Local Marketing – Messaging

Consider this: One of our customers changed all of the signage and brochures from English to Spanish-only at selected stores that were located in areas with a large Hispanic population. The change worked as those stores are now among the best performing in the nation. The lesson here is that Local Marketing works if – and only if – the messaging is relevant to the audience.

So how do you make your Local Marketing messaging relevant? I’d begin with Segmentation. In other words, what do you know about the consumers who visit each location? Is there a concentration of one or more ethnic groups? Are there certain age groups that frequent your store or restaurant? Is English a second language to a large number of your customers, and if so, what is their primary language? Are there different groups visiting at different times, such as professionals in the morning or soccer moms at lunch?

Once you collect data about current or potential customers, you can use it to build your Local Marketing campaigns. For example, if you have a large number of Hispanic customers, you may want to have Spanish or bi-lingual signs for a given location. You also may want to promote different products that meet customer preferences, such as ice tea in the south. Alternately, you might want to promote speedy service to busy professionals.

Messaging can be as involved as you would like. It can be one-dimensional, meaning that you speak to just one customer attribute (i.e. customers 18-25) or it can be multi-dimensional (i.e. professionals who are Hispanic). The specific attributes that you target and the level of complexity can change over time; I strongly recommend starting simple and evolving as you gain experience. However, make sure the technology platform that you are building upon is capable of handling more complex messaging.

The process of mapping location and customer attributes to messages can be time consuming. But once the rules are set, the ongoing effort drops significantly. Furthermore, linking data sources, such as POS databases, into the messaging process allows marketing strategies like localized pricing strategies to be implemented without significant management support. Speaking from my direct experience, the technology needed to deliver store-specific signage is surprisingly efficient and effective once it is set up.

Good luck with your Local Marketing efforts. If you’d like to share a success story or ask a question, please email me at dfergusson@synqsolutions.com and I’d be happy to share it on this blog.