Local Websites: Improving Channel Organization Marketing Results (WITH Testing Worksheet)

THE LOCAL WEBImproving Channel Organization Marketing Results

» LOCAL WEBSITES: THE FIRST STEP IN “LOCAL WEB” MARKETING

» CHALLENGES FACED BY CHANNEL MARKETING ORGANIZATIONS

» EXERCISE: DETERMINING BRAND PERFORMANCE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

» WORKSHEET: YOUR BRAND’S LOCAL PRESENCE

PAPER INTENDED FOR

BUYING STAGE» Investigation

AUDIENCE» Responsible for Corporate Marketing at

National Brands

FOCUS» Local Website Strategy & Education

(what, how, why)» Exercise for Determining Local

Marketing Presence

ROLE» Decision Maker» Influencer

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1CHALLENGES FACED BY CHANNEL MARKETING ORGANIZATIONS 1GROWING IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL MEDIA IN LOCAL MARKETS 2THE SHIFT FROM TRADITIONAL TO ONLINE MARKETING 2THE LOCAL WEB 3LOCAL WEBSITES: THE FIRST STEP IN “LOCAL WEB” MARKETING 3AUTOMATING LOCAL WEBSITES 4CONCLUSION 4EXERCISE: DETERMINING BRAND PERFORMANCE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL 5WORKSHEET: DETERMINE YOUR BRAND’S SEARCH “REAL ESTATE” 9ABOUT BALIHOO 11

WHITEPAPERIMPROVING CHANNEL ORGANIZATION MARKETING RESULTS

1IMPROVING CHANNEL ORGANIZATION MARKETING RESULTS

WHITEPAPER

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe Internet and its mobility have fundamentally changed marketing. Over the past decade, websites have become the hub for all marketing activities, i.e. the centralized landing pages through which all tactical programs – both online and offline – can be driven, tracked and measured. Mobile phones will soon overtake as the most common Web access device worldwide. And within the last two years, local marketing has emerged as the next big frontier in effective demand generation.

For national brands, having a local presence online is now imperative to ensure that the consumer can find them at the local level. Local websites do this – they are the first step required for national brands to build a local market presence. They ensure search engines direct customers to the right place at the right time; they make sure local partner messages are consistent with national campaigns; and they guarantee customers aren’t routed to the competition.

This paper explains how channel organizations can use marketing automation to create and implement local websites, and in turn:

• Extend the reach of their national brand in local markets

• Increase partner participation in marketing programs

• Improve the ROI of their partner programs

• Contribute more to top-line revenue

CHALLENGES FACED BY CHANNEL MARKETING ORGANIZATIONS More than ever, channel organizations need to improve results from partner marketing programs. The channel is a vital sales pipeline for national brands, and executives in the C-suite want to see partner programs contribute more to top-line corporate revenue. This puts a lot of pressure on channel marketing organizations that have always been challenged with:

• Increasing partner awareness and participation in channel programs

• Managing partner marketing programs more efficiently and effectively

• Properly tracking and measuring ROI of marketing programs

• Balancing partner needs with brand needs

Added to these challenges are the facts that partner marketing is inherently local by nature, and local marketing has traditionally been difficult for national brands because it requires customization of messaging and graphics for multiple partners within hundreds or even thousands of markets across a growing number of media choices.

Due to this, channel marketers have typically had to rely on their partners to execute brand marketing at the local level. This is problematic because whenever responsibility is placed on partners to finish-out marketing programs, it has a negative impact on program adoption, quality and effectiveness. Local-level partners are often either business owners who are time-constrained and not focused on marketing, or resellers who also sell competing brands. If a national brand’s channel marketing programs are not extremely easy to implement, they often get completely ignored by partners.

Local Channel Partners Include:Retailers

Franchisees

Resellers

Distributors

Dealers

Agents


GROWING IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL MEDIA IN LOCAL MARKETSTo gain awareness and participation among partners in brand marketing programs, channel organizations need to properly address partner needs at the local level, and increasingly this means helping them gain online visibility and leads in their local markets.

Within the last two years, local marketing has emerged as the next big frontier in effective demand generation. As partial proof, comScore recently announced that over 4 billion searches a month have a local intent (comScore 2013).

THE SHIFT FROM TRADITIONAL TO ONLINE MARKETING

When it comes to what works at the local level, the importance of online vs. traditional marketing is shifting. Digital media is growing exponentially and is expected to represent 23.6% of advertising spending by 2015. And with that growth, the way consumers are buying is changing. In the past few years, the number of sources used by consumers in making buying decisions increased from 5.27 to 10.4. Consumers are embracing the many sources of information and including them in their investigation process. And increasingly, they’re accessing them while on the go. According to comScore, consumers now spend more time interacting with online retailers on smartphones and tablets than they do on desktops and laptops (Internet Retailer).

http://screenwerk.com/2013/06/12/comscore-4-billion-local-searches-in-may/

http://www.internetretailer.com/2013/10/01/its-official-mobile-devices-surpass-pcs-online-retail

http://www.internetretailer.com/2013/10/01/its-official-mobile-devices-surpass-pcs-online-retail


THE LOCAL WEB

All of these new digital outlets for marketing and accessing information make up “The Local Web,” an integrated growing ecosystem of online media channels that collectively drive online local marketing. (See Figure 3)

National brands and their partners must claim, and at least minimally participate in, the majority of the Local Web’s integrated channels or risk being invisible in local searches.

So how does a channel organization begin to take advantage of the Local Web? The first step is by creating and implementing local websites for their partners. Local websites are at the heart of the Local Web.

LOCAL WEBSITES: THE FIRST STEP IN “LOCAL WEB” MARKETINGLocal websites serve as the centerpiece, or hub, for all local marketing tactics – both online and offline. They are smaller variations of a national brand’s corporate website, carrying through the brand’s image and messages. They allow the national brand and its partners to be “found” at the local search level. Local websites function as the centralized landing pages through which all of the local marketing tactics can be driven, tracked and measured. While there are other Local Web elements that are important to take advantage of sooner rather than later, it’s necessary for local websites to be in place first.

Local websites can take multiple forms. Here are three examples:

• Co-branded affiliate sites with each of the brand’s agents, distributors, dealers, etc., which allow all partner/affiliate locations to show up individually in location searches and maps

• City sites focused on the corporate brand, which enable all of the brand locations for that city to be listed in a single spot, and for the nationally branded site to be found in organic search listings for the city

• Promotional sites which enable a brand’s new offers or products to be found in organic searches in each relevant city

LOCALREVIEWS

LOCAL SEARCH

LOCATION BASED

SOCIAL MEDIA

MOBILE

LOCALWEBSITES

DAILY DEALS

THELOCALWEB

FIGURE 3

Request The Local Web: The Linchpin to Successful Local Marketing Whitepaper at: Balihoo.com/local-marketing-resources

WHITE PAPER

Balihoo’s whitepaper “The Local Web: The Linchpin to Successful Local Marketing” explains the elements of the Local Web and provides a high-level view of the impact each element can have on improving local marketing.


A brand might choose to implement one type of local website or all of them simultaneously in order to ensure their products and partners are always found in local searches.

For example, a financial services company might sell services through a network of 2,500 advisors in 500 different cities. To ensure their products are always found at the local market level, they might set up:

• 2,500 co-branded affiliate sites that link to each and every partner’s website

• 500 different city sites that list all their partners in a given city

• 500 promotional sites (one per city) per quarter to promote their most important offerings

All these local website variations will ensure their brand’s financial services and partners/advisors are always found at the local level by customers who are seeking financial guidance, regardless of whether or not a partner has a good web presence or might be promoting a competitor’s similar product at the time.

For channel organizations, relying on partners to help implement such a large number of local websites would not be feasible, but it’s possible to scale to this level using local marketing automation.

AUTOMATING LOCAL WEBSITESMarketing automation makes creating a large number of nationally branded local websites possible. With automation, channel marketers can build and offer customizable local website templates to their partners, update the templates as needed, and have a brand message appropriate for each region’s local presence that helps the channel partner grow revenue/leads.

Automation of local websites enables channel partners to:

• Increase partner awareness and participation in channel programs – Automated local websites offer clear value to partners and a simple way for partners to engage. They can even be implemented without any direct effort by the partner.

• Ensure partner programs contribute to top-line revenue – Increasing partner participation and driving leads to partners when local customers are ready to buy adds to revenue growth.

• More efficiently manage partner programs – Automation enables brand updates and promotions to be quickly and easily disseminated across all websites, to all markets, at once.

• Maintain control of their brand’s image and message – while driving leads to local partners.

• Track and measure ROI at the local partner level – Local websites provide outstanding, measurable performance as a landing page for digital marketing efforts, such as pay-per-click (PPC), email marketing and banner advertising.

CONCLUSIONWithout effective local marketing strategies that take advantage of the Local Web (i.e. the integrated growing ecosystem on online media channels), national brands risk losing visibility and sales at the local level. Local websites are a strategic way for national brands to combat this problem. They are the hub of the Local Web and the first step in building a local-market presence. And with local marketing automation, they can be implemented efficiently and cost-effectively.


EXERCISE: DETERMINING BRAND PERFORMANCE AT THE LOCAL LEVELAny brand can get a gut check on how well their marketing is performing at the national and local levels through an easy exercise. The objective of the exercise is to determine the percentage of “real estate” your brand and product categories own or strongly influence on “Page One” of search engine results pages (SERPs) in brand name searches and in searches with local intent. The higher the percentage, the better your brand is performing. We will start with an example and then provide you with a worksheet for your own brand calculation.

Example: How to Check Your Local Marketing Visibility

In this example, we’ll use a Converse brand, “Chuck Taylors,” as the brand, and “basketball shoes” as the product category we’re measuring. Google will be the search engine. The search will be performed on a laptop. The city we will be searching in is Boise, Idaho.

We will run the three searches listed below and determine the results.

1. Brand Name Search (Chuck Taylors)

2. Brand Name + City Search (Chuck Taylors, Boise)

3. Product Category + City Search (Basketball Shoes, Boise)

For each search, we will determine the results for Paid Opportunities, Local Listings (e.g. Google Places) and Organic Search by counting the number of times the brand shows up in the results for each of those areas and dividing by the total number of results returned for each area.

The results for our Chuck Taylors example is shown on the following pages.


BRAND NAME SEARCH (EXAMPLE)CHUCK TAYLORS

EXERCISE: DETERMINING BRAND PERFORMANCE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

SEARCH RESULTS:Search Results Total “Your Brand” Owns or Influences “Your Brand” Results

Paid Opportunities 5 5 100%

Local Listings 0 0 0%

Organic Listing 11 11 100%

Total Search Real Estate 16 16 100%


BRAND NAME SEARCH + CITY SEARCH (EXAMPLE)CHUCK TAYLORS + BOISE


SEARCH RESULTS:Search Results Total “Your Brand” Owns or Influences “Your Brand” Results






The results of our example show that Chuck Taylors performed well in the broad search for the brand name, garnering 100% of the paid and organic listings. However, searches at the city level for both the brand name and product category were dismal at only 18% and 0%, respectively. It’s also worth noting that the local results returned in all three examples were 0% each time. Ideally, instead of no listings, the top retailers who sell Chuck Taylors would show up in Google Places listings.

These results are fairly typical for national brands. But by shifting a relatively low level of resources and budget to local marketing, brands will see a dramatic, positive shift in their local marketing results. And by implementing a local marketing automation solution to ensure local partners are found and actively marketing the brand, channel organizations will quickly see measurable increases in channel program ROI.

PRODUCT CATEGORY + CITY SEARCH (EXAMPLE)BASKETBALL SHOES + BOISE


Search Results Total “Your Brand” Owns or Influences “Your Brand” Results





SEARCH RESULTS:


WORKSHEET: DETERMINE YOUR BRAND’S SEARCH “REAL ESTATE”Use this worksheet to gauge the local marketing visibility of your own brand.

NOTE: You may want to run the results multiple times for different brand names, product categories, market segments and cities in which you play. For example, in the Chuck Taylors exercise, the exercise could also be run for “Chuck Taylor,” “Converse Chuck Taylor,” “Converse,” “Jack Purcell” and “Converse Hoodies.”

Instructions

For each search outlined below, run the search and tally the results in the corresponding spreadsheet before moving on to the next search. Follow these three steps for each:

1. For Column A, count up all of the results that show up for each of the Paid, Local and Organic search areas, regardless of if they relate to your brand or not, and enter them in the appropriate row. Add the numbers in Rows 1, 2 and 3. Enter the total in Column A, Row 4.

2. For Column B, count up the results that relate solely to your brand within each of the search areas (i.e. Paid, Local and Organic). These can be your national brand’s paid ads or search results, ads paid for by your partners, local listings for your partners, and/or directory listings (such as Yellow Pages) or web pages for you or your partners, as long as they clearly relate to your brand. Enter the results for your brand in the appropriate row under Column B. Add the numbers in Rows 1, 2 and 3. Enter the total in Column B, Row 4.

3. For each row within Column C, divide the number in Column B by the number in Column A. The results in Rows 1, 2 and 3 are the percentages of real estate your brand owns for each respective search area – Paid, Local and Organic search. The results in Column C, Row 4 are your brand’s total results, or “real estate,” for Page One of that particular search. The higher the percentage, the better.

COLUMN A COLUMN B COLUMN C

Search Results Total “Your Brand” Owns or Influences “Your Brand” Results

ROW 1 Paid Opportunities 2 1 1 ÷ 2 = .5 or 50%

ROW 2 Local Listings +4 +0 0 ÷ 4 = 0 or 0%

ROW 3 Organic Listing +10 +1 1 ÷ 10 = .1 or 10%

ROW 4 Total Search Real Estate 16 2 2 ÷ 16= .125 or 12.5%

INSTRUCTION SAMPLE STEP 2 STEP 3STEP 1



Search Results Total “Your Brand” Owns or Influence “Your Brand” Results

ROW 1 Paid Opportunities

ROW 2 Local Listings

ROW 3 Organic Listing

ROW 4 Total Search Real Estate

BRAND NAME SEARCH YOUR BRAND













BRAND NAME SEARCH + CITY SEARCH YOUR BRAND + ANY CITY IN WHICH YOUR BRAND IS SOLD

PRODUCT CATEGORY + CITY SEARCH YOUR BRAND’S PRODUCT CATEGORY + ANY CITY IN WHICH YOUR BRAND IS SOLD

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ABOUT BALIHOOBalihoo is the leading local marketing platform, helping national brands activate millions of data-driven campaigns at scale. Our cloud-based technology incorporates a full suite of solution modules, ranging from traditional tactics like direct mail to local digital tactics, including local websites. Each module marries powerful technology with data, allowing national brands and agencies to scale campaigns and track results.

Leading national brands, across a multitude of industries, use the Balihoo local marketing platform to activate millions of data-driven local campaigns for over 300,000 local outlets.

Ready to rethink local? Request a live demo, or contact a Balihoo team member for more information.

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