AI Risks: Can Artificial Intelligence Affect Your Brand Equity?

Brand equity — that intangible asset that sets your brand apart and directly impacts its success, can either flourish or wither at the hands of artificial intelligence (AI).

Using artificial intelligence in your external communications can be a threat to any brand equity you’ve built up, but does this mean you shouldn’t use it at all?

In this article, we’ll explore the delicate dance between technology and human connection, exploring the AI risks when it comes to your brand equity.

What is brand equity?

Brand equity is the value gained from a consumer's perception of a company, service, or product — beyond its functional attributes. It is the cumulative effect of various factors that contribute to how a brand is perceived, recognized, and differentiated from others within its industry.

There are four main elements of brand equity:

• Brand awareness: The recognition and familiarity consumers have with a brand. If a customer has strong brand awareness, they are more likely to think of it when making purchase decisions — this is the first step to building brand equity.

• Brand associations: The characteristics, qualities, and attributes that consumers associate with a brand. This can be through previous experiences, recommendations, or even online perceptions.

• Perceived quality: The consumer’s perception of the overall quality of the brand. This will differ from person to person and does not always reflect the actual quality, instead being based on parameters that are important to the individual.

• Brand loyalty: When a consumer chooses to buy from a particular brand over others. This could be related to repeat purchases or recommendations for higher ticket items, such as mortgages.

Brand equity will have a significant impact on the company’s success. Stronger brand equity often means brands can justify higher prices, enjoy customer loyalty, and be protected against competitors.

How does brand equity relate to AI usage?

Like everything else in marketing, AI can affect brand equity. With AI tools widely available, the two elements of brand equity that could be impacted are brand awareness and brand associations, i.e. what they see of your brand before having their own experiences.

When AI is harnessed effectively, it can either boost or erode brand equity depending on whether it enhances authentic customer interactions or turns them into robotic, disconnected experiences. In essence, the smart use of AI can either reinforce your brand's value or, if mishandled, risk damaging the trust and emotional connections you've worked so hard to build.

How the overuse of AI can affect your brand equity

Brand equity is the culmination of years of trust-building, consistent messaging, and positive customer interactions. It's the intangible asset that sets your brand apart in the hearts and minds of your audience.

The right AI-driven experiences can drive awareness and solidify positive brand associations in the minds of your customers. But while the temptation is there to utilize AI-generated content to speed up output, it’s important to know when to use it and when to stop.

Dangers of overusing AI for your customer communications

AI can be a valuable asset, but it can also be a potential liability in your marketing toolkit. It's crucial to tread carefully and be mindful of the potential dangers lurking when AI-generated content is used within your communications.

Losing that personal touch

Your brand was made by humans, for humans. If your customers start to feel as if their interactions with your brand are too automated and lacking that vital human empathy, the emotional connection you’ve spent so much time building will begin to weaken. For example, you ask an AI tool to produce an article around a specific topic, and you upload that content straight to your site without fact-checking or personalizing it. That piece will stand out from the articles already on your website, either because of the change in tone of voice or mistakes and inaccuracies within it, leading the reader to question your branding, authority, and trustworthiness.

That loss of personal touch to content can not only affect what your customers feel about your brand but can also impact your site’s ability to rank. A recent AI vs. humans experiment carried out by Reboot found that pages created by copywriters outperformed AI-generated content in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Privacy concerns

Using AI tools to collect and analyze personal data can raise privacy concerns within your customer base. Because artificial intelligence is about always learning and improving, AI tools will store any information put into them, which includes any data. Allowing another party to store customer data opens up more opportunities for it to be viewed, copied, and even stolen by outside sources.

If your consumers believe their personal information is being misused by AI tools or their privacy is compromised, you can erode the trust in your brand and damage your overall brand equity.

To negate these privacy risks, some AI tools give you the option to opt out of this data storage. On ChatGPT, for example, there is a setting you can use to prevent it from saving your chat history.

Not understanding intent

Understanding and fulfilling intent is what helps your content to rank, and keeps your customers happy. AI content tools and recommendation systems might be unable to pinpoint customer intent or preferences. Continually missing the mark of what your customers want could negatively impact their perception of your brand’s competence.

If you’re looking to combat this pitfall, you can try asking the AI tool to create a piece of content with a particular search intent in mind. As with all content produced by artificial intelligence, though, this will need to be thoroughly fact-checked and edited by a skilled copywriter.

Loss of brand identity

Your communications could lack consistency with your brand’s image if they are solely produced by AI tools or even a mix of AI and human-generated content. Recognizable features of your brand are watered down, which could lead to confusion among your customers and a dilution of the all-important brand image.

Not only this but how can you be sure your tone of voice stands out when your competitors have access to the same AI tools? You know your brand best, and it is in your best interest to ensure any information you put out there is accurate, relevant, and on-brand.

Lack of human interaction

For complex or emotionally sensitive issues, customers might prefer human interaction rather than AI. If you don’t offer this option or rely too much on AI for customer service by only offering chatbots or email assistance run by artificial intelligence tools, you may start to notice increased dissatisfaction and reduced loyalty.

Can AI tools recreate recognizable brand communications?

As mentioned before, AI will affect your customers' awareness and perception of your brand, primarily if you use it in your communications. Can you trust AI-generated content to adopt your tone of voice accurately?

Brand tone of voice is a direct manifestation of its personality and values. It’s what drives brand perception and feeds into equity if you take away all of the visuals, logos, and videos.

Let’s see how a popular AI tool, ChatGPT, deals with mimicking the tone of voice of a famous and instantly recognizable brand.

AI tackles Cards Against Humanity

Cards Against Humanity has one of the most identifiable brand voices out there, which feeds into customer perception. There are specific qualities and characteristics that those familiar with the brand would expect from its communications.

To test out the AI tool, we input the prompt:

Please write a 120-word 'About Us' section to be used on the Cards Against Humanity website. Make sure this copy is instantly recognizable to customers by matching the brand's tone of voice and style of writing.

The word limit was to make sure the copy fits in line with the existing page the brand already has. For reference, this is the brand’s current About Us page on the site:

Cards Against Humanity

It’s short, to the point, and has brand-specific humor; it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a tone that anyone familiar with the brand would associate with their messaging. But how will an artificial intelligence tool compare?

Going off the prompt, this is what ChatGPT produced:

While the finished products are dissimilar, you can pick out inspiration from the brand’s existing content. With phrases such as ‘renegades of irreverence’ and ‘inner misfit’, Cards Against Humanity’s somewhat overtly offensive branding comes through.

However, Cards Against Humanity thrives within the sarcasm, self-deprecating space, which is where the ChatGPT content misses out. It doesn’t quite have that tongue-in-cheek humor that is apparent from its existing About Us page.

How this could affect brand equity

Consistent branding is pivotal in constructing and upholding a positive brand perception. If you’ve built up a consumer base familiar with a particular tone of voice and personality but then start to move away from this, you’ll go against their perceptions and chip away at their brand awareness.

Even though Cards Against Humanity has already formed relatively strong brand equity through years of consistent messaging and good-quality products, that doesn’t mean it’s invincible. If the brand decides to go ahead with AI-generated content for its future communications, it risks going against its consumer perceptions and damaging its brand equity in the long run.

Striking the balance between automation and the human touch

AI isn’t the enemy of brand equity. But you do need to be careful when using it. Balancing creativity caution with AI is like finding the perfect blend in your morning coffee — too much AI can leave a bitter taste.

You should aim to avoid your AI-generated content coming across as robotic or inconsistent with your brand identity. By selecting the appropriate AI tool and always referring back to your brand's unique voice, you still have the ability to craft captivating content that truly connects with your audience. Here’s how you do it:

1. Have a solid TOV guide

Why is having a tone of voice (TOV) guide a big deal?

It’s a roadmap for your messaging, ensuring your brand always sounds like, well, your brand!

This consistency is crucial for brand recognition and recall. When your audience can easily identify your style and personality across different channels, it's like having a familiar face in a crowd — feeding into brand awareness and perception.

A well-crafted TOV guide can even set you apart from competitors in a sea of voices, helping you stand tall in your niche.

How to create a TOV guide:

• Start by digging deep into your brand's purpose. What's your mission? Who's your audience? What values drive your business?

• Once you've got those nailed down, pinpoint your brand's personality traits. Are you fun and casual, or all about professionalism?

• Lay down some ground rules. Decide on vocabulary preferences, sentence structures, and even whether to use emojis (yes, they can be part of your TOV!).

But it doesn’t stop there. The key to a good TOV guide is keeping it fresh. Revisit and update it as your brand evolves. Get your team on board, train them up, and keep the dialogue open for feedback and tweaks.

2. Train AI tools to recognize and use your TOV

You can train many AI-content tools to use your brand’s TOV as you would with any new starter. Start by feeding it some of your brand's past content so it begins to understand how you structure your sentences, how informal your messaging is, and how you talk to your audience.

Then, using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning, AI recognizes patterns in your communications and starts to produce similar content. With time and ongoing pointers, amendments, and tweaks, most tools can begin to recognize and use your TOV.

But remember, it's an ongoing practice. You have to continuously fine-tune and review its outputs to keep it singing in perfect harmony with your brand's voice.

3. Monitor AI content and edit

Even after you’ve trained your chosen AI tool to mimic your brand’s TOV, you still have to thoroughly check and edit the content it has created. Just as you would proofread and edit any work from a content writer.

Monitor the output and use your TOV guide to ensure it hits the brand's values, tone, and messaging standards. AI tools occasionally throw out incorrect facts or statements without context. Publishing anything incorrect that can be disproven by your audience will alter brand associations and even perceived quality, so it’s important to have a rigorous fact-checking system in place.

4. Test and give feedback to the AI tool

Think of the AI tool as an eager employee. If you want it to improve, you need to provide thought-out feedback.

Start by conducting structured evaluations of its outputs against predefined criteria, measuring aspects like accuracy, relevance, and adherence to your brand's tone of voice.

Then, maintain a clear and consistent feedback loop, offering specific and constructive comments to help the AI tool learn and improve over time, ultimately aligning it more closely with your brand's unique requirements.

How to safely build brand equity with AI

The good news is that by adopting a thoughtful approach to AI and making some adjustments, you can generate content for your brand that is entirely distinctive and tailored to your identity.

There are some ways you can use AI tools that will work to spot patterns in your analytics to inform your ongoing strategies, as well as improve customer experiences.

Spotting data patterns and unearthing customer insights

Analyze customer data

Some AI tools can analyze large datasets, such as customer churn rates and sentiment analyses on social media, to identify patterns, trends, and correlations. This valuable insight into customer behavior can help to inform your brand to craft personalized marketing strategies and improved user experiences, ultimately leading to better decision-making and enhanced customer satisfaction.

It’s worth keeping in mind the privacy concerns point from above, though, making sure the AI tool you use has the option to not store chat history for this.

Stay in the loop with social media

There are AI tools that can track brand mentions, sentiment analysis, and emerging trends on social media. This will allow your social media marketing team to spend more time elsewhere, crafting perfect campaigns to work with the AI’s findings.

Do market research

Artificial intelligence has reshaped the field of market research, providing tools that can dissect data and generate invaluable insights. This is a great way to save your team time that would otherwise be used to analyze this data.

An example prompt to do so could be:

Generate a report summarizing the current market trends and customer preferences for [specific product, service, or industry]. Include information on key businesses and any notable shifts in consumer behavior. Please provide statistics and insights from the past year.

Improving customer experiences

Personalize content

After you’ve already used AI to sift through customer datasets, you can use the findings to produce personalized content tailored to their needs and preferences. This can span from customized product suggestions to tailor-made marketing messages.

24/7 chatbots

24/7 AI chatbots enhance the customer experience by delivering quick and reliable service around the clock — chatbot conversions are also pretty powerful for your bottom line. You can provide instant, consistent, and cost-effective customer support, handling routine queries efficiently and freeing human agents for more complex issues.

Automatic subtitles and image captions

With video becoming one of the preferred methods of consuming content, AI-powered subtitle generators such as Kapwing and VEED’s tools are getting increasingly popular. This helps with accessibility, which can improve user experience and save your team time.

How to avoid AI risks when it comes to your brand equity

Safely building brand equity with AI involves a strategic approach to harnessing the technology while mitigating potential risks. Here’s how to do it:

1. Define your brand's AI strategy: Begin by setting clear objectives for AI integration in your branding efforts. How will you use it? Will you use the tools to generate content, automate processes, or gather insights? Ensure you have answers for these and the goals behind them. What are you hoping to achieve?
   
   

2. Apply strict quality control: Establishing a robust review and approval process for AI-generated content will help to protect your brand awareness, associations, and perceived quality. Human oversight will always be needed to catch errors and maintain consistency in messaging.
   
   

3. Remain transparent: Maintaining transparency with your audience about your AI use will help to build and keep their trust. If chatbots or automated systems are handling customer inquiries, make it clear that customers are interacting with AI. If a blog post has been produced using AI, add a disclaimer about it highlighting who the piece was checked by to make sure you’re still hitting ‘experience’ and ‘expertise’ in E-E-A-T.
   
   

4. Focus on data privacy and security: Safeguard customer data rigorously. Comply with data protection regulations like GDPR or CCPA, and communicate your commitment to data privacy to enhance brand trust. Similar to the above, share any instances where personal data is handled by AI systems and the steps taken to make sure it remains confidential.
   
   

5. Be prepared for a crisis: Even with the most watertight approval processes, some mistakes still slip through the net. This is no different when using AI. To safeguard the audience trust you’ve built, ensure you implement a plan to address potential AI-related crises, such as misinterpretations or mishandling of sensitive issues.

Key takeaways

There will always be AI risks if using it in customer-facing content, but this doesn’t mean your brand shouldn’t use it.

To successfully integrate AI into your brand's strategies while building brand equity, you should ensure all uses align with the brand's values, messaging, and customer expectations.

Have solid processes in place for everything from proofreading and fact-checking to keeping all customer data confidential. This way, you’ll be able to protect your brand awareness, associations, perceived quality, and, ultimately, your brand equity.

Celebrating Canada’s Small Business Month With Sustainable Local Biz Tips

Happy Small Business Month to the 1.19 million small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Canada! You employ 10.7 million Canadians (88.1% of the private labor force) and contribute to 50.4% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Your numbers, percentages, and contributions outweigh those of large businesses in many ways, meaning that Canadian SMEs have awesome collective power to be part of the transition to sustainability which we all know we need in order to protect the beautiful earth on which we depend for life.

Localized green production is considered one of the top methods of healing the climate, but in order for customers to discover and choose your sustainable business, you’ve got to have a strong presence in Google’s local results. Today, let’s talk to 3 of my favorite Canadian local SEOs — Darren Shaw, Colan Nielsen, and John Vuong — for expert tips on becoming highly visible in Google’s local pack rankings.

And, if you’re working to green your business or planning to start a new one, we’ll highlight a few sustainable models for your inspiration. The transition off fossil fuels is a narrative of gains, not losses, and as a local business owner, you have the opportunity to play a starring role in this dramatic evolution towards a better future for all of us.

3 expert Canadian local pack ranking tips

I asked my honored colleagues to the north what the top factor they see currently impacting Google’s local pack rankings (shown above) in Canada. You’ll find a diversity of answers, because all local SEOs notice different things as they work with different industries and geographies, making all advice worth listening to. Here are their tips for you:

1. Keywords in Google Business title

Darren Shaw, the CEO of Whitespark, says:

"The top factor I'm seeing driving local rankings in Canada is the same as the top factor I see in any country. Unfortunately, it's keywords in the Google Business Profile business name. Google gives too much ranking weight to this factor, and it's helping businesses spam their way to the top of the search results. It's technically against Google's guidelines to use a business name that is not your business' actual real-world name, but the sad reality is that Google does not police or penalize this, so spamming the business name with additional keywords has become a common practice."

When Darren refers to spamming Google Business Profile names with keywords, he’s talking about this practice:

Google’s guidelines make it clear that the only thing that belongs in this field is your real-world business name. No one in Canada knows local rankings better than Darren, who is the annual publisher of the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey and Report, and he and I both expressed our disbelief that Google is still allowing keyword-stuffed business names to have such influence on visibility.

What is an honest local business owner to do in this scenario? Join in the spam? Report it? I’ve created this graphic to explain the several paths open to you:

This graphic doesn’t represent every possible bend in the road, but it covers the big ones. In sum, if you’re being outranked by a spamming competitor, you could decide to join in the spam. But that could make you lose potential customers who think your name looks untrustworthy, and Google might eventually edit your business name, which could lead to a loss of rankings once your extraneous keywords are removed. If you’re investing in spam instead of other more solid marketing tactics, you’re always on the verge of losing out.

Meanwhile, you do have the option to report spammy competitors to Google by flagging the name right on the listing or via the Business Redressal Complaint form, but even if Google acts on this and edits the keyword-stuffed name, the spammer is all too likely to come back. Spam fighting is a good competitive tactic, but can’t form the whole of your marketing strategy.

If you choose not to spam, you will look authentic to the customers who do see your listing, and you just have to be philosophical about the fact that spammers may outrank you in Google’s system. If your competitors’ business practices are as iffy as their names, you know their disgruntled customers will likely end up coming to you one day, anyway, for better service, and we can all hope that Google may one day utterly downgrade this ranking signal.

Finally, if you’re preparing to launch a brand new business, you could choose to brand it with one or two top keywords in mind, knowing that this could give you a boost in Google’s local packs. However, there are two big conditions to this route. Firstly, don’t go overboard. Don’t name your business Best Organic Farm-to-Table Restaurant With Sustainable Practices And Righteous Poutine in Toronto. This is just going to look silly to anyone who is evaluating whether to become your customer. Stick to just one or two keywords at most, and remember that your business name must be consistent on your real-world signage, website, and how you answer the phone.

The second condition is that brand names that are too specific can sometimes require later rebranding if the business expands. For example, if you name your first restaurant location Toronto Farm to Table and you become successful enough to open a second location in Mississauga, your original branding is going to become a problem in your new setting. If you plan to grow, be wary of city names or other geo-modifiers in your branding that could hold you back in the future.

2. Primary category selection

VP of Sterling Sky, Colan Nielsen, agrees with Darren about keywords in the business name, but don’t miss his second tip because it’s a major one:

“The local algorithms in Canada tend to be driven by most, if not all, the same factors that drive rankings in the USA. Here are a few things that we have seen have a significant impact on rankings recently:

Keywords in the business name. Yes, yes, I know… everyone is tired of hearing about keywords in the name. But even here in the great white north, it has a significant impact.

Getting the primary GBP category right. We recently advised a Family Law practice to change the primary GBP category from "Law Firm" to "Family law attorney," and it improved their rankings significantly.”

If you download the free Chrome extension, GMB Everywhere, you’ll be able to make the most of Colan’s tip about getting your primary category right by looking at it in comparison to your competitors’ Google Business Profile listings. The primary category (in this case, garden center) is marked with a star in this useful interface:

It’s almost impossible to rank for your most important local search phrases without selecting the right primary category, so a shop like this garden center in Edmonton has to be sure that the first category they choose when creating their Google Business Profile is of prime importance to the business. They can then add up to 9 additional categories for aspects of secondary importance, and one key way of determining what your primary category should be is by seeing what your top-ranked competitors have chosen. In this example, the top result for this search has, indeed, chosen “garden center” as their primary category:

For more tips on this key area of local listing optimization, read: How to Choose Google My Business Categories with Cool Tools

3. Searcher-to-business proximity

CEO John Vuong of Local SEO Search Inc. says,

“Physical proximity is the top ranking factor for the local pack right now. Google wants to provide users with the most relevant search results possible, and this includes showing them businesses that are closest to them. Make sure that you are optimizing your site for local search to rank best in your local area and try to get solid reviews with local justification trigger terms in them on Google (e.g. close by, near me, neighborhood/city, highly rated, etc.).”

John is referring to two things. The first is the phenomenon of knowing you are likely to rank best in the local packs for searchers nearest you, like this:

This can not only help you determine the ideal spot for your company to be physically located so that it’s closest to your intended audience, but this nearby geography should also feature highly in how you optimize your local business website. City names and neighborhood names matter.

Secondly, John is describing the eye-catching local pack elements known as local justifications, which look like this:

Read: Local Justifications are a Big Deal and You Can Influence Them to get a speedy education on this neat feature that can influence clicks on your listings, and don’t miss this quiet but fascinating recent tip from Colan on how to get Google to show the “provides” justification on your listing.

3 Deeply sustainable Canadian small business models

Are you an entrepreneur who wants to be part of the sustainable transition by founding a Canadian SME? Consider these models:

1. Feeding local people local food

“Farming. It had everything we were looking for; it was a real and concrete way to work at creating change.” — Liz Beasley and Matt Rock

Small organic growers like Joyfully Organic Farm in Markham, Ontario, aren’t merely producing vegetables without synthetic chemicals; they are focusing on regenerative agriculture, which improves land over time while also greatly reducing the fossil fuels required to put meals on neighbors’ plates. When managed organically, farm stands, farm shares, CSAs, farmers' markets, and community gardens can abundantly feed us with the fresh, nearby, unprocessed foods medical experts say are best for us. Farmers say you can even keep eating locally in winter in most of Canada with a combination of cold-weather crops and ancient practices like preserving.

1. Launch a local ReStore for local people

"Thrift stores are idealized as the perfect place to find unique and affordable items, with proceeds benefiting local charities. In reality, 75 percent of your donations are being shipped overseas. Conversely, Habitat’s ReStore operates in a highly transparent way to assure you that. your purchase from our ReStore really does have an impact on local families.” — Habitat ReStore, Ontario

Overconsumption, fast fashion, long-distance shipping, and planned obsolescence are the opposites of sustainability. A really good solution to keeping your neighbors clothed and stocked with basic household necessities could be launching a community ReStore. If you are good at mending and repairing a variety of merchandise, your re-store could significantly reduce the number of times people nearest you have to buy new. This phenomenon has become so popular in Europe that Sweden opened the world’s first recycled mall and it’s about to celebrate its tenth anniversary.

1. Offer green, local production of basic goods

One green trend I’m keeping a close eye on is helping people transition from seeking happiness in owning lots of stuff to pursuing joy through intangible experiences like staycations and community projects. These increase satisfaction in being where you are, the truth is that we all need some basic belongings like clean water, food, clothing, shelter, warmth, and a few simple household goods.

If you’re launching a new venture or looking to transition an existing one, consider how you can emphasize local production of necessities. Squamish Nation-owned Raven and Hummingbird Tea Co. reduce the need for imported drinks by locally growing traditional herbs in their community garden. Customers looking for nearby drinking vessels could go to TAV Ceramics of Vancouver which sources their clay locally and uses lead-free glazes. Another nearby outfit, Just Potters, highlights how diversity, equity, and inclusion are meant to be part of the energy transition; they’re embracing their community by employing neighbors with both physical and mental health challenges.

Look around your home, office, and town and see if you can identify daily-use items that are currently being imported and shipped long distance to your neighbors. Could you produce these items locally? Are there parts of your existing supply chain that you could switch to more local sources? Business ideas, persuasive USPs, meaningful content marketing, and a better future could exist if you have the right vision.

Why I secretly want Canada to lead in healing Climate Change

Canada is so beautiful! Some powers-that-be may see you as the world’s oil can, but Canada is so much more worthy, inspiring, and awe-inspiring than that.

I was personally thrilled when Moz evolved beyond Seattle to include a branch in Vancouver and expanded our Moz Local offering to help Canadian businesses get listed on the major local business directories and platforms. As a California girl, I’ve always been a secret Canada fan. I grew up with a really special feeling for Canadian children’s television like Degrassi Junior High, and wanted to live on PEI with Anne of Green Gables. Your country gave us Rush, one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Your figure skaters and hockey players are global legends, your gardens are gorgeous, and your natural spaces are beyond monumental. You understand my fierce love of both maple syrup and beavers. You spell better. And you might just have the prettiest flag in the world.

Yes, I’ve always felt close to Canada, and in recent years, that kinship has been more deeply forged by the losses we are both suffering in California and Canada due to the wildfires of Climate Change. We know first-hand now what it means to see loved spaces turned to ash, making the transition off fossil fuels immediate and urgent to us both. While penning this column, I haven’t been able to go outside for five days due to air quality alerts from heavy wildfire smoke. Climate Change is, indeed, impacting every aspect of business and life throughout North America.

But, together, by making sustainable local goods and services easier for everyone to find and choose online, we can reduce fuel consumption and, perhaps, bring new meaning to the symbology of both our homelands’ flags. You have a maple leaf, and I have a bear. Let’s do business like people who know we not only depend on nature but are part of it. Wishing you a strong and sustainable Small Business Month in 2023!

Making Industry Landing Pages Engaging for B2B Companies – Whiteboard Friday

Learn how to transform your industry landing pages into powerful sales enablement tools for B2B success. Discover the key strategies to bridge the gap between search relevance and customer expectations in this Whiteboard Friday.

12 Local Search Developments You Need to Know About from Q3 2023

The previous quarter in local search has felt slightly more mellow than the first two of this year, but industry experts have definitely made some noteworthy discoveries, and Google has made one major move.

With the holiday shopping season up next, now is the time to examine any emerging opportunities or learn about new rules, before things get too busy for the local businesses you market. Let’s hop right in!

1. No second reinstatement chances from Google

Ben Fisher wins the quarter with his detailed breakdown of the biggest Google local news. Already launched in the EU and coming to us all globally at an unspecified date is a set of changes to the Google Business Profile reinstatement process.

The main improvement Ben highlights is somewhat more transparency in the process, offering some clues as to why your listing was suspended. The biggest fly in the ointment is that you have just one chance to make this application for reinstatement. Ben shares these two useful links:

• The appeal tool

• Support about appeals

Google may continue to tweak this process in the coming months. In the meantime, if a listing you’re managing gets suspended, you’ll be better equipped to handle reinstatement if you’ve bookmarked Ben’s article.

2. Try out “&near=[ZIP]" remote location emulation

Take 60 seconds to watch Chris Long’s useful video on emulating zip code location by editing the URL of your query. Chris offers this process:

1. Copy the ZIP code of the geography you want to emulate

2. Search for your target query (e.g.. "fence repair near me")

3. At the end of the URL, append "&near=[ZIP]"

4. Click enter and analyze the local search results

While it’s important to remember that Google’s results can be hyperlocal to the searcher, meaning that any emulation tool or tactic may not exactly represent what a unique searcher sees as they move about town, try Chris’ tip next time you want a general idea of what rankings look like in a remote location. Fast and quite fun!

3. Review tests, spam, and warnings

We’ve got three different items of note in this category this quarter.

1. Inline reviews test

Mike Blumenthal has captured this interesting test in which reviews do not stem from individual reviewers but from third parties like Best Company and Home Advisor. Historically, Google has sometimes showcased third-party reviews in sections labeled “Reviews from the web” or similar lingo. But, this test mixes platform reviews right in with customer’s direct reviews. Keep your eye out for this test in your area.

2. No lasting consequences for Google review spam

To understand why Joy Hawkins calls reporting review spam to Google “as about as effective as trying to teach a goldfish to play piano,” watch her video on the frustration she experienced in repeatedly reporting purchased reviews. Joy documents how each report resulted in some reviews being removed from the errant company’s listings, but then they simply bought more, creating an endless cycle of tomfoolery. If Google doesn’t ban brands that violate guidelines by buying reviews, consumers will continue to be taken in by unearned high-star ratings, and the local search results will remain untrustworthy. On that note…

3. Spammers, en garde in France!

We take our hats off again to Mike Blumenthal for sharing this screenshot of a French reviewer being warned that their review isn’t being posted because it may violate Google’s policies. It remains to be seen whether this is EU-wide (if you know, please @ me), but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the case yet in the US, where we’ve gotten into a sad pattern of lagging behind Europe in anything regulatory-related. Wouldn’t it be fantastique if Google would roll this out globally, and publish such warnings not just to the reviewer, but on the profiles of brands that have been repeatedly caught violating review guidelines?

4. Interesting GBP Developments

We’ve got several wondrous things to ponder in the world of Google listings this past quarter, including:

1. Footnotes in overviews?

I don’t often feature myself in these quarterly roundups, but look at this weird thing I came across in the local packs! My Twitter (ugh, ‘X’) thread compiles a bunch of instances I saw of what appear to be numbered footnotes within overview descriptions within the local pack. Look at this example, where the numbers go as high as 9:

And here’s another curious one on GBP that claims to be linking to a menu:

The trouble is, none of these footnotes are actionable. They don’t link to anything, and they aren’t explained. There appears to be no point to them, so they almost feel like a bug. But… they do have a familiar tone. Don’t these sound rather like AI of the kind we’ve been previewing in experiments like SGE? I’m wondering now if what I spotted presages an AI/local mashup ahead. Keep watching!

2. You can’t list services as GBP products anymore

I think we all share Claire Carlile’s disappointment that you can apparently no longer add services as GBP products. Until recently, it appeared fine to do so, but that’s Google local search for you: a dynamic environment in which today’s best practice is tomorrow’s bad hair day (which is why reading columns like this one becomes necessary just to keep up with the changes). I wish Google would reverse course on this. For SABs, their services are what they sell; they are their products.

3. Getting the “Provides” local justification to show on your listing

Speaking of SABs, who wouldn’t want this awesome Provides local justification to appear on their local pack listings, catching the eyes of potential customers? I don’t know what wizardly work my friend Colan Nielsen has been up to lately in the deep recesses of GBP, but when a Local Search Forum member asked why she couldn’t get this justification to show up on her listing, his reply got my attention. Colan indicated that if you want that justification to appear, you need to contact Google support to ask them to completely remove the “on-site services” attribute from your profile and that this can help you get the Provides option, instead. That was news to me, and I’d love to hear more stories like this.

4. New Google policies bring some transparency to formerly-secret processes

This document makes public Google’s formerly secret policies on why and when they might suspend an account, and I highly recommend watching Near Media’s full commentary on what we’ve learned from this disclosure. I quote:

“Google rolled out a number of new policy statements regarding the rules guiding suspensions and content takedowns affecting Google Business Profiles (GBP). These guidelines, long the working rules that affected listings and listing content, now make explicit how user accounts, and abuses affect whether a business continues to have access to any given listing or whether that listing will be removed from Google. While this increased clarity is welcome, the devil is in the details.”

Local search depends on authenticity, and I warmly welcome any public declarations of this kind by Google.

4. Grab bag ‘o other local finds

1. What’s your blue zone?

Check out what Andy Simpson noticed when looking at the map for “nearby searches”: an unusual blue zone none of us seem to have seen before. It indicates both a walking and driving distance, and as Andy said, could be useful in helping you choose a new location for a business, given Google’s penchant for user-to-business proximity. How great to be running a business that customers can walk to.

2. What are you mentioned in?

While not specifically local, getting this “Mentioned in” treatment captured by Brodie Clark could be good for any local business, especially if the recent loss of FAQ-rich results impacted you. Google appears to be testing different versions of this result, and it strikes me as a reminder of how the Authoritativeness signal of E-E-A-T works in action. Who is mentioning your brand, and how can you get more mentions from top sources?

3. Is your Performance data spooky enough for Hallowe’en?

We’re finishing up with a notable case study from Joy Hawkins that was kicked off when an attendee of a LocalU event asked why his storage client’s GBP Performance section was showing him ranking for restaurant queries. Dismissing the notion that people safeguard leftover meatloaf in storage units, and getting no insight directly from Google on the mystery, Joy posited and confirmed a theory: the client was participating in the paid Performance Max Google Ads program, which gives you a little branded pin on Google Maps… often for queries that are totally unrelated to your business.

As Joy explains, this Performance Max data then transfers over to your GBP Performance stats, convoluting paid with organic info. Joy was able to confirm that a branch of this business not participating in the Performance Max program was not getting this weird data, giving good credence to her theory. She also offers a warning that you shouldn’t immediately blame SEO if you see performance drops being reported to you by Google – it could be coming from your paid ads.

And that’s it for Q3 in local search marketing. Now we’re headed for the wild and wonderful holiday shopping season, my friends. Please, come back in January to see how it all played out!

How to Collect & Use Your GA4 Data to Transform Your Content Strategy

Content without data is like a property without a foundation — it lacks stability. Without data, you can’t truly understand the impact of your content and what to do next.

Victor Ijidola put it best in his recent article on informational content, “You want your content to persuade your readers to do something,” but if traffic is low or sales are slow, chances are your content isn’t working hard enough at generating interest.

In the last few years, content marketing has become more data-driven than ever before. Content marketers and SEOs have tools like Moz Pro and Google Analytics to thank for that. These tools can help you identify which articles are working, how many conversions your content is generating, where your content gaps are, and much more.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) replaced Universal Analytics, Google’s long-standing analytics reporting tool, in July 2023. Hopefully, you’ve already migrated to GA4 and taken ownership of your GA4 property, had a good look around, begun unpacking all of your data, and made yourself familiar with the reporting platform’s layout. As you settle in, you can begin to learn just how much GA4 can help you renovate your content marketing strategy.

Whether you’re creating content for a SaaS knowledge hub, planning articles for a service-based company’s blog, or publishing product guides for an e-commerce platform, the tactics I am about to share will help you evaluate your content marketing efforts so far (or within the last two months or 14 months, depending on your data retention period), figure out which pieces of existing content to improve, and identify gaps and opportunities in your content.

This article presumes that:

• You have admin access to your website’s GA4 property.

• You have admin access to your website’s Google Tag Manager (GTM) container or have a developer who can help you with tags.

If you don’t have admin access to your GA4 property, get this set up first! If you’re unable to gain access, you can send some of these recommendations to those who do, so they can share the reports we create with you.

Let’s begin!

How to evaluate your content performance using GA4

As a content marketer, there’s always a desire to create new content. After all, we’re often told that Google favors “fresh” content — wisdom that is widely debated. That’s why I recommend working on your content strategy by improving existing content first.

This doesn’t just draw new attention to older articles. Beginning by improving your existing content also makes it much easier to develop new content ideas.

The first step in improving your existing content is to figure out which articles you should work on and prioritize. Enter GA4.

I’ll explore each of the following metrics in more detail, including where to find them in GA4. But first, here’s a quick rundown of the most helpful metrics when it comes to understanding how well your content is performing and choosing which pages to focus on for optimization:

• Page/screen views

• Engagement rate

• Average engagement time

• Exits

• Bounce rate

• Scroll

Page/screen views

Let’s start with one of the most important and easy-to-find metrics — page/screen views. Views will provide a helpful indication of your content’s performance, i.e., how many times your article has been viewed in a specific period of time.

In GA4, you can find this by going to Reports > Engagements > Pages and screens. Once there, you’ll see a list of pages and the number of views they had during your selected time period. By default, this is set to the last 28 days, but you can update this to a duration that suits you.

Filter this data so you can concentrate on your blog or content hub only. In most cases, you can do this by:

1. Clicking “Add filter” at the top of the page

2. Choosing to filter by the “Page path and screen class” dimension

3. Selecting “contains” as your Match Type, then enter the subfolder that contains your relevant content — usually “/blog/” or “/news/”

   

Order the results by views, and you’ll see which articles have had the most — and the least — views during your selected time period. You might want to focus on a selection of the least visited articles first as these could have the biggest potential, so add those pages to your list.

Simple enough — but things can get complicated when choosing which period of time you want to evaluate. Older pieces of content will typically benefit from having a higher number of views just because they’ve existed longer. That is why other metrics can be more helpful in understanding what’s working well and what isn’t.

However, if posts about similar topics feature prominently in your least viewed articles, you may want to remove this type of content from your blog or hub altogether. It’s OK to delete content that attracts little attention or combine some of these pieces into a longer guide that provides more value for your readers. Just remember to implement redirects from your old URLs to the new ones for your guide.

Engagement rate and average engagement time

Google defines engagement rate as “the percentage of engaged sessions on your website or mobile app,” where an “engaged session” is a “session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.”

Put simply, engagement rate measures the percentage of visits that involve a significant interaction with your website.

The engagement rate isn’t included by default in GA4, so you’ll need to add this to your report. The pages and screens report we just used to see views is a good place to add this metric.

Here’s how:

1. At the top right, just below the date range, click the pencil icon to customize your report view

2. In the “Report Data” section, click “Add Metric”

3. Type “Engagement rate” then “Save”

Average engagement time should be added by default. This metric provides the average “amount of time someone spends with your webpage in focus or app screen in the foreground.”

Analyze engagement rate and average engagement time against your pages to identify those with lower-than-average results. In the Base Creative blog, our average engagement rate is 51%, so I’d pay close attention to articles that are much lower than that and those that have a short average engagement time (which should already be in your report).

The aim is to use this data to improve engagement. Some quick wins based on engagement metrics could include:

• Increasing font size so it’s easier to consume content (particularly on smaller devices)

• Breaking up longer paragraphs into smaller chunks to improve readability

• Adding links to related content and/or downloads or (more) links to your calls to action

• Incorporating a range of media formats, such as audio, video, images, or interactive assets like quizzes or infographics

Interactions across different devices

You can go one step further and compare how your content performs against these metrics across different devices. Compare desktop and mobile performance against each other in GA4 by using the “Add comparison” feature on any report screen you’re looking at:

1. Click “Add comparison” just above the graphs

2. In Dimension, choose “Device category”

3. Choose “exactly matches” in the Match Type

4. In Values, choose either Mobile or Desktop and click “Apply”

5. Click “Add comparison” again and add the other device, e.g. “Desktop” in Values

In Base Creative’s case, there isn’t a large difference between engagement rates across devices. Around 90% of visits to our blog take place on desktop, so I’d pay closer attention to these statistics when reviewing performance, but you might find some interesting results that could make you rethink the design and layout of your blogs if there are some drastic differences between devices.

Exits and bounce rate

An exit counts as a session that ends on a particular page or screen. It’s similar, but not the same as a bounce, which is a single-page session where no engagement occurred.

Both are useful metrics for identifying weaker pieces of content, but I find the exit rate more helpful when it comes to articles. A high number of exits suggests that your content isn’t encouraging any further action on your site. Ideally, we want our articles to lead our readers to visit another article or — even better — your money pages (usually a service, product, or contact page).

Currently, Google doesn’t offer an exit metric in the Reports section of GA4, so you’ll need to create an exploration in the Explore section. You can add the bounce rate here, too, to see how it compares. Here’s how:

1. Go to Explore and click on “Blank exploration” to create a new exploration

2. Click the “+” icon next to DIMENSION, choose “Page path and screen class” under “Page/screen”, click “Import,” then drag to ROWS

3. Click the “+” icon next to METRICS, choose “Exits” and “Views” under “Page/screen,” then “Bounce rate” under “Sessions”, click “Import,” then drag to VALUES

4. Filter to just show your articles by dragging “Page path and screen class” to FILTERS. Update Match Type to “contains,” then enter your blog’s subfolder (e.g.,/blog/) below and click “Apply”

   

Don’t forget to change your date range on the left to a helpful time period and reorder by the number of exits, which you can do by clicking on the “Exits” column.

What can you do with this information?

If you see high exit pages here, for example, if your number of exits on an article equals at least 50% of its views — then these are your priority to review. The aim here is to keep visitors on your site for longer (by visiting another page) or to encourage them to take action, so take this opportunity to add helpful, relevant links to related content or other appropriate pages.

This is also a good place to add links to your least viewed articles (that we identified previously) if you believe they still provide valuable information for your visitors, as they may be difficult to find on their own.

Site scroll

If you’ve enabled enhanced measurement in your GA4 property (which you can do by going to Admin > Data Streams > Web stream details, then clicking the toggle on Enhanced Measurement), then you’ll begin recording a “scroll” event. This will count every time a visitor has scrolled through 90% of your page.

To see scrolls, go to Reports > Engagements > Pages and screens, then under “Event count,” you can choose to just see “scroll.” Compare this number against the number of views to get a sense of how many users are making it to the end of your article without any additional setup.

GA4’s offering provides a limited interpretation of scroll depth but combined with Google Tag Manager, you can learn more about your visitors’ scrolling behavior.

Using Google Tag Manager to enhance your data

Remember how I mentioned that content and data work so well together? Well, the same applies to GA4 and Google Tag Manager (GTM) when it comes to reporting on the impact of that content.

There are plenty of insights you can glean from GA4 alone, but you can take it further with GTM.

Chances are, you’ll already be using GTM to track meaningful engagements with your website and conversion events like form submissions, purchases, and video views. However, you can also use GTM to send some helpful data for analyzing content performance directly into your GA4 property.

Here are some tags I recommend setting up specifically for content analysis:

Improved site scroll

We’ve seen that GA4 can give us a basic indication of scroll depth. Angela Petteys’ Introduction to Google Tag Manager shares some helpful tips on how to set up scroll depth so you can create an event that triggers every time a visitor scrolls 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% down the page, to give you more detailed scroll data in GA4.

Depending on your GTM setup, there will be various ways to see this data in GA4. You could create a scroll depth exploration like this:

1. Go to Explore and click on “Blank exploration” to create a new exploration

2. Click the “+” icon next to DIMENSION, choose “Page path and screen class” under “Page/screen”, “Event name” under “Event” and “Percent scrolled” under “General”, then click “Import”

3. Drag “Page path and screen class” to ROWS

4. Drag “Percent scrolled” to COLUMNS

5. Click the “+” icon next to METRICS, choose “Event count” under “Events”, click “Import,” then drag to VALUES

6. Filter to just show your accordion clicks by dragging “Event name” to FILTERS. Update Match Type to “exactly matches,” then enter “scroll”

7. Additionally, you can filter by page by dragging “Page path and screen class” into the FILTERS section

Use the data you see here to help optimize your content. At which point on the page do visitors tend to drop off? Are they seeing your calls to action?

If all your CTAs are at the end of each page and most visitors are dropping off around the 60% mark, then you might want to test moving these up to a more prominent position towards the top of the page.

Click events on FAQs

With informational websites, I’ve found it useful to track what visitors click on, particularly for areas like FAQs that typically use accordions.

Depending on their implementation, there are lots of ways to set up accordion tracking in Google Tag Manager. Often, this will be setup in the form of a GA4 event tag and a “Click - All Elements” trigger. These will look out for clicks on your accordion based on a specific set of rules, like when a “Click class” contains “Accordion_title”.

You’ll then want to scrape the text on your accordion, so you can see what visitors are clicking on in GA4. In your Google Tag Manager tag, create an Event Parameter with a helpful name (something like “accordion_name” or “faq_name”), then set the Value to “” to grab the accordion’s title.

You may need to do some testing to find out what you should use here or check with your web developer.

Once you’ve got this set up, you should start seeing this event — let’s call it “accordion_open” — being recorded in your GA4 property within a few days. But there are some extra steps to take to specifically review the FAQ titles in your GA4 property.

You need to create a custom definition. To do this:

1. Go to Admin > Property > Custom definitions

2. Click “Create custom definition”

3. In the Event parameter box, you should hopefully see the Event Parameter you set up in Google Tag Manager (e.g. “accordion_open” or “faq_click”)

4. Choose this, and name your dimension the same thing.

That’s the setup. Now to review the activity! This calls for another exploration, which you set up as follows:

1. Go to Explore and click on “Blank exploration” to create a new exploration

2. Click the “+” icon next to DIMENSION, choose your custom definition e.g. “accordion_name” under “Custom”, click “Import,” then drag to ROWS

3. Click the “+” icon next to METRICS, choose “Event count” under “Events”, click “Import,” then drag to VALUES

4. Filter to just show your accordion clicks by dragging “accordion_name” to FILTERS. Update Match Type to “does not exactly match,” then enter “(not set)”

5. Additionally, you can filter by page or section by also importing “Page path and screen class” as we did in the previous example and using this in the FILTERS section

With this information, you can see which queries are being clicked on more than others.

Are there any themes in which types of questions are engaged with more? If so, these could provide the basis for more in-depth content.

Are there questions that aren’t clicked on often, but you think they should be? Consider moving them to pages with higher traffic for more exposure.

Using site search to identify content gaps

We’ve explored ways to identify and improve, move, combine, or delete existing articles based on GA4 insights. But what about new content ideas?

Hopefully, you’ll already be using tools like Moz Pro and insights from your sales teams to find content opportunities, but your GA4 data can also provide great content ideas. Specifically, GA4 can help you identify content ideas that address your customers' pain points.

Your site’s search bar is a goldmine of content ideas based on what some of your most engaged site visitors are looking for. In GA4, there are a few ways of finding site search data.

But first, you’ll need to make sure you’re set up to track site searches. In most cases, you’ll need to enable enhanced measurement in GA4, which you can do by going to Admin > Data Streams > Web stream details and then clicking the Enhanced Measurement toggle.

You’ll then need to set up a “search_term” custom definition (which you can do via Configure > Custom definitions like we did with “accordion_name”). This reports on the actual search terms from the “view_search_results” event.

Then I recommend you create an exploration. Here’s how to set this up for site search:

1. Go to Explore and click on “Blank exploration” to create a new exploration

2. Click the “+” icon next to DIMENSION, choose “search_term” under “Custom”, click “Import,” then drag to ROWS

3. Click the “+” icon next to METRICS, choose “Event count” under “Events,” then click “Import,” then drag to VALUES

4. Filter to just show your search terms by dragging “search_term” to FILTERS. Update Match Type to “does not exactly match,” then enter “(not set)”

Now you’ll see a table with all your site search queries ordered by the number of times they were searched for. This information is valuable for many reasons, and you can analyze and review these results to inform your content strategy.

The next step doesn’t involve any GA4 tactics. It involves you, a list of popular search terms, and your web browser of choice. Visit your website and try out these search terms yourself. What content crops up in your results? Is it helpful?

You can use your site search analysis to:

• Compile a list of topics for articles or thought leadership pieces on your site, especially for terms that have a high number of searches but there isn’t currently an article or page that covers it well

• Create FAQs that answer the most popular searches, especially for terms that are formatted as questions

• Update or move content around so it’s easier to find or make better use of customer terminology if a term is being searched a lot and there is content on your site that covers it

Prioritize your pages: combining site search with exits

Want to learn even more about your site searches? Let’s combine site searches with exits.

Either create a new exploration or create a new tab in your “Site search” exploration, where you’ll then do the following:

1. Click the “+” icon next to DIMENSION, choose “Page path + query string” under “Page/screen”, click “Import,” then drag to ROWS

2. Click the “+” icon next to METRICS, choose “Exits” and “Views” under “Page/screen”, click “Import,” then drag to VALUES

3. Filter to just show your search terms by dragging “Page path + query string” to FILTERS. Update Match Type to “contains,” then enter the relevant information here, which means you’ll just see your search results pages. In most cases, this will be something like “/search/” or “/?s=”

Once you order by exits, you’ll see which searches most often end in someone leaving your website, suggesting these are your highest priority content gaps. Add these to the top of your content to-do list.

Final tips

There are countless ways that GA4 can help you analyze, plan, and optimize your content strategy. The more you get to grips with your GA4 property, the more you’ll develop your own measurement criteria for evaluating your content’s performance, but these metrics will provide you with a great starting point.

Use your GA4 insights to create content experiments backed by data. If your data tells you that your CTAs are too far down the page, then move them and review them. If your data tells you that visitors keep searching for a particular topic, then make sure it’s prominent across your website.

Setting up new events and dimensions can take time. When testing your new events or custom dimensions, expect to wait at least 24 hours before seeing data in your GA4 property.

My final tip — be patient when collecting data and keep testing. By following the data and fine-tuning your strategy, you’ll see your content pay off in the long term.