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Should teams guiding marketing strategy for national organizations with local locations pay more attention to the local piece of the media puzzle?
Monica Ho believes they should. The CMO of SOCi, a local marketing firm, sees the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst for marketers to shift greater focus to local initiatives.
I recently asked Monica to shed light on this strategy.
Paul Talbot: Why does a localized marketing strategy for multilocation marketers matter?
Monica Ho: Now more than ever consumers crave connectivity to their local communities and the brands they support. With major platforms now prioritizing local results, from search engines to social, businesses must also consider the fact that major platforms have prioritized local results as they know this is the type of content consumers are engaging with the most.
Talbot: What are the first few steps a multilocation marketer should take to develop a solid localized marketing strategy?
Ho: Brands should first start by clarifying responsibilities between local and corporate teams.
The three most common models are:
1. Primarily centralized corporate marketing takes on most of the local marketing needs.
2. Primarily decentralized locations take on most of the local marketing needs.
3. Hybrid-seamless coordination between corporate and local teams and equally sharing local marketing responsibilities are made more efficient and effective through technology.
From here, marketers should clearly define the gaps they have in resources and expertise and evaluate technology partners and solutions that can help fill these gaps and bring the full solution together.
Talbot: How should the performance of the localized marketing strategy be measured?
Ho: Here are some of the metrics that can be tracked against such campaigns:
- Appearance in local search results for target keywords.
- Conversion actions from local pages.
- High valued engagements with your local community.
- Trustworthiness as measured through local ratings and reviews.
Talbot: Obstacles to developing and executing a localized marketing strategy include the usual suspects… silos, scale, resources and office politics. How serious should CMOs and brand management teams be about minimizing these obstacles?
Ho: COVID-19 is shining a spotlight on the urgency for national brands to market locally. Brick and mortar locations that are part of chain brands, whether in a corporate or franchise model, are local businesses that operate within unique local communities and this is how consumers now see them. But it’s not commonly how corporate marketing executives think about the business or the brand.
In many ways local and digital are opposite sides of the same coin. When shelter in place orders took effect, businesses with robust digital strategies enjoyed a huge advantage and actually excelled during this period. Likewise, brands that already had a local marketing strategy have more easily transitioned to this new reality.
For CMOs who haven’t pivoted to digital and/or local strategies, it’s not too late. Indeed, it’s the only way to compete and remain relevant as we move forward.
Talbot: Is there a rule of thumb percentage range of marketing budgets currently invested in national campaigns that should be reallocated to local?
Ho: Considering that nearly 60% of digital search activities now have local intent, marketers should be focusing approximately two thirds of their digital budgets on localized digital marketing efforts with the goal of creating a digital presence around each one of their distinct locations.
Talbot: How should the importance of specific local markets be determined?
Ho: Marketers need to look no further than sheer search activity around target keywords and geo’s, as a way to figure out their specific markets. By communicating between national and more local teams, certain locales may be prioritized over others, based on where upgrades and updates are needed the most.
Talbot: Any other insights on marketing strategy you’d like to share?
Ho: The new customer journey now starts with a local search. Sites like Google My Business, Facebook Places and Yelp have become the single biggest drivers of local business traffic and conversions.
Locations that show up in the top results for these searches are the ones that get the business. A consumer has a momentary need, they search for that need on their smartphone and respond to the results by clicking for directions, calling the business or placing an online order, which results in a local transaction which has just occurred, little of which links back to national brand marketing.
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September 05, 2020 at 01:10AM
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