Local Marketing Success?

...and how to measure it for multi-location brands? For decades the advertising industry paid scant regard to the measurement of its success, or otherwise. It’s easy to understand why. Measurement was difficult, if not impossible…and advertising agencies enjoyed the freedom that mystery afforded them.

Tim Berners-Lee put an end to all that!

The last 30-odd years has changed the landscape from ‘publish-and-hope’ to ‘measure-and-learn’. Some might argue that the change has taken us too far, and that data is destroying creativity. I don’t think that notion will curry favour with the modern-day CFO and CMO.

These days media agencies reign supreme, with creative agencies at their command. Big brands revel in data with the dream of attributing every sale to a known source.

But what about local marketing? If ALL marketing was carried out centrally, there would be no sins in this section. If…

It’s true, there are hundreds of global or national brands that have centralised data, strategy, creative and media-buying. Broadcast, targeted and search all being operated by one team.

But for brands that sell through local partners, whether branches, retailers, dealers, franchisees, or affiliates things are different. They often either delegate local marketing to these partners or don't engage in local marketing at all.

Local customer databases are frequently in poor condition, making it challenging to find leads. And limited time, expertise, and understanding often hinder the use of analytics provided by Google, LinkedIn, and Meta (Facebook & Instagram) for local businesses. It's an all too common situation.

So is your brand a sinner? Well it’s an absolute sin if:

• Local marketing performance isn’t rigorously measured by the brand and the information made accessible to its local partners.

• Simple, proven marketing best-practice isn’t communicated to local partners by campaign, media channel, region, or demographic.

• Head office doesn’t use local sales and marketing data to create a range of easy-to-use brand and sales campaigns for their local partners to engage with.

Feeling guilty? This is where a fully-functioning Local Marketing Hub supported by an experienced agency team can really deliver redemption.

The brand and its local partners will have visibility of ALL marketing activity and budget spend via the Hub, allowing for data aggregation and sharing. This is a significant advantage of having multiple partners in the network, enabling learning from each other.

• Data visualisation with dashboards and templates.
• Varied access levels for field teams, HQ, and local partners.
• Always current real-time data.
• Reporting options: material, tactic, campaign, or channel.
• Data can be integrated with 3rd-party sources.

Imagine… both brand and local partners having a better understanding of where their marketing budget is having the biggest impact. Utopia, at local business level! Get in touch to find out how we do it.

National to Local experts We Are Acuity have 25 years experience in effective local marketing for national brands. If you are impatient to know more, why not visit this page to download the full range of fascinating FREE ebooks today? Packed with tips, tricks and ideas it will be well worth your time. See you next week!

Or if you'd like to read more about Local Marketing have a look at our blog page "Local Thinking': https://www.weareacuity.com/local-thinking-our-blog

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