Ep 40: Monica Ho is Chief Marketing Officer for SOCi, the All-in-One Localized Marketing Platform
Top multi-location brands have an impossible challenge in the form of managing their digital presence across hundreds or thousands of locations. This is a pain point that SOCi solves and today we have its CMO, Monica Ho, on the show as our guest. SOCi is a leading all-in-one marketing platform built specifically for next-level multi-location marketers. For the last three years, SOCi has been conducting a report called the Localized Marketing Benchmark Report whose focus is to measure the success of local marketing for multi-location brands. Monica joins us today to share the methodology behind the report and explore ways that brands can not only improve their scores but more importantly, how these insights can translate into quantifiable business results. Before digging into this, Monica firstly helps us learn more about how SOCi functions, talking about the different features it offers for running social business listings and social media as well as aggregating local reputation management. From there, we dive into the increasing importance of socially targeted posts and the claiming of local listings when it comes to the localized marketing of multi-location brands. Our conversation then turns to the report, where Monica gets into its methodology and also shares an important correlation between high LNBR scores and rapid growth. Wrapping up, Monica weighs in on current conversations relating to franchisee marketing, search versus social, personalized marketing, and the rise in the importance of C-commerce. Tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
A fun fact about Monica about her Jiu-Jitsu hobby.
Different features of SOCi and how it solves marketing needs of multi-location businesses.
Challenges the pandemic posed and how SOCi can help marketers solve them.
The marketing value of targeted posts on platforms people are spending time on.
How helpful it is for multi-location brands to have their localized social ads managed.
Findings of the Localized Marketing Benchmark Report conducted by SOCi.
How the report helps businesses know the value of visibility and how to become more visible.
The methodology used in the Localized Marketing Benchmark Report.
How SOCi can help businesses get a better score according to their report.
Discussing the metrics of search versus social and how they benefit businesses.
Why not just CMOs but CFOs should be interested in the findings of the report.
How SOCi is sharing the findings of their data and where to see them.
The score a few past guests of this show have got on the report.
How and why the 2021 report was divided up into phases of maturity.
Monica’s answer to the objection that local franchisees should not handle their own marketing.
IOS 4.5 and the value of knowing a person’s location for more personalized marketing.
Perspectives on C-commerce and how it relates to multi-location marketing.
Tweetables:
“What makes SOCi different is the platform was built specifically to solve marketing needs for multi-location businesses as it relates to all of the digital channels that these marketers have to manage.” — Monica Ho [0:03:20]
“You need to claim your local listings and your profile pages and you have to build them out and they have to be updated so that people understand what you’re offering and the experience they should expect when they come in store.” — Monica Ho [0:12:41]
“There’s a lot of things that go into your visibility and again, I think what this research does is it talks about all of those different factors that you need to be thinking about as a business and then, it helps you see what does ‘good’ look like.” — Monica Ho [0:15:20]
“Those brands that are scoring the highest in the LNBR score are growing their business, their revenues, three times faster than their competitive set. Again, we’ve seen the same trend three years in a row.” — Monica Ho [0:24:46]