Do you have a big blind spot with shoppers?

It’s increasingly clear that shoppers are returning to nearby, in-store shopping in huge numbers. Major mall operators like Simon are seeing both foot traffic and sales exceeding expectations. But digital marketers still struggle to reach those shoppers with compelling and actionable messaging about what they should buy at nearby stores, by far the largest sales channel.

Over the past decade, most manufacturers have made substantial commitments to the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) business model— and in doing so, have dragged much of their brand awareness marketing over to fuel transactional consumer behaviors. In other words, brand marketing is now so heavily focused on generating transactions that loyalty and affinity marketing is being lost.

What if that isn’t the whole story of how shoppers actually make purchasing decisions? Can that model really work if the local channel is broken? 

Even major, pure-play e-commerce merchants are now staking a flag in local shopping. Not only is physical retail an enormous channel to ignore, but in doing so, competitors absolutely will replace the products that shoppers are seeing on their store visits. Retailers are happy to serve up new brands that offer greater support for brick-and-mortar.

Ironically, as shoppers see less of one brand on store shelves or less of that brand’s presence in their geographic area, they are less likely to buy in other channels (like DTC). Slowing wholesale business is nearly always a harbinger of weaker sales across all channels. And, trying to build or grow a DTC model without local market share is - at best - extraordinarily expensive and at worst a waste of time.

Less local brand awareness leads to less sales in all channels.

Given that growing local sales and increasing local market share are probably the two most powerful tactics for growing overall revenue and brand awareness across all channels, why don’t brands act more aggressively?

Many brands actually do want to invest in both the size of their dealer network and brand awareness at the local level. Most brands have some type of co-op or market development program that pays for ads that benefit local stores.

Oftentimes, stores lack the level of digital marketing expertise required to reach shoppers where they are doing all of their shopping research - online. Running radio ads that no one hears or putting up billboards no one sees isn’t very effective for either brands or their dealer network.

And, even when a retailer does have digital sophistication to run local digital marketing, it’s hard for their brand partners to contribute to that marketing process because: a) that tends to be via a competing e-commerce channel and b) the clicks very well may end up on pages featuring competing brand products. This isn’t a great omni-channel experience, it’s just more channel conflict for everyone.

Locally’s Unique Solution

First, there are about as many solutions for this problem as there are ideas about how to tackle the challenge. This fact really underlines the urgency of solving the problem.

Locally is different though because we aren’t a marketing platform. We don’t even provide marketing services beyond SEO. We work directly with marketing partners to sharpen local campaigns into something that looks much more like a sophisticated campaign that drives in-store sales rather than shipped packages.

We can do this because we have far more information about local stores than any other company. We have perpetually-validated address info, in-stock inventory down to the UPC level, brands and categories carried by tens of thousands of stores, and local shopper behavior at an aggregated level. Altogether, we have the ability to market what’s in stock to personas that are most likely to be heading to a local store to make a purchase.

And, our Marketing API (MAPI) system can be used by firms to empower digital ads via search engines, social media, email, display ads, and re-targeting systems. We enable a store or brand’s preferred marketing partner to tap into our data in order to be as effective as possible.

How can this system help me win more sales?

With in-stock inventory at nearby stores in hand, virtually any marketing idea or tactic used by major e-commerce platforms can be used to drive footfall and in-person shopping. Let’s look at a few popular uses:

• New Product Launch
  Imagine if you could run a campaign on a national level - but only for specific cities - that features where to buy a newly-launched product.

• Regionally-Popular Product Campaigns
  What if you could run a national campaign in search and social media channels that featured the most popular products in specific DMAs? Fishing gear on the coasts, but skiwear in the Rockies?

• Get It Today Ads
  A lot of products are best sold at nearby dealers and leaning into featuring “where to buy today” in national campaigns can really boost low-conversion clicks into a more holistic ‘rising tides’ model.

• Category Campaigns for Stocking Dealers
  Or, even just an ongoing campaign for specific dealers that sell specific sub-categories of products. If you want wholesale traction for a less popular or new category, this is an effective way to market for purchases (and get stores to give those products a shot).

• Retailer Campaigns
  And, Locally recycles product content provided by brands to help any size retailer become their own, sophisticated digital marketers - but just for pickup and delivery.

What do I need to make this work?

Brands that want to make this work for their dealers and local shoppers need a few things. The first is a growth-level relationship with Locally that includes the Marketing API tool. This tool transfers information about what’s in stock at selected local stores to the brand’s preferred marketing firm.

Next, Locally will work with brand clients to ensure that the specific retailers who will be featured in ads have real-time inventory connected to the platform. We constantly audit the inventory to make sure referrals will end in a purchase.

You’ll also need to work with someone from the Locally business or success team to make sure that there are appropriate landing pages that can accept an incoming click. We can set those up on either retailer or brand sites (usually a subdomain like stores.brand.com) or we have transaction-enabled landing pages that can be used (for free) on locally.com. The locally.com pages can also point to a subdomain (brand.locally.com) so competing brand products and/or competing local stores don’t appear on those clicks.

Lastly, you’ll need to choose a firm that can manage overall ad spending, funds allocation, and results. That firm will have access to the various services (feeds, landing page URLs, analytics) to optimize the campaign for impressions, interest, intent, or action. Here are a few of our partners.