The Five C's for Successful Distributed Marketing - Part II

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Monday's post featured two of the five "C's" of a win-win brand strategy from our newly released Distributed Marketing Leadership Series booklet, Exploding Brand Value at the Local Level. Today, we'll share the remaining three.

SECTION 5: The Five C's of a Win-Win Brand Strategy 

Coordinated Message Delivery

Just as consistent messaging is important, coordinated timing of delivery is also key. When a local marketer's messages are timed to coordinate with national messages, investments in marketing can be optimized.

At the heart of successful coordination is successful communication. And that means two-way communications. Often coordinated message delivery is dependent upon one way communication and hope. In these cases, corporate develops a merchandising kit containing promotional signage and other merchandising materials and sends it to the local market with the hope that it will be used properly, if at all.

Local marketers want to be successful and want the benefits of the resources the corporate marketer provides, but their worlds don't revolve around what corporate marketing is doing. They are focused on what they are doing to drive traffic and view corporate as a helpful part of that plan. When the marketing kit arrives for a coordinated campaign, it may or may not receive the priority the corporate marketer seeks. What happens is dependent upon how effective communication has been up to that point.

While it takes more work, engaging communication between corporate and local marketers is key to coordinated message delivery. When the local marketer knows what message is recommended and why; what's in it for him/her; and what is expected as part of a campaign, coordinated messaging naturally follows.

Cooperative Customer Management

Brands only hum when customers hum in harmony with them. The brand exists to create an emotional connection with the customer, to establish and grow a relationship. That doesn't happen without a corporate role and doesn't sustain without a local one.

For a brand to hum, the experience a customer or prospect experiences through national brand messages - coupled with the experience they have upon entering a local retail outlet or upon interacting with a branded product or service - must be completely harmonious. The local marketer is critical to this process. Store décor, in-store promotions, digital signage, merchandise bags and many other physical items all contribute to the brand experience. So too do the personal interactions that happen in the store.

While corporate marketers can't always control customer management, they should always consider it when creating local options for national brand messaging. One cannot assume that a local marketer or local sales associate will be able to provide a continuous brand experience for the customer without being coached on how to do so. Often, adding this "last mile" of instructions adds little time to campaign development but can make a huge different in the effectiveness of that campaign.

Communication, Communication, Communication

"Any successful relationship starts with listening, including that between the corporate and the local marketer."

You simply can't over communicate with a local marketer yet you most assuredly can over communicate to one. Remember, effective communication is a dialogue.

A nationally renowned speaker told 80,000 people who came to hear him speak that he really didn't have anything to say, but just one thing to show the group. With that he pulled out a giant ear and held it up. He didn't need to say another word to make his point.

• Communicate what's important to your brand by first listening to how it's important to your local marketer.
• Communicate what you need them to do by first listening to what they need you to do.
• Communicate what resources you've made available to them by listening to what they need those resources to be.

There they are. The five C's for making your brand hum at the local level. There's nothing magical about them. We'd love to call them profound, but they're simply applications of the sixth C ... Common sense. Yet too few apply them well and as a result too few see their brand really hum at the local level.

The Distributed Marketing Leadership Series - Exploding Brand Value at the Local Level

The five "C's" we previewed here are in section 5 of our newest booklet. Download the booklet for more on how to create exponential value from corporate investments in brand creation, positioning and messaging by leveraging your distributed marketing network.