Gannett Acquires SweetIQ For Digital Marketing Insight Boost

Next-gen media company Gannett recently announced the acquisition of SweetIQ Analytics Corp.

SweetIQ provides location and reputation management SaaS solutions that enable businesses to manage location data and measure consumer engagement.

With the acquisition, Gannett will work to boost its ReachLocal subsidiary’s digital marketing product suite, leveraging SweetIQ’s analytics capabilities — namely, online to offline attribution — to enable businesses to measure the results of their digital marketing investments in hyper-local environments.

“Businesses want to work with one company that they can trust to help them with all of their digital marketing efforts,” said ReachLocal CEO Sharon Rowlands. “This acquisition adds strong product offerings in local listings and reputation management to our suite of digital marketing solutions and strengthens our value proposition with multi-location and national brands. By adding SweetIQ to our portfolio, we can further provide our customers with data-driven insights that drive real-world results.”

Today, SweetIQ’s technology reportedly integrates with all major online directories, enabling its customers, SMBs to global enterprises, to manage data such as addresses, hours of operation for their store locations and other information, as well as consumer reviews, in a single place through the SweetIQ dashboard.

“By leveraging Gannett’s and ReachLocal’s large sales forces and their deep relationships, we will be able to quickly expedite reaching these goals and further propel our rapid growth,” said SweetIQ CEO Mohannad El-Barachi, “cementing our position as a market leader in location and reputation management.”

Leveraging SweetIQ allows businesses to launch and execute marketing campaigns that work to convert online searches into in-store foot traffic.

Now, Gannett will leverage the technology in ReachLocal, whose digital marketing services were being rolled out to 109 different local markets across the USA TODAY NETWORK earlier this year. Gannett operates in over 120 digital markets, interacting with some 110 million people on a monthly basis through its specialized media properties and USA TODAY brand.