Five Reasons Why Brands Should Provide Local Websites to Channel Partners
Websites are essential to a business’s marketing strategy. With the emergence of smartphones and digital media, not having a website is like not having a business card. This is especially true for small business owners, who may not have the time or money to create big marketing campaigns that reach a large audience at one time. This is where you, the corporate marketer, may need to step in and help with your local partners’ online presence. Here are five reasons why national brands should provide local websites to channel partners.
1. Small businesses do not have the resources to continuously monitor their websites.
According to Thrive Analytics, 31% of SMBs that responded are most likely to update their websites on a quarterly basis, and less than one-quarter of SMBs make changes to their website on a monthly basis. Outdated information on websites can turn prospective customers away from your local partners. If you provide your channel partners with a program that maintains their websites for them, local businesses will be able to use their website as a 24/7 sales and marketing tool to increase local revenue for your brand.
2. National brands can make updates to partners’ websites at scale.
Does your brand run monthly or weekly promotions? With a local websites program, you can update the details for your promotions as often as they occur across dozens to thousands of your channel partners’ websites. In addition, you can localize promotions for consumers who are shopping for local deals. According to a Google study, consumers prefer location-based ads. In fact, they expect online ads to be relevant to their city, zip code, or immediate surroundings.
3. Brands can provide partners with websites with sophisticated design and technology at lower costs.
Earlier this spring, Google released a mobile-friendly algorithm designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results. Mobile-friendly web pages and websites may rank higher in search engine results than websites that are not mobile-friendly. With a local websites program for your channel partners, brands can provide websites that are mobile-friendly or built with responsive design in a scalable manner.
4. Maintain brand consistency across local channel partners.
With a local websites program, you can avoid lengthy approval mechanisms or routing channel partners’ websites through your legal department. Instead, you can control what local partners can and cannot update on their website. Want to ensure legal compliance of promotional disclaimers, product descriptions, or terms and conditions pages? Prohibit local partners from accessing these sections while allowing them to update information about their business like upcoming events, blog posts, and in-store-only sales.
5. Local websites can increase online and offline leads for small business owners.
According to eMarketer, one-third of small business owners said new or existing clients engaged with them through their websites at least daily, while a similar percentage said they did so biweekly or weekly. A good website will motivate customers to make online and offline contact with your channel partners. This means that your local partners need to pay special attention to their websites. With a local websites program, you can give your partners the effective co-branded websites they need to generate more business.
Consumers are looking for your product or service online. Local websites will increase your partners’ online presence so that people can find you more easily. Because these sites are co-branded, you can control what your partners can and cannot localize. As a result, your partners will have websites that can easily drive online and offline business that will ultimately grow your brand.