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Renting vs. Owning the Post-Review Local Consumer Journey

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Renting vs. Owning the Post-Review Local Consumer Journey

The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Technology can be a conductor or a barrier. Everything we do to market local businesses is meant to culminate in a human encounter. When we get our part right (and external forces smile upon us), technology connects us. When we get our part wrong (or external forces impede us), technology can have the frustrating effect of sundering local brands from their customers, with everybody losing out on the deal.

The modern phenomenon of local search exemplifies the concept of a “mixed blessing”. Loss of control over significant parts of the customer journey can be a source of legitimate stress for owners and marketers. Stress isn’t good for us, of course, and that’s why I’m hoping this message brings some welcome relief: control of the most important aspects of the consumer journeys remains strongly on your side, and you can thrive without the parts you have to give up. We’ve got data to back this up, thanks to Moz’s recent report, The Impact of Local Business Reviews on Consumer Behavior, and I’m hoping today’s column will lift some burdens that may have been weighing you down.

The data

Let’s start out by taking a moment to really reflect on what it means that 96% of adults read local business reviews. Basically almost everyone in your community is perusing this content, making it the widest possible road to your front door, but the truth is that it exists in a space you only partially control. Given that only 11% of review-readers trust brand messaging over public opinion, reviews matter greatly, and it’s a tough reality that they mainly happen in digital spaces you rent rather than own.

If something goes wrong with your reviews on third party platforms like Google, Nextdoor, or Yelp, such as a spam attack, or the random disappearance of your reviews due to a bug or update, or a single irate customer shouting half-truths or downright falsehoods through a megaphone amid a small number of reviews, you have limited direct recourse for resolution. Platforms may or may not respond to your pleas for help, and some customers may ignore even your best offers to resolve their complaints – the sense of lost control is not imaginary.

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Here is the good news: for 91% of your potential customers, the very next step they take after reading reviews will land them in spaces you own. 51% will head to your website, which you fully control, 27% will visit your place of business, which you also fully control, and 13% will contact you, and it’s you who control your phone and text lines, your email, forms, and live chat. Apart from the 8% that will move from reviews to the profiles you rent on social media platforms, management of customer experiences is almost all on your side and in your house.

Barring mishaps like your website being infected with malware, a temporary closure of your premises due to illness, or a power outage bringing down your phone lines, it turns out that you remain in charge of key customer/brand experiences during nearly all of the post-review consumer journey. Great news, indeed! But it carries some big responsibilities with it.

Converting on the next step after reviews

The wide funnel begins to narrow as consumers transition from reading reviews to their next steps. Winning maximum conversions from their next actions depends on having the right welcome in place in all three of these spaces:

The local business website

Whether customers click from the review profile to your website homepage, or to a landing page your listing is linked to, prepare this welcome for them:

  • An accessible, secure, technically-clean, optimized website housing the multi-media content and features the customer needs to take their next steps towards a transaction.

  • Highly visible information on every way in which the customer can contact and visit you, including phone, text, chat, messaging, email, forms, hours of operation, maps, and written directions.

  • Additional first-party reviews to provide further proofs of your good reputation and tide you over in times when bugs make your third-party reviews go missing.

  • A unique selling proposition to seal the deal.

Your place of business

Whether your place of business is your physical premises, or your clients’ locations, you can shine on this main stage with the following:

  • Exceptional customer service based on the training of your staff and good management of the entire customer service ecosystem. With 65% of review writers saying they’ve written negative reviews because of experiencing bad or rude customer service, building an employee-centric company that radiates both happiness and helpfulness is your best bet for building an excellent reputation.

  • Careful guardianship of your supply chain. 63% of review writers say they’ve written negative reviews after purchasing bad products. The quality of your inventory supports both repeat purchases and high ratings.

  • Accurate online local business listings. 52% of survey respondents have written negative reviews after encountering incorrect business information on the Internet. Use of listings management software like Moz Local can ensure that what’s published about your business online (like hours of operation, addresses, and key services) matches what the customer will experience in the real world, preventing inconvenience and disappointment.

Your contact options

Whether a review reader turns next to your phone line, text line, live chat, website form, or email, assist them towards a next conversion by:

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  • Reducing on-hold times on your phone line to the bare minimum

  • Ensuring all public-facing representatives of the business are well-trained in your products, services and policies

  • Providing realistic estimates of when a customer will hear back if they are required to leave an email address on chat instead of speaking immediately to a live person

  • Reducing the number of form fields the customer is required to fill out before reaching you

  • Offering an after-hours support option

  • And, of course, for the 8% who will visit your rented spaces on social media platforms as their next step after reading reviews, be sure your full contact information is included on your profiles.

Despite the market disruption of the Internet, so much about local businesses remains the same

Infographic depicting the cycle of consumer engagement. Top middle: blue circle with image of person working at a computer, text:

While technological innovations are ongoing, it’s apparent that deeply-rooted consumer behaviors continue to follow a traditional pattern that’s existed for hundreds of years. In summary, people in your town want to know what others say about your business >>> people want to connect with your business for a possible transaction >>> people then tell others about what they experienced with your business. All of this cycle has always happened offline, and the only real change is that the means for some of this communication has partly transitioned online.

Just as business owners always had to do without the ability of controlling the word-of-mouth reputation their community was creating for them on front porches and over fences, modern business owners can live without directly controlling the online brand sentiment that exists in spaces they have to rent rather than owning. While it’s true that traditional PR may have had more power to shape public perception before online local business reviews made individual consumer voices so loud, the not-so-secret ingredient to brand longevity and loyalty remains unaltered: great customer experiences at and around the time of service are the foundation of success.

What every local business needs today is a thoughtful plan for managing the digital assets that now contribute to these positive consumer experiences. The winning recipe, then, is developing high standards for the spaces you own (your website, place of business, and most contact methodologies) and being as hands-on as possible in the spaces you rent (the online profiles containing your local business information, reviews, and social content). With a workable strategy and good quality tools for managing this ecosystem, the development of your good name in the community you serve will follow.

Knowledge is power; read Moz’s full survey report: The Impact of Local Business Reviews on Consumer Behavior

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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