Multi-location businesses—like franchises and corporate retail networks—often share a unique problem: managing an advertising campaign that’s brand-compliant but effective for its different local markets. Broad brand campaigns miss out on engaging customers in a highly relevant, localized way—where nearly half of customers are searching for solutions “near me.” On the other hand, campaigns that opt for the hyperlocal effect may not adhere to stricter brand standards, leading a lack of brand consistency and less trust with customers down the road.
The solution is something of a goldilocks advertising strategy. To be effective, a multi-location business must deploy campaigns that are localized for each market differently while also maintaining brand standards. Although complicated, it isn’t hard to implement with the right toolset.
Campaigns that are Both Localized and Brand Compliant Win
A localized campaign approach based on location and target market dynamics delivers the highest conversion rates for less ad spend.
When done correctly, localized advertising applies brand-compliant messaging and creative assets to inform everything about the campaign—from ad content to budgeting, channel allocation, bidding strategies, and audience targeting.
These America’s Mattress Display Ads incorporate and adhere to existing brand standards while providing localization that makes them relevant to consumers searching for products or services that are “near me.” You can read more about America’s Mattress’s multi-location advertising campaign here.
How Localization Impacts Your Advertising
A campaign that doesn’t target the right audience won’t be effective. But when you have a business with hundreds of different locations spread across different geographical areas, who’s the right audience?
That’s the tricky part. It goes beyond setting geo-specific keywords or showing ads with specific store addresses as part of your campaign. In order to most efficiently localize your advertising campaigns, you need a technology platform that allows you to scale your ads across multiple locations. Messaging, budget, and creative should be customized to fit those unique locations, while still upholding the corporate brand standards.
To combat this, many brands leave it up to their individual locations to handle their own advertising, but this isn’t the right solution. Enabling channels with scaled campaigns from the corporate level rather than leaving campaign planning and execution to local agencies is the best way to ensure brand compliance with local relevance.
Unfortunately, the complexity of this problem (and its solution) often leads brands to just ignore it completely—meaning those brands miss out on new customers, leads, and sales.
Pro Tip: Set an Individual Budget Per Location, Per Month
Most traditional, multi-location campaign structures simply share an ad budget across locations, leading to a small number of locations eating all of the budget, while the rest never receive traffic. Customizing the advertising budget by location ensures each store gets the correct allocation for their market size—leading to better sales for the individual locations as well as the brand overall.
The Right Approach to Localizing Your Advertising
It’s all about striking the right balance between central control and market customization. For example, if a brand location is given free reign to handle their advertising as they see fit, the brand essentially gives up all control. This may lead to the location ignoring brand standards, offering unapproved promotions or deals, and other issues. On the other hand, if the brand handles all of the advertising for each of their locations—no matter how many—the advertising just won’t be as effective.
Customers are searching online for convenient solutions to their problems. They want something that’s nearby and easy to get to, or order online. If your advertising is too centralized, they’ll never be able to find you—especially when your competitor is showing them the exact ads they’re looking for right around the corner.
That’s why localizing your ads is so important. Localized campaigns deliver on strategic messaging and compliance with the success multiplier of campaign management and personalization based on the unique needs of each location.
Implement This Strategy for Your Network
Want to see what localization looks like for your brand or franchise network? Connect with one of our advertising specialists today for a free consultation.
Coleen Kinen-Ferguson
Coleen Kinen-Ferguson is the Inbound Marketing Manager at Netsertive. When she's not busy writing blogs, drafting content strategies, or collaborating with the marketing team, you'll probably find her at the gym practicing aerial acrobatics.
