I need to talk about something for a moment that is confusing the local eco-system and impacting online data integrity. It’s the use of multiple partners and platforms to manage location listings for multi-unit and franchise systems across the same or similar channels such as Google, Yellowpages, Yahoo! Local, City Search and more. My concerns stem from recent conversations with brands looking for their location data online, finding it, and asking “whose data is this?” because it does not match the data that they submitted or provided to a third party to submit.
An example: A brand has a third party submit to Yahoo! Local but is also running paid ads on Dex (directly or through another agency). The brand is concerned about what they consider to be rogue data populating their Yahoo! listings.
Through some research we were able to identify where each piece of data was coming from.
Why does this happen?
Partnerships: Throughout the years of local advertising, extended networks have become the buzz words of local directories and IYPs. Examples include DexKnows and Yahoo! partnering in 2007 and AT&T and CityGrid expanding an existing relationship in 2010. These relationships can be tricky for brands to understand and confusing when your data shows up where it’s not expected.
Competition: Even though everyone is best friends, they all have the best strategies, the best reach, and the best return. Because of this, each channel and partner are actively pushing a solution to a brand. Unfortunately, data integrity is generally not part of the strategy. Data integrity means that your brand is represented accurately across all online venues. This includes basic location information like name, address, phone (the foundation of strong online presence) and more engaging content like images and descriptions. The example below has two different phone numbers for the same business.
How can it be stopped?
Communication: I cannot stress how important communication is for brands engaging in online marketing strategies. Internally, anyone involved in marketing for a brand needs to know what goes on so they can evaluate the potential each opportunity presents. Externally, partners should be informed of any efforts that may impact online data such as website changes, location management programs, paid programs, social efforts and more. Especially when dealing with location data, each partner needs to be working off of the same set of data to protect data integrity. And finally, location managers and franchise owners need to be informed of any efforts that corporate is engaging in so that they are not being duplicated.
Industry Education: It is our responsibility as agencies and online partners to educate brands about the online eco-system and how all efforts intersect with each other. When brands become frustrated with services because they are conflicting or hard to understand, it is detrimental to all parties involved.
(Shameless self-plug here: Learn how Social, Mobile, and Local tie together in our webinar)
Consolidation: Finding a partner or internal resource that has a solid understanding of the online landscape will be extremely beneficial for your business. This resource will be able to perform gut checks for each initiative and weave the pieces together so that they all work to better the brand. At the end of the day, marketing requires a set of recipes with a head chef to make sure it is executed properly every time.