Local is important. It’s where you live, often where you work. Most Australians do their eating, shopping and socialising within 10km of their house. There are nuances in one area, which will not have any impact in another. Which is why your marketing to different local areas needs to align. And for nationwide franchises, that means at scale.
Marketing is not just about strategies that deliver business outcomes. It’s about maximising your assets. Harnessing the power of technology to reach more people. For franchisors, it’s growing your brand. Reaching the right people, at the right time. All the while, measuring the impact your communications are having. Ultimately it’s about ensuring any budget spent is optimised to deliver the biggest return on investment.
In a word, it’s about ‘effectiveness’ – which is where Local Area Marketing (LAM) comes in. It’s an area which senior leaders need to give more importance to as part of their planning and strategies. Too often it feels like an afterthought, which is why its impact within certain businesses remains limited. The potential though is huge.
Why LAM works
For those who conduct local searches there’s a higher level of intent. Almost 90% of smartphone users who conduct a local search, visit a related store within a week. The consideration level at this stage of the customer journey is very high. The need has been established, and it’s likely just a matter of ‘which’ business they’ll go with.
LAM is effective in terms of where marketing budgets go because of the greater level of intention. Indeed 18% of local searches on smartphones lead to a purchase within a day, which is amazing, especially when you know that this figure is 2.5x higher compared with non-local searches.
Spend in this area can deliver some of the most effective advertising, given the demand for a product or service is often already there.
Good for you, better for me
The power of a brand is in its ability to connect with its customers. There’s an expectation around what a particular brand will deliver. How it will act. Brand guidelines are in place to help maintain high levels of experience for customers.
Dynamic marketing is important at a local level as it takes the ‘brand’ message, but leaves enough room for franchises to put their own local spin on things. Whether this is across price which is set to suit your local clientele, or even specials which may work better given your environment.
This helps increase customer loyalty, when brands connect in the community. Standardisation can enhance the perceived brand value by your customers. And it can help with the effectiveness of your marketing as well, through improved levels of trust and seeing the same message delivered in the same way, repeatedly, helping with memorability.
Consistency and perceived brand value, will be one of the reasons franchisees chose to buy into a given brand to begin with.
LAM = financial reward
Locally area marketing isn’t just about ensuring a high level of branding nationwide. That standardisation can be satisfying for those in head office, but its greater offering is felt at the local level.
Local area marketing platforms allow brand managers to share assets with franchisees, while also tracking the operational efficiency of each store in one dashboard.
Generally we’ll see 50-66% of franchisees engage with the LAM platform, and we understand from brands that there’s a strong correlation with active franchise managers on the LAM platform, and the top financially performing stores. For some, the top 30% of performing stores are also the ones that are most active on these platforms. They’re the ones that engage their customers with customised special local area initiatives, at the grass roots level, whilst adhering to brand guidelines. After all 73% of Australians want to see brands demonstrate they are connected to local communities.
marketing assets seems an easy win for most franchises.
Any planned activity needs to align with local business needs, while also laddering back up to the brand’s objectives and business goals, to ensure impactful results. Haeday supports a number of its clients in this way, while also working on marketing plans of local stores for these activities.
One element of support we offer, is to produce a set of ‘Marketing Tips’ for franchisees through our local area marketing portal, MyLAMP™. This allows all franchisees, no matter their background/experience/seniority to be equally informed about how to best perform marketing in their area. It’s not about dictating to franchisees, it’s rather about empowering those keen to engage more by giving them the tools to ensure success.
N.B. Marketing in the local area is only one aspect of running a franchise business; something I should acknowledge at this juncture.
How to take advantage
The success of LAM is rooted within the richness of the data used to inform any insight. Simply put, the more you understand your audience, the more relevant your message can be, and the more effective results you’ll get.
Better data = improved revenue.
Franchises need to think about their customer journey. Where are the pain points? What barriers still exist? And how can we reduce friction?
The path to purchase is dictated by the user experience. Improve the customer experience and you’ll be rewarded.
Knowledge over local audiences, their demographic, psychographics and behavioral tendencies will offer insights. It’s always important to understand the areas in the business that need attention. Sometimes it will be those small 2% gains across categories that can have a big impact. Optimisation isn’t a destination but a mindset shift. Small improvements across every step of the customer journey will deliver big results.
A nationwide franchise client was experiencing multiple years of declining sales for a product category. One simple restructure in promotional approach made a huge difference. It may sound simple, and sometimes the most effective changes can be, but it has flipped the fortunes of that category to see sales increase by 9% over the most recent quarter.
Unearthing the right insight can improve your franchise into 2025.
Enabling your team
Technology platforms allow everyone within an organisation to have access to information and numbers which impact the business.
Empowering your team with knowledge and assets to do their job better and to the same high standard will result in improved outcomes across the board.
Having the right tech platform in place, can also remove manual tasks from your own team. Which can often be a bottleneck in a franchise. Anecdotally, when one client started using MyLAMP™ it freed up resources within the marketing team that had previously been responsible for creating marketing assets for each franchise location.
Sharing this information and performance metrics with operations teams and wider departments within an organisation can highlight the important role of LAM, but also contribute to greasing conversations to increase media budgets for brand campaigns.
Taking into 2025
The demand for localised marketing is not new. What matters, is what matters to the people that matter. In this case, relevant messaging is what matters to your customers, who matter most to your franchisee. Over 80% of consumers want ads that are customised to their city, postcode or immediate surroundings.
So make your focus for 2025 matter, and prioritise giving your customers what they’re after, and unlocking new potential within your business through local area marketing.
Rachael Hockaday is the Managing Director of marketing specialists Haeday