As a local marketer, your goal is to get effective campaigns launched and bring customers through your doors.
McKinsey notes, while there is no "single blueprint for success," the more "localized" or customer-relevant your marketing, the better your growth. Marketing is key to your success as a local franchisee or dealer. Even if you aren't a marketer by training, or don't have much time for marketing, creating high-quality assets helps drive results and establish your business in the community.
While head office marketing support can vary depending on the business model, making the most of available resources and effectively deploying campaigns is important for all local marketers.
In this blog, you'll learn five ways the most successful local marketers implement the brand vision and use assets from the head office to successfully run campaigns in their local community.
5 Marketing Execution Tips for Local Partners
1. Develop Relationships with Other Local Franchisees and Dealers
If you're not already a member of a professional organization for local franchisees or representatives, there's value in getting involved. You could glean particularly important knowledge if you're able to communicate and share ideas with people in your industry - especially individuals representing the same brand.
Networking expert Paul Terlemezian is a firm believer that, "professional associations often offer low-cost ways to sharpen your skills, stay abreast of industry trends, and earn the skills needed" to exceed sales targets. For owners of franchises, dealerships, and other local outlets, this means reaching out to other owners in your network. While you may sell the same product for the same brand, discussing common challenges, and bouncing ideas off of each other, may boost your business.
In addition to learning best practices for getting your business to long-term profitability, spending time with other business owners could reveal valuable insights like the latest brand updates, best contacts at head office for local marketers, and how to work more effectively with your brand manager.
2. Pay Attention to Customer Interactions
86% of customers are happy to pay more for a great customer experience. Local marketers have a serious advantage over corporate counterparts when it comes to customer knowledge. On the front lines, you know best what your customers define as an amazing experience.
Take note of the customer interactions you see playing out time and time again. What does this mean for your marketing? Does your head office understand your client base? First-hand knowledge of your buyer is one of your most valuable marketing assets.
As a local marketer, you're on the ground at a local level - you see first hand the customer preferences and customer demographics. Without key market information, it's nearly impossible to create effective local marketing. Head office, while usually well informed, can't see the immediate response to new products or campaigns, and certainly can't pivot quickly if the results are less than stellar.
As a local marketer, you have an advantage - you get the customer in the flesh, not just on a piece of paper. Use these valuable customer insights to help boost your local marketing efforts.
3. Get Outside Marketing Help
Nearly two-thirds of business organizations are outsourcing at least some part of their marketing - which can include technology, content, graphic design, and other marketing activities. If you're struggling to make the modifications necessary to launch relevant local campaigns, it may be time to seek outside help.
If you decide to hire a local marketing agency or independent freelancer, you will need to provide them with tools for success, including:
- Brand guidelines
- Campaign guidelines
- Campaign and/or asset spec sheets
Speak to your brand manager to make sure you have the most up to date version of the above assets to ensure success for your outsourced team.
4. Use the Right Technology
Distributed marketing technology can make your life as a local marketer much easier - or way more difficult than it needs to be. Local marketers need tools to help them access the right campaign assets, modify templates painlessly, and immediately deploy campaigns to their website. Ideally, local marketing tech should also integrate with social media, a printing partner, and an email marketing tool.
Truly effective local marketing execution occurs when your brand's head office provides essential distributed marketing tools like digital asset management (DAM) and local marketing automation (LMA), allowing for painless compliance with brand standards. The right system removes the guesswork and formatting difficulties from customizing marketing materials by:
- Preventing the use of non-standard fonts and colors.
- Providing required disclaimers and disclosures.
- Preventing non-compliant executions of brand logos and visual design.
- Supporting the use of pre-approved campaign content.
5. Give Feedback to Your Brand Marketing Team
With limited time to implement all the necessary marketing, it's normal to worry that you're not doing the right things. Research by BellyCard indicates that marketers are worried about "having the time and knowledge to effectively run their marketing."
Ultimately, it's important to listen to your brand management team. But don't be afraid to offer critical feedback when their ideas don't match up with reality. You have access to a source of highly-valuable marketing information that the brand team will always want to have - real in-store customer interactions.
By actively sharing feedback about customer interests, demographics, and what campaigns are working (or not working) with your head office and brand manager, you can pair your local insights with their marketing power to deliver spot-on messaging and drive results for your business.
How Local Marketing Partners Drive Marketing Success
Successful local partners make the most of limited time and budgets by focusing on continuing education via networking, outsourcing their campaigns when necessary, and remaining proactive about communicating with their brand manager and head office. In addition, the use of a local marketing tool like CampaignDrive by Pica9, empowers you to launch beautiful, effective, and compliant campaigns.
