SUMMARY

1. Local online campaigns are often cheaper than national ones and have a strong branding effect
2. Joint marketing investments from headquarters and local locations offer more advertising opportunities and additional marketing budgets.
3. The introduction of local locations and branches to local online marketing offers a strong training and support effect in the course of digitization.
4. Local branding is a factor that should not be underestimated in order to bring more customers to the local branch.

Companies that sell their services and products through a legally independent sales structure are always faced with the question of the best way to implement local marketing for the external locations.

On the one hand, your own brand, product and service should be advertised, on the other hand, the independent branch or location insists on being sufficiently taken into account in the advertising measures.

In the offline world, numerous processes and procedures have grown, been incorporated and learned, but in the online world a lot is still unclear. Which measures are best suited here, how can the complexity of the numerous online channels, which should now also be used individually for each location, be managed?

Furthermore, the individual locations are increasingly taking their destiny into their own hands and trying to become active on their own via Facebook, Google and Co. The resulting chaos between brand safety, competition in advertising between the umbrella brand and individual locations, uncoordinated advertising of products, etc. is usually pre-programmed.

At the same time, the decision-makers at headquarters are of course still aware that the majority of sales success is generated in the individual locations and branches. If you look at the insurance industry, for example, the problem here is that the customer no longer distinguishes between the individual providers.

“70 percent of those surveyed do not see any differentiation in the brands examined.”
Source: www.horizont.net

Here it is up to the local representative to make the difference for the customer. For this, the customer must of course find or know the representative. Online marketing is now one of the most important building blocks of the local marketing mix.

Interestingly, in online marketing and especially in mobile advertising (which is now the main driver of all online use), the recognition of the advertised brand is a decisive success for the advertising effect.

So the goal is clear, the local location should also be supported online, to strengthen sales and at the same time to advertise itself and the umbrella brand (local branding).

The challenges of implementing these measures can be solved with technologies such as Localyzer .

What specific advantages does the head office have?

After many discussions with our customers, the obvious ones are always listed first:

• More advertising and frequency at the location
• More sales at the location
• More control over online marketing measures at the location (campaigns, creatives, advertising measures, interaction of national vs. local campaigns, etc.)
• Fulfilling the demand for online marketing by the individual branches

There are also three other points that are not immediately obvious, but are just as important:

• Local online campaigns are often cheaper than national ones and have a strong branding effect
• Joint investment of marketing budgets (e.g. the branch pays 50% and the head office 50%) offer more advertising opportunities and additional marketing budgets. The branch actively contributes to the marketing costs of the umbrella brand, which can be quite significant with more than a hundred locations.
• Local locations and branches are introduced to the possibilities of online marketing, which offers a strong training and support effect against the background of digitization. This results in further chances and possibilities in the interaction of marketing activities. For example, announcing an event nationally and specifically picking up customers locally.

In combination, these advantages lead to very satisfactory results for our customers. Even without a direct focus on sales, a structured use of local online marketing measures offers significant advantages for all locations.

If you are interested in further details and specific customer cases, please contact us and let us know your personal feedback or experiences.