Distributed marketing is a model adopted by advertisers who have both a central (corporate) marketing department and local (distributed) marketing functions.
These distributed functions can be separate organizations, business units, departments or individuals. Both central and local levels have sales and marketing responsibilities. The beauty of distributed marketing is that it allows both levels to work together to achieve a better ROI.
The central marketing department has its brand guidelines, processes, budgets and data in place; then there are those "on the ground". No one knows the market better than those who operate at this local level.
For the company to retain control of its brand, leverage the local level for marketing initiatives and gain visibility of these marketing activities, a distributed marketing platform like The Ramp is necessary. Here's a list of what this solution should entail to ensure brand compliance, locally relevant marketing and visibility of activities and analytics.
Central marketing retains control of its brand. Global marketing teams create print and digital materials, including ads, flyers, emails, microsites, direct mail and more, for everyone in the company. These assets can be stored, shared, personalized, co-branded and localized. The local level (whether agents, franchisees, partners, distributors, consultants, etc.) can take these assets marketing assets and make them relevant to their business needs.
The company can choose to provide all customer data to its distributed network, or allow these partners to upload their own data for use, or a combination of both. By storing data in a distributed marketing platform and being 100% RGPD compliant, prospects and customers don't "fall through the cracks". This can provide valuable visibility for the business.
If an organization chooses to do so, it can fully or partially finance local campaigns using cooperatives, market development funds, dedicated local marketing budgets or by allowing self-financing.
As with any marketing activity, measurement is essential. What's the point of launching a campaign if you don't have visibility of its performance? With a distributed marketing solution, corporate marketing can see how marketing activities have performed locally, and the ROI associated with each campaign.
Let's say you're a marketing specialist at a world-renowned hotel. You've created communication tools and campaigns that will be sent all over the world.
Let's imagine that a major concert takes place throughout the year in different cities where you have hotels.
You obviously want this audience to choose your hotel over your competitors! So you're going to create a campaign to entice guests to stay at one of your hotels.
Thanks to a marketing platform distributed marketing platform, you provide all your hotel chains with the fully designed e-mails, mailings and banner ads that form part of this integrated marketing campaign. You then enable each hotel to tailor the assets to the specific needs of each specific area.
With distributed marketing, companies can offer branded, compliant and professional campaigns for all their hotel properties. Each hotel can then place the appropriate logos and applicable discounts. Even better, companies can display statistics on marketing campaign performance in each region, offering endless transparency and scope for analysis.
If you think about it, almost every organization needs a distributed marketing strategy:
- Restaurants or chain stores
- Franchises
- Direct sellers / Multi-level marketers (MLM)
- Agencies with agents / field representatives
- Companies with partner networks
- Companies with sales representatives or marketing specialists in the field
The key is to consider your distributed network not only as a sales channel, but also as a marketing function. Leveraging the knowledge of your local relationships can make a huge difference to your business. Customers turn to companies they recognize. Take advantage of the local to outperform in your customer acquisition.
The Ramp is the #1 solution for managing local digital advertising for network retailers and FMCG brands.
By simplifying access to all digital inventory, The Ramp enables the network headquarter, or each individual outlet, to launch local campaigns in line with the brand's catchment areas, creative assets and audiences.