After 18 years, Where2GetIt is a leading platform provider in location-based marketing technologies and services, and is a top Fortune 500 enterprise business. Brandify, Where2GetIt’s analytics tool, tracks the strength of a brand’s digital presence across local search, social, advertising, mobile and competitors using the Brand Score algorithm. Where2GetIt creates powerful localized brands, connecting online consumers to offline locations.  

We caught up with Manish Patel, CEO of Where2GetIt, to learn more:

What local problem(s) does Where2GetIt solve? How?
At Where2GetIt, we work to make sure that brands are equipped with a comprehensive strategy to win at Local. Often times, brands managers face frustration in trying to reach local customers upon search. With hundreds or even thousands of locations, all sorts of unforeseen complications can occur. A customer may end up at a location that no longer exists, read incorrect store hours, hunt for local deals, or even leave a negative review that is left unanswered.

If you want to manage and optimize all of this for all of your locations, that is where we come in. From local advertising, claiming and syndication, to local pages, locators and review management, Where2Get and Brandify work hand-in-hand to create a seamless transition from online searches to in-store purchases.

What makes Where2GetIt innovative?
We have been in the local search space long enough to accurately forecast the direction of where things are moving. We work closely with large-scale enterprise clients in assessing needs to build strong locally engaging brands. From this, the Brand Score was spawned, and is now the single most innovative metric to comprehensively track and monitor the progress of brands locally and across various channels not limited to listings or pages.

The Brand Score is formed around a Six Pillar Strategy: Data quality, Local SEO, review satisfaction and ratings, engagement, local advertising, and competitor benchmarking are all part of these pillars. The Brand Score helps brands incrementally work to clearly focus and improve every brick and mortar location from every angle by giving national brands the visibility they need in one single dashboard.

Furthermore, brands are able to take action straight from the dashboard to either update listings, communicate with a local branch manager, or respond to a review. By focusing on the six pillars brands are ready to meet the consumer at the point of purchase and win the local-mobile consumer. This strategy also has been implemented across international markets and for the first time in 18 years, W2GI opens up its platform to international partners to leverage our field-tested technology.

Just last month, we announced our International Partner Network Program, starting with NAB Digital and Habari Media in South Africa. This partnership will allow us to help manage, optimize and distribute quality location information for brands in South America. With omni-channels searching for brands on every screen, this partnership will leverage Where2GetIt ‘s Store Locator and Local Pages technologies in order to extend NAB Digital’s solution offering. We’re looking forward to working with more international partners in continuing to innovate local search.

How does Where2GetIt make the local space better for advertisers and/or consumers?
The Brandify Platform works in real-time to ensure that both advertisers and consumers are relevant and connected. Accurate data is the gate-keeper of great connections and with Where2GetIt, brands do not have to worry about meeting publishers or engines requirements about data formatting and structure – we take care of that. With our ‘Data Cleansing’ technology we create clean, consistent and branded files which is essential for accurate listings. From there we continue to reinforce a brand’s local presence by properly claiming listings, pages, geo-localized business locators, and more.

The greatest pain point we hear from marketers is analytics and local visibility. With Brandify, brands get a national view of their performance but also have the ability to drill down to the local level. We make it a point to give brands the visibility and control they deserve by making local digital presence management scalable. And all the while making it seamless and painless for consumers to find what they are ready to purchase.

What is next in local?
Previous predictions about beacon technology and the Internet of Things are coming into fruition across various verticals this year. We anticipate access to more accurate measures to understand online-to-offline interactions. We believe that the various beacon technologies will become a staple in consumer search habits, and from them, masses of big data will be generated. The data generated will all be local, hyperlocal.

Brands who today have a strong local presence will be the ones who will be the quickest to take off with these types of technologies. Adoption may take some time, but we believe that both brands and consumers are ready for this level of real-time communication.

For information on how you can get a free trial of Brandify, visit Where2GetIt.com. For more on the company, check out the presentation below, connect with them on Twitter @Where2GetIt, or feel free to reach out to Mireya Prado, Where2GetIt’s marketing manager, at mprado@where2getit.com.

Marketing Automation: Localize. Humanize. Strategize. from Where2GetIt