'Click and mortar' success for local store marketers

Franchised businesses have unique challenges when it comes to marketing their local stores. Each store or dealer has unique offers, budgets, creative and location information to be communicated, all at different places.

While it may be a complex undertaking, Local Store Marketing (LSM) is becoming far more sophisticated and far more important to franchised operations. With 78% of internet browsing in SA happening via mobile (*Qwerty Digital 2017) and phones being intrinsically local, marketers are looking for mobile to take the lead in local marketing efforts...and Vicinity Media has the ultimate LSM solution.

Customised, Localised Creative

Creating artwork is always an issue when you’re dealing with 100 plus franchised stores. Vicinity’s LSM solution removes this headache through the dynamic distance window. The brand simply provides creative for each offer that’s running and Vicinity's platform dynamically publishes the distance from, and the name of the location within the artwork. Clients can also choose to further customise the message at each location. For example, a car dealer may want to communicate 'Speak to Mike Brown, our DP in Randburg' and this message could be customised at each location, without the need to generate 100s of sets of artwork.

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Localised Landing Page

Not having an existing mobisite or web presence is a barrier for many franchised operations who want to use digital marketing as they have nowhere to push the clicks and engagements to. Vicinity’s Custom Landing Page solves this issue by dynamically creating a landing page with unlimited further engagement options. Each franchisee can decide if they want to push people in store, to allow them to call in directly, complete a lead form, share on social or any number of other outcomes.

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True Location

Any local (or neighbourhood based) marketing effort start with location. In previous years this would refer to the location of streetpole ads, or printed inserts. With the emergence of geo targeting, brands can now target individuals based on their location. But there is a critical difference between Location and True Location. Standard location targeting uses 3rd party location data (such as GEOIP), often gathered through the programmatic bid stream. True Location, a concept synonymous with Vicinity Media, is the ability to pick up an individuals GPS co-ordinates through a direct first party integration with a publisher.

This is critical for national brand marketing, but becomes even more important for store level marketing. If you’re not getting True Location, then you’re not actually Local Store Marketing. Fact.

Publisher Network

Traditional media options are limited when it comes to Local Store Marketing. National publications are too expensive for franchisees who own one or two stores because they demand national coverage. Vicinity Media has changed all that. Individual franchisees can now access ad space on the best South African publishers (such as IOL, Times Live, Mail and Guardian, The Citizen and almost 100 others) but only own the kilometre or two directly around their branches. This allows the local store to advertise in exactly the same ad placements as the big national brands but only in the tight vicinity surrounding their store location.

Location Level Reporting

Franchisees want to know the ROI of every cent they spend on marketing. Vicinity’s location level reporting provides each franchisee a weekly report that demonstrates how many impressions, clicks and further engagements they’ve received. Vicinity’s proprietary Visitability™ report takes reporting to the next level by reporting on individuals who have been exposed to a campaign and then visit a store/dealer. This is the truest ROI reporting on the market.

Local Store Marketing has come a long way in the digital age. Vicinity Media's LSM product is the next evolution of this progression and allows local store owners as well as national franchisors to target consumers with the right message at the right place with the right user experience on a premium network.

Get in touch now to find out more about Vicinity’s LSM Solution.