3 Reasons Marketers Are Collaborating More With Their Local Partners Than Ever

Your network of locations and channel partners represent an enormous opportunity for exponential revenue, but historically, brands have taken the easy road of marketing directly to consumers. Not surprising, as most agencies and tech solutions gear toward direct sales. Times have changed. Digital transformation in local markets has accelerated with consumers expecting the same personalization across their physical and digital experiences. Things that felt like novelties just a few years ago are now table stakes. As such, technology that supports marketers responsible for a diverse network of partners has become an essential part of brand marketing strategy, but not all martech solutions for channels are created equal. Here’s the necessities: 

Balanced Brand Control

Brands often struggle with the competing need to retain brand-level control and consistency while ensuring that each individual partner can achieve success. This is especially complicated when Meta advertising enters the picture.

“58% of partners are more actively using Facebook than any other social media platform,” BrandMuscle’s State of Local Marketing Report 2021-2022. 

Moreover, many partners may already have created their own Facebook Business Page and want to drive ads directly from it to garner attention to their location. Yet, most channel partners are time-strapped, non-marketers, a dangerous combination that often results in low-performing ads that can either dilute your brand or cause compliance risks. Be sure your technology ensures brand integrity with controls that disable partners from changing copy, campaign objectives, creative, and/or default targeting. Your technology should also reduce the risk of errors with automatic checks for Facebook HEC compliance and policy monitoring. This way brand safety is always first and foremost.

Centralized Data Visibility

However, little can be learned when your data analytics are spread across multiple platforms, making it difficult for you and your partners to understand how campaigns are performing. Centralize your reporting with a platform that allows you to view all of your insights through a single pane of glass and provides consistent visibility into your partners efforts. A great dashboard should enable you to generate comprehensive reports, monitor pacing across campaigns, and provide real-time visibility into campaign performance with specific, location-level dashboards. Your brand benefits from understanding your program’s accomplishments and gaining insights on how to best optimize future campaigns. Your partners benefit from seeing the impact your investment had on their success. 

Collaborative Innovation

As your centralized data begins to bear insights, ensure that these learnings lead to new strategies and creative approaches. Use your new insights to think outside the box and innovate at the agency and corporate level. Offer your partners a solution that accounts for their collaboration but is backed by an expert team to help drive strategy. No matter the level of a partner’s marketing expertise, they will never have to be left in the dark. And your brand can feel confident in the campaign quality your partners publish.

Furthermore, supporting your partner network can be challenging, as many options fall short or fail to gain traction. However, with available technology, you can ensure brand integrity, centralize campaign performance data, increase data visibility, and offer flexibility to meet varying partner needs. Technology will continue to play a vital role in brand marketing, and now is the time to surpass the competition with a technology-driven channel marketing strategy, given the focus on localization and personalization.