If your multi-location brand works with regional marketing teams, you know that effective campaign orchestration requires complete alignment between corporate-regional teams. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.
The fact is, communication across time zones, shifting priorities, conflicting goals, and a lack of transparency results in serious marketing misalignment, an inconsistent customer experience, and diminished brand equity.
There's a lot that can go wrong when it comes to multi-location marketing.
5 Regional Marketing Challenges Multi-Location Brands Face (And How to Overcome Them)
As an industry-leading brand management software provider, we've worked alongside hundreds of complex, multi-location brands. Many of these brands manage regional marketing teams and constantly face difficult regional marketing challenges. Here are some of the most common:
1. Understanding Local Audiences
For regional teams, maintaining a deep and intimate understanding of local customers is key. Unfortunately, conducting regular local market research has become increasingly difficult for teams to execute. The fact is, regional teams just don't have the time, resources, or background to initiate sophisticated analysis.
By obtaining in-depth, actionable information through trusted market research firms, brand marketers can optimize marketing strategies and gain a better understanding of local audiences.
Related: 5 Ways to Use Local Market Research to Create Compelling Marketing
2. Working Across Time Zones
Another regional marketing challenge is working across time zones. Unfortunately, communication across multiple time zones results in serious delays to market. Try thinking about it this way – if a regional team in Paris asks for a specific marketing asset from corporate in San Francisco, there are going to be significant communications issues when trying to work across time zones. It may take corporate headquarters at least one working day (or more) to respond to regional's request!
In this scenario, a brand management software solution is ideal. Our tool allows system administrators to distribute marketing templates across thousands of locations instantly. This kind of distribution cuts down on those one-off requests, giving regional and local teams more autonomy.
Related: 4 Common Threats to Brand Consistency at the Local Franchise Level
3. Understanding Local Marketing Campaign Effectiveness
A regional marketing manager's success is tied to the performance of the stores within their territories or regions. When it comes to monitoring regional marketing campaign effectiveness, field marketers needed to be proactive about tracking progress at each individual franchise, dealership etc.
We recommend checking in frequently with local teams. What's working and what's not working when it comes to marketing? What do local affiliates need more of? Additionally, selecting a brand management solution like ours enables distributed teams to monitor asset usage within a single system monitor asset usage - some use separate systems for print and digital, and without a single source it's difficult to get the metrics ri
4. Finding Local "Specialists"
Remember, local affiliates are rarely marketing champions that we need them to be. As such, it can be difficult for regional teams to find on-the-ground specialists that understand what good marketing looks like.
A brand management tool eliminates the needs for specialists. In fact, with a few simple clicks inside our tool, local marketers can find everything they need to activate on-brand, compliant, and effective local marketing – it's that easy!
Related: Why Does Local Marketing Management Matter for Marketers?
5. Managing Regional Marketing Budgets
According to recent studies, co-op marketing's popularity among enterprise organizations and local franchisees is growing, but the amount of money that local affiliates are actually taking advantage of is $14 billion less than what's earmarked.
To effectively manage co-op marketing budgets, we recommend promoting the benefits of co-op marketing. What will the cooperative marketing program actually do for them? How will the program attract customers? How much money will the store or location stand to save?
Related: How to Maximize Marketing ROI With Regional Marketing Teams
Maximize the Effectiveness of Your Regional Marketing Teams
The most successful enterprise brands understand the importance of regional marketing team effectiveness. That's why many multi-location brands are equipping regional marketing teams with the tools and resources to overcome the most pressing distributed marketing challenges. With the right tools in place, corporate and regional teams can work together to support the unique goals of their local partners, franchisees, dealers, agents, and more.
Moreover, our solution equips teams with easy-to-use print and digital marketing templates so that local affiliates can execute regional marketing campaigns that excite their customers and employees and make their regional specialists proud. Are you ready to start your brand management journey?
