Brand Equation is a full-service brand consulting and digital marketing agency based in Tampa, FL with special expertise in multi-location enterprises.
In fact, Houk says, “the larger the enterprise, the more locations you have, typically the bigger the problems because most large multi-location enterprises have never had a strategy coupled with proper technology to truly handle and manage, much less optimize, their location data for all these locations.”
“Add in reputation or online review management and monitoring along with social media management and monitoring and you have a real mess out there,” says Houk who is a recognized expert in this area of digital marketing. “Multi-location enterprises present a unique challenge because the data and online presence for a single location encompasses many dozens of data endpoints, business listings, social media and online review sites. Once you have multiple locations, the location data management becomes nearly impossible without a strategy and digital marketing software technology in place.”
Why should a healthcare executive in the C-suite care? Ask the customers who spent 45 extra minutes trying to find one of your imaging locations for a scheduled test but the Google business listing for said location had the wrong, outdated address on it which resulted in the patient being taken to the wrong address which resulted in a very upset and frustrated patient who ended up missing the diagnostic test thus leaving a 1 star review for the imaging center.
Real-life scenarios play themselves out like this every single day and for the larger healthcare providers with 50+ locations, this can ruin your brand name in the community quickly if left unchecked and unmanaged.
According to Virayo.com in a 2018 survey, “a company’s online star rating is the #1 factor used by consumers to judge a business” and in February 2017, Healthgrades conducted consumer research and found that “Consumers also hold physicians to a higher standard than they do other business service providers. They will not use a business rated below 2.7 stars, on average. But when selecting a doctor, they will not consider a provider rated below 3.2 stars.”
“One of the biggest challenges our clients face is managing their location data and their online reputation effectively and staying out in front of building a 5-star brand online across the directory, social and review ecosystem,” says Houk. Moving from one office to another or changing locations, getting a new phone number, or expanding and adding a new location to the business are just a few reasons that Lane Houk cites as reasons that most businesses are way behind in properly and accurately managing their online reputation and their online location data in directory listings and online business profiles such as Google MyBusiness, Yelp, Insider Pages, Citysearch and many others in this greater online ecosystem.
Brand Equation, the digital agency that Houk founded in 2010, is at the forefront in helping multi-location enterprises develop a system and strategy to corral the location data around each location which includes optimizing the location presence in the Google and Apple Maps ecosystems to help consumers navigate to the location properly in mapping apps like Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps. Additionally, Brand Equation has a technology platform that combines Listings Management, Reputation and Review Management and Social Media Management in one unified cloud marketing platform.
“Deploying a simple yet sophisticated technology marketing stack with a system and strategy yields great success for our clients,” says Houk. For those interested in learning more about the solutions Brand Equation offers, contact Lane Houk to schedule a live demo and consultation.
