Rio SEO launches new Local Experience (LX) platform, streamlining customer experiences for global multi-location brands

05 June 2023

New tool enables brands to customize the way their information appears across Apple apps

Rio SEO, the leading all-in-one local marketing platform proven to increase online visibility for enterprise brands, today announced an integration with Apple Business Connect API. This new integration enables Rio SEO to streamline local listings management for its multi-location clients by maintaining and quickly publishing critical business information and updates to the Apple Maps place cards and across Apple apps.

We created Business Connect to provide Apple users around the world with the most accurate information for places to eat, shop, travel, and more,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services. “Apple Business Connect gives every business owner the tools they need to connect with customers more directly, and take more control over the way billions of people see and engage with their products and services every day.

Businesses can now seamlessly manage listing information at scale any time a change or update is needed, including the business’ name, address, phone number, hours, website URL, and more. Updates ensure a seamless customer experience with the business the moment a customer finds them in search results. Business Connect also includes Showcases, a new feature in the Maps place card that helps businesses present customers with offers and incentives, like seasonal menu items, product discounts, and more.

From our own research, we’ve found 84% of U.S. consumers say they use Apple Maps to search for business information,” said Joel Headley, VP of Product Management, Rio SEO. Recent research conducted by Rio SEO also shows that one-fifth of local consumers are unlikely to visit a business with incorrect or missing business information. “The new Apple Business Connect API will allow us to more effectively maintain accurate information on Apple Maps and across Apple apps, resulting in a more seamless experience for consumers and increased conversion opportunities for brands.

In addition to the ability to deliver up-to-date information to the Apple Maps place card, businesses will have access to data and insights on their listings through Business Connect.

Existing clients now have the ability to designate Rio SEO as vendor of record with Apple allowing for timely brand-verified updates to be published on the business’ behalf. To learn more about the Apple Business Connect API or how your brand can get started with Local Listings through Rio SEO, visit rioseo.com/apple.

New offerings bring top tier customer experience and local marketing solutions together as part of Forsta’s Human Experience (HX) Platform

CHICAGO – June 5, 2023 – Rio SEO, the leading provider of local marketing solutions for enterprise brands today announced the launch of its Local Experience (LX) Platform, a comprehensive, seamlessly integrated suite of local marketing and customer experience solutions enabling multi-location brands to create meaningful, memorable, and cohesive customer experiences at the local level, with global scale. The advancement of Rio SEO’s integration with Forsta, a leading global provider of market research, customer experience (CX), and employee experience (EX) technology, brings industry-leading CX solutions, available through the award-winning Human Experience (HX) Platform, to even more enterprise brands looking to enhance the full customer journey.

We live in a world where customer experiences are being shaped by many touchpoints in the digital and physical worlds. By combining the power of LX and CX, our technology can enable organizations to build and execute a strategy that help brands understand and optimize that full customer journey. The Local Experience Platform combines digital customer acquisition tools with holistic visibility into customer feedback with the ability to harness the insight from those conversations to drive action. The result is unparalleled understanding of key drivers for customers, smarter solutions to drive better experience, and better brand perception online and off.

Joel Headley
Vice President of Product Management, Rio SEO

Forsta and Rio SEO combined capabilities in 2022 to power a seamless customer experience solution, enabling brands to engage consumers throughout the entire customer journey, from discovery to purchase through to brand reputation and advocacy. The new LX Platform brings together the best of Rio SEO’s local marketing solutions with Forsta’s HX Platform to create the industry’s only end-to-end local marketing and customer experience solution for enterprise brands. Rio SEO is also debuting a new brand design as part of advancing its integration with Forsta.

Integrated solutions include:

• Forsta Genius ® Text Analytics for Local Reviews: Gather review data from market-leading review sites, such as Google, Yelp, and Facebook, with the added benefit of Genius ® Text Analytics and action management to build actions in response to feedback in reviews. 

• Forsta Digital Feedback for Local Pages: Build feedback natively into local landing pages, locators, and branded mobile apps, allowing for behavioral data capture and digital intercept prompts and surveys. Provide valuable location and user interaction-specific data from desktop and mobile devices that can inform action management at both the brand and store levels.
• Forsta Studio for Local Experience: Visualize LX data, including local landing page performance, impressions, clicks, local search ranking data and more with Studio. Online infographic dashboards enable visual storytelling and allow companies to create a single, holistic view of local marketing and CX programs. 

“Customer experience and local experience are stronger together. They combine insights from disparate engagement strategies into one holistic customer voice that drives impactful improvement to experience,” said Giles Whiting, Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director at Forsta. “We’re excited to bring the Local Experience Platform to our customers so that they can take advantage of the rich data-driven action that this platform empowers.”

To learn more about the Local Experience Platform, visit: https://www.rioseo.com/platform