Locators are indispensable digital marketing tools for large, multi-location businesses. As more consumers go online to learn where to buy products and how to engage with brands in person, it pays to point customers to the right locations, retail outlets, or dealers as efficiently as possible. Whether you’re a manufacturer, bank, healthcare system, or another large enterprise, you’ll need the right locator technology embedded on your website to achieve this.
One contender in locator software is MetaLocator, a platform that creates branded locator pages. It comes with quite a few features for integrating with existing web services, and provides templates that brands can customize to their liking.
However, the question remains: Is MetaLocator right for your business, or should you look elsewhere?
You should know that the Bullseye Dealer Locator software is an established leader in online space. It comes with best-in-class features that make locator pages an essential part of your online presence.
Once you look under the hoods of both platforms, you might find — as many businesses have over the years — that Bullseye is the better, more reliable, and more beneficial choice for your digital toolbox. Here, we’ll share 4 big reasons why Bullseye is the best MetaLocator alternative.
1. Advantages With Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
As noted by Integrowth, 68% of online experiences begin with search, and 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
That makes good SEO (the kind that keeps you in the first Google result page for popular terms) a key part of digital success for multi-location businesses.
MetaLocator comes with some SEO capabilities, but Bullseye provides a highly-scalable, customizable experience for brands that are ready to win at local search. Here are some of the advantages of Bullseye:
Integration with Google My Business
Bullseye integrates seamlessly with Google My Business (GMB). It pulls name, address, and location data directly from Google, the largest repository of such information online, right into your website. This is great for both your website’s search optimization and customer convenience.
Bullseye’s best-in-class integration with GMB also means that location data will always be accurate. As your locations’ info changes, you’ll never have to worry about manual updates.
Both Bullseye and GMB remain in sync, eliminating any extra information maintenance strain on your staff. Additionally, thanks to batch matching and automatic synchronization, location info that might be relevant to your business is instantly detected.
This means that, without you having to lift a finger, you can always be confident you’re giving customers the latest, most correct info on stores and dealers.
Customized Local SEO
Bullseye takes SEO seriously, all the way down to the local level. It helps you create keyword rich, search-friendly local pages that take the best of on-page and off-page optimization into account.
Bullseye-powered local SEO pages have automatically-generated meta titles and descriptions, but you can choose to edit these yourself. You’re able to insert specific keyphrases and search terms you’ve found to be important to your brand and key for capturing your ideal customers.
All in all, Bullseye’s SEO features put your business in the driver’s seat, both through automatic optimizations and the option to make your own tweaks and adjustments. You’ll have everything you need to stay on top of the search results, and thereby, the competition.
2. Enhanced Location And Dealer Relationships
Multi-location businesses must get a crucial thing right if they want to thrive: the relationships they’ve developed with their local branches, stores, and dealers.
Up to 45% of executives report that keeping strategic business partnerships active and mutually rewarding is their biggest challenge. Keeping relationships with your locations healthy leads to a more resilient brand, more sales, and a stronger overall position in your market.
If your connections to dealers aren’t as strong, however, it means less promotion of your products, fewer customers, and fewer dings of the cash register.
The locator software you use can make all the difference. MetaLocator has a few capabilities that help you communicate with your dealers and show detailed local listings. Bullseye, however, offers a superior experience in building business relationships that last.
Here are some of the ways they accomplish rapport:
Email Templates
When adding new locations, there should be an easy, hands-off way to do so while making those business contacts feel welcome and empowering them to conduct sales.
Bullseye has prepared email templates specifically for this purpose. Use them to welcome new locations into your fold, as well as to send leads to dealers, follow up with leads yourself, change passwords, and more.
MetaLocator allows some limited customization of email messages, but only through an HTML editor that requires technical knowledge. Bullseye’s email template editor is completely user-friendly, reducing the time it takes to create brandable emails that will strengthen your company’s relationships with local dealers and stores.
Allow Locations to Display Special Promotions
Bullseye gives you and your locations the power to display any kind of promotion or sale. This means putting attractive offers right in front of leads, right when they’re willing to make a purchase.
When a location wants to advertise a sale, they can simply log in to your locator’s “portal” if you’ve given them permission and add the information themselves. Bullseye can even generate printable coupons, rebate offers, flyers and more. Each location’s information can be clearly featured, thanks to a seamless integration with the QPLES printing platform.
This is a powerful way to make deals tangible for local consumers who are ready to buy. When it comes to sharing sales that attract customers to your dealers and retail partners, Bullseye is ahead of the pack.
Custom Admin Interfaces
It shouldn’t be difficult for locations to make listing updates. With Bullseye, you can make it easy for them.
Your admin interface for locations can be completely customized, giving your dealers and locations an easy-to-use way to make changes to their listings. Everything is still fully under your control, since you can set which fields they can see or change.
Within the portal, you can add your branding, change the order in which tabs are displayed, and personalize welcome messages. All of this sends a subtle, but strong message to your dealers and retail partners: you’re a brand that cares and wants to empower local businesses.
Bullseye’s ease of use carries over into the location’s experience with your site. Locations won’t have to reach out and ask endless questions. Instead, you can furnish them with access privileges that build trust.
Security and Privacy
More and more businesses are putting a premium on security, and rightfully so. Here, Bullseye has you covered as well.
The SAML support that’s natively-offered will redirect the user to the right identity provider and login gateway. Bullseye is also Privacy Shield Certified and complies fully with GDPR rules, giving your locations extra confidence that your company’s security and privacy standards are up to par.
3. A Superior User Experience (UX)
Who matters most, in terms of sales for your brand? The consumer.
You’ll want to make it easy and pleasant for them to use your website. A good web experience can raise online conversion rates by as much as 200%.
The locator solution you use can mean the distinction between an “okay” UX and a remarkable one that will leave a great impression on your most motivated prospects.
Bullseye is your chance to give consumers looking for where to buy your products the best web user experience (UX) possible, which is key to making sure customers stick around and buy from your brand.
Here are some ways Bullseye gives you an edge:
Integrations with Google and Yelp reviews
MetaLocator only offers native reviews, however Bullseye integrates cleanly with Google and Yelp reviews.
This pulls in a major source of user-generated content from sources that prospects already know, like, and trust. When web users see Google and Yelp reviews associated with your brand, they’ll get the message that you’re a company worth buying from, whose local outlets and dealers can be trusted.
This also takes the burden of generating new reviews off of your shoulders, especially if your brand and locations have already sourced many positive reviews on Google and Yelp. Bullseye lets you use your already-existing positive brand sentiment to attract and convert more leads with ease.
Regularly-Scheduled Listing Updates
Bullseye allows you to upload changes and updates to listings via XML files. You can also schedule feeds and regular updates, automating and simplifying a large part of your locator page’s maintenance.
Robust Form Builder
Bullseye’s form builder is a best-in-class feature of the platform. Embed the forms individually wherever you need them. They’re intelligent enough to implement any routing rules you set up, and can immediately point your web users to the closest store or dealer.
Language Capabilities
Bullseye has the capacity, out of the box, to translate into other languages based on the user’s browser settings. This is a unique feature: MetaLocator and other solutions will require you to create individual language files or make other manual adjustments to serve the same purpose.
Whether you want to configure your locator to use a language drop-down selector, have it automatically detect culture settings, or use query string overwrites, Bullseye is the number-one locator solution for multiple language support. Its powerful language capabilities make it easy to meet customers everywhere your brand has a presence.
Local Events
Consumers love to attend events that are relevant to them. What could be better than routing leads to a local dealer’s how-to seminars, classes that teach new skills, or live demos of your products?
Bullseye locators are the best at helping you promote events, whether they’re independently hosted by local dealers or created in partnership with your brand. Just like sales or promotions, they can be prominently displayed in your locator listings and can potentially drive lots of foot traffic to your preferred stores or dealers.
Want to do event promotion in an even more-targeted way? Bullseye lets you create an entirely separate event locator tab, in addition to your standard locator. This gives you yet another powerful tool to engage and segment customers.
4. Scalability and Growth-Friendly Capabilities
To stay successful, multi-location businesses must grow sustainably and efficiently.
Keap describes true scalability as a principle that “allows for expansion and revenue growth while minimizing increases in operational costs.” The tech solutions used in your business matter when it comes to reaching more customers and harnessing more dealer partnerships without huge expense.
This is yet another area where Bullseye gives you the edge. Here are some features that support the healthy scaling of manufacturers, insurance brands, banks, health systems, and other multi-location businesses:
Multi-Brand Capabilities
Bullseye doesn’t just help you promote lots of locations. It helps you manage multiple whole brands from a single account. This is especially helpful for companies with several distinct product lines or business models, or who operate across different countries and regions.
You can add as many locator pages as you want in order to manage your brands, and give each one its own unique styling and rules around location type.
At Bullseye, we have many years of rich experience across industries. This has enabled us to build a locator solution that meets the complex relationship management needs of multi-location enterprises.
Manufacturers, for example, can manage service centers, contractors, dealers, and retail stores all within a single Bullseye account, while maintaining the same level of security, administrative control, and ease of use across user instances.
Unlimited Locations
Bullseye supports your company’s expansion more than any other locator technology. It supports unlimited locations, for one. There’s also no limit on interfaces, users, and pageviews.
Additionally, depending on the Bullseye plan you choose, your locator will be able to support more than 10,000 (and up to to 1 million) searches per month. You’ll be able to drive as many leads as you like to stores and dealers.
Bullseye – The Winning Store and Dealer Locator for Growing Multi-Location Businesses
When growth is a priority for your business, there are many factors at play, including a great customer experience, positive relationships with your dealers and retail partners, and flexible, scalable, easy-to-use digital technology that supports your lead generation and sales processes.
Bullseye is the locator platform that pulls it all together. Thousands of multi-location companies have benefited from Bullseye’s robust, industry-leading capabilities in the areas of user experience, dealer access, digital marketing, and business growth.
If you’ve been using a locator solution that does anything less, you’re missing out on a powerful digital partner that can transform your business in every metric that matters. Schedule a free assessment today of your current locator solution to see what Bullseye can do for you.
