Beat National Ad Campaigns With a Local Co-op Marketing System
Co-op marketing funds have been established as an efficient way to solidify your brand’s image on a local level. You might have a difficult time beating a big name competitor in your industry on a national scale, but who says you can’t beat them in your local markets? This effective marketing incentive structure produces higher adoption rates among your local partners, creating a larger impact on the local level.
Deploying a co-op strategy elevates your local image and here’s why!
- Targeted Co-op Strategies
Flexible co-op programs allow brands to incentivize specific marketing campaigns, assets, and even adoption in specific geographic areas. Unlike old reimbursement models, a flexible co-op system enables your brand to specify what you want to pay for up-front, how long you want to pay for it, and much more. You can depend on higher adoption rates among local partners for a specific asset or campaign if your brand is fronting the money. You can also use data from current campaigns to create funds for specific geographic areas. For example, you notice that a particular region would benefit from more co-op funds, so you decide to cover 75% of direct mail and email campaigns for every local partner in that region, but all other regions pay a 50% share. The local partners will see that they are only paying 25% and are more likely to opt into the program. This will raise your brand’s profile in the identified region.
- Brand Consistency
Maintaining your brand image becomes easier as you deploy a co-op system to offer funds. Put yourself in the shoes of your local partners. They have the option of going through a complicated, unguaranteed reimbursement scheme or getting the best price in their local area for a piece they want to do. They figure the pieces will be “close enough” and order non-brand approved materials. With a co-op system in place, you can ensure all marketing dollars are spent on approved materials, not “close enough,” and get rid of the hassle and back-and-forth of approving or declining disbursements. Your local partners will be using brand approved materials that not only promote the use of your product, but increase consumer loyalty to your local retailers.
- Agility and Speed
A co-op strategy makes local marketing quick and easy to deploy through a stronger connection with your partners and local retailers. Getting advertisements out of the door into the hands of your customers will be faster than ever. Adapting is the name of the game when running a successful campaign so it’s vital that your local retailers quickly adjust to your trending market.
- Personalization
Your competitors will be baffled as to how you’ve made your marketing efforts completely personalized. Building your brand is about building the connection between your brand, your local retailer and your mutual customers. With a platform based around personalization and customization, your competitors will be scratching their heads on how to compete with a personal touch that local versioning can provide. Co-op funds can be used to promote only the pieces that include local flair or specific local partner customizations.
By eliminating reimbursement processing, a co-op platform saves you time and money. It allows you to spend your marketing budget on actual marketing pieces and not overhead. This inherent advantage allows you to roll out more campaigns with intensive rules to better control your brand image, elevating your local image and your bottom line.