.

Similarly, 14% of SMBs (up from 12% in 2013), cite performance guarantees as the most important factor for choosing an agency or consultant. Yet how many quality SEOs would knowingly make promises of “top positions” & getting a client to number 1 for “keyword X” without adding some serious qualifiers to that?

On a plus note, quantifiable factors like having a good reputation (13%), relevant industry experience (12%) & being prepared to listen & learn about a client’s needs (9%) are still important factors from an SMBs perspective.

Of course, we can’t force SMBs to change the way they think about internet marketing and what makes a good SEO, but given time & understanding, perceptions can change. As more SMBs try outsourcing as an option, they will of course discover first hand what is important in terms of working with an agency.

Q14. Which of these statements best applies to your attitude towards internet marketing?

Key Findings:

• 29% understand internet marketing & do it all themselves (vs. 40% in 2013)
• 28% are learning about internet marketing & would like to do it all themselves (vs. 22% in 2013)
• 84% would like to, or do their internet marketing themselves (vs. 84% in 2013)
• 16% have no interest in doing their own internet marketing (vs. 16% in 2013)

Analysis:

Year on year, more SMBs are learning about internet marketing. However, there is an 11% decrease in those that say they currently understand it and do it all for themselves. In a fast moving industry with plenty of changes, updates & potential pitfalls, internet marketing can be a tough skill to learn, particularly when that has to be balanced with the running of a business.

Costs are obviously an important factor, and the price of doing online marketing in-house puts off 17% of SMBs. It seems like a lot of SMBs are caught in the catch-22 scenario of not being able to afford to either outsource their online marketing, or to do it in-house – yet despite this they obviously understand its importance to their business.

Whilst it is unlikely that the cost of outsourcing will come down, or SEO will get easier, taking the step to learn about it themselves can seem to some like the last remaining option. Obviously it helps that Google is adapting its own products with the introduction of Google My Business too.

SEO agencies & consultants have a small battle on their hands to convince SMBs that internet marketing is worth their investment, and to promote positive factors based around solid reputation & relevant experience. The signs are that it is a worthwhile battle, as 2015 is set to be a positive year for all concerned; SMBs are looking to put more resources into online marketing & most agencies & consultants are providing high quality services. With those two factors combined – 2015 could be a real turning point for the small and medium sized business world.