THE CMO’S GUIDE TO

LOCATION DATA MANAGEMENTWinning in the Era of “Near Me” Moments

2

Today, the mobile consumer calls the shots for any enterprise – particularly

those that want to attract consumers to their brick-and-mortar locations.

And to succeed with the mobile consumer, marketers need to harness

the power of location data to create a competitive advantage.

It’s no secret that consumers empowered with mobile devices are

collapsing the sales funnel. According to Google, shoppers armed with

smartphones are making “I want to go” or “I want to buy” decisions so

quickly and often that brands need to be present with relevant answers

in those micro-moments of discovery or lose.

And Google isn’t the only place consumers are searching in these

“near me” moments of need. Maps, apps, GPS, and mobile operating

systems such as Apple iOS 9 and Android Google Now also play a role,

along with wearables such as Apple Watch.

Accurate location data – such as a brand’s name, address, and phone

number – makes a business findable in the near me moments of

search. Location data paired with compelling content converts these

near me searches into “next moments” of purchase.

At the center of it all is your location data – the key to turning micro-

moments of discovery into big business for your brand.

WELCOME TO THE AGE OF THE

MOBILE CONSUMER.

The Shift from Listing Management to Location Data Management

Location Data: Your Brand’s Online Foundation

The Complexity of Location Data

Amplifying Your Location Data

Converting Consumers into Customers with Location Data

Keeping Your Location Data Healthy

What’s Next for Location Data

3

4

5

6

8

10

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

3The CMO’s Guide to Location Data Management

Many brands make the mistake of viewing location data as nothing

more than plumbing for their local listings – or a component of a listing

management strategy. But location data management is much bigger

than listing management.

Traditionally, listing management has focused on the accuracy of your

location’s name, address, and phone (NAP) data across a limited

number of directories. Some listing management solutions in the market

rely on a paid inclusion model that focuses on buying data placements

for your locations on marginal directories that earn little traffic.

Location data management goes beyond listing management to make

your location data actionable and accessible across the entire discovery

ecosystem – including search engines, maps, apps, operating systems,

GPS, wearables, and more. As a result of this owned and earned

approach to location data distribution, your brand becomes more visible

because your business data becomes more open and accessible to the

influencers who are in a position to help customers find your business.

Location data is the lifeblood of every local search, mapping, social,

and mobile platform.

THE SHIFT FROM LISTING MANAGEMENT TO LOCATION DATA MANAGEMENT

LISTING MANAGEMENT

helps local businesses track all

of their business listings, increase

their online visibility, and correct

their business information.

LOCATION DATA

MANAGEMENT treats

location data as an ownable

asset that is scalable, accessible,

and actionable to maximize

visibility and accuracy across

the entire discovery ecosystem,

including search engines, maps,

apps, operating systems, GPS,

wearables, and more.

NEARLY 80% OF LOCAL SEARCHES ON A MOBILE PHONE END IN A CONVERSION.SOURCE: NEUSTAR.BIZ

4

At a foundational level, your brand’s location data

is the digital identity that represents your physical

locations across search engines, maps, apps, GPS

and operating systems, and more.

Location data consists of information that a consumer

would need to find your business through a search

result. Think of location data as your local online

identity – the sum total of information that helps

someone identify who you are (and, in the context

of search, where you are, and how to

contact or buy from you).

You often hear location data associated with the

name of a business (also referred to as “business

title”), physical address, and phone number – these

three elements combined are known as “NAP”

data. Distributing consistent NAP information across

the local ecosystem is key to earning citations and

improving search rankings across discovery

platforms.

NAP data is the foundation of a brand’s location

data. There are other primary elements of a brand’s

location data that should be considered, including

business category, business description, and latitude

and longitude, among others. In addition, businesses

typically need to manage a countless number of

secondary elements including social links and

accessibility.

LOCATION DATA: YOUR BRAND’S

FOUNDATION

Primary Elements of Location Data:

HOURS OF OPERATION: these may vary by season (e.g., during holiday shopping).

BUSINESS DESCRIPTION: a brief description of what you do. For instance, an insurance agent should state the types of insurance offered (such as home, auto, and life).

NAP DATA: consists of data elements core to a business location, including: businesses name (also referred to as “business title”), address, and phone number.

LATITUDE/LONGITUDE: your latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, which com-prise your pin data, make it possible for your business location to appear accurately on mapping apps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps.

BUSINESS CATEGORY: the type of business you are. Business category is often classified by industry, but data aggregators and publishers use their own taxonomies.

5The CMO’s Guide to Location Data Management

Managing your location data can become a complicated challenge depending on how complex and diverse

your locations are.

A single business location, such as a restaurant that offers a limited number of products and service under

one roof, needs to focus on managing one set of location data.

But many businesses, such as Target, Walmart, or a medical center, offer multiple services under one roof.

Each service (say, a pharmacy inside a retailer) may require its own set of location data. We call businesses

that operate multiple services in one location “container stores.” A consumer’s motivation for visiting a

container might be radically different from one day to the next: needing a prescription filled on Tuesday,

and wanting to buy groceries on Wednesday. The container needs to share accurate location data for all

its services to satisfy its customers’ many needs.

There is a lot more to building a foundation than what we describe here. But you get the idea: location

data requires a strategy and technology to manage.

THE COMPLEXITY OF LOCATION DATA

LOCATION DATA TYPESDepending on the nature of your business, your location data could be defined any number of ways:

Professional services: professional services include insurance agents, physicians, or financial advisors who need to list specialty information such as accreditation or type of service.

Kiosks: free-standing operations such asATMs that are located near or inside another business such as a retail store. Kiosks need to clarify the context of their location relative to their proximity to another business.

Containers: these businesses operate multiple services under one roof, an example being Target or Walmart. Their location data needs to accommodate several variables, including hours of operation and points of entry within the building as well as the relationship between the business units.

Single business locations: single businesslocations typically include restaurants or retail stores that offer a single product or service.

Service area business: service area businesses might technically operate out of a location with a street address, but they typically provide onsite support within a geographic boundary in which their customers live and work. Examples include plumbers or other in-home repair services.

6

Making your location data accurate is important to create a foundation for local and location-

based marketing. But your location data becomes a more powerful asset when you unleash

it across the digital world where your customers live. Brands can create more customers and

generate more revenue by unleashing accurate location data that:

• Helps your brand locations appear in the near me moments that occur especially on mobile devices.

• Accelerates the velocity of the customer journey by supporting the next moment of search – or the action that occurs after someone finds your local business, ranging from booking an appointment to getting customer support.

• Ensures existing customers find you again, rather than a competitor, after they have done business with you already.

Unleashing your data properly means building relationships with data amplifiers. Data amplifiers

distribute and publish your data to a broader audience than you could ever do on your own –

what we call the “network effect.” Amplifiers consist of publishers such as Apple, Facebook,

and Google, which share your data with consumers in their ecosystems; and aggregators such

as Infogroup, Factual, and Neustar Localeze, which distribute business data to publishers.

The relationships among data aggregators and publishers create a critical network for your

brand. Your brand becomes more visible because your business data becomes more open and

accessible to the influencers who are in a position to help customers find your business. But

if data amplifiers lack accurate information about your locations, your business might not be

found – or conflicting information will be listed – when someone uses Apple Maps or Google

Maps to do a near me search for businesses in your category.

When you provide your data to amplifiers, you also create possibilities for your data to be used

by emerging local search technologies such as wearables, beacons, mobile apps, smart houses,

and self-driving cars.

AMPLIFYING YOUR LOCATION DATA

7The CMO’s Guide to Location Data Management

We recommend that enterprises with multiple locations work with data amplifiers (either directly

or via a third party such as SIM Partners) as part of a broader strategy to make their brands

more powerful through location data. You should complement those relationships by working

closely with smaller, influential publishers in key verticals, too. SIM Partners maintains direct

relationships with a number of data amplifiers as well as vertical-specific publishers to distribute

and scale our clients’ location data through our Velocity platform.

EXAMPLES OF DATA AGGREGATORS

Data aggregators are important because they distribute business data to publishing outlets such as Apple Maps and Google Maps. For instance, Neustar Localeze distributes business data to more than 100 search platforms, navigation systems, and mobile apps, such as Nokia and Yahoo! (Nokia, in turn, ensures that in-car navigation systems include your business data.) On the other hand, Factual specializes in making real-time data available via mobile and also boasts relationships with publishers such as Weather Channel and Yelp.

EXAMPLES OF PUBLISHERS

Apple Maps was developed for iOS, iOS X, and Apple Watch. Apple Maps Connect facilitates self-service for local listings.

The default search engine for Siri, crucial for voice-activated local searches.

The launch of Facebook Place Tips and beacons elevate the importance of local Facebook pages for driving foot traffic to stores.

Want Uber customers to find your business? You had better be visible on Foursquare. The two companies continue to deepen their relationship.

Google organic and local search results, Google Maps, knowledge graph, and the multitude of sites and apps that leverage Google results are powered by location data within Google My Business accounts.

Yelp long ago expanded beyond restaurant reviews; it’s a location data partner for major brands ranging from Apple to Mercedes-Benz. Yelp’s influence also extends into industries such as healthcare.

LOCATION DATA AMPLIFIERS

8

Managing your local listings is no longer just about controlling your brand; it’s about creating

customers by owning the next moment of search with location data. Being findable, while

still important, is table stakes when it comes to winning with mobile consumers. To accelerate

the velocity of the customer journey, multi-location enterprise brands should make their

location data actionable.

Making your data actionable means combining data and content to own the next moment

– or the action that occurs after a consumer finds you. An example of a next moment is a

consumer downloading a mobile wallet offer or a patient booking an appointment with a

doctor using a scheduling widget on a physician profile page.

To own next moments, brands need to deliver compelling content and experiences built on

a foundation of location data. Brands can create contextual content in many ways, such as

a well crafted offer for 20-percent off a purchase at a local retailer when a shopper is near

or inside a store; or a notification from a restaurant about a special event. Accurate location

data ensures that a consumer has a seamless experience finding the business; a contextually

relevant offer accelerates the journey from search to purchase.

CONVERTING CONSUMERS INTO CUSTOMERS WITH LOCATION DATA

9The CMO’s Guide to Location Data Management

NEXT MOMENTS THAT DRIVE CONVERSION

Next Moment

Actionable Content & Experiences That Convert

Making an online purchase

Buy buttons and/or seasonal features on location pages

Making an in-store purchase

Featuring compelling offers on location pages, such as a mobile wallet offer.

Booking an appointment

Scheduling widget.

Getting customer support

Vital “contact us” information prominently listed.

Telling others about your location

Share buttons for social media platforms such as Facebook (akin to digital word of mouth).

When you use a local marketing automation platform

to scale contextually relevant content and location data

across multiple locations, you scale the benefits, too. A

mobile wallet offer multiplied across hundreds and thousands

of locations can engage customers at scale, not simply in

one place. When location data is combined with customer

data – such as demographic profiles – as well as other

contextual data (such as weather conditions) the results

can be further amplified.

Making your location data actionable also means collaborating

with the partners in your ecosystem to do the work on

the back end that is needed for consumers to take a desired

action, whether ordering food from your restaurant or

walking into your store.

For instance, a restaurant should form a relationship

with GrubHub, the online food ordering service, and

ensure that its information is accurately listed in order

to encourage nearby customers to order its food. Local

search data resides in an ecosystem of publishers,

partners, and distributors beyond your local listings.

Especially as mobile devices proliferate, we believe

that owning the next moment of search is essential for

brands to compete at the local level. As difficult as it is to

display your location data properly, doing is not enough

to send customers to your cash register. As Google

recently discussed in I Want-to-Go Moments: From Search to Store, consumers armed with mobile devices

have at their fingertips the means to search for brands,

compare them, and make purchase decisions faster

than ever.

WHEN PEOPLE USE MOBILE SEARCH TO HELP MAKE A DECISION,

THEY ARE 57% MORE LIKELY TO VISIT A STORE.

SOURCE: GOOGLE MICRO MOMENT GUIDE

10

When you have accurate location data shared properly across your ecosystem, you possess location data

health. In other words, healthy location data is accurate data with reach. Keeping your data healthy requires

ongoing management, distribution, and monitoring. Velocity Listing Health measures and monitors location

data health across two dimensions:

• Local listings: we use a proprietary algorithm to assign a health score for the core attributes of a brand’s location data across all your local listings, including (but not limited to) NAP data. A stronger health score indicates that your business contains highly accurate location data across all your listings – which is significant if you manage thousands of locations. A low health score means that your business suffers from consistently inaccurate listings or attributes.

• Your ecosystem: we assign a health score to assess the soundness of your location data in all the places where customers find your brand across the digital world, such as Bing search results, Facebook, Google search results, and Yellowpages.com. Here, we examine how visible and accurate your data is across the ecosystem, especially with data amplifiers. When we assign a health score, we take into account the reality that not all sites in the ecosystem are equal. For instance, having your data appear in Google search results might be more essential to your business than, say, Yellowpages.com.

Monitoring your location data health will also identify steps you need to take in order to respond to changes

that occur constantly with your brand and ecosystem. For instance, your business might create new local listings

to account for the opening of new locations, or Google might update an algorithm. For a business with thousands of

locations, those types of changes can occur frequently.

When you make accurate location data accessible, you make location marketing more valuable. According

to proprietary research conducted by SIM Partners, brands that increased their location data health score by

20 percent saw traffic to their location pages increase up to 450 percent and on-page action conversion rates

increase by 216 percent.

When your foundational assets are healthy, you will reap rewards for years to come, especially as local and

mobile continue to thrive.

KEEPING YOUR LOCATION DATA HEALTHY

450%Brands that increased their Location Data Health Score by 20% experienced up to:

11The CMO’s Guide to Location Data Management

WHAT’S NEXT FOR LOCATION DATAHistorically, brands have treated location data as a passive phenomenon: a consumer enters a search query,

and good location data enables a brand to be present in search results. But increasingly, brands don’t need to

wait for a near me search before serving up the next moment, as with the nearby results now featured in Apple

iOS 9 Spotlight search.

To convert mobile consumers into customers, brands

can combine location data with contextual content to

create the next moment. A brand that capitalizes on

its own location data and the consumer’s location

data can make queries such as “drug store near me”

or “coffee near me” unnecessary because the brand

knows enough about the consumer’s location and

buying preferences to provide an offer before a

search even occurs.

A sound location data management strategy – one

that treats data as a scalable asset through ongoing

management, distribution, and monitoring –

ensures that your brand will be visible where and

when people are looking for you, no matter the

platform, location, or device.

As wearables take hold and as automobiles become

more sophisticated data repositories, location data

will become a more contextually relevant two-way

street. If you want to build sustainable marketplace

leadership for your brand, transform your location

data into a scalable asset that is accessible and

actionable.

A sound location data management strategy –one that treats data asa scalable asset through ongoing management, distribution, and monitoring– ensures that your brandwill be visible where and when people are looking for you, no matter the platform, location, or device.

C H I C A G O & S A N F R A N C I S C O | 8 0 0 - 2 6 0 - 3 3 8 0

About Velocity Location Data ManagementVelocity Location Data Management goes beyond just listing management by making your location data an ownable, accessible, and actionable asset that maximizes your brand’s’ visibility and accuracy across the entire discovery ecosystem at scale. This broad-reaching approach requires ongoing management, distribution, and monitoring of your location data. As a result, your locations are visible in the moments where and when people are looking for them – not just on tier two paid inclusion sites.

About SIM Partners and VelocitySIM Partners’ local marketing automation technology, Velocity, maximizes digital marketing results for enterprise brands at a local level. By making location data actionable and local content scalable, Velocity drives customer acquisition for national brands across thousands of physical locations. With Velocity, national brands can create location-based offers to turn “near me” mobile searches into offline conversions. Velocity includes a powerful local data management tool to drive listing visibility, a content management system that automates the creation of location- based content and experiences, and a robust insights platform to inform local content strategies. SIM Partners has offices in Chicago and San Francisco.

To learn more, or request a demo, visit simpartners.com.