Are you National/Local?

2 weeks ago I keynoted the BIA Kelsey NATIONAL conference, an event focused on “local media and marketing through the perspective of national brands, agencies, franchises, and multi-location businesses.”

I even wore a suit…

My presentation centered on 5 key trends shaping the national/local opportunity and you can watch the entire session on video or view the full deck on our site.

Here’s a quick summary:

1. Mobile

BIA Kelsey pegs local at more than 1/3 of mobile ad spending.

Indeed, in a mobile-first world, location is one of the most telling signals that can be used by marketers to deliver 1:1 messaging. Table stakes for marketers is creating mobile responsive sites and opting in to mobile search and social ads but sophisticated marketers deploy mobile bid adjustments, focus on actions beyond clicks, explore in-app ads, and leverage mobile display inventory.

2. Programmatic

The beauty of digital is the ability to pick and choose the impressions you buy and this strategy should be deployed at the national and local level alike. Per eMarketer, mobile is driving programmatic growth with 88% and 70% spend increases projected for 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Baseline execution for marketers is retargeting people who have visited your site. An advanced approach is leveraging keywords as a proxy for intent and appending that data to location targeting across mobile, social, and display.

3. Channel Fluidity

Two-thirds or marketers say orchestrating activity across channels is a top priority but only 10% are actually aligning messaging, execution and delivery across touchpoints per eConsultancy.

For national/local marketers, it’s a no-brainer is to ensure location info like name, address, and phone are consistent and up to date across platforms like search engines, IYPs, directories, maps, local listings, and review sites. Elite marketers (re)allocate ad budget fluidly across channels based on performance and inventory availability.

4. Audience Signals

Research from the IAB shows 83% of marketers leverage technology for audience analytics in support of segmentation and targeting.

For national/local marketers, gathering data points about your customers and turning them into audience signals starts with geography (where people are), demographics (who they are), content (what they’re looking at), and third party data (what else do we know about them). From there, the wheat separates from the chaff by matching these signals to actual people across channels and devices and tailoring ad messaging accordingly.

5. Measurement

Nearly 40% of marketers don’t have an attribution model in place according to Webmarketing 123. And, of those that do, only 1 in 9 are using advanced attribution models per Forrester Consulting research commissioned by Skai.

National marketers operating at the local level must go beyond the click to measure phone calls, leads, and sales, even if only proxy metrics are available. With proper tracking in place, you can then optimize customer lifetime value through dynamic attribution and predictive modeling.

Going the Distance

I closed my presentation with a success story from our partner Ovative/Group and their client Meijer. Through a shrewd combination of local listings, inventory syncing, keyword expansion, portfolio optimization, and online/offline tracking, the team at Ovative put best practices for national/local marketing into play and drove a 16% increase in YoY channel revenue.

That’s a (W)rap

As the self-appointed Head of Freestyle Rap at Skai, part of my job is leveraging live lyrical longevity so naturally I spit for about 2 minutes to close the Q&A. You can see the last 20 seconds here. FYI, the lead-in to the first rhyme in the video is cut off but of course it was “local”…☺