CASE STUDY

CASE STUDYNatioNal MaNufacturer SeekS local BraNd awareNeSS aNd iMproved co-op MaNageMeNt

Local Marketing. Automated.

NATioNAl MANUfACTUrEr SEEkS loCAl BrAND AwArENESS AND iMprovED Co-op MANAgEMENT

ChallengeA product manufacturer with a well-known brand had invested significant advertising, marketing and research dollars to ensure their brand had a strong national presence. However, despite a compelling, well-funded national advertising campaign and a strong website, they were concerned that a lack of retailer effort in localized markets was negatively impacting their broader marketing efforts, ultimately making it difficult for consumers to find—let alone purchase—their products, due to a weak local presence. The manufacturer turned to Balihoo to implement a solution that would enable their resellers to efficiently customize advertising and marketing materials and to automate the highly manual co-op process.

Key Objectives

• Ensure their well-recognized brand was represented consistently in local markets.

• Improve co-op program administration and management in order to encourage increased reseller participation and reduce expenses.

• Motivate resellers to represent the national brand online in local markets.

• Close the sales loop in the critical last mile of marketing.

SolutionAfter investigating the manufacturer’s local retailer websites, Balihoo identified that these dealer sites poorly represented the manufacturer because they 1) provided too little information about the brand and its products, 2) did not highlight the manufacturer’s products in a way that reflected superiority over low-cost competitors and 3) were not well-positioned in local search results and rarely optimized for lead generation.

Balihoo provided a solution that made multiple creative pieces available across 12 mediums to over 900 of the brand’s qualified resellers. Using data provided by the manufacturer, Balihoo then implemented high-quality, local websites for each reseller represented in the manufacturer’s dealer locator. Once the data was input, all of the sites were automatically generated and rolled out simultaneously.

To ensure that local brands were also represented, all dealers were given the ability to co-brand and customize traditional and online creative elements. Each local reseller received a login account, enabling a full customization of creative and execution of production or media—all within a matter of minutes.

In addition, by implementing Balihoo’s Local Web Program, local resellers’ businesses and websites were fully registered across all major search engines and directories (for dealers who chose to use co-op funds provided by the national brand for this purpose). Balihoo also created and executed online advertising to drive traffic and leads to local websites for dealers who chose to participate in this program using manufacturer co-op funds.

These co-op funds were applied instantly to the creative and media orders, eliminating pre-approval, approval and proof-of-performance steps, and enabling brand compliance and tracking reports. The fully integrated, automated co-op dollar functionality in the application subsequently saved the national brand and the resellers hundreds of hours of administration time.

Results

• Each of the manufacturer’s dealer locations now has a high-quality, co-branded website optimized for lead-generation and search.

• Over 50 % of the brand’s resellers have customized creative pieces in the past six months.

• Due to the integration of Local Web elements implemented through the program and newfound trackability, the manufacturer has determined that more than 25 % of the traffic to the local dealer sites is now being driven by organic search results. These are visitors—and leads—the brand and local affiliates were not capturing previously.

• The brand tracked over 70,000 unique visitors to dealer microsites in the first six months of program.

• The automated co-op program has enabled the brand to incent dealers in the execution of programs and tactics that are of strategic importance to the brand.

• 7,800 co-op claims have been automated since the launch of the program.

• More than 70 % of the dealers chose to apply the co-op funds provided by the manufacturer for local business and website registrations and local online advertising. Because of this, the national brand now has easy-to-access visibility into the results generated from these co-op investments.

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