The Local Marketing Scorecard
This scorecard tracks what drives phone calls and walk-ins for a service business with one location or fifty: Google Business Profile views and actions, review velocity and rating, local pack visibility for the terms that matter, listing accuracy, lead counts by location, how fast someone answers, and whether the local landing page converts. It is run by the marketing lead, with the front desk lead and each location manager owning the rows they can actually move. The whole review takes 20 minutes a week.
Why this scorecard exists
Why a generic scorecard breaks at the location level
A generic marketing scorecard reports one number for the business. Local marketing does not work that way. Two locations can share a website, a budget, and a brand and still have completely different results, because the local pack is decided within a few miles of the searcher. A blended lead count hides the location that stopped ranking three weeks ago and the one that quietly stopped answering the phone. By the time the roll-up looks wrong, the damage has been done at the store level and nobody can say where.
Measuring local marketing also means measuring things that never touch your website. Most of the action on a Google Business Profile happens on Google's own surface: someone taps call or directions and never sees a landing page. Reviews, hours, categories, and a phone number that matches every other listing decide whether you show up in the top three and whether the searcher trusts you when you do. Those inputs live in listing tools and review platforms, not in an analytics dashboard, so a scorecard has to pull them in on purpose or they get ignored until a location goes dark.
When the scorecard is live, every location has a row, every row has an owner, and the owner is usually the person on site. The front desk lead sees the speed-to-lead number with their name next to it. The location manager sees their review count against the rest of the group. The marketing lead stops guessing which location needs attention and starts the week with a ranked list. Red-flag rules turn a slow bleed into a Monday task, and the owner gets a view that stays honest because the numbers come from the source systems, not from a slide someone made.
The scorecard
12 numbers. Every one has an owner.
| Metric | What it means | How to set the target | Owner | Cadence | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GBP profile views per location It is the top of the local funnel and the first number that drops when a listing gets suspended, loses a category, or slips out of the pack. | How many times each Google Business Profile appeared in Search and Maps in the week, pulled from the GBP performance report per location. | Set the floor at each location's trailing 8-week median, adjusted for that location's own seasonality from last year. Locations with fewer than a few months of history borrow the median of the closest comparable location until they have their own. | Marketing lead | Weekly | Any single location falling more than 20 percent below its own median for two consecutive weeks triggers a listing health check for suspension, category, and pin location the same day. |
| GBP calls per location Each of these calls is a lead that happened without a website visit, so it never shows up in web analytics and is the first number to fall when a listing detail changes. | Calls placed by tapping the phone number on the Google Business Profile, counted per location from the GBP performance report and cross-checked against call tracking where it exists. | Use each location's trailing 8-week median as the floor and set the stretch target as the median of the top third of your locations in the same market type. Tighten the floor 10 percent a quarter once every location has held it for two months. | Location manager | Weekly | A location below its floor for two consecutive weeks while profile views held steady starts a review of hours, phone number, and the primary category on that listing. |
| GBP direction requests per location It is the closest proxy for walk-in intent and it reveals when a map pin, address, or service-area setting is wrong. | Direction requests started from the Google Business Profile, per location, per week. | Set the floor at the trailing 8-week median per location. Watch the ratio of direction requests to profile views as well, since a falling ratio with steady views usually means a listing problem rather than a demand problem. | Location manager | Weekly | A drop of more than a third week over week at one location with no drop in views triggers a check of the pin, address, and hours on that listing before Tuesday. |
| New reviews per location Review velocity is a ranking input and a trust signal, and it is the most controllable number on this page because it depends on whether staff ask. | Count of new Google reviews received by each location in the week, regardless of star rating. | Set the target from the location's trailing 12-week weekly average, then raise it by one review per week each month until the ask process is running at every location. Compare locations to each other, since the same brand with the same process should produce similar velocity. | Location manager | Weekly | Zero new reviews at a location for two consecutive weeks triggers a check that the review request is actually being sent, starting with a test send to the manager's own phone. |
| Trailing 90-day rating per location The lifetime rating moves too slowly to catch a problem; the trailing 90-day number surfaces a service issue at one location while there is still time to fix it. | The average star rating of reviews received in the last 90 days, per location, not the lifetime average shown on the profile. | The target is the location's own lifetime rating or better. A location whose 90-day rating is below its lifetime rating is trending the wrong way, whatever the absolute number is. | Location manager | Weekly | Two one-star or two-star reviews at the same location within a 14-day window triggers an owner-level conversation with that location manager about what happened on site. |
| Review response rate and time Responses signal an active business to Google and to the next reader, and an unanswered one-star review does more damage every day it sits. | The share of new reviews that received an owner response, and the median hours from review to response, per location. | The target is every review answered, with a response time set at the median your team has actually hit over the last month and then tightened by a quarter each month until responses land within one business day. | Front desk lead | Weekly | Any review below four stars unanswered after 48 hours goes to the owner for a same-day response. |
| Local pack visibility for core terms The pack is where local calls come from, and it is the only view that shows whether ranking work is moving the needle at each location. | The share of tracked term-and-location checks where the business appears in the three-listing map pack, using a rank tracker that checks from points inside each location's service area. | Pick five to ten core service terms per location and record the share in the pack for the first four weeks as the baseline. Set the target as the best four-week result each location has achieved, then move the target up as new highs are set. | SEO lead | Weekly | Losing pack position on a core term at any location for two consecutive checks starts a comparison against the listings that took the spot: categories, review count, and proximity. |
| NAP consistency score Mismatched listings split ranking signals and send calls to old numbers, and a bad listing usually stays wrong until someone checks. | The share of tracked directory and data-aggregator listings where each location's name, address, and phone number match the master record exactly. | Run a full audit at launch and record the match rate per location as the baseline. The target is every listing matching the master, and the working target each month is to close a fixed share of the remaining mismatches, starting with the highest-traffic directories. | Listings owner | Monthly | Any change to a location's phone number, address, or hours in the master record opens a re-audit task for that location within one week. |
| Leads per location It is the number the owner actually cares about, and per-location counts are the only way to see which stores marketing is working for. | Total new inquiries per location in the week across every channel: tracked calls, forms, GBP messages, texts, and walk-ins logged at the desk. | Set each location's floor at its trailing 8-week median and its stretch target from what that location did in its best comparable week last year. Review the target quarterly rather than chasing week-to-week swings. | Marketing lead | Weekly | Any location below its floor for two consecutive weeks triggers a source-by-source breakdown to find which channel dropped before any budget or tactic changes. |
| Missed call rate per location A missed call from a Google listing is a lead you paid for and handed to the next business in the pack. | The share of inbound tracked calls during business hours that were not answered by a person, per location. | Pull the actual missed call rate per location from call tracking for the last month and set that as the starting line, then cut the rate by a quarter each month until every location is answering during posted hours. | Front desk lead | Daily | Any location above its target on any single day triggers a same-day check of staffing and phone routing at that location. |
| Speed to lead A searcher who does not hear back moves on to the next listing in the pack, so response time is a conversion lever the marketing budget cannot fix. | The median minutes from a form, message, or missed call to the first human response, per location. | Measure the current median per location for two weeks before setting anything. Then set the target at the fastest location's median and bring every other location to it over a quarter. | Front desk lead | Daily | Any lead without a response by close of the same business day is escalated to the location manager the following morning. |
| Local landing page conversion rate Locations that share a template should convert similarly, so a page that lags is telling you something about its content, its offer, or its tracking. | Calls, form fills, and click-to-text actions divided by sessions on each location's landing page. | Set the floor per location at its trailing 8-week median and use the best-performing location page as the benchmark for the rest, since it proves what the template can do with the same traffic mix. | Web lead | Weekly | A location page more than a quarter below the group's median for two consecutive weeks triggers a side-by-side review of that page against the best page, starting with phone number, hours, and form placement. |
Targets are set from your own history, never from someone else's benchmarks. The builder does the arithmetic once you plug in your numbers.
The weekly review
Twenty minutes, same order, every week.
// 01
Start with leads per location and speed to lead
Read the per-location lead count against each floor first, then the speed to lead and missed call numbers right beside it. These three rows tell you whether demand showed up and whether anyone answered. Any location red on both lead count and response time goes to the top of the list before you look at anything upstream.
// 02
Check the Google Business Profile rows
Scan profile views, calls, and direction requests per location and look for a location that moved differently from the group. If views held and calls dropped, the listing changed. If views dropped everywhere, the market changed. Then look at new reviews and the trailing 90-day rating to see which locations are asking and which are slipping.
// 03
Each owner speaks to their red rows
Every red flag has a name next to it, and that person explains what happened and what they did in the past week, in under two minutes. The marketing lead keeps it moving and takes notes. Nobody explains a green row.
// 04
Decide, assign, and set the follow-up
Each red row leaves the meeting with one action, one owner, and a date. Pack visibility and NAP issues go to the SEO lead or listings owner, response issues go to the front desk lead, review problems go to the location manager. The follow-up gets checked first thing next week.
Where scorecards die
Mistakes we see constantly.
Reporting one blended number for all locations
A roll-up hides the one location that stopped ranking and the one that stopped answering. Every row on this scorecard should have a line per location, even if the weekly view only surfaces the ones that are red.
Treating the lifetime rating as the health metric
A location with hundreds of reviews can absorb a bad month without moving its lifetime average. The trailing 90-day rating and the count of recent low reviews are the numbers that catch a service problem while it can still be fixed.
Ignoring what happens on Google's surface
Calls and direction requests from the profile never hit the website, so a website-only dashboard undercounts local demand and misses listing problems entirely. Pull the GBP performance report per location into the scorecard on purpose.
Setting review targets nobody on site owns
Review velocity depends on whether the person at the counter asks, so a target owned by the marketing lead is a wish. Put the location manager's name on the row and show the location count next to the rest of the group.
Fixing listings once and assuming they stay fixed
Data aggregators and directories overwrite good data with old data more often than people expect. NAP consistency needs a monthly check and a rule that any change to the master record opens a re-audit.
Other scorecards
Same discipline, different numbers.
By platform
By business type
Want it set up live in your dashboards?
We install scorecards on real data, wire the owners and alerts, and coach the weekly review. Scorecards and accountability is the service.
Questions we get
Straight answers.
We only have one location. Do we still need this scorecard?
Yes, and it is simpler to run. Drop the per-location comparisons and keep every row, since a single location still needs an owner for reviews, response time, and listing accuracy. The floor for each row comes from your own trailing 8-week history.
Where do the numbers come from each week?
Google Business Profile performance reports supply views, calls, and direction requests. A rank tracker supplies pack visibility, a listings tool supplies NAP checks, and call tracking plus your CRM or intake log supply leads, missed calls, and speed to lead. The marketing lead pulls them into one sheet or a live dashboard before the meeting.
How do we set targets without an industry benchmark?
You do not need one. Each location's own trailing 8-week median is the floor, its best comparable week is the stretch, and the best-performing location in your group shows what the same process can produce. Tighten the floors a step at a time once every location holds them.
Who should own the speed-to-lead row?
The front desk lead, or whoever manages the people who answer phones and messages. It should not sit with the marketing lead, because marketing cannot fix it. Putting the right name on the row is most of the work.
What if a location's numbers drop across the board?
Check the listing first: suspension, a changed category, a wrong pin, or hours marked closed will drop views, calls, and directions together. If the listing is clean, look at the pack visibility row to see whether a competitor took the spot, then at the lead source breakdown before changing any budget.
A scorecard is only as good as the system feeding it.
Start with a diagnostic call. We will tell you which of these numbers you can trust today and what it takes to trust the rest.