Adopting Per-Location Franchise Advertising Doesn’t Need to Be a Hassle

If you’re a franchise or multi-location marketer, you may be considering taking a per-location approach to brand advertising. After all, if you’re not customizing ad spend, targeting, and creative per location you’re likely slapping audiences with regional creative that doesn’t match their preferences and needs. For example, you wouldn’t want to show Los Angeles-optimized creative to customers in suburban and rural California. 

Plus, per-location advertising can not only drive stronger results but also give franchisees confidence in the benefits of marketing, and provide the opportunity for franchisees to collaborate through a distributed dashboard. This can strengthen franchisor-franchisee relationships and even encourage franchisees to pour more of their own money into marketing to drive a greater brand presence as well as local and national results.

But for many franchise marketers, the roadblock to adopting per-location advertising is often the perceived logistical difficulty of switching from regional or DMA-level targeting to an approach that’s customized per location. You probably have reasonable questions like: How do we localize creative for all locations? How do we budget per location for a given campaign? How does reporting work? Won’t this all be a hassle? 

Rest assured! Adopting per-location advertising does not need to be daunting. Here’s a step-by-step guide as to how franchise brands can transition from regional to per-location advertising.

1. Adopt a per-location approach for national or regional campaigns 

Start with a confined advertising test with brand or ad fund budgets. Select a region or DMA with enough locations to experience meaningful results, before rolling out system-wide and introducing a new platform to franchisees. Franchisees are your most valuable assets, and managing their expectations and delivering success for a new platform are paramount. 

The Hyperlocology team helps to devise per-location advertising approaches that are equitable to all store locations and franchisees. The first phase typically involves a shift in how companies allocate budgets for ad fund campaigns. Rather than the old-fashioned model of DMA level budgets, Hyperlocology’s methodologies most often employ budgeting based on franchisee percent contributions, and budgets are dedicated per location. This ensures that store owners see the spend and benefit they are owed when they access Hyperlocology reports.

Hyperlocology also localizes brand creatives (and even individual location landing pages) for each and every location. And the platform runs and analyzes ads under one system to allow for aggregate reporting and analytics, a welcome departure from the siloed data that results from working with multiple franchise advertising agencies. 

2. Communicate with franchisees once the model is proven 

Ahead of adopting any new program, education is a crucial component to get everyone on board and instill positive feelings around the incoming technology. Franchisees need to buy-in to the new approach, particularly true of franchisees who may have already had negative marketing experiences. 

Educational assets and tailored communication can bring franchisees into the fold of per-location advertising, and these resources also lay out how the change will benefit the franchisee and their business. When national ad campaigns adopt per-location targeting and reporting, results can be broken down by storefront, and this data can be made clear and accessible to franchisees. This empowers brands with greater marketing agility and makes it possible to provide transparency. 

When franchisees learn how the shift to a per-location marketing approach can make their lives easier with transparency and collaboration tools, the entire franchise ecosystem can get behind the change. The Hyperlocology team helps with company-specific training and educational tools to ensure franchisee buy-in ahead of rollout, and even go on road shows with corporate brands to drum up excitement about the new marketing approach and to answer any questions that franchisees might have.

3. Roll out tools that empower franchisees to participate

Once franchisees are comfortable with Hyperlocology, the next stage of rollout is about giving franchisees more tools to participate themselves. If franchisees feel that the incremental sales they've experienced is a result of national marketing efforts, they can choose to contribute their own additional budget to “top up” the national campaign in their local market area. They’ll know that spend and results will benefit their store only.

In addition to the ability to contribute local budgets to corporate campaigns, a full rollout of Hyperlocology involves giving franchisees the tools to easily pay for and launch their own pre-built campaigns in accordance with Hyperlocology’s advanced targeting and in compliance with corporate’s brand identity and marketing parameters. 

In the dashboard, franchisees can select localized creative and messaging, budgets, and dates to launch local advertising within brand parameters, with just a few clicks. They can also opt into and individualize pre-built LTOs or other campaigns to match their business goals. 

Plus, Hyperlocology automates communication to let franchisees know when there are campaigns available to participate in, or when an action is required, or to send monthly reports, so corporate doesn’t have to do extra work to keep everyone on track. 

With professionally executed cross-channel advertising at their fingertips, franchisees have the agency to effectively market their own locations. And HQ can feel confident that local advertising is brand-safe and that local campaigns are benefiting from the brand’s first party customer data and targeting. It also gives brands the peace of mind that local and national campaigns are working in concert with one another. 

All of this is only possible when local and national can collaborate on a single platform and advertising can be targeted with advanced per-location methodologies that break down results by each store. With Hyperlocology’s tailored and accessible rollout process, adopting per-location advertising becomes a reality - without the hassle. 

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