Run a decentralised marketing programme

Empowering managers at local level can help create a more customer-centric business, says Gary Howard, business director at Tangent Snowball

A lot of B2B businesses share a similar issue: they have a small central marketing team and multiple outlets or channels to market. Some run their own outlets, such as builder’s merchants, while others sell products to third-party retail networks, such as brewers.

Although these types of organisations may have a recognised national or even international brand, there’s an increasing need to help their individual customers or stores build engagement at a local level. In essence, they need to create the same level of local empowerment as a franchise operation or small business, where each manager feels in charge of their own marketing operations.

There are two key strengths for B2B brands with multiple outlets. Firstly, there are the relationships managers can build with the clientele that create a level of trust and loyalty that no national brand can hope to duplicate. The brand simply needs to provide the tools and inspiration, as well as the economies of scale.

Secondly, a brand that supplies 200 stores across the UK is going to have a blizzard of data coming back its way. Brands can use this combination of local knowledge and store data to feed back to branch managers to help them create truly localised and personalised campaigns.

1. Build a resource repository
You need a direct, one-to-one relationship with your channels so you can influence how your products are sold and promoted.

Local store managers or outlet owners aren’t marketers or copywriters. Left to their own devices, they won’t know how to ensure marketing materials are legally compliant and they won’t always understand how to ensure their message stays on-brand.

Technology has a huge role to play. For example, you could implement a B2B portal for your trade customers, such as Carlsberg UK did using a marketing automation platform. It allowed each pub or bar to create its own marketing materials from a selection of available templates where much of the design and copy is pre-populated. That meant individual managers could choose the type of marketing campaign that worked best for their customers and their area without compromising the brand.

Similarly, an online dashboard for each outlet could allow managers to align preferred marketing methods to each local customer. For example, a trade customer may tell their local store manager they prefer to get discount offers by email rather than direct mail. The manager can then create and send those emails, with offers tied to that customer’s preferences, but they will be appropriate and on-message because they’ve been pre-populated, designed and powered by the big brand that’s sitting quietly in the background. All that data, constructed from dozens or hundreds of local CRM operations can then be analysed centrally so that your brand has a far better understanding of market segmentation, customer groups etc, at the national or international level.

2. Share the data
Brand sales managers often have access to insightful sales data that helps them understand the performance of each branch in comparison to other local branches all the way up to a national or even international scale. Why not give your branches real-time access to this information and empower them to view their performance against these various metrics? It can help guide them about the next promotions they should run or how they should change their product mix.

Again, online dashboards can empower managers with detailed customer and store performance data. During a promotion, they can see how clients are tracking on their spend targets, what specific offers they’ve been given and their purchase histories. Managers can then hold targeted conversations with their customers next time they’re in the branch. This puts the power of one-to-one marketing back in the branch’s hands.

3. Leverage sales staff
For many B2B brands with multiple branches or routes to market, the costs of sale have been driven up by the people-heavy nature of the business – the sales rep has traditionally been the one who takes orders and ensures delivery.

However, moving those transactions online frees up salespeople to take on a more consultative role with their customers: advising on product choice and ways to make both parties more profitable. By analysing recent purchasing trends, for example, they can work with local managers to determine what customers in the area are buying (or not) and amend stock orders accordingly.

In essence, you’re making the direct sales relationship between your sales force and your B2B customers an ecommerce one and allowing communications between them to be ongoing and advisory. It makes the brand more customer-centric and adds value.

Running a decentralised marketing operation is about maximising local relationships and empowering local branches while maintaining control over the brand. Business strategy needs to sit at the heart of an effective decentralised marketing approach, but technology can be the key facilitator and driver.

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