The Local Advantage

Online shopping has exploded over the past couple of years, but local brick-and-mortar businesses still have a significant edge over their online competitors. Brick-and-mortar stores and offices offer convenience and ease of doing business that is hard to match. In fact, over half of consumers say ease of business is the top reason they choose a local business, according to the 2022 State of Local report. They also say it’s a top reason they refer friends and family and why they give local stores their repeat business.

The “ease of business” local advantage

54% say ease of business is the top reason they choose to work with a local business

57% say ease of business is a top reason they refer friends and family

60% say ease of business is why they give local stores their repeat business

In a world where consumers want everything instantly, proximity is also a key advantage for local stores. Nearly three-quarters of people who conduct a local search will visit a store within 5 miles of their location. After all, it doesn’t get any easier or faster than going to a store within a few miles from home and walking out with the product or service you want.

But the best thing any local business can do to gain an advantage is focus on making it SUPER EASY for customers to do business with them. And that starts by allowing your customers to interact with you on their preferred channels—whether that’s in-store, email, text messages or online through your website and social media channels like Instagram and Facebook.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to successfully bridge the gap between engaging your customers in-store and online. And, we’ll also show you how doing so can give your business an even bigger advantage.

In-Store Experiences Boost Customer Engagement & Lower Acquisition Costs

Brick-and-mortar stores give businesses the ability to provide a better customer experience than a website alone and improve customer engagement. Customer acquisition costs are also lower with an owned physical location.

In one study, 61% of shoppers said they would rather shop with brands that have a physical store versus online only. This is why some of the biggest online brands are opening brick-and-mortar stores—and it’s not just limited to retail. From automotive sales to healthcare, online brands are moving to a multi-channel model by opening physical offices and stores.

Digital native businesses make the leap to physical stores

Casper Mattress (60 U.S. locations)

Carvana (28 locations)

Smile Direct Club (247 locations)

Warby Parker (166 locations)

Amazon (90+ locations)

When brands create unique in-store experiences, such as having beauty experts help customers choose the right skincare products or having knowledgeable store associates available to help shoppers select the perfect product for their needs, shoppers enjoy a more personalized and engaging shopping experience that simply can’t be matched online.

Local Stores Engage with the Local Community

Local businesses are also major influences for good in local communities, and that goodwill is impossible to replicate. Amazon won’t sponsor your son or daughter’s soccer team, but the auto dealer or bank down the street might.

As Kelly Vass, the Office & Go to Market Manager for State Street Jewelers, notes, “I don’t know that we could be more involved. I like to think of us as one of the backbones of the community, because we do really believe our success has been directly related to the area that we’re in…We actually have many of our staff that are active members of different community boards.”

“I don’t know that we could be more involved. I like to think of us as one of the backbones of the community, because we do really believe our success has been directly related to the area that we’re in…We actually have many of our staff that are active members of different community boards.”

–Kelly Vass, Office & Go to Market Manager, State Street Jewelers

This local presence and involvement of brick-and-mortar stores in the community is what builds strong relationships that lead to customer loyalty and repeat business. More than one-third of consumers say the sense of community they get from shopping at local businesses is a top motivator for visiting local shops. Customers don’t have the same kind of community-oriented relationships with faceless big box stores or online-only retailers.

But despite all the fantastic advantages local stores offer over online-only competitors, the bottom line is that in today’s omnichannel world, your business’ physical presence can only take you so far.

Why Invest in Online Channels Now?

Your customers may prefer to shop locally, but that doesn’t mean they won’t first be looking to connect with you on other channels. Just like online brands are investing in brick-and-mortar, it’s important for local businesses with physical locations to invest in online channels. Not only do 81% of shoppers research online before visiting a store, 93% search for a local business when they research options online. So if you want to drive traffic to your store—you need to first get found online.

As customers become more accustomed to using multiple channels in their daily lives, they expect businesses to also support these channels—whether that’s Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, email, text messages, or chat. Text messages, in particular, are a preferred communication channel for consumers.

According to one study, omnichannel campaigns that involved SMS at some point in the process were 48% more likely to end in conversion. Purchase frequency was also 250% higher when businesses supported multiple channels for customers to communicate and connect with them. Likewise, 85% of smartphone users say they prefer text messages to emails or calls.

If your business chooses not to invest now in creating and maintaining a robust online presence and giving customers an easy way to get in touch with you, be aware there is a significant opportunity cost. You may miss out on a large portion of customers that are looking for your business online first.

The SMS Advantage

250% higher purchase frequency for businesses that support multiple communication channels

48% higher conversion rate for businesses using SMS in omnichannel campaigns

85% of smartphone users prefer text messages to emails or calls

The In-Store/Online Disconnect

Deciding to invest in your online presence and other digital communication channels is a good first step, but you may still find that the online and in-person experience still feels disjointed. In-store associates may have no context into customer conversations online, so when customers come in, they have to repeat themselves to in-store associates. Moreover, customers who may be researching your store online, don’t want to call your store or office to get a question answered, but they feel like they have to if there isn’t another easy and fast way to communicate with you.

But customers’ patience for these types of disjointed experiences is limited. Customers’ expectations are changing quickly. They simply expect more from businesses—even small, local businesses—than they used to. They want seamless experiences wherever they do business.

Today, 59% of consumers want to see pandemic-era innovations like expanded pickup and delivery options remain permanent. And 46% of consumers say they actively seek out businesses that provide alternatives to speaking on the phone, such as text and chat.

Remember how we talked about the ease of doing business at the beginning? That’s what customers are looking for. A full 9 out of 10 consumers say they go out of their way to use business locally. Make it easy for them to do that.

How to connect your online and offline experience

The best experience for your customers is one that combines the advantage of access to traditional brick-and-mortar local stores with an online presence that makes it quick and convenient for customers to research and communicate with your brand even when they’re not in your store.

To successfully connect the online and offline experience for your customers seamlessly, here are the most important things you’ll need to do:

Improve Ease of Communication

We’ve already discussed how important “ease of doing business” is to customers. A big part of that is the ease with which customers can communicate with your business. If a customer is searching for a specific product, they want to know your store will have it before they make the trip. So, they need a way to get a quick and accurate answer—whether that’s sending you a text message, giving you a call, or checking your website.

To assess how easy it is for customers to communicate with your business, start by evaluating your online properties (website, Facebook, etc.). Do you feel like your business is present on all the channels your customers are likely to use? If not, what channels are important for you to add to the mix?

Take stock of your in-store experience

Download our Digital to Physical Experience Checklist and see how you score.

Next, think about all the strategies and things that make your physical location experience great. These things might include:

Fun waiting room
Short waits or no lines
A happy, smiling greeter
A well-designed store layout
Good service
Good lighting/visuals
Convenient drive-through or curbside options

Now think about how those same principles need to apply to your digital storefront—especially if your website or web presence is likely your customer’s first impression of your business. With the average time someone spends on your website being just 15 seconds, you’ve got one chance (and a very brief one!) to make a great first impression.

How can you create the same warm, welcoming, inviting, good service experience before they come to the store? And how can you use that to drive more traffic? Need ideas? Download our Online Presence Checklist and see how you stack up.

Optimize Your Google Business Profile

More people search for businesses online than anywhere else. Somewhere between 64% to 78% of those searches happen on Google. So, it’s essential to make sure your local business listing is easy to find on Google. It’s also critical to consider how your business profile will rank in Google search as 75% of all clicks and calls go to the top 3-5 search results.

To optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP) and boost your rankings in search, there are five key metrics Google considers when prioritizing businesses in its search results:

Overall star rating
Quality of reviews
Quantity of reviews
Frequency of reviews
Business response

You’ll notice a trend in this list—the importance of online reviews. Reviews are a critical factor in how Google ranks businesses, so it’s ultra-important that you invest in making it easy for your customers to leave reviews. We’ll dig into more details on how to do this in the next section.

You also need to ensure that your click to call, click for directions, website, and click to message Google Business Profile buttons are all active. This way, when people are ready to reach out, they can easily do so.

Finally, it’s important to have a good system in place to respond quickly to incoming leads as “business response” is a key Google search metric. For instance, at Manchester Music Mill, they had added numerous ways for customers to reach them—website, email, social media, and texting—but they found that they still missed messages occasionally.

“It became very disjointed because we had information coming from all these different sources. If we needed to reference something in a conversation… it was very difficult,” notes Craig Peterson, General Manager of Manchester Music Mill.

They found the answer with Podium, an all-in-one platform for managing customer interactions and online reviews. Now they can respond faster because communication is more organized and centralized.

Choose a great review collection tool

Reviews are critical to showing up in Google searches, so it’s worth investing in the right tool to make sure that you’re Google Business Profile has a large number of high-quality, high-star ratings—and that new reviews are consistently coming in. A review collection tool like Podium, which sends review invitations to your customers via text message (their preferred channel), can make hitting all these review metrics much easier.

Podium makes the review process simple for customers and businesses alike by automating review collection. It syncs with point of sales systems and CRM or e-commerce sites to automatically ask for feedback when customers finish a transaction. It also allows you to use customizable templates to send out messages that prompt customers to leave a review. And, Podium will alert you any time you have a new review on any channel so that you can thank the customer for their thoughts and also address their concerns.

Dealing with any negative reviews promptly is a key part of online reputation management and can often result in customers revising their reviews upward. In one study by Trip Advisor, hotels that responded to reviews received 12% more reviews and their ratings increased by 0.12 stars.

For Power Ford, a new and used car dealership in Albuquerque, New Mexico, using Podium to collect and respond to online reviews, was a game-changer. Previously, their email solicitations for reviews had fallen short. By switching to text, their review collection rate and their overall review score went up dramatically. As a result, they saw a 19.3% increase in website traffic from Google Business Profile. This has helped bump them into the position of #1 Ford dealer on DealerRater for four years running and increased their net profits by 44.5%.

“We’ve been the number one Ford dealer on DealerRater for four years running, and Podium has been instrumental in that…We saw results instantly. Our review collection rate went massively up, and so did our score. It’s made a huge difference for us.”

–Matt Sneed, director of operations at Power Ford

Optimize Your Website

Websites are a critical part of the customer experience, even for traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. If it’s too hard to make a purchase, schedule an appointment, or find information, customers will bounce. In fact, a poor website user experience drives almost 50% of users to go with competitors instead.

To ensure your website is delivering a good experience, one that will drive leads and conversions, make sure your website has the following features:

Clear description of your business’ products and services
Easy to navigate website
Accessible and clickable phone number
Messaging or web chat option that is easy to use
Messaging or webchat that connects to a real person during regular hours
Store location details that are easy to find

How does your website experience rank?

Take this quick Website Checklist quiz to find out.

Webchat photo of icon and example message.

Just how much can optimizing your website help? When Portland Window Coverings finally got serious about improving and optimizing their website experience, they saw tremendous results.

The company had historically relied on his website’s ‘contact us’ form to collect leads, but that form was generating only a handful of leads each month. Recognizing they needed something more natural, allowing for synchronous, two-way communication, they added Podium Webchat. With webchat added to the site, prospects and customers could ask questions with the click of a button—whether they wanted to schedule a home call with the Portland Window Coverings design team, ask questions about custom treatments, ask follow-up questions after purchase, or anything else. As a result, their web interaction is up 583%.

“Our web interaction is up 583%, and clients truly enjoy being able to chat through the widget and start the process with a simple click-to-talk to an associate.”

—Joel Masters, Owner, Portland Window Coverings

Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

Given that an estimated 3.6 billion people use social media regularly, no business can afford to not be on social media. But, just having a presence on various social media channels isn’t enough. If your social media profile isn’t optimized, you won’t drive the traffic or boost sales the way you could otherwise.

While there are a number of social media channels your business can be on—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, etc.—we recommend you start with Facebook and Instagram. The general population widely uses these two platforms. Facebook accounts for 60% of all social media site visits in the United States and 73% of U.S. Facebook accounts belong to daily active users. Instagram has 1.22 billion people use it each month, and is the fourth most used social media platform—only Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp rank higher.

Use your social channels to publish content that is relevant to your customers, such as changes in store hours, promotions, new inventory, and other news. Post content regularly and respond promptly to all questions, comments, and mentions. You can also use your profiles to post testimonials from customers to further build trust and show how your business benefits customers.

Invest in Communication Tools that Convert Online Traffic into Foot Traffic

In addition to using review and webchat tools, there are several other communication tools that can superpower your online-to-offline customer journey by creating a consistent and effortless experience for customers and prospects. An instant communication tool like text happens to be one of the most powerful, but here are a couple of others that are must-haves if you want to ensure communication is seamless for customers and your employees:

Consolidated Inbox: Every interaction from every channel—Facebook, email, text, voice, and more—flows into a single inbox so you can ball quickly without jumping from inbox to inbox or losing track of incoming leads or customer queries.
SMS marketing tools: Use SMS to send marketing messages that feel conversational and live in the same thread you’re already using to build a relationship with individual customers.
Integrated opt-ins: Us built-in SMS integrations like Reviews, Payments, and more to offer more convenience and engagement to customers.
Appointment schedulers: Using a tool that supports text messaging for appointment scheduling gives customers and businesses an easy way to schedule appointments, receive appointment reminders, and follow-up after appointments.

How have these tools made it easier for local businesses? For Pete’s Greenhouse, having SMS marketing tools has been a game-changer in how quickly they could put together a texting campaign and for how they communicate with customers.

“We were able to sell out of a workshop in 3 days with the help of a text campaign – something that usually takes a few weeks to do!”

–Robyn Bilson, Marketing Director at Pete’s Greenhouse

A centralized inbox has also significantly streamlined responding to customers for the Tire Outlet. “We had our call center guys going from Zendesk to Facebook Messenger to the reviews. Now that it’s just all on one system, it makes it a lot easier to manage and make sure that nothing gets forgotten,” says Jenn Nicole, Marketing Coordinator at Tire Outlet.

Make Online and Offline Experiences Consistent

One of the hardest parts of connecting the online and offline experience is making it feel consistent. To do this, you need to keep the conversation between online and offline connected, which requires connecting website visitors to your local staff—the experts.

Here are a few ways to keep consistency between online and offline:

Use Webchat and Text

Connecting website visitors with your local team via webchat and texting is an untapped opportunity and brings online shoppers to your store. Web visitors can reach out online on your website, and you can respond via text. This also allows customers to easily keep the conversation going on-the-go.

When the Van Horn Auto Group, moved from live chat to Podium’s webchat and text, they saw a dramatic uptick in customer engagement and response. Their appointment set rate increased 56%, resulting in 300 more cars sold.

Van Horn Auto Group results with Podium

56% appointment set rate

300 more cars sold

“Podium is just so efficient for the entire team. It’s not just for the business development center. It’s for service, it’s for sales, it’s for the receptionists. All in one program.

–Tina Tasche, CRM & Reputation Specialist at Van Horn Auto Group

Re-Engage Shoppers with Text

Another way to connect the experience online and offline is by re-engaging shoppers to return to your website or store. Text is a great way to do this. Not only do 75% of consumers say they want to receive marketing offers via text message, text has a 209% higher conversion rate than phone, email, or Facebook. And consumers are twice as likely to prefer texting to any other communication method.

Preferred communication channels

Source: Podium

Build Your Marketing Opt-in List with Integrated Tools

Sending SMS messages is a faster and more direct way to market to your customers and let them know about special offers or opportunities. SMS messages have a 98% open rate, much higher than email. But, before you can begin to reap the rewards of sending bulk SMS messages, you first need customers to opt-in to hearing from your business.

To make this easier, you want to find a platform that integrates perfectly with your existing tools, such as CRM’s, reviews tools, website forms, and other databases. This will make it much simpler to solicit opt-ins from a number of channels, helping you grow your opt-in list much faster.

For Maus Family Auto, building an opt-in list for SMS marketing campaigns has been hugely successful. Not only were they able to collect 5,454 SMS subscriber opt-ins, but their first campaign reached 2,967 subscribers and saw a 3.8% response rate. They sold 8 cars through that single campaign.

“I would definitely recommend [Podium] for the platform costs and what it does, it’s probably one of the best for the money out there. Text and chat are where it’s at.”

–Devin Stotts, Internet Director, Maus Family Auto

Offer a Seamless Checkout Experience

Customers want fast, frictionless payment options, just like they want other aspects of the customer experience to be effortless. Nearly 80% of consumers say they want businesses to continue offering contactless payments after the pandemic. They also want more convenience overall in how they pay.

Offering SMS payments not only provides a contactless way for customers to pay, it’s also much more convenient and can even re-engage customers who have left your store without making a purchase. By sending a simple link, customers can make a purchase without waiting in line or consulting with a sales associate. It also means less time and effort for employees to gather payment. Finally, you’ll see much higher response rates than traditional payment methods.

“Since we found out about Podium Payments, we have fallen in love with it. We no longer use any paper statements and have put our entire revenue management team on Podium. In the last 12 months, we’ve generated $130,000 dollars in revenue through the tool. It’s super convenient for our patients, which we love, but also for our team members. It’s taking a fourth of the time to send and collect payments”

–Hillary Smedley, VP of Operations, Genesis Dental

Check out our Payments Checklist to see where you can improve your payment process.

Do It All With Podium

Podium ties the online and offline experience together—giving you not just a local advantage, but a competitive business advantage overall.

Podium is the leading SMS platform to improve every stage of your customer lifecycle so you can engage with the right customer through the right channel at the right time. With Podium you can:

Start more conversations with customers searching for your business and services
Convert those conversations into customers and appointments
Retain and grow brand loyalty, earn repeat customers and build advocates for your business

Start your free trial of Podium today.

Bridging the gap between clicks and bricks: How to attract website visitors to your store or office