Digital marketing isn’t optional in 2017. The average organization today dedicates 30 percent of their marketing spend toward online distribution channels, and experts predict this figure will increase to 35 percent by 2019. The importance of social media, websites, and email for brands has been described as an “adapt or die scenario,” and there’s evidence that an online presence will only grow more important in coming years as a driver of brand visibility.
While the importance of digital is clear, there are many barriers to executing effectively in these channels. Distributed brand managers face unique challenges in supporting local digital marketing, as they provide support for a large, geographically-distributed network of franchisees, dealers, or local representatives – few of whom know what these platforms are or how to use them. Needless to say, many brands still struggle with adopting new platforms or rapidly-changing best practices at this local level.
For distributed brands in many industries, localized landing pages have great potential to drive high return-on-investment for local outlets. But making it easy enough for local marketers to know what to do with landing pages is no small task for brand managers.
Brand managers have to get local affiliates on board by optimizing the processes, tools, and modes of education they provide about digital marketing and landing pages specifically. Only by doing that will you be able to make it easier for locals to create compliant, locally-optimized landing pages.
Local Landing Pages: An Important Tool for Multi-Location Marketing
A landing page is, “a standalone web page distinct from your main website designed for a single focused objective.” The goal can be to invite page visitors to perform a specific action, such as:
- Buy a product
- Fill out a form
- Sign up for email communications
- Print or download a coupon
- Sign up for a loyalty club
- Enter a contest
Locally-focused landing pages are optimized for local SEO and advertising through the inclusion of hyper-local content, including localized keywords, location contact information, maps, and other indicators to help local affiliate stand out to a localized audience.
Studies show that 80 percent of the highest-performing landing pages are locally-targeted — meaning they have a city or region in the page title. This same research also indicates:
- 77% of the best-performing landing pages have an address and phone number.
- 49% of the top landing pages have a local photo.
- 21% have an embedded Google map to help visitors navigate to the location.
- 24% provided access to local business reviews via third-party review sites.
In a good local marketing strategy, landing pages are a versatile way of achieving marketing results and can be part of a much bigger set of initiatives. Well-optimized landing pages can be found by prospective customers on search engines like Google or Bing, appearing in organic results for localized queries like, “catering in Santa Fe” or “motorcycle dealerships in Lincoln.”
They can also be used in conjunction with banner ads, and serve as cross-functional marketing and advertising for both traditional mediums and digital. Online banner ads feature topical graphics and copy used to elicit clicks, directing customers to the landing page. They are displayed through paid advertising campaigns on websites, sometimes “retargeting” website visitors with an offer based on their behavioral history across the web.
Another way that brands can leverage landing pages is through traditional advertising like direct mail pieces. For instance, a direct mail piece can have a CTA that drives back to a localized landing page. This allows brands to create a cross-channel experience, driving results from traditional advertising mediums back to digital.
Landing pages that are promoted in these different ways are an effective local marketing tool for distributed brands because they’re aligned with consumer behavior. Today’s mobile consumers make purchase decisions in what Google calls “micro-moments,” or instants when they realize they have a need that they want to resolve. With SEO-optimized local landing pages and ads that are targeted to consumers' online behavior, your organization can make relevant offers that find these customers when they're in these micro-moments of need.
The brand team can't afford the constant back and forth requests for tweaks, updates, and announcements. For this reason, it's necessary to let the local marketers have control over their own landing pages. However, if you are going to do this, it has to be easy for them. You need to provide them with tools they can use to create landing pages easily and when they need them.
If your local marketers need a background in web design to successfully use the CMS, they’re unlikely to take advantage of this digital marketing tactic to its full potential. Brand managers need to make it easy for local marketers to quickly customize landing pages, using tools like digital templates, and fast to publish landing pages focused on relevant offers.
Looking to boost your local marketing results? Get Distributed Marketing on Steroids: The Brand Manager’s Guide to Designing and Managing Local Marketing Assets Without Breaking a Sweat. 
3 Local Landing Page Examples for Multi-Location Brands
How many ways can distributed brands use landing pages? Research shows that the more landing pages your brand creates, the better your lead generation results.
The following examples represent ways that various industries utilize local landing pages. With tools like templates, and drag and drop functionality, distributed brand managers can make it easy for local marketers to add location details and other relevant customization across hundreds or thousands of global locations.
Car Dealerships: Landing pages can be used for potential customers to schedule an appointment to test drive a new model, request information on year-end sales or manufacturer rebates, or receive special pricing information for vehicles advertised online.
Restaurants: Local landing pages can drive traffic for reservations around special events such as a Valentine’s Day dinner or a Mother’s Day brunch, or act as a gateway to a loyalty club. Restaurants can also use landing pages for prospective catering customers to request additional information on availability and pricing.
Hospitality: By customizing local landing pages to regional events, hotels and distributed brands in the hospitality industry can use landing pages as a gateway to reservations, for customers to receive pricing quotes, or to request information on special packages.
How Distributed Brand Managers Support High-Conversion Local Landing Pages
As a brand manager, you've got to do a master balancing act. Your challenge is to support the creation of timely, locally-optimized and brand-compliant landing pages at the local level. Local affiliates often don’t have a background in web design, and find it intimidating to create on-brand web content. In most cases, the compliance aspect of local marketing execution shouldn’t be underestimated. If a landing page looks amateurish or significantly different from the rest of your brand’s website, customers may not “trust” the page as a safe source to enter their email address or, in some cases, their credit card information.
By providing a clear process, helpful support resources, and the right tools, brand managers can reduce the intimidation factor associated with landing page creation, and help their local marketers use this digital marketing tactic to its full advantage.
Provide a Clear Process & Support Your Locals
The beauty of a landing page is its ability to be created quickly, allowing businesses to capitalize on events, offers, and holidays that are relevant to their audience. Ideally, your affiliates should feel comfortable creating pages quickly to promote events, deals, or offers in real-time. A clear, well-defined process is key. In communications to the field about marketing, like franchisee handbooks or ongoing trainings, brand managers should make the process for creating landing pages simple to understand.
Regardless of what technologies your brand uses to support local landing page creation, brand managers should create a process to help local marketers navigate tools and workflows with confidence. Not only does consistent communication and training improve confidence at the local level, it can reduce the risks of locals who go outside established workflows and create amateurish and potentially reputation-damaging web content.
By showcasing great examples from the field in your training, newsletters, and local marketing playbook can also help your local marketers understand ways they can drive profitability with their landing pages. By curating examples of optimized local landing pages from the field, you'll be providing additional real-world guidance and inspiration for the next time they want to run a promotion online.
Use Tools to Make Local Landing Page Creation Easy
Local Marketing Automation (LMA) tools with Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities make it easy for local marketers to create landing pages — even if your locals lack significant technical or web design capabilities. Using LMA allows brand graphic designers to create a series of landing page templates that locals can easily edit to add relevant custom imagery, content, and local contact information for SEO-optimized, high-performing local landing pages.
Some LMA tools, like CampaignDrive, promote local marketer success in following brand standards with their landing pages by giving brand management teams control over the design of the landing page through locked form fields. Brand managers can limit what content can be edited at the local level, “locking down” important elements like the brand logo, or messaging that's required for legal compliance.
With the use of landing page templates via an LMA tool, local marketers achieve a fast turn-around time and the ability to create customized, compliant landing pages on an as-needed basis.
Easy, Effective Local Landing Page Creation is Possible for Distributed Brands
For many distributed brands, landing pages are among the methods of digital marketing that have the highest potential for ROI on the local level. With landing pages that are customized to local events or unique trade-area promotions, your franchisees and dealerships can drive more sales around sporting events, national promotions, sales, and countless other revenue generating opportunities.
While there are challenges associated with supporting successful digital marketing execution within the distributed brand model, brand managers who unlock the right processes and concepts for local landing page creation can support high-return marketing execution.
By using ongoing communications and training to reduce the natural intimidation factor of landing page creation, and offering high-performing examples in a local marketing “hall of fame,” brand managers can empower locals to be more effective at marketing online. With LMA tools like CampaignDrive, that offer digital templating features, brand managers make it easy for local marketers to create compliant, beautiful, and high-performing pages quickly.
For more insights from distributed brands like Marriott, Polaris, and The Melting Pot, get the Local Marketing Playbook to unlock creative new ways to drive measurable success at the local level! 
Sources:
- https://www.webstrategiesinc.com/blog/how-much-budget-for-online-marketing-in-2014
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289164
- https://niftymarketing.com/optimal-local-landing-page-infographic/
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/micro-moments/
- https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/what-role-is-your-homepage-playing/
