Netsertive is excited to announce our new report, The State of Digital Advertising for Multi-Location Businesses, that reveals new findings on the priorities and challenges facing retail, franchise, and other multi-location marketers across the country.
The report is based on a survey of ROI-driven multi-location marketers, who are challenged with running and measuring digital advertising campaigns across multiple channels and locations, at the national, regional and local level, and surfaces key trends, challenges and opportunities related to digital advertising.
What emerged from our research is encouraging—while it is a challenging time to be a marketer, it is also filled with opportunity. “Marketers are under pressure to provide ROI like never before,” says Erin Martin, VP of Marketing at Netsertive. “Our research shows that the majority of marketers default to digital channels that can more easily prove ROI, such as search and social. We also found that the majority of marketers only use three channels in their media mix, with half running CTV campaigns. A clear understanding of attribution across all channels continues to be a challenge, but marketers are starting to get their arms around it.”
The report highlights the top ten trends that emerged from the research, and provides insights on how multi-location marketers think about, and can tackle, the most pressing opportunities and challenges in digital advertising. In this 32-page report, you will see data and insights which includes:
- True omnichannel strategy among multi-location marketers is still a rarity. In our survey, the majority of respondents tap out on using three channels, including search, display and social, with the majority defaulting to running their ads Google and Facebook.
- Marketers default to the digital duopoly. The majority of survey respondents use Google’s network Google Display Network, YouTube, etc. – to execute their search, video, and display advertising.
- The majority of marketers run their search, display, and video advertising on Google. Of those survey respondents who run search ads, 100% use Google, with those who run display ads using Google 95% of the time, and those who run video ads using YouTube 92% of the time.
- National Brands still fall short with being local. Despite valuing personalized and localized digital advertising (67% of respondents stated that localized digital advertising is a priority), only half of marketers currently run a formal digital advertising program for their local channel partners.
- Survey respondents ranked paid search and paid social as the channels they most value for driving an ROI - with 80% identifying paid search as delivering high ROI/value and 66% identifying paid social as delivering high ROI / value.
- Data is everywhere, yet marketers still struggle to measure ROI. The number one objective identified by multi-location marketers is increasing lead generation, as measured by the lead-to-customer conversion rate. However, the top challenge to marketers is measuring and proving ROI.
- Connected TV advertising is an untapped opportunity. While 29% of marketers said they have been running over-the-top (OTT) ads for more than a year, over half do not and have no plans to in the future.
- The impact of agencies is murky. While 38% of companies doing localized advertising use agencies in some capacity, 36% say it’s unclear how their agency's activity impacts their profitability.
- Staying on brand is the primary challenge when going local. According to our survey, brand compliance is overwhelmingly the biggest concern in developing a localized strategy for multi-location businesses. Followed by transparency of performance at the national and local level, and communication between parties.
Download the report to access key insights on the state of digital advertising and learn how marketers can position themselves for a successful future.
