Effective Local Store Marketing
By David Holland, DataSource
Local store marketing, or “neighborhood marketing,” refers to complex and variable distribution based on the needs of individual business locations. Many local marketing campaigns take place in a reactive, disruptive, and last minute environment. These responsive situations provide the greatest opportunity for an emotional connection with the consumer – which is why local store marketing is so important.
Successful local store marketing requires meeting the needs of the store based on consumer, competition and store characteristics on a local level with timely, accurate integration of messaging across multiple channels.
Often, the common process for procuring local marketing materials are “one-off” requests which result in a series of emails, phone calls, drafted proofs, editing – and ultimately delays. Or, if timing is really tight, and a local marketer cannot get what they need, when they need it, they may resort to “rogue marketing,” creating their own marketing pieces, without regard for brand compliance or consistency.
With so many variables in execution, the final result is rarely reflective of the brand.
Let’s take a look at three tools for effective local marketing:
1. Digital Asset Management
All brands track and store marketing assets differently. Some use outside creative agencies and others store assets on company servers, sharing approved files with suppliers and storing only the most recent file on their server. Tracking and organizing art files, photography assets, and templates is complicated enough without trying to make sure franchisees have the latest versions available. One solution is an online, centralized digital asset management system that offers fast access to workflow tools, branded pieces and file tracking, ensuring accuracy across any medium.
This centralized environment creates easy access to the latest version that can then be shared with the marketing team, agency, other brand partners, and the local market. Brand standards are more easily upheld, and it is less likely that creative time is wasted on duplicating content that has already been completed or is now obsolete. When assets can be retrieved and posted quickly, it becomes fast and easy to drop them into design templates, allowing anyone to execute branded campaigns with real-time access to pre-approved content
2. Intelligent Location Profiling
A franchise’s various locations may have different language preferences, hours of operation, pricing tiers, offerings, and other local market variables.
Intelligent location profiling (sometimes called store profiling) is a process to collect and maintain local store data is in a central repository where it can be easily accessed, updated, and used to drive local marketing content. Generally, some of the data can be found across different departments, however collecting and storing this information so it is easily updated is challenging for most distributed marketing teams without a technology solution that streamlines.
An accurate store profile accomplishes several objectives for local store marketing. It enables easier customization of marketing materials and quick access to templates for improved speed-to-market across all channels. Intelligent location profiling improves budget forecasting and reduces waste in the supply chain as you can order and deliver only what is necessary for each specific local market.
3. Easy Online Brand Portal
Franchises should seek marketing asset management technology solutions that support end users with a fast and easy way to create and execute localized multi-channel branded marketing pieces. Easy access to customized materials makes the likelihood for rogue marketing less likely, and brand compliance more easily upheld. With automated fulfillment set up, execution is made easy for the local marketer that does not have time to find, integrate and manage production. A robust solution will do many things, including providing integrated reporting, detailed tracking, integration across all departments, and the ability to split billings and shipments, and more. Technology advancements are rapid so keep an eye on new options and review marketing execution strategies to get the most out of your marketing spend.
Local Store Marketing techniques are evolving everyday and companies need a solution that makes the brand delivery process easy for everyone. When selecting a solution, brands should look for full service partners that can offer comprehensive end-to-end local marketing management with the services and support to not only integrate and operationalize the technology, but also to help streamline the process of delivering materials to the local level.
David Holland is CEO of DataSource, a managed marketing services provider. He can be reached at [email protected].