Local-digital marketing an “untapped opportunity” say majority of chains
But is it worth it? 77% of multi-location brands say it’s a challenge to execute at scale locally.
What do you think of when you hear the phrase “local business?” Many people’s first thought is of a mom-and-pop store. However, the national brands - like Home Depot, Walmart, and Chipotle - also count as local businesses because they are physically part of the community.
Lagging in Local Marketing
Although multi-location brands make the majority of their profits from sales in-store, many are lagging in their focus on local-digital marketing tactics. These include things like SEO, GMB optimization, review management, and localized social media marketing. The focus is instead often on national strategies and campaigns. But evidence suggests that most consumers engage with these large brands at a local level.
A recent survey was commissioned by SOCi to investigate this disconnect. The survey, conducted by Forrester, showed that 60% of multi-location marketers agree that the ratings, reviews, and social media of the brand at a local level has “a direct impact on their customers’ decisions to visit a store and make a purchase.” Additionally, 61% say that it will be a high priority in the next year to improve their local marketing strategies.
As great as it is to have the goal of prioritizing local marketing, the actual implementation of changes to marketing strategy could be challenging. While the study found there is a consensus that local marketing campaigns are beneficial, it also showed the roadblocks to putting these new campaigns into motion.
Challenges for Implementation
Out of 154 multi-location brands surveyed by Forrester, 61% agreed that local digital marketing is still “a largely untapped opportunity” for them. At the same time, 77% admitted that the execution of a local-digital marketing strategy across all their stores is a challenge.
Although inadequate or incomplete, all the marketers who participated in the survey were doing some form of local-digital marketing campaign. They identified the following challenges and pain points:
● Too few resources to scale a marketing program locally across their hundreds of stores and locations.
● Siloed operations, or a lack of cooperation and coordination internally among company teams.
● Poor interaction between the in-house marketers and the external agencies the use to manage the different channels and campaigns.
● Gaps in the strategies; 31% reported no locally-targeted paid social media strategy.
● Issues with integration because of the software solutions being used that aren’t ready for global or holistic views of performance.
● An inability to quickly respond and engage with customers or resolve complaints at a local level.
Along with asking about their local-digital philosophy, the Forrester survey also asked the marketers to identify a multi-location marketing priorities wish list. The top request: vendor SLAs that would enable tighter publishing schedules and review management response times. The next most reported wish was claiming and managing local search pages, like GMB, Yelp, and Facebook.
Approaches to Local-Digital Marketing
Within the survey lies some answers about the structure of local-digital marketing efforts. Typically, there are three general approaches:
Centralized: This is a top-down model in which everything to do with the local digital marketing campaigning is done at a corporate level. This approach was reported as being used by 32% of the survey respondents. The problem with this method is that it often compromises the ability of the company to respond to local questions or reviews in a timely manner.
Decentralized: This was reported to be the least common approach, only used by about 23% of the marketers. In this approach, the marketing strategy and execution is delegated to the local stores and franchisees. While this allows for a more responsive relationship with the local communities, it can also breed inconsistency and a lack of alignment between the local and brand initiatives.
Hybrid: This combination approach was used by 45% of respondents, making it the most common approach. It involves a relationship based on coordination between the corporate teams and local managers or markets at the regional or store level. This method requires tools for this type of collaboration and can require some management of tension between the two teams.
The marketers who responded to the survey were also asked to rate their localized marketing efforts. About half of these respondents rated these efforts as “average or below average.” The report of the survey does offer some recommendations for dealing with the aforementioned operational and technology challenges.
What does this mean for you?
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every corner of the globe, driving more customers to online shopping. This may lead some marketers to think the role of local stores and locally-focused marketing will continue to diminish over time. In fact, the truth is the opposite. There are some strategic hybrids of online and physical store purchasing - like “buy online pick up in store” options - that continue to grow local businesses.
We as consumers are looking to our communities during these uncertain times. “Near-me” searches are growing and it will continue to be important for national-local brands, chains, and retailers to maintain their local marketing and social engagement with their communities. The importance of local stores is increasing and that will continue.