On Tuesday, March 25, BIA/Kelsey and Surefire Social are teaming up to host a live webcast on the booming opportunity, but inherent challenges, in national-local digital marketing for brands and multi-location enterprises.

BIA/Kelsey forecasts locally-targeted advertising and promotions spend by national businesses to approach $53 billion in the U.S. by 2017. As a result, brands are aggressively pursuing localized marketing initiatives to boost their visibility and drive both engagement and leads. In fact, BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ Wave 17 survey research indicates that digital media are three of the top five most widely-used channels by franchisees, with Facebook as the top choice. Meanwhile, they are also spending heavily on their online presence – more than $41,000 annually.

However, the question persists: How do adoption and spend translate into ROI-based success? In the webinar, we’ll probe the research more deeply to identify key opportunity/execution gaps. Then Surefire Social will share its point of view on best practices for conquering these challenges to drive real business results across local networks. Specifically, CEO Chris Marentis will look at how technology-enabled service can empower coordinated publishing, content marketing and lead generation strategy across all levels of an organization. Brand case study successes will also be shared.

Please sign up for the free webcast here.

The post Free Webcast: Succeeding in National-to-Local Marketing with a Networked Approach appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Small businesses are more interested in social today. The challenge is finding the right mix of content and advertising, do it yourself and managed service, that maximizes the opportunity for local businesses.

A panel today at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference, “Social-Local: Boosting Sales and Engagement,” took a whack at these questions. The session featured Joel Hughes, SVP, Strategy and Emerging Businesses, Constant Contact, and Chris Marentis, CEO, SureFire Social.

Hughes: Constant Contact is a big name in the SMB space — millions of very small businesses use their low cost email marketing services. The company is following its customers into social media marketing, and feels it is getting a grip on the right mix of services to drive results.

“Email marketing is something SMBs have traditionally understood,” Highest said. “Social media has become a very hot area for small businesses.”

ConstantContact has spent much of this year testing a “recipe” for small business social marketing success. The recipe that is emerging is a combination of content (postings) plus ads and campaigns in different combinations.

“SMBs want do it for me (DIFM). Getting them started is a big piece. Many will start with DIFM, and move to DIY (do it yourself). Others will want to maintain outsourcing.”

Marentis: Marentis’ company is focused on the national-local opportunity, helping national marketers engage with local customers through franchise or dealer networks.

“We like to focus on idea of working with national businesses have an opportunity to harness the power of independent businesses they rely on for volume (franchisees, dealers, etc.),” Marentis said. “This requires integrating services, and that is more than a dashboard.”

Marentis offered a case study, Gutter Helmet, a company that offers gutter protection services (which he concedes is about as boring a category as they come). He said the company was able to drive down its cost per lead substantially using an integrated program that included content marketing.

“They were paying $90 a lead (driven mostly by PPC),” Marentis said. “Now paying $20 a lead, and organic is driving more than 55 percent of their site traffic.”

He said businesses need to begin understanding that content marketing is not a cost, but an investment. And measuring and attributing results is key to that education process.

“The key is measurement, so you can show them what they are getting out of it.”

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: Social-Local and the Science of Engagement appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the more common debates in SMB digital marketing revolves around the DIY vs. DIFM dilemma. Is it realistic for a service provider to hand over its tech platform to a small merchant, or is high-level “done for you” assistance required? Surefire Social CEO Chris Marentis thinks the answer may lie somewhere in the middle.

The company recently released SMB Visible, its integrated social media, content marketing and SEO platform that helps SMBs tackle the fast-evolving discoverability challenge, where social signals, “earned backlinks”, fresh content and mobile optimization all have a hand in getting found.

Surefire Social’s proverbial special sauce, however, may be its network of “coaches” spread around the U.S. that work directly with clients to create their full digital footprint and generate a roadmap of editorial that drives engagement and leads. Certainly not DIY, but also different from many of the DIFM platforms that often take control out of the hands of the SMB and produce generic, high-level content that can at times homogenize brand voice and miss opportunities for direct customer engagement.

Marentis envisions building out the coach network to 100+ within two years to scale the SMB Visible platform. Also look for deeper movement into leads-based content.

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