Why local search is the next frontier in marketing
At the start of my Emerging Media class, all that was on my mind was the rise of social media, but I was forgetting some other major changes in technology and the way we are conducting our web-based searches now and how that impacts our buying patterns. One such example is location-based marketing.
The first thing to note in this infographic is that the more devices people have, the more times per week they conduct a search for things nearby. This makes sense because someone who only has internet access on their home PC may look up a search prior to leaving their house but someone with a smart phone and maybe an iPad can continue to search as they are on the road. It is a lot easier to find the closest Starbucks on your phone than on a GPS device and certainly easier than driving around in circles looking for one. This is an important consideration for marketers as they look to increase local marketing efforts in 2013.
This infographic also shows what the most common things people are looking for in an internet search and how far they are willing to drive to get it. Considering that 90% of people have made a purchase in a retail store in the past year and 77% have performed a local search, it makes sense for local stores to do everything they can to appear in search results for these consumers.
