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Placeable NatLo Top 30 | 2014 ∙ 2@BePlaceable facebook.com/Placeable www.placeable.com

National brands cannot afford to have an inadequate or missing local web presence. Almost universally, consumers with local purchase intent begin their searches online. Over the last two years, the percentage of consumers that go online to find a local business rose from 80 percent to an astounding 95 percent 1. As a result, national multi-location brands must compete online for customers using local strategies that drive traffic and conversions.

However, successful marketing at scale on the local level is a complex and even confusing undertaking, involving a range of factors across a diverse set of activities. To help articulate and quantify these factors, Placeable has developed the NatLo Score as the authoritative measure of local digital marketing performance, and is proud to introduce the NatLo Top 30 to recognize the national brands that stand out as the best local digital marketers.

Comprising the largest and most successful digital marketers in the U.S., the NatLo Top 30 was compiled by analyzing local search and location-based marketing criteria across four key dimensions: Visibility, Depth, Precision and Reach.

The initial NatLo Top 30 is based upon an evaluation of 280 enterprises. This fall, hundreds of additional brands will be scored and ranked for the release of the NatLo Index, which will track performance across a broader range of industries and leading companies.

Introducing the NatLo Top 30...

Automotive Banking Hospitality Insurance Pharmacy Restaurant RetailMoney Transfer

Introduction

Placeable NatLo Top 30 | 2014 ∙ 3@BePlaceable facebook.com/Placeable www.placeable.com

precisiondepth reachBRAND INDUSTRY

90 70 77 72

94 80 67 49

92 70 66 66

86 70 54 67

86 70 54 67

77 70 63 66

68 80 69 55

74 80 47 67

OVERALL SCORE

78

75

75

71

70

70

69

69

visibilityRANK

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

77 70 64 6169

77 70 62 6369

NatLo Top 30

Placeable NatLo Top 30 | 2014 ∙ 4@BePlaceable facebook.com/Placeable www.placeable.com

75 65 58 73

60 60 82 76

86 45 68 69

57 55 79 80

71 55 68 67

68

68

67

65

65

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

68 50 74 69

77 45 64 73

77 55 48 72

73 40 80 68

64

64

64

64

70 50 59 7863

precisiondepth reachBRAND INDUSTRY OVERALL SCORE visibilityRANK

NatLo Top 30

NatLo Top 30

Placeable NatLo Top 30 | 2014 ∙ 5@BePlaceable facebook.com/Placeable www.placeable.com

63 65 70 54

61 60 60 73

58 45 87 67

59 80 56 42

69 50 56 72

63

63

62

61

61

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

62 55 51 69

66 40 49 75

55 60 44 64

71 10 82 74

59

57

56

56

92 50 45 4260

precisiondepth reachBRAND INDUSTRY OVERALL SCORE visibilityRANK

Placeable NatLo Top 30 | 2014 ∙ 6@BePlaceable facebook.com/Placeable www.placeable.com

precision

depth

reach

visibility

Website effectiveness in search and discoverability

Depth and accuracy of published location content

Geographic accuracy of location data

Data consistency and coverage across third party sites

• Site structure• Page optimization• Web and mobile site performance• Local and geo-related search factors

• Richness and completeness of site information ‐ Basic: name, address, phone ‐ Secondary: descriptions, services,

photos, calls-to-action, etc.

• Pin placement of each location based on latitude and longitude

• Dispersion of pins on third party sites (pin spread)

• Presence, completeness and accuracy of location data on Google, Facebook, Foursquare and Yelp

Strong Visibility produces higher search engine rankings and greater traffic. It also supports authoritative indexing by search engines and enables brands to attain local dominance with multiple listings in search results. Brands with poor Visibility surrender more traffic to directories and competitors.

Brands that achieve exceptional Depth deliver a better customer experience with richer content about their offerings. Greater Depth also produces higher click-to-brick conversion rates and supports other marketing calls-to-action.

Superior Precision enables customers to efficiently navigate to a brand’s locations. It also supports accurate geo-targeting for digital campaigns. Failure to ensure Precision damages customer trust and increases the risk of competitive poaching.

Brands with outstanding Reach can be found by consumers across a range of search engines, social sites and apps. Poor Reach can lead to consumer confusion and misallocated marketing investments.

DIMENSION DEFINITION SAMPLE OF EVALUATION CRITERIA WHY IT MATTERS

The NatLo Score measures a brand’s location-based digital marketing power, as represented by the four key dimensions of local online marketing: Visibility, Depth, Precision and Reach. The brands received a score from zero to 100 (with 100 being the best) for each dimension. The four dimensions were weighted and combined into a single overall score. The NatLo Top 30 represents the highest scoring brands that were evaluated.

The NatLo Score

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On average, the brands in the NatLo Top 30 scored highest in the Visibility dimension and lowest in the Depth dimension. The best performing companies exhibited a superior overall digital presence, with optimized web and mobile locators. Leaders supplemented general SEO best practices with specialized local search tactics.

To score highly in the Depth dimension, leading brands delivered location-specific details and content about their services and offerings. However, even the top performers have an opportunity to improve their Depth by providing richer, more engaging local content to consumers.

VerticalsAmong the industries represented in the NatLo Top 30, automotive, hospitality and insurance brands earned the highest average scores, while restaurant and retail brands scored lowest. Selected vertical highlights include:

Of the 24 automotive brands included in the study, Meineke was the only one to make it into the NatLo Top 30. Not only did Meineke outperform its peers, it received the highest overall score of any brand. Meineke achieved a superior local pages presence with best-practice SEO and site execution across both web and mobile. In addition, it delivered rich content on its local pages, produced consistent pin placements and attained effective third party listings coverage. Across the automotive industry, other brands generally lacked essential location-based marketing components like local landing pages and mobile-optimized locators.

Ten percent of the banks evaluated in the study made it into NatLo Top 30, even while under-performing in the Depth dimension. Bank of America was the top-scoring bank, standing out for the strength of its optimized web and mobile locators. The banking industry’s return on investment for local marketing activities is hindered by a lack of rich site content like customized promotions and offers.

Four of the ten highest scoring brands in the NatLo Top 30 came from the hospitality industry. Hospitality brands scored especially well for site structure and page optimization, but the industry’s Visibility performance was undermined by suboptimal URL structures and mobile redirects.

Succeeding through the delivery of unique, detailed content on local office and agent pages, insurance companies comprise 13 percent of the brands in the NatLo Top 30. However, with the lowest overall average Reach score (50), insurance brands could enhance coverage across the third party ecosystem by improving their syndication of accurate data to the most visited third party sites.

73

66

63

59

visibility

reach

precision

depth

Key Insights

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The restaurant category showed particular strength in its average Reach score (72)—the second highest among industries in the NatLo Top 30. Its performance across the Visibility, Depth, and Precision dimensions, however, left it with the lowest overall average NatLo Score (63) in the top 30. Compared to the rest of the NatLo Top 30, restaurant brands were less adept at SEO page optimization, location-specific site content and pin placement accuracy.

With an average NatLo Score of 64, the nine retail brands in the NatLo Top 30 performed especially well in the Visibility dimension, but have room for significant improvement in Precision. The frequency of inaccurate pin placements for these brands reduces their click-to-brick conversions and damages customer trust.

How Does Your Brand Compare? Congratulations are due to all the companies that made the NatLo Top 30 list. These enterprises excel at local digital marketing and should be recognized for their accomplishments. Making the NatLo Top 30 and staying on it are two different achievements, however—and the top performing brands must continue to innovate and improve in order to maintain their positions in the rankings.

If your brand is not on the list, consider what actions it can take to improve its NatLo Score and capture more web traffic, store visits and revenue. Do you have a properly implemented online locator? Has your locator been optimized for mobile? Do you have unique landing pages for every one of your hundreds to thousands of locations? Have you created custom content and offers for each of your locations? How accurate is your location data? Are you syndicating to the right directories, aggregators and search engines?

MethodologyTo select the NatLo Top 30, the U.S. Census Bureau’s North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) data was used to choose the industries in which individual brands have the greatest density of locations. Within those industries the largest multi-location enterprises were then selected based on a combination of revenue and number of locations (minimum 600 locations). This resulted in a pool of 280 brands across a set of nine industries. Next, the brands were assessed using the Placeable™ Workbench and its proprietary scoring algorithm. The brands were analyzed across hundreds of data points and millions of locations for four quality dimensions: Visibility, Depth, Precision, and Reach. The four dimensions were individually scored between zero and 100 (with 100 being the best), and then the four scores were weighted and combined to produce an overall zero-to-100 score. The brands with the highest overall scores were ranked and recognized as members of the NatLo Top 30. These companies were determined to be the highest performing national brands in the evaluation set.

Key Insights

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