Kadecia: Welcome, everyone. So excited to have you joining us today. I am Kadecia Ber here with Duane Forrester to spend some time talking about mastering local marketing. Before we kick it off, I always love to know where people are joining us from. If you want to drop where you’re joining us from in the chat, we would love to know. I’m just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, and Duane, where are you?
Duane: I’m just up the coast from Los Angeles, California.
Kadecia: Ooh. I think I’d rather be in California, but Cleveland is nice this time of year. If you never visited, come on out to the City of Rock and Roll. Before we get started with the webinar, a few things to know. We welcome questions, so feel free to use the chat. Feel free to share reactions and to pop questions into the Q&A. Duane and I will take some time near the end of this webinar to answer those. Most importantly, we want to get started and really talk about mastering your local marketing as a national advertiser. Before we kick that off, we’ll do a little introduction so you can know who we are, why we’re speaking to this.
I’m Kadecia Ber. I am a 15-year Yelp veteran, so I’ve spent time working with local businesses, mid-market businesses, emerging businesses, enterprise businesses. Today, I work with our enterprise and brand teams to really help clients figure out their digital measurement and attribution strategy and figure out the best products to really make an impact across the national landscape and in local market. I’ve had the good fortune of really sitting on every side of the table from operations to account management to sales. Really, one of my favorite things to have done in my career is work with all of our different clients and businesses and really share everything we have to share when it comes to local marketing. Duane, do you want to jump in there?
Duane: Sure thing. My name is Duane Forrester, VP of Industry Insights at Yext. I’ve been in the digital marketing industry for a little over 25 years now, so got the gray hairs to prove it. I’d like to thank everyone for that contribution to my life. It’s been a very fascinating career to grow up through. Started in sports betting. My career originally began with Caesar’s Palace in marketing. Then, ended up getting hired by Microsoft. Worked there for about a decade. Did some in-house SEO for them. Built and launched the big Webmaster Tools program. I was part of the team that launched schema.org, SiteMaps, .XML, robot.txt.
Ended up leaving there running one of the oldest agencies on the internet, Bruce Clay Incorporated. Ran that for a while, and then moved over about seven years ago to my time here at Yext. It’s incredible to work with businesses of all sizes and see the challenges they have and use the experience I have to help them overcome that and be successful, which I’m really hoping you guys agree with us today. That’s what we’re going to bring you today in the webinar, so I’m excited to get started.
Kadecia: Great, so anyone who’s been in this space for a while knows that the landscape has changed tremendously. I remember starting with Yelp and people saying, “Well, why would anyone ever write a review for a business? My clients find me via word of mouth. My clients look at the Yellow Pages. My clients look at mailers.” We think about so much change has happened over time, even thinking about the changes that COVID ushered in for businesses from buy online, pick up in store, to making sure everyone’s able to see your E-comm or online offerings.
Even in recent years, it’s been a very rapidly changing landscape. That’s something something that is so important when we’re thinking about, how do you make sure your local footprint and what people are finding is up to date and really valid and it’s something that consumers are going to be able to trust and make decisions on? I know, Duane, you’ve had a lot of experience in really studying and understanding these changes. I would love to get your thoughts on today’s landscape.
Duane: Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, look, I don’t think it matters which analogy we use. We can trot out the multi-layered onion, whatever version of this conversation you want to attribute it to. There are some really key facts. It’s never been more complex than it is today to do anything in digital marketing. Every single thing is more complex, more layers, more impact, more responsibilities, more everything. When you’re a consumer, for example, there has never been a point in history, and you can claim this always, but it’s most important to businesses today right now, but there’s never been a point in time where the consumer hasn’t been able to maximize their time as much as they can today. Consumers’ time is actually expanding. They get to do more with every minute of their time than any other time in history, and that’s really exciting for us as consumers.
We can do more, we can accomplish more. We can get more things completed. We can check off more of our personal tasks and goals. All of that matters, but on the other side of that coin, if you’re a business, that time is contracting. It’s getting smaller and shorter. Consumer expectations are higher. You have to respond faster. You have to respond more accurately. You have to be diligent in everything you do. You have to be responsive to things that consumers may not think matters in the moment, but then in the future believe that it matters. This is where we see corporate responsibility. All of these things are compressing a business’ time. That’s the general landscape that we find ourselves in today. Consumers have a voice that they’ve never had before. Kadecia, I chuckled your example of like, “Who would write review of a business?” I remember those days where we were debating like, “Why would anybody take time to talk about this?” You know?
Kadecia: Exactly.
Duane: At the same time, I just came from the water cooler where I complained about the service at the coffee shop on my drive into work that morning. It took a while for those two behaviors to bump into each other in the real world, but now that it’s here, boy, let me tell you, we take liberal advantage of communicating, whether it’s on social media or through commentary, feedback, reviews, everything. Again, that has the fact, the compression factor on businesses while it’s expanding for consumers.
If you’re sitting there thinking, “Wow, it really feels like it’s difficult today,” that’s because it is. It absolutely is. You’re completely valid in feeling that it’s never been more challenging. You’re right on point. What we want to do is help you figure out what to really focus in on so that you can actually kind of cut through some of that confusion that exists.
Kadecia: Yeah, it’s really interesting just hearing you speak about that change in time. I think about like the 24-hour news cycle, right?
Duane: Yeah.
Kadecia: When you think about something we’ve seen really change in that same time period, you know, you might sit down and watch the news or read the newspaper at a finite point, and now it’s this 24/7. People expect to have that access to what’s going on, and that’s how you see that spill over into how consumers think, too, right?
Duane: Absolutely.
Kadecia: … what they need and finding a business or finding anything they want to engage with, it’s always there, and so it does put that pressure on businesses to be right there at the time that the consumer is engaging.
Duane: Well, I’ll tell you, Kadecia, this example of news is like the perfect example. I think some people on this webinar will remember a time when they sat with their parents and their parents watched news on television, and that’s what you were watching because it was the one-hour news at dinnertime and everybody caught up in what was going on in the world from your community radiating outwards. Today, we have 24/7 super instant access. Everything is there. We have citizen reporters and anyone can be breaking news now.
If you actually look at the latest data, what you see is Gen Z, for example, when it comes to news, prefers to get their news from influencers in places like Snap and TikTok rather than traditional news sources. Again, forget what’s changing, but note the fact that this is changing and that that march of progress will always be there, constantly revolving and you need to stay focused on it.
Kadecia: Yes, exactly, so I think it’s a great time to speak a little bit, too, ..to other things you’ve seen change, and that’s one is geolocation and the expectations there and what consumers are expecting to find. I know you’ve thought a lot about this one as well.
Duane: Yeah, so okay, lots here. I’m going to unpack this pretty quick for everyone, but there’s lots here. You may look at this and say, “Oh, vicinity. Yeah, I remember that. That was like November of 2021. That’s getting a little old and stale.” Well, let me just recap what vicinity was about. It’s actually about two things. One was about keywords and domain names, which we’re not going to talk about today because it doesn’t really apply here. The other was proximity. I will hold up my device. You all have one of these. I’m sure you could not live without it. If I hold my device directly in front of my camera and I move it, say, a couple of feet this way or a couple of feet that way, Google can know the difference between both of those locations. That’s not a big move. We’re talking three to four feet in fidelity of Google knowing where a device is.
Now, put that device in your purse or in your pocket and put you on a street somewhere walking in front of businesses and Google knows exactly what business you’re standing in front of, not the street you’re on, not the block you’re on, but the actual business that you are in front of. That was really the core of vicinity was getting to that level of granularity, that level of understanding, which is huge for understanding the world around us in a fact sense.
That means from a business point of view, name, address, phone number, category for business, all these basic things that are unsexy. We have to make sure that those are super accurate, always up to date, and always available for consumers because Google’s using those signals to determine whether it should trust that you’re at that location when it tells a consumer that you’re nearby. Vicinity might sound like it’s old and we’re stopped talking about it, it’s still impacting the world around us because it’s about the world around us.
Now, let’s flip over to helpfulness. This is a little bit newer, August of 2022. Helpfulness is all about if you’re familiar with SEO, you’ll have come across E-A-T, the Expertise Authority and Trust, that triumvirate of concepts. Earlier this year, Google expanded that to make it E-E-A-T. They’ve added experience in there as well, so you have to demonstrate these things. You would demonstrate your experience as a business. You would demonstrate your expertise in a topic as a business. Others would talk about your authority, and trust is something that gets built throughout all of those first three elements. Google sees all four and can assign whether you’re trustworthy essentially.
Helpfulness kind of spans everything. It’s the difference between saying when I ask, “How do you tie a tie?” You say, “Will you put a knot in it.” Or you say, “Is it a bow tie or is it a straight tie? How are you going to be wearing it? Is this formal or informal? What kind of knot do you choose?” “Well, I want something that is traditional. I want something that’s modern.” All of that is helpful. Telling me to put a knot in the fabric, not helpful, but technically accurate. That type of helpfulness is at the core of everything Google is doing and focusing on moving forward.
I’m… Look at this way. Any single thing that your business is capable of doing, any product, any service, anything at all your business is focused on, doesn’t matter what it is. Start asking yourself, “Do I have enough information about it? Are there any questions that a consumer may ask about my product or service or my business that I do not already have the written answer for that is accessible to a search engine?” If the answer to that is yeah and some blanks, well, you’ve got some blanks to fill in, no question about it. It’s really important.
That helpfulness update, you’re going to see the value from that applied across everything, especially this new search generative experience, the AI stuff that Google’s working on. All of these signals that Google is gathering are going to be the tell-tales of who ranks where in these new experiences. These things are really customer-focused and the business has to support the concept. Really, really important that you drill down on this.
Kadecia: Yeah, I feel like it’s the user journey-plus, right? Like it’s the user journey-
Duane: Oh, absolutely.
Kadecia: … on steroids. I think he’s thought so much about the user journey, but what’s the business journey in making sure you’re able to meet that user, right?
Duane: Absolutely.
Kadecia: … on this?
Duane: Absolutely. I mean, and we’re going to talk a little bit about… a little bit more about the customer journey in this next slide here, Kadecia, but I will say this. There is so much information available today about customer journeys through analytics and through just your server logs even that there is no reason for you to not be able to understand where you need to place yourself to be on a customer’s journey. It’s the data is there, dig in, parse the data, use it to help you make decisions. If you want to look at a macro level, that’s where this concept of a new world order is, and this is all about change. This is just the change that’s happening. When it was search, we had this search made information accessible. Essentially it took the craziness of the web and gave us a way to sort through it.
Then, places like Google and Bing taught us the model of explore, ask my question; find, here’s a list of links; and engage, click on the links to see what answers your question. 20-plus years that’s been the model for the internet and for search and for largely consumers’ version of information retrieval. Now, we start seeing very different experiences emerging. If you look at a platform like TikTok, and look, I know, I know nobody here’s on TikTok, but I also know each of you is spending the average of four hours a day on TikTok. I know that. I’ve got it down to about two and a half and that feels about right. That feels about [inaudible 00:15:37] my life, but the experience that you get on TikTok is vastly different. It is an exploration where it’s an enjoyable exploration where you’re watching videos you like.
I love seeing cats on Roomba vacuum cleaners cruising around the house. It’s always fun, and as I engage with that, I see more of that. Then, eventually, I see a cow in the back of a trailer being towed around a field and the word Roomba is written on the trailer that the cow is standing on. It’s like, “Oh, that’s funny. It’s like the cow and the vacuum.” Then, what I didn’t realize was the next video I was watching halfway through it became an ad, and so now it’s the instant exploit.
That whole explore, find, engage model that we’re used to in search is morphing and changing to become enjoyable exploration and instant exploit. Really, the takeaway from this is, what are consumers doing? Why are they sliding over? What is it that’s enticing them to go do this? Look, this isn’t particularly difficult to understand. The human brain is lazy. If you can give it a video to watch instead of words to read, it’ll prefer that, and so we as the human, we’re just going along for the ride with what our brain’s enjoying. It’s enjoying the video concept because it’s easy to consume.
We see that that is real. Then, we look at the data. Google will be the first one to tell you visual search is huge. It’s growing. It’s massive, and that backs up what we’re seeing with consumer behavior. For your business, one of the things we’re going to get to when we get into the what should you be doing is the engagement on social media. It’s about the choices you’re making on how you’re creating your content. All of these big implications as we continue to move forward.
Kadecia: Yeah, and it’s interesting with search. I know this is something we haven’t talked about, but I think in my home, I have two nine-year-olds and they think search is all voice.
Duane: A hundred percent.
Kadecia: The idea of sitting down and typing something in when they could just ask Alex, you know?
Duane: Right.
Kadecia: Even seeing that behavior of like, how do you become that number one pop-up answer when someone’s doing a voice search? Even going down to the next generation, we’re going to see that behavior drastically change.
Duane: We see the data shows two generations right now, Gen Z and Boomers, are heavy users of the microphone to tell a system what they want it to do, whether that’s play music or look something up. That split is a little bit different, but we’re moving in the direction of more and more voice interaction. If you look at Google’s new AR goggles that they just launched, they track your eyes to know what you’re looking at. Then, there are cameras on the outside of the goggles watching your fingertips for a pinching motion, and when they see that, that means click.
Kadecia: Hmm.
Duane: Apple is inventing a new engagement paradigm that as people get used to that will then change how we do things. I can imagine 60 or 70 years from now, we’re going to have a whole bunch of people like, “Do you remember when we first had earbuds came out and we’d see people walking around on the street and we’d think they were lunatics because they were talking to themselves?” It turns out no, they were just on the phone with a Bluetooth headset and you couldn’t tell the difference. 80 years from now, we’re going to have people wandering around, pinching the air around them and we’re going to be thinking, “Wow, that’s weird.” We will be thinking that. Everyone around them will be thinking, “Oh, look, they’re doing something on the internet.” Like it just… That could be our reality, but the fact is that these things are changing in relation to consumer adoption and consumer demand. That’s what this is, right?
Kadecia: Exactly.
Duane: We saw this with TikTok. Nothing was adopted faster in the history of the internet than TikTok until ChatGPT came along, and I think now we need to come up with a whole new way of classifying this because those guys made a hundred million in 48 hours. That’s winning the lottery right there. It’s insane how much people wanted this and people are using those tools. Right or wrong, they’re using them. It’s shaping behavior, and more critically for businesses, it’s shaping expectations. None of those systems work if your data is not right.
If your data is inaccurate or old, out of date, missing, only partially validated, then all of that passes through with all of its errors to every one of those systems. The systems, as they understand the errors exist, will start making choices about what to talk about, and it’s a new version of what we’re used to with crawling, indexing, and ranking for search. Just a new paradigm, so-
… it’s exciting, we’ll say.
Kadecia: … as we talk about all these things that have changed and especially consumers today, on top of [inaudible 00:20:45] I think that all your… I mean, the trust, right? It’s not only like, “Where are you at? Are you open” Is everything accurate?” It’s like if I’m going to put my dollar out there, can I trust that I’m getting the service that I expect?” When I talk about that behavior long ago, “Why would someone ever review my business?”, today, we know that about 70% of consumers say they will check reviews before engaging with a new business. That’s become another element of this that is just fundamental is to engage with that content that’s written about you online to make sure you’re in those places that consumers are checking because so much of consumer behavior is really driven on knowing that they’re going to be able to find out about your reputation just at the touch of their fingertips.
Even if you get a negative review, I think it’s something like 88% of consumers say they’ll look past that negative review and then they seen that a business has responded to it, so being where your consumers are at in those local markets really matters. Your engagement in those local markets really matters because consumers are making those decisions when they do that quick search on you.
Duane: Yeah, I think you’re 100% on target with this, Kadecia. The only thing I want as a consumer is to know that I will get a fair shake if I have a problem. That’s what I want to know when I’m making my decision. I’ve kind of already made my decision on purchase/no purchase because I’m still engaged with you, and if I see that you are responsive to people with problems, look, I can read that that person’s being unreasonable. I can see that just by their ranting in all caps. I’m not going to give them credibility for the one-star review, but I’ll give you a ton of credibility for calmly, politely, and professionally addressing their concerns and attempting to solve the problem.
Kadecia: Mm-hmm.
Duane: Carries way more weight, and just to be crystal clear, we’re talking about humans understanding this. The search engines can also understand that. They understand syntax nuance, they understand context. They will look at that and understand the same thing we do that the business tried, and that matters because that one-star review isn’t going to tank your business. Google understands that there are always going to be outliers, people that you can’t satisfy. It works to look past that and balance its trust with you. The more you can do to encourage it to balance in your favor, to me, that’s an easy win. Get in there, respond to these things. My advice to businesses is 90% of reviews in 24 hours or less. That’s the mark right there, and yeah, you might not be able to hit it, but like aim high, right? If I told you it was 50% in a week, like, okay, but that’s really not going to move the needle, so aim high with this. Get as much as you can and create a culture around engagement with the consumer inside your business. That’s huge.
Kadecia: Yeah. I mean, consumers are expecting that engagement within the business and online, and so it’s just really completing the circle on how people are interacting with your offerings.
Duane: Well, and I just want to add one thing to that, Kadecia. This also extends beyond your digital footprint and this extends into your shop to hold themselves, the employees, and how they interact. Do they greet people? Do they smile? Are they helpful? Do they offer to help? All those little things change the equation in your favor and they’re things that you should influence whenever you can.
Kadecia: Yeah, exactly, and I think as we think about what it takes to be really successful, we talk about meeting those customers where they are when they’re searching locally, paying attention to those local reviews, and really thinking about the strategies that it takes to make sure you are doing these things at the moment that consumers are searching. I know at Yext and at Yelp, these are things we take very seriously, and just a few tips we have for you here if you want to walk everyone through them, Duane.
Duane: Sorry, you caught me on mute there, I guess. Tell me what-
Kadecia: It happens, it happens.
Duane: … “Hold on, I have to unmute.” Wow. Okay, so look, these success strategies, a lot of this is not necessarily news, but it’s things that businesses have yet to execute on at a high level. They need to do better, so investing your local listings. Absolutely everything’s on the table here, name, address, phone number, category, history of your company. Every single thing that somebody might be interested that can be filled in in a blank, fill it in.
The search engine doesn’t create the blanks and ask you for the data because it doesn’t know what else to do. It asks for that information because it’s pretty sure that the consumer wants it, so Google is not going to create a blank. That means someone has to go and somebody has to actually do the coding and take the time and figure out all of that work. That’s a high-cost investment of time on Google’s end.
If they give you the blank, fill in the blank because they’ve spent millions of dollars understanding that the data from that blank impacts consumers and consumers respond to it. When it comes to local listings, if you’ve got any blanks unfilled, fill them in. If you don’t have the content for them, get the content for them. Make that happen. Now, also improve your local search results.
I can’t stress this enough. Fill in, again, every single thing I’m including in this, videos where appropriate, imagery where appropriate. I can’t… I’ve lost track of how many businesses in New York City I look up in Street View on Google and I see a pile of garbage in front of them. Well, I’m freaked and I’m thinking, not heard, to take the phone we all have in our pocket as the manager and go take that photo. Update that. Make sure that you’re doing everything you can.
Make sure your web presence, your actual website is screaming about you and the local community. Take the effort to make those steps happen. Then, again, engage in social media. This is where the conversation about your business is happening, whether you’re there or not/ It’s far, far better for you to be a part of that conversation than not be a part of it. Google can see that, Bing can see that. Every search engine can see if you’re a participant in the conversations about you and, yes, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of places, but this is our reality today. This is where we stand today, and there are no shortcuts, unfortunately. We just… We cannot get by without filling in everything.
Kadecia: Yeah, I have a new term as you were talking. I was thinking about the 24-hour news cycle. We’re in the 24-hour search cycle, right?
Duane: Absolutely.
Kadecia: You got to be there. You got to be ready to go. I know we’ve worked with a few businesses that have really done this well and have let us kind of share their stories. Denny’s, I mean, everyone knows Denny’s. It’s a great place to go for breakfast, and they have a large network of franchisees who really drive at the value at the store level. What we saw in Yelp is Denny’s just did a great job of turning its local listings into an opportunity to drive awareness and repeat business. I always thought about Denny’s as an early morning or a late night spot, a 2:00 AM cup of coffee, which happened in younger days, but what Denny’s was able to do with its local listings is really use some to promote things like an all-day value menu or Denny’s Rewards and even creating awareness for the app.
If you think about someone who might come to Denny’s two, three times a year, how does Denny’s then get them to come in six or seven times a year? How you take someone who might come in once a week and get them to stop in two or three times a week because they’re not just getting breakfast. They’re thinking about Denny’s for lunch. They’re thinking about Denny’s for dinner, and so making sure that they’re on top of those local listings, making sure people know about their most recent promotions. You know, seasonally, there’s pumpkin pancakes. Those are all things that help drive that repeat business, and I think Denny’s really zeroed in on how they use its local listings to help their franchisees get the most value and meet the customer right where they are anytime they’re doing that search.
In addition to that, another one, tires, discount tire. When we talk about filling in every blank and making sure that moment someone is looking for what you offer, a discount tire has just done such a great job of that. You think about that tire service. We all need them from time to tome. I’m always like, “Oh my God, am I going to need one tire, two, four? What is this expense going to be? There’s so many options out there. Am I going to go to Costco? Am I going to go with someone who really specializes in it?”
When you think about someone waking up and being in that point, searching for tires, thinking about tires, trying to figure it out, you want to make sure they’re able to find that local footprint and don’t have to hunt it down. We know that most people are just going to go a few miles from their location when they need a service like this, and so Discount Tire is one that’s really zeroed in on making sure all their information on Yelp and just across the web is complete and easy for consumers to find.
This is such a great campaign. Kentucky Friend Chicken plant-based, going green at Kentucky Friend Chicken. You talk about just creating alignment across your media. You have something like Yelp when we know someone’s pretty down funnel, trying to search. You could be on Facebook, you could just be scrolling Instagram, or even on Twitter. Consumers are in all these places all day long doing talks about four hours on TikTok. We were starting to combine up all the social media and how much time that sucks away in a day. Your consumers are really bouncing away from place to place.
When you think about putting a campaign together and creating uniformity, yet also creating a campaign that’s unique to each platform. We think KFC like time and time again, really clue in on that. Whether if you were on Instagram and now you’re on Yelp looking for, “Well, where’s the nearest KFC?”, you’re still getting that message of what’s recent. It’s just such a great way to really unify what’s going on in your socials by making sure that you’re creative and your messaging is consistent, yet still unique to where the consumer is searching and how the consumer is searching.
Duane: You know, Kadecia, I’m just going to say this is kind of critical today. How a consumer wants information on Yelp, Facebook, Insta, Twitter, TikTok will vary, and you have to think of not the experience on the platform, but who the consumer is while they’re engaging on the platform and tailor your experience to them on that platform. What it usually means is a little more work in your creative time, in building your storylines, in capturing video or photos or audio. You need to do a little more so that you have the elements to create that broader campaign-
… but having said that, this is what builds top-of-mind brand awareness with consumers. When they platform hop and they’re obsessed with the green sit and the red shoes that they saw on Facebook, but they don’t really care beyond that. They’re just like, “Oh yeah, KFC, cool suit. Don’t know what that was about.”
Now, I start seeing this stuff hitting me on Insta, I’m like, “Wait. Why does it say beyond a… Wait, hang on a second. Wait till I plan things?” Now, you’re suddenly puling them in. The systems can tell that your engagement has increased, and as a result, by the time you hit Twitter, you’re almost guaranteed to see this ad. These are really, really clever ways to drive engagement, really smart ways to do it, but it doesn’t work as well as it could if you just take a static photo of a bucket of chicken and put it everywhere. You don’t have that same lift and engagement. I’ll tell you, this one caught my attention mostly because my entire life the bucket’s been red and white, and immediately I’m like, “Why green?”
Kadecia: Yeah.
Duane: That’s what drew me in, and then as someone who chooses plant-based 50% of the time, I was like, “Oh, wow. Okay, yes, I want to know more about this.” It’s a very, very important step in today’s world for sure.
Kadecia: Absolutely. I’m excited. I see some questions coming in about these campaigns, so we’ll get to answering those soon.
Duane: Yeah.
Kadecia: You know, with Yelp and Yext have been partners for years. A lot of people may not know this, but Yext has just been an active partner and really helping make sure that information on Yelp has great recency and just pushing things over towards real time to make sure consumers can find hours changes, address changes, all those things they need. We’re always eager to help businesses unleash that power on the local level. With Yelp, it can mean managing your listing.
It can mean advertising to people who are just searching in your category and in your industry. It means reaching them on our platform and even reaching them beyond our platform. We’re always happy to speak to the different ways you can really unlock Yelp to reach new consumers and reactivate repeat customers and lots of opportunity to do that with us. Duane, I want to give you a second to speak to some of the great things that Yext is able to do as well.
Duane: Absolutely. Thank you, Kadecia. I’ll say this, gang. I’m not sure if folks on the webinar know Yext, but I encourage you to take a look at who we are today. We are a digital experience platform. It’s not just about listings. Heck, if you want to have your entire website hosted with us, we got your back. We can do a lot today from site search to building knowledge grafts to powering experiences to maintaining your data everywhere.
For example, in Yelp, these things are the core of the platform with Yext, so I’ll encourage folks to go take a look. You’ll know what’s appropriate for your business, so I feel good about that. What I’m also going to feel really good about is digging in on a couple of our questions that have come in. Kadecia, so I’m going to call one out right up front from Mike Willis. You cool with that?
Kadecia: Yeah, let’s do it.
Duane: I think this one’s more of a you thing than to me thing because Mike is asking, “Can you be more specific about what Denny’s was doing and the features they were using?” Increase the visibility of their additional services. Example, photos of discounts and menus, promotion features of Yelp, the other type of hosting or features on the Yelp profile. I think just unpack maybe as much as you can about what made them successful.
Kadecia: Yeah, exactly, so Denny’s absolutely took advantage of having paid profiles on Yelp, and so making sure that they have their photos, their creative, a call to action that they can update at any time and link over to their website. Making sure that that basic Yelp profile was completely up to par, access to menus, access to ordering online, all those basic things. Then, in addition to that, they do Yelp advertising, and so that gives you an opportunity to really use a showcase ad.
If you want to push an ad that really showcases what’s recent, “Hey, we have this all-day menu and let’s link you to it.” Or, “We have this great rewards program, let’s link you to it.” Those are some advantages of really using some targeted ads where we can create great copy and get that in front of consumers right at that moment search. We’re worked with Denny’s to really think about timely campaigns, seasonal campaigns to understand that audience and when to reach them across Yelp and customize just a suite of tools to make sure we’re helping them to drive customers in-store.
Duane: Yeah, look, I can tell you there’s only one campaign Denny needs to be successful with me and that’s breakfast for dinner, I mean [inaudible 00:38:01] pancakes every day and I am there unquestionably. I’m pretty sure if I ask people to raise their hands more than half the people on the call would be with me.
Kadecia: You’re just a pancakes-for-dinner kind of guy, huh?
Duane: Listen, I cannot get enough of the off-timeframe meal at the inappropriate time. I’m all about that, but I do want us to dig in. Ethan dropped a question in here as well.
Kadecia: Yes.
Duane: I think we can both take a run at this one, but Ethan’s asking, “If there’s one social media platform your company excels at and gets a bunch of engagement from, how much time should you realistically spend on other platforms that aren’t as successful?” I think completely fair question. You want to take a stab at this one?
Kadecia: Yeah, you know, I think this is interesting because one of the things I would look at is, what’s making you successful on the platforms you’re successful on today? You think about, is it that you have great creative or great messaging? How long did it take you to build that audience as these things don’t happen overnight? Then, to think about, how can you transfer some of that same success on one platform to another? When we just think about the evolution of this, Facebook Meta was kind of the first place businesses were going and really trying to figure it out. Now, how do I trans that over to Instagram? Which is also the advantage of just using static photos. Now, you start to think about something like TikTok. Do you have that creative? Do you have someone who can help edit videos?
Sometimes I think when you are trying to figure out how to engage another platform and be successful, you have to look at how consumers are engaging. You have to look at, what do you need to build in your tool kit to be successful on that platform, especially when it comes to the creative messaging you’re putting in front of people and the content? Sometimes I think doing the content piece is the heaviest lift when you’re trying to get onto a new platform because it might be putting something into your tool kit that you haven’t really used before, and so making sure you’re building the resources around that. Then, you can go to market on that platform in a way that consumers are going to engage because I think if you tried standard photos on a platform where it just doesn’t make sense, it’s going to be really hard to build the kind of traction you’re looking for.
Duane: Look, I could tell you right now, I was an early adopter of TikTok and when you pop up in my feed and you’ve got a series of photos that you’re passing off as instead of a video, I’m almost 100% of the time going to immediately scan past that. I’m not interested in the speed at which that engages me, which is slower than a video playing and capturing my attention. If you start your video with “Wait For It” printed on the screen, it’s an automatic pass for me. I am not waiting through your crappy editing choices to get to the punchline. I think what’s really critical here, Kadecia you touched on this, so Ethan, something that’s that’s excelling on Facebook. for example, or Insta or Snap, what’s extremely critical is to understand those are three different audiences entirely. The people on Facebook, you’re looking at the average person on Facebook, okay, middle-aged.
The message you get me that gets me engaged is vastly different than, say, my child who’s nine or 10 years old, who would not be caught dead on Facebook, like literally do not even mention them on Facebook. They will only go on TikTok. They will only go on Snap. They will only be on real, all of these other new places. You have to truly understand how the consumer in that location, that version of that person, how they want to consume that information, which back to Kadecia’s point, that’s the heavy lifting of creating the content because, look, if you don’t have a 16 x 9, or sorry, a 9 x 16 orientation video and you’re telling people on TikTok, “Oh, turn your phone sideways?” No, you have to make the extra step.
It’s part of the reason why companies like DJI, when they release their Mini Pro 3 drone actually made the camera capable of doing vertical and horizontal imagery because they know that people will use it more and use more of that video in more places like TikTok if you’re given the capability. Now, we’re talking about a hardware investment to be able to do it. It’s not such a big deal when we’re talking about our phones. I mean, it can landscape you. This is easy with these devices, but the fact of the matter is you may be doing it one way for a reason in a lot of cases because you’ve “always done it that way.” It’s time to rethink that.
It’s time to dig in deep and treat not all of it as “social media,” but each location as its own distinct audience and, how do you best serve them? When you do that, you will find more success on those other platforms, and that success may look very different. One may be incredible at growing an email list. The other may be incredible at driving foot traffic. Another platform might be great at E-commerce driving. All three of those things can be true at the same time and should be pursued. I said this earlier, there’s no shortcuts and everything is more complex today.
Kadecia: Yeah, and I love… Amy had a comment of testing and learning to see what the platform can do. Absolutely, absolutely. Test and learn. Have the metrics you’re driving at. Give things a go and make sure you’re doing it with enough time so you can gain the traction you’re looking for because these things definitely change quickly. It’s interesting, though, I think we could start to look at something like TikTok if you’re not there and to really study because the numbers show that it’s such a large engaged audience that it’s worth it to figure out a strategy. It’s certainly not every new platform is going to take off, and so having that kind of mentality of testing totally makes sense.
Duane: There’s another thought that I’m going to layer on this, Kadecia, and it’s one that I’ve had through my career, which is why I own my own domain name, so my name as domain, I own that. There’s a reason why I own my name as email addresses in a number of different places and it’s to protect me. The business, it’s absolutely in your best interest the minute you hear about a new social media platform to go in and claim your real estate because the last thing you want is someone else claiming it and then essentially mimicking you or pretending to be you to grow an audience.
Look, there’s still plenty of that happening on TikTok. I am absolutely certain that Bruce Springsteen did not reach out to friend me on TikTok. In fact, apparently four Bruce Springsteens, all of the singer-songwriter, have friended me on TikTok. There’s lots of that that happens. It’s ultimately up to the platform and consumers to deal with that. The platform polices it. Consumers should be smart enough to know the difference, but you can do your part. Whether you actually publish something or you do anything is secondary to claiming the real estate, but then, just like Amy said, you got to get in there, got to do this stuff. I mean, that’s really, really important.
It’s not to mention important, but it’s kind of fun. I mean, we talked about this in one of our prep calls. KFC, their Twitter account, follows I think it’s 11 individuals and seven of them are named Herb and the rest of them are the original Spice Girls, so KFC’s Twitter account literally follows seven herbs and spices. Like-
Kadecia: Love it.
Duane: … that is absolute genius. Okay, I mean, I am buying drinks for the person who thought about that for the rest of their life. There’s no question, and every company can do these things to kind of position themselves and get that attachment and that engagement. Honestly, that engagement, look, if people are engaging with you on the social platforms, that’s going to affect how they think about you and their recall of your brand and business name when they’re thinking about, “Where are we going for dinner tonight?” Or, “8:00 PM, where can I get pancakes? I know, Denny’s.”
This is the reality that we’re into now. It’s all about nudge. It’s about continually putting yourself in a position to nudge people in your direction, and you’ve got to expand and do that. Fill in the blanks, experiment, try these new things. Have a plan for it. Get support inside your business to make sure that everyone’s onboard with it. Everyone needs to be onboard as well. It’s one thing to have the IT department updating your pages for you to be managing listings data, but if your customer service at the point of sale is terrible, you’ll do nothing but collect negative reviews, which will harm you overall. All of it’s interrelated. Think of interconnected circles. Nothing is in a silo today.
Kadecia: Yeah, and this is such a great summary of how we think across a massive landscape and bring it down to the community level and just down to people at that point of church and that interaction with the business. I mean, people still love to transact in the real world, so continue to just complete that circle and connect what’s going on offline/online is so important and I think there’s lots of tools to get it done in the right way, and so we encourage people to lean into those tools and really take advantage of having just the best impact you can locally.
Duane: Absolutely, and I can’t stress this enough, there’s so many resources. I mean, obvious plug here, but if you just read the Yelp blog and the Yext blog, we give away all kinds of information. It’s in everyone’s best interest for businesses to be successful in the local space. If you look at what’s going on with Google’s investments in Google Maps, for example, years ago, they bought Waze. They’ve been slowly but surely taking most popular features out of Waze and embedding them in Maps. What this tells us is despite it already being the largest space for people to do map-related activities, Google Maps is Google’s future.
We’re starting to see more people using maps for product research, so they literally will just put the type of product they’re looking for in as a search and let Google find it locally for them. Again, breakfast for dinner. I don’t need to specify more than that. I could just ask Google that and it will then go and put together the information, especially now that we’re starting to see AI applied at various levels within search. We just now know if I put my answer out there, they give me a good… a good question out there, they give me a good answer. I can trust it and I can go there, and that’s what people want. People want simplicity and trust, so you just follow the steps and you build those things and you will attract more people. No question in my mind.
Kadecia: Well, it looks like we have come to a good point here. Really hope you enjoyed the discussion today. Really privileged to have an audience to talk about these things with. Duane, thank you so much for just dropping so much knowledge in this last hour. It’s been wonderful. We’re happy… If you didn’t get the calls or if there’s any more information you want and you want to drop anything in the chat, we’re happy to send you more information on Yelp or Yext. There’s plenty of other webinars and things you can find that we’ve done to go into more detail, but appreciate everyone joining today and look forward to seeing you again in the future.
Duane: Thank you all for your time today. This has been awesome.
Kadecia: All right, take care.
