Sonus Franchises Get Localized

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:05:00 GMT

Generating quality leads at the local level and finding a solution that was scalable, automated, customizable and compliant and provided a competitive return on investment, were the main criteria for Sonus Hearing Care Professionals when it sought a marketing solution.

Easy enough, right? In fall 2012, the hearing health care provider decided to leverage the SIM Partners Velocity program combined with the Kenshoo Local platform to achieve its local marketing goals.

The solution provided by these two companies gave Sonus’s multiple locations the ability to target their key customers using: hyperlocal content, custom landing pages, mobile pages, paid ads, data feed distribution, search engine optimization, local optimization and more. This allows Sonus franchises to feel confident that their customers have multiple online channels through which they can find Sonus. In addition, all calls and leads coming through these channels are tracked and reported back to Sonus so they can monitor performance.

“Sonus employed a very intelligent strategy by using both national and franchise-level paid search campaigns to complement local page optimization and data feed distribution, and the results speak for themselves,” said William Martin-Gill, general manager of Kenshoo Search. “Hyper-local marketing has become increasingly important for multi-location brands, and leveraging a cross-channel model has the potential to pay big dividends.”

The results were a 2.5 ROI and a 67 percent decrease in CPL.

For more information and key takeaways, visit SIM Partners and Kenshoo to download the full case study.

Full Speed Ahead with SoLoMo Platform Velocity

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 17:55:00 GMT

Scalability, automation and speed to market are three things Velocity platform by SIM Partners is hanging its hat on.

Platforms like Velocity, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution works with large, national brands to fill the increasing need of maximizing social, local search and mobile and the location level, play tribute to the growing focus on SoLoMo (social, local and mobile).

SIM Partners Director of Client Strategy Tara Thomas says what is happening with smartphones and technology as a whole, and what giants like Facebook and Google are doing (through Facebook pages and Google+ Local pages, respectively), is driving the need for localization.

The change should alert business owners to put a premium on localization, which includes launching geo-location and hyperlocal strategies, registering for services like Yelp and Foursquare and more.

The numbers back the idea.

73% of all online activity is related to local content (Google)
82% of local searchers follow up with a phone call or show up on your doorstep (TMP/Comscore)
66% of Americans use local search to find local businesses (Comscore)

As important as the stats, are the search implications. Businesses can no longer appear at the top of local search pages without a local presence. Velocity works to optimize everything for local search by creating standard and mobile business profile Web pages for a company’s locations and optimizing them to improve ranking and increase local traffic for all major search engines on smartphones, tablets and computers.

Using the Velocity platform, SIM Partners recently completed a full rollout (10,000 locations) for a leading national insurance brand thanks to a successful pilot program (of 250 locations). They were able to connect higher sales and engagement at the local level.

This isn’t an isolated case study. Velocity boasts a 95 percent renewal rate, based on the product’s performance. Part of the success is the malleability.

“If I am a large brand and need to create consistency, and every one of my locations needs to be on board and increase sales at their stores, using a platform like ours is successful because it’s automated and scalable,” says Thomas. “I can roll it out to 5 or 10,000 with the same system, using the same platform.”

Big or small, businesses needs to be hyperfocused about hyperlocal.

'Net Features : SIM Partners

Sonus Franchises Get Localized

Full Speed Ahead with SoLoMo Platform Velocity