Money. Money. Money.

Local marketing, for a multi-location brand’s network of local partners whether branches, retailers, dealers, franchisees, or affiliates often has rules, strategy and brand compliancy to be followed.

What might they look like?

• The current fonts, layouts and images will need to be adhered to.
• There’s a Tone of Voice for the brand that is important to match.
• A strict schedule of sales campaigns & product launches should be followed to the day.
• Local website landing pages & social content might have to adopt new campaigns every month.
• Anything created locally will probably need sign-off from Head Office & Legal Compliance.

Few local partners can cope with all that. Unless they’re big enough to in-house this activity, it’s almost certain they’ll need a separate marketing agency to support them… and that gets expensive. Especially if it’s happening across the whole of your network, right?

So, what exactly are the sins here?

To CORRECTLY fulfil the marketing functions demanded by the brand, there is a significant cost to its local partners. For the brand to ignore this fact and not consider the impact of this cost is a sin.

For the brand to allow local partners to INCORRECTLY fulfil those marketing functions, by trying to save money with cheaper local alternatives, or even worse doing nothing at all is an even greater sin.

Before Local Marketing Hubs and automation changed the landscape, there was a time when production costs were truly horrendous. They still can be.

A brand with a location in every UK city and most major towns will have 200+ local partners in its network. If you wanted local relevancy, personalised offers or even a simple town name included in their marketing, there were 200+ artworks. Each needed creating in an agency studio. Imagine!

How did that work?

Well, it wasn’t cheap. It wasn’t quick. And it certainly wasn’t stress-free. (...we were there!)

And it was the same for every different material, from press ads to direct mail, emails and posters.

But redemption has come in the form of marketing automation through Local Marketing Hubs. We had a client’s network execute 189 different materials all within a few minutes of one another. This happened one morning when it was launching a new product against a tight deadline.

Each material was separately personalised and trafficked through for printing or digital publication. Each one was brand compliant, legal, on-time, pre-approved and absolutely beautiful. Another happy sales and marketing team and an engaged local network ready to hit the ground running.

The cost? Well, it was all included as part of the service We Are Acuity deliver with our Local Marketing Hub, supported by an experienced agency team. It’s how savvy growing brands support their local partners. Because it’s not just the financial saving that’s important, it’s the time and effort too. And that was almost certainly colossal. As us 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

#marketing #branding #localbusiness