Consumers’ increased use of mobile over the past decade allowed advertisers to use digital experiences to connect with people authentically and in real time. And although this shift has given businesses new opportunities to find relevant audiences and drive growth, it has also created more complexity.
While large companies are able to devote entire departments and large budgets to mobile-optimized digital campaigns, franchise owners and local businesses must navigate limited resources, a gap in knowledge sharing and a lack of sufficient technology to optimize their investments.
Digital investment is a must
Consider the fact that there was a 13.6% increase in average time spent on mobile in 2020, with people spending over four hours a day on their mobile device, according to eMarketer. That represents a third of total time spent on media. Further, a 2020 Facebook-commissioned study of 12,063 people ages 18-plus revealed that two in three global customers say their mobile device is quickly becoming their most important shopping tool.
We believe that to reach new customers and engage existing customers, businesses must break through with personalized messages and stand-out creative that is optimized for the mobile experience and tailored to each audience. This can require significant investment to build out digital marketing teams, develop and optimize creative and understand performance.
The local challenge
Local businesses—defined as small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) that are part of a larger national brand such as agents, dealers, franchisees and owners—face unique complexities when building their digital marketing strategies. Sure, their national chains support new customer growth through multichannel brand and direct response campaigns; however, reaching incremental local customers requires an additional layer of digital investment.
With smaller teams and limited budgets, local businesses and franchises often need to make tradeoffs that affect their channel mix and their creative development. Building and managing bespoke campaigns for digital channels can require skills and time that many of these businesses don’t have.
And although local businesses have varied access to their national brand teams, they often don’t have access to ongoing learnings and best practices that their counterparts have from large-scale campaigns with multiple creative iterations. This leaves many local marketing teams to figure out best practices on their own, with limited data.
Additionally, unlike their national counterparts, many of these small businesses lack visibility into performance because they don’t have access to the same level of measurement or tracking. Sophisticated measurement tools can require significant investment and a level of scale that these businesses may not have.
The partner solution
Despite facing challenges while trying to navigate their digital investments, there are great resources available to make it easier for local businesses to succeed.
Specialists such as Meta Business Partners offer local businesses a way to maximize their resources and build campaigns that leverage best practices and target incremental audiences that their national brands may not be targeting. Through these partners, local businesses can tap into the knowledge and technology to build effective creative and scale beyond their own capabilities.
As Paul Elliott, CEO of Tiger Pistol (a Meta Business Partner) explains, “We help local businesses overcome their challenges to build on-brand, dynamic social campaigns with mobile-first creative while also helping them optimize in real-time to maximize their performance.”
Partners take some of the complexity off the shoulders of local businesses, allowing them to get the benefits of digital activation without the investment of a large company. From strategy to creative development, performance measurement to campaign optimization, partners offer a range of services all designed to help local businesses grow.
As digital and mobile continue to grow, it’s essential that local businesses adapt their strategies to find and engage relevant audiences.
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To learn more about how to start accelerating your local strategy today, watch interviews from businesses like yours on Meta’s Local Enterprise Solutions page.
