Your cheat sheet for tracking analytics in multi-location marketing
Tracking analytics in multi-location marketing campaigns is a challenging task—but one that, when done well, reaps plentiful rewards. It’s the only way to measure and improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns at the local level, and it’s a crucial way to identify new opportunities and markets that you can expand into.
Just as importantly, marketing metrics help you understand your target audience. Multi-location businesses with hundreds or thousands of locations can’t rely on cookie-cutter campaigns that speak to a single location or broad audience. There’s too much diversity from one region to the next, and often, from one location to another.
Keep reading for a few tips about effective analytics tracking as well as a breakdown of which metrics are important, why, and how often you should check them.
3 tips for tracking multi-location marketing analytics effectively
Before diving into the actual metrics you should track for your multi-location marketing efforts, let’s look at some general tips that can help you streamline your analytics-gathering process.
1. Make website visitor tracking software part of your tech stack
Measuring website traffic and related metrics (like CTA button conversions) is a big part of multi-location marketing—and at the enterprise level, you’re going to need more than the basic analytics that a web host can provide.
Most enterprises rely on tracking software that uses a website script or a reverse domain name lookup system to collect traffic metrics. Be sure the tracking software solution can integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) platform so that it automatically channels collected data into the CRM where analysts can easily access it.
2. Create a schedule for reviewing metrics
At the enterprise level, efficiency is the name of the game. Checking dozens of metrics daily can waste a lot of time and resources. To keep your marketing team’s workload manageable, categorize metrics according to the frequency with which they need to be reviewed: Daily, weekly, monthly, or on an as-needed basis.
For example, a quick daily check-in on overall website visits is a good idea because it will immediately point out sudden increases or declines in traffic—and that is crucial information that can point toward a new viral trend or a major problem that needs to be corrected.
On the flip side, metrics like page rankings can safely be left for monthly reviews. SEO optimizations designed to increase page rankings need time to take effect. Checking on these daily will burn through time and resources that could be better used elsewhere.
In our lists of metrics below, we’ll note how frequently you should review them.
3. Create a single source of truth
The average enterprise tech stack features all kinds of apps—productivity tracking tools, CRM platforms, your email app, communications tools, digital marketing platforms, and much more. It’s up to you and your organization’s internal processes to choose a platform suited to tracking analytics—but whatever you use, it needs to be a single source of truth.
For example, let’s say that you’re using the following:
- A particular social media platform
- A tool to automate your social posts, which also happens to track interactions with those posts
- A CRM platform that integrates with the rest of your tech stack to collect all metrics
At any given time, all three may provide a different number of likes on a particular post. The social media platform provides real-time updates, while the automated posting tool and the CRM platform take a little while to update.
Creating a single source of truth means designating one of these platforms as the one from which everyone gets their information. In this example, your best bet is to use the CRM platform as your single source of truth because everyone—both at your corporate office and at individual locations—has access to it. And that means everyone will be working with the same numbers rather than introducing inaccuracies by pulling numbers from a variety of different tools and platforms.
Website traffic metrics to track
Measuring website traffic provides important clues about marketing performance both overall and within different cities or regions. Track the following metrics to gain insights on the ways online visitors are interacting with your website.
Visitor location
Definition: The physical location of website users
Why it matters: Visitor location is crucial for identifying which regions are performing well in a multi-location marketing campaign and which areas may need more resources to bring performance up. Location data combined with other data, like conversions or numbers of page views on a given page, can also help you determine the pages and products that are most popular in a particular region.
Review frequency: Weekly, since it can take time to build up useful pools of location-specific data.
Device type
Definition: Which devices people are using to access the website
Why it matters: Keep an eye on this metric to learn which types of devices are most popular. Combine this information with location and demographic data to determine which customer segments are more likely to use mobile or desktop devices so that you can optimize desktop sites, mobile sites, and mobile apps for these segments.
Review frequency: Weekly or monthly, so you can ascertain where app or website platform optimizations may be needed.
Total visits
Definition: The total number of all website visits
Why it matters: The total number of website visits will help you determine the overall reach of your website, and it will also help you spot trends in traffic. For example, you may notice seasonal spikes, or you may spot an overall decline in traffic as consumer trends and tastes shift.
Review frequency: Daily, so that if you notice a sudden spike or decline in traffic, you can identify the causes and take action immediately.
Unique visitors
Definition: The number of individual users visiting the website
Why it matters: Increasing numbers of unique visits signifies that your brand’s overall reach is trending upward.
Review frequency: Daily, so you can capitalize on sudden spikes in unique visitors (such as a viral moment) or do damage control if something negative is behind a dramatic change.
Traffic sources
Definition: Where website traffic is coming from, like search engines, business directories, social media, etc.
Why it matters: Track this metric to determine which sources are the most effective and which may need more attention in order to help them bring in more traffic. You can also combine traffic sources with location data and demographic information to discover which customer segments are more likely to discover the website through a particular source.
Review frequency: Monthly, so you can allow enough time for new campaigns, keywords, social platforms, or other marketing initiatives to gain traction and thus more accurately assess performance from each source.
Keyword rankings
Definition: How effective targeted keywords are at ranking your site in search
Why it matters: Keyword rank tracking helps you assess which keywords are working best and which aren’t. Over time, you can optimize both overall and local SEO strategies by discarding the keywords that aren’t performing well and replacing them with terms that bring in more traffic.
Review frequency: Monthly, because even if you’re using keywords with the potential for high performance, it takes a while for search engines to index and rank pages.
Social media metrics to track
Seventy-seven percent of businesses use social media to reach customers—and 90% of social media users follow at least one brand on social media. Stay on top of the metrics below to measure the performance of your social media accounts.
Followers
Definition: The number of people following a brand or an individual location’s page on a particular social media platform
Why it matters: Follower numbers are a key indication of your brand awareness and reach on social media. In particular, you can compare numbers of followers between location-specific brand profiles to discover which locations have greater reach and which are lagging behind. Stable follower numbers indicate that your brand has a good reputation with its followers, whereas a decrease can indicate that something disruptive is happening to annoy or drive away your audience.
Review frequency: Do a quick daily check to monitor for sudden spikes or declines in followers. However, because changes are most likely to be gradual, save deeper analysis for monthly reviews.
Interactions
Definition: The likes, shares, and comments on social media posts
Why it matters: Interactions on social media are an important way to judge overall engagement and to keep track of sentiment. Lots of positive comments are a good thing, but keep track of negative remarks too. These can often highlight areas where your brand or where individual business locations could be doing better.
Review frequency: Daily to weekly, depending on the metric (e.g., check in on likes and shares on a weekly basis to allow time for posts to circulate fully, and check in on comments daily so that you can respond or take action if necessary).
Click-through rate (CTR)
Definition: The percent of users who click a link on your social posts
Why it matters: High CTRs are indicative of posts that are effective at driving traffic to your website. They’re also a great indication that the content, topic, or product is relevant and helpful to your audience, as opposed to posts with low CTRs which may signal a poorly received product or topic. Use posts with high CTRs as an example to follow when creating future posts.
Review frequency: Weekly, to see which posts perform best so you can optimize future posts to generate even higher CTRs.
Offline activity metrics to track
Unlike online-only brands, enterprises with multiple locations have dozens, hundreds, or sometimes thousands of locations to oversee—and metrics tracking offline activities at each physical location are just as important as those tracking online interactions.
These are the metrics that will show you which stores are performing well and which are underperforming. Use this information as a starting point.
Then sort the high performers into their own category so you can analyze what they’re doing right and apply it to other locations. Meanwhile, earmark the low performers so that you can do further research into the reasons behind their lagging metrics.
Best-performing location
Definition: Which region or individual store is performing best based on metrics such as in-store traffic, sales, and customer reviews
Why it matters: Any number of factors can influence performance from one location to another. Store management, store layout, the neighborhood in which the store is located, employee training, product popularity in a given area, brand reach—these are all examples of the kinds of things that can make (or break) a particular location’s performance. This metric will reveal which locations could use a boost and which are the high performers that you can use as a model for other locations.
Review frequency: Monthly, because it can take some time for performance-boosting initiatives to have a measurable effect.
In-store foot traffic
Definition: The number of customers visiting each physical store location
Why it matters: In-store traffic clearly identifies which stores are performing well and which aren’t. When traffic is low, look at the area first. Is the potential customer base large enough to support a physical location? If so, then start looking at other data points—like what people are saying in online reviews or social media comments, or what the competition is like locally—to identify possible causes behind low traffic.
Review frequency: Monthly, so you can allow time for marketing initiatives to gradually build traffic at individual locations.
Promotional codes redeemed
Definition: Numbers of print or digital promotions redeemed in each physical store location
Why it matters: The overall number of promotions redeemed can tell you how effective your promotional efforts are. Comparing between locations sheds light on how well promotions work among different customer segments. Differentiating further between print and digital coupons will give you clues about the types of promotions that work best for each location.
Review frequency: Monthly or on a per-campaign basis, so you can assess how well the promotion performed overall.
Marketing budget metrics to track
Budgeting metrics are some of the most important for multi-location marketing campaigns. The whole idea is to find ways to make the most of your marketing dollars—and the metrics below will help you do that.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Definition: The cost to acquire a new customer
Why it matters: Lowering your CAC allows you to make back more of the money you put into your marketing budget. Additionally, this metric is made up of several other useful metrics, like the costs of marketing tools and paid advertisements that you’re using, labor hours, and more, all of which you can analyze separately to help keep costs as low as possible.
Review frequency: Monthly or as needed, such as during budget reviews so you can figure out how to optimize costs.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Definition: A measurement that represents the value of a customer to your company over the duration of their relationship with you
Why it matters: Higher CLV indicates not only increased revenue per customer but potentially also better efficiency per customer. While some campaigns may produce a lot of overall sales volume, you may discover that other campaigns with lower sales volumes are actually producing more sales per customer, which leads to a higher CLV — and a higher ROI.
Review frequency: Monthly or on a per-campaign basis to allow time for your campaigns to generate enough data to create an accurate analysis
Conversion rate per campaign
Definition: The number of people who converted (completed a desired action, not necessarily a sale) during the course of a marketing campaign
Why it matters: Conversion rates in general are important to track the efficacy of your overall marketing efforts—and conversion rates per campaign can help you assess how well individual or local marketing campaigns performed. Conversions can include not only sales but also inquiries, bookings, subscription registrations, or other desired actions.
Review frequency: Weekly, so you can optimize campaigns as you go to produce better and better results.
ROI per campaign
Definition: Revenue generated versus costs spent within an individual marketing campaign (or if you’re tracking revenue generated versus money spent specifically on advertising, then you would track your “return on ad spend,” or ROAS)
Why it matters: Keep track of this metric to identify which campaigns are producing the highest ROIs. If you’re running multiple local campaigns across different regions, you can use this metric to compare the ROI for each region—and then tailor strategies on a per-location basis to increase your ROI for specific locations or regions.
Review frequency: Monthly or as needed, so you can give your marketing campaigns time to generate results before analyzing the ROI. Continue measuring over time since quick, early wins can often mislead you by making your ROI seem higher than it will be once it normalizes.
Tracking analytics in multi-location marketing with Yelp for Brands
Yelp for Brands has a lot to offer in terms of metrics and multi-location analytics. To start, individual location pages come with metrics of their own, which give you the ability to track efficacy and make performance improvements. However, the support that Yelp for Brands can offer goes much deeper than page metrics.
Analyze and respond to customer reviews
Yelp Pages give local customers a chance to leave reviews—and these reviews are a goldmine for marketers who need data points to improve performance across different locations. Listen to what customers are saying, and let Yelp help you create a strategy for responding to reviews so that you can boost engagement and customer satisfaction even further.
Round out analytics with market trends and industry insights
With millions of visitors each day searching for products and services plus advertisers promoting their own offerings, Yelp is in a unique position to offer information on industry trends and insights as well as current market trends.
As a Yelp for Brands user, you can access specific trends and insights that are relevant to your brand—then add them to your analytics to better inform your multi-location marketing strategy.
Gather metrics to improve your ROI
One of the best features of advertising with Yelp for Brands is that through the platform, you can leverage multiple tools to track and optimize your multi-location marketing campaigns:
- Track in-store visits with Yelp Store Visits, Cuebiq, or Foursquare
- Monitor key customer actions on your website after they’ve engaged with your Yelp campaign with Yelp Pixel
- Measure brand lift with Upwave, Kantar, and Dynata
- Track in-store sales resulting from your campaigns using LiveRamp, Neustar, and APT
Discover how you can get more from your multi-location marketing analytics
Tracking analytics in multi-location marketing is a must—and with the right tools and know-how, multi-location brands can dive into the data produced by each of their marketing channels to learn more about their target audience and all of the diverse groups that make it up. It all starts with choosing appropriate metrics so you can track and analyze campaign performance both on a broad scale and at the local level.
Yelp for Brands can make it easier for your brand to collect data while putting business listings, ads, and relevant content in front of your user base. Reach out to learn how you can get started with tailored solutions and services to support your business.