The Winning Play: Strategies for Localizing Beverage Ads
How your beverage brand localizes its social ads hinges on your target location’s regulatory framework.
For instance, in the United States, alcohol makers, distributors, and sellers must operate separately, and brands cannot advertise directly for retailers or pay for their advertising. Conversely, in many European and South American countries, alcohol brands and trade partners can collaborate on social ads, though they may still have age restrictions for their target audience.
At a high level, beverage brands can localize and personalize social ads in two ways.
- Inside the USA: Geo-targeted ads launched from the brand’s or product’s Facebook Business Page
- Outside the USA: Local social ads launched from the trade partners’ Facebook Business Pages
Let’s examine how this strategy could work to tie sporting event sponsorships to local bars and restaurants.
Inside the USA
To stay compliant, brands can set up a centralized website that lists all partnering on-premise establishments. This website would tailor its displayed list of venues based on the user’s geographical location. Armed with this centralized platform, brands can launch hyper-localized social ad campaigns focused on specific markets where key sporting events are taking place.
When consumers click on these highly targeted ads, they are redirected to the list of nearby venues where they can enjoy the promoted beverage and sporting event. This strategy minimizes obstacles for the consumer, speeding up their journey from ad to purchase. At the same time, it ensures that all participating retailers have a fair shot at attracting business.
For example, BuzzBallz aimed to create local advertising campaigns that followed U.S. 3-tier alcohol advertising rules while motivating shoppers to visit nearby retail partners
BuzzBallz deployed proximity-targeted Facebook campaigns through Tiger Pistol’s platform. These campaigns directed consumers to a store locator page that was dynamically localized to show all nearby retailers where BuzzBallz products could be purchased. The brand leveraged Tiger Pistol’s automatic localization tools that enabled BuzzBallz to customize ad messages to match local preferences, like partying at the quad, drinking slope-side cocktails, or sipping the perfect beach drink.
This ability to use adaptive messaging allowed the brand to dynamically speak to consumers while accounting for variable retailer availability by state. BuzzBalls demonstrated that it could drive better performance by focusing messaging on customers’ attributes.The results speak for themselves:
- 50% lower cost of advertising than benchmark
- 80% of clicks resulted in store locator searches
- 40% increase in click-through-rate compared to national campaigns
Outside the USA
In nations where the three-tier system doesn’t apply, brands have greater freedom to work closely with their trade partners on localized advertising. Utilizing platforms like Tiger Pistol, brands can feature their top-notch creative content in ads automatically tailored to the local market. These ads are then published from their trade partner’s Facebook Business Page, ensuring direct benefit to the partner. Here’s how this coordinated strategy benefits both the brand and its trade partner.
Companies like AB InBev have already capitalized on this symbiotic relationship between sports fans and local establishments. During the 2021 COPA America Tournament, the beverage giant successfully activated fans by highlighting each matchup in hyper-targeted Facebook and Instagram ads. Tiger Pistol’s platform enabled the ad creative to be changed quickly across hundreds of campaigns, resulting in wins for both the brand and its trade partners:
- 75% lower cost of advertising than national campaigns
- 500+ participating pubs and restaurants
- 2M+ fans reached
These winning strategies maximize the impact of sponsorship dollars and increase reach, foster trade relationships, and establish a strong local brand identity. Brands who seize this opportunity will be ahead of the competition, unlocking a more prosperous and enduring future in the highly competitive beverage industry. By embracing local social advertising, beverage brands can bring the excitement of the game directly to the local establishment. This will connect brackets to bars, reaping the rewards of community ties and increased revenue.
Ready to learn more? Our latest playbook, Converting Cheers to Sales: A Social Advertising Playbook for Beverage Marketers to Boost On-Premise Sales, reveals the global impact of sports for on-premise, how to make the most of your sponsorship dollars with local social advertising, and how to localize social advertising (even in highly regulated regions). Learn how local social advertising enables your brand to secure trade partner loyalty, become the local fan favorite, and unlock exponential sales.
Related Posts
Small Business Social Advertising Benchmark Report for Marketing Resellers
See how we’ve helped marketing resellers lower ad costs and soar past Facebook benchmarks. Get our benchmark report now and see how you compare. Get the Report A Sampling of Savings Get the Report to See How Your Industry Compares Lower CPC Home Services Lower CPC Fitness Lower CPM Healthcare Lower CPM Legal Lower CPM […]
Maximizing Sports Sponsorships: Tiger Pistol’s New Playbook for Beverage Marketers Puts Sports Fans in Focus for On-Premise Success
Discover the Winning Strategy for Driving Sales with Local Social Media Advertising CGA by NIQ, the trusted on-premise measurement, insight, and research consultancy to food & drink businesses across the globe, recently published a series of reports that demonstrate that the future of pubs and bars is intrinsically linked to sports fans. To aid beverage [
Community Over Cookies: The Hidden Path to Dealing with Cookie Deprecation
Marketers knew the day would come, yet that foreknowledge did little to fortify their readiness. Google’s new “Tracking Protection” feature, which blocks third-party cookies on websites, launched last week, sending shockwaves through the marketing world. While currently only 1% of Chrome users are affected, the impending rollout to a broader a
Beverage Power Play: Winning with Local Social Advertising during the Paris Olympics
There’s a golden opportunity on the horizon that no savvy beverage marketer should miss – the Paris Olympics. With 4 billion eager eyes expected to tune in, it’s a chance to ensure your brand captures significant market share. Local social media advertising is the strategy that helps your brand harness this global spectacle to drive […]
