Today at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL, real life national brands stressed the importance of social media and local reviews in any location-based ad strategy. This is an always-welcome perspective, given that the BIA/Kelsey stage is usually filled with media companies (sellers) rather than buyers.

Mark Hardison, VP Marketing, El Pollo Loco
Elnora Cunningham, Director, Local Search, Uhaul International

As always in the multi-location franchise world, an important distinction is how much campaign fulfillment happens at the centralized corporate level versus the de-centralized franchisee level. Both Uhaul and El Pollo Loco lean towards the former.

“We encourage franchisees to take a role in community through clubs or sponsoring baseball teams,” said Hardison, “but we supplement that through posting activity on Facebook to communities near the restaurant. We localized that but from the central base.”

Uhaul is similar in providing direction to franchisees, while handling the heavy lifting and quality control from the corporate level: “Everything is centralized in the dealer network,” said Cunningham. ” We don’t give them the tools, we take that burden off them.”

Where Uhaul has spent the most energy is developing social marketing around the experience of moving. Cunningham reminded us that moving can be an emotionally fueled time that is tied to certain life moments — a ripe opportunity for brand association.

“Something in your life is changing when you get a Uhaul,” she said. “It could be a mother aging, someone changing jobs, or having a baby. Whatever their life situation is, we’re trying to give them a way to have a customer experience. It’s successful because it focuses on the journey.”

Specifically, this includes developing blogs to chronicle the experience, and sometimes posting on customers’ behalf. It also includes collecting and curating pictures that then populate social channels, as well as more analog media (i.e. the side of Uhaul vans).

Lastly, user reviews have a huge impact on both moving/storage and quick serve restaurants. Uhaul has five million cumulative reviews, and they’re very impactful says Cunningham. Meanwhile, El Pollo Loco’s business is swayed heavily by Facebook and Yelp, especially when negative.

“The first goal is to respond quickly,” said Hardison. “We want to move the conversation offline as quickly as possible. We need better ways to manage those reviews and search out bad reviews.”

The post At BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL: Franchises Go Loco appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

We continue to gear up for our National Conference, taking place next month in Dallas. It will be here before we know it. As we put together the program, many themes are emerging.

One theme is the importance of national brand advertisers in the local media picture. The connotation with “local” is always SMB; but national advertisers are driving lots of the ad spending. In fact, national companies make up 36 percent of the $140 billion spent on location targeted advertising in the U.S.

And thought they’re national in scope, many large brands — especially multi-location and franchised businesses — compete for consumers and mindshare at the local level, where conversions actually happen.  This has driven their early adoption of emerging areas like location based mobile advertising.

We discuss a few of these themes in the video below, and preview the location based mobile ad session. We hope this piques your interest and we’ll have more previews to come. Email me for a discount code if that helps your ability to join us in Dallas (mbolandATbiakelsey.com). Hope to see you there.

The post Video Preview: BIA/Kelsey’s National Conference, the Mobile Angle appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

We continue to gear up for our National Conference, taking place next month in Dallas. It will be here before we know it. As we put together the program, many themes are emerging.

One theme is the importance of national brand advertisers in the local media picture. The connotation with “local” is always SMB; but national advertisers are driving lots of the ad spending. In fact, national companies make up 36 percent of the $140 billion spent on location targeted advertising in the U.S.

And thought they’re national in scope, many large brands — especially multi-location and franchised businesses — compete for consumers and mindshare at the local level, where conversions actually happen.  This has driven their early adoption of emerging areas like location based mobile advertising.

We discuss a few of these themes in the video below, and preview the location based mobile ad session. We hope this piques your interest and we’ll have more previews to come. Email me for a discount code if that helps your ability to join us in Dallas (mbolandATbiakelsey.com). Hope to see you there.

The post Video Preview: BIA/Kelsey's National Conference, the Mobile Angle appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In local media and advertising, “National” is increasingly where it’s at. Though paradoxical in a semantic sense, it stands to reason if you consider the deeper pockets and more technologically adaptive nature of national brands, compared to SMBs.

This is especially true for multi-location businesses such as chain restaurants or retail. Though they’re national in scale, they compete at the local level where conversions happen. We’ve reported that national brand spending will represent 43 percent of location based advertising by 2018.

This involves an evolving set of campaign components including mobile, social, search, listings management, etc.. These strategies are are endemic to local marketing but take unique forms for the nuances of multi-location businesses and how they’re oriented.

We’ve covered this “National” area of local marketing for years but began to formalize that coverage last year. Now we’re blitzing the topic even more, with the upcoming National conference in March in Dallas. And today’s white paper is the latest.

The report’s executive summary is below and BIA/Kelsey clients can read the entire thing by logging into the client portal. Anyone else interested in the full report, please email me (mbolandATbiakelsey.com).

Executive Summary

Smart phones now account for 75 percent of mobile subscriptions according to BIA/Kelsey. Stemming from their evolving capabilities (i.e. location awareness, connectivity, optics), location targeted mobile advertising continues its rapid ascent. BIA/Kelsey projects it to reach $19 billion in the U.S. this year.

Google supports these findings, reporting that 80 percent of smartphone owners search for local information, and 80 percent of those users want ads customized to their locale. Moreover, 73 percent of mobile searches result in conversions (such as calling a business). Half of those happen within one hour.

BIA/Kelsey forecast data and insights likewise indicate that mobile users are “high intent” customers who often have a sense of immediacy (read: ready to buy). Correspondingly, mobile ad networks confirm performance deltas — such as higher click through rates and phone calls — for location targeted ads.

But the emergence of mobile has also made advertising more complex as the technology and consumer behavior evolve. For example, advertisers’ affinity for proof of ROI and attribution is technically difficult when consumer decision-making happens across several devices including desktop, tablet and mobile.

This challenge is amplified for national companies that must align brand messages with local presence. Those localized entities include retail partners, franchisees, distributors, and affiliates. This makes it difficult to achieve consistent messaging and service levels across geographically disparate entities.

These challenges are highlighted by the size of the market opportunity: National brand spending will represent 43 percent of location based advertising by 2018 according to BIA/Kelsey. That’s about $68 billion — an amount that makes multi-location marketing strategies increasingly critical.

Some of the areas where these strategies will focus include social media, listings management, ratings and reviews, search engine optimization, and of course, mobile. This report examines each of these areas and their impact on multi-location advertising in the mobile age.

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