Channel Marketing Software

Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

This post, Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know, was originally written and posted by Shane Vaughan on our old blog on 7/14/09.

Balihoo recently penned an article for one of our favorite sites for franchise news - Blue MauMau. Article can be seen here, or you can read the full article below!

Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know

If you’re a franchisee, you’re probably already doing some local marketing — even if it’s just listing your business in the local Yellow Pages. Think additional advertising will cost too much? Think you don’t need an online presence? Or does “online presence” seem to be the opposite of “local media”?

In fact, every company, no matter how large or small, can benefit from using local media effectively. And it doesn’t have to break your budget! Here’s a list of the Top Ten things you need to know to make Local Marketing work for you.

1. Know Your Target Audience.

First, last, and always: Pay attention to your target market! If you’re not focused on your customers, you cannot hope to win their attention — or their business.

Be specific about who you’re trying to reach. Men? Women? Retirees? Mothers? Sports Fans? Chinchilla owners? People with other particular interests? Other small businesses, such as real-estate firms? Dental offices?

Now that you’ve clearly defined your target audience, consider what marketing messages will resonate with them. What problem does your product or service solve for them? Think carefully about where you should position your communications so your target audience will see, read — and act on them.

If possible, develop a “profile” of your target customer. Give them a name to easily refer to them, let’s use “Katie” for an example. Where does Katie work? Is she married? Kids? What does she do in her free time? What is Katie’s household income? The more specific, the better.

2. Measure, Measure, Measure.

There’s an old saying, “Half the money you spend on advertising is wasted, and you don’t know which half.” Unfortunately, this is true in many cases, but it doesn’t have to be. Careful planning and – most importantly, measurement, ensures your advertising is working hard for your business.

It’s all about ROI — Return On Investment. This may sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty easy to calculate. Simply take the benefit you receive from an investment, and subtract the cost of that investment. Divide the result by the cost of that investment. (Benefit - Cost)/Cost.

You can apply this to any business investment, including marketing campaigns. And you should. ROI tells you if a given effort is providing a net benefit to your bottom line, and if so, the size of the gain. You’ll want to get the highest ROI possible from your marketing dollars, and you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

3. Buy Media; Don’t Be Sold

Strategically buy your media, don’t allow yourself to be “sold.” Make sure you evaluate all options, across all communications channels, not just whoever happens to knock on your door. And evaluate them in terms of their effectiveness for your target market, not necessarily in terms of your personal interests!

Also, make sure that any reps who call on you know you’re considering other placement; they will probably sweeten their rates.

4. Integrate Your Marketing Messages.

Don’t spend all of your marketing dollars on a single medium. Why not? Because multi-channel marketing efforts perform better. In one study, over a few years multi-channel customers spent at least several hundred dollars more in comparison with single-channel customers. Multiply that difference by your total number of customers, and you can see there’s real value to be had.

As you venture into multi-channel marketing, be sure to integrate your marketing. You’ll need to convey the same message across all channels.

And don’t forget some powerful experiential channels that many small franchises overlook. Your storefront or office, your signage, your employees, and your product are all sending messages of their own. Are those experiential messages consistent with your advertising messages? Are they consistent with the message you want to send?

5. Relations With Local Media.

The thing to remember about local media is that when your business is down, so is theirs. Just like you, your local media want long-term repeatable revenue in a down economy. They want to keep your business! This means now is the time to renegotiate your contracts.

This is especially true of local print media. Understand the downward pricing pressure exerted on these media by the power of the internet: In 2008, print classified ad spend was down to about half what it was in 2000! Blame Craigslist, Google, and Yahoo — then put this knowledge to work for you.

6. Newspapers Are Still a Valid Option.

Although readership is shrinking, newspapers are still a valid local advertising option.

Particularly in smaller markets, newspapers carry more weight with the local audience.

Older readers in particular continue to rely on newspapers, especially for local info.

But make sure you supplement ad placement in the print version with placement on the newspaper’s own on-line presence. In 2008, newspapers actually accounted for over one-quarter of all local online advertising!

And consider writing up a press release announcing your company’s opening, refurbishment, website, sale, or upcoming special event — anything that could be seen as “news.” Get it out to your local papers. They may not take it, but they might if they need to fill a spot in a hurry.

7. Digital Works Locally.

You say you don’t think of interactive or online media as being “local”?

In fact, local online advertising is expected to grow 6% in 2009, to a total spend of $13.3 Billion. In a broader sense, local digital media includes things like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and online yellow pages. These are growing too.

Local search is also a powerful tool, increasingly replacing printed Yellow Pages. People used to “let their fingers do the walking;” now it’s the mouse! Local search is when a potential customer uses a search engine to find your kind of business, adding the name of your city or town. When that happens, you want that customer to see your company’s link — front and center!

8. Build Your Online Presence — Beyond Your Own Website.

Local search will work more effectively for you if you have your own website — and get it on the first page of search results.

To rise in the search rankings, your site needs to have relevant keywords but not appear “keyword-stuffed” — containing nothing but keywords and no useful knowledge.

A single website is not enough; keywords are not enough. Search engines also take into account how many websites have links to yours. This is an indication of how useful and relevant your content is.

You can build links to your website from your own Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter pages. This will help you rise in the search rankings. But it means you need to have a strategic plan for your online presence, and commit resources to implementing it.

9. Build a Relationship.

Attracting a new customer costs about 5 times as much as keeping an existing one. To control your customer acquisition costs, therefore, you need to build an emotional connection between your customers and your brand. (And yes, all companies have a brand, even if they don’t realize it!)

To do this, foster a relationship with your customers outside of the buying interaction.

Direct mail, email, social media, blogs, and Twitter can all contribute.

10. Email Marketing Is Your Friend.

Once you build up a solid email list, email marketing is relatively inexpensive and highly targeted. If done right, you know you are communicating a relevant message to motivated customers who want a relationship with you. That’s a marketer’s dream!

How do you build your own email list? Offer a “membership” campaign on your website. Give something of value exclusively to members (i.e., discount coupon, etc.) in return for their email addresses. Make sure you respect their privacy and take care in how you use customer contact info — and tell them about your privacy commitment.

Don’t spam your customers. Use a “preference center” on your website that will allow customers to tell you how often they want to hear from you, and on what topics.
Frequency: Daily; Weekly; Only when there’s a sale?
Potential Topics: Arrival of new merchandise; Monthly newsletter containing tips & how-to advice; When you have an event just for “members;” Only when you’re about to have a sale?

Then, respect that preference! Nothing is more annoying to a customer (and therefore destructive of the relationship you’re trying to build) than when they’ve told a company their preferences — and then that company ignores them.

There you have it: The Top 10 Things You Need To Know About Local Franchise Marketing. It isn’t just the Yellow Pages any more!

Apple iPad - A Local Marketing Software Tool?

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Last night at the Oscars, Apple finally unveiled the iPad to the masses. For those of us in the tech world, it's old-hat, but last night was very possibly the first time "your mom" heard about this device. For those of you that didn't see the ad, here it is:

As I've followed the pre-launch efforts around this product, one of the more interesting debates that has raged has been around it's "place" in the market. We have laptops, we have netbooks and we have smart phones - do we really need a 4th device that falls somewhere in the middle?

After watching this spot and mulling over it for 12 hours, I had an interesting thought - could this be the ultimate hardware tool for local marketing? I'm not talking about marketing via the product to the millions that will inevitably buy it (though that's a very important point - save for a later blog post).

Instead, the question that came to my mind is, "Could this be the tool that should be in the hand of every local store owner, manager and marketing professional to drive their local store marketing efforts?"

Balihoo sells local marketing software (Local Marketing Automation software to be exact). However, access to this software obviously has to happen via a piece of hardware. Today, that's typically handled by a desktop (or laptop) computer either in the back office of the store or at the home of manager or owner that handles marketing. While this works, it still fundamentally separates the act of "marketing" from the act of running the daily business. A sophisticated, and relatively affordable, piece of hardware like the iPad has the possibility to bring the "marketer" closer to the business to take action immediately. Perhaps it's best described in a use case:

The manager of local sandwich shop is at the store at 9AM helping to prep for the day. Unfortunately, it's a typical rainy March day, and from experience they know that business will be down as a result. Standing at the counter with his iPad, the manager can access Balihoo's local marketing software and create a "delivery-only" special coupon for the day and automatically distribute it via email, SMS text, Twitter and Facebook to all of their opt-in customers (total time spent = 5 minutes). Their customers, not wanting to venture out in the rain, jump on the opportunity to get this special delivery deal. The customers are happy and the cash register at the shop is active. Crisis averted.

If you're a franchisor or product manufacturer - isn't this how you want your local outlets to be able to respond to changing local conditions? Are you putting the tools in place (whether hardware or local marketing software) to make this a reality?

Is Agile/Scrum the Process Management Framework for the Creative Economy?

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Kevin Donaldson

Recently I have been talking to more and more people about the power of using the Agile/Scrum framework to manage multiple business functions and it struck me that a likely reason for this is that the nature of work is changing for many people and even entire organizations.

There is a broad shift happening away from the information/knowledge economy (which arguably started decades ago) into the next great stage often referred to as the creative economy. In this stage, business starts to look, and act more like art. Furthermore, a company's strength is often less about the systems and processes that it runs on, but more about the people and creative capital within. Take Balihoo or any start-up for that matter - In a start-up, treating the business as art is not only required, but also a source of competitive advantage in most cases.

As many more people and organizations move away from factory work, process's become harder to define and lock down. And when I say factory I don't mean just the traditional assembly line version of a factory that most of us think of. Seth Godin uses a broader term in his book Linchpin where he defined a factory as:

"... an organization that has it figured out, a place where people go to do what they are told and earn a paycheck"

This definition goes well beyond assembly lines and encompasses white collar information organizations such as insurance companies, government departments, and even franchises with their systems and controls that drive continuity in their offering.

Of course, as business's mature, it is inevitable that parts of the organization will become a factory - areas where the work is repeatable and comoditized. That's not necessarily a bad thing, however more and more things in modern business cannot be 'systematized'. This can be scary to many people that want to work in a job with a map to tell them what to do. It can also be a thorn in the side of traditional process engineers who love to create process maps for everything. What some fail to consider is that if a process can be mapped, it is likely that it can be copied and therefor starts a march down the path towards comoditization.

In the creative economy process engineers and the process's they create can actually reduce operational effectiveness when they attempt to systematize everything in the organization. Six Sigma works great when trying to create lots and lots of high quality microchips, but it doesn't work as well in value-add service offerings. Process engineers can fine tune accounting processes but it doesn't work as well when trying to create a musical. Traditional process engineering is valuable but not when it is used like a hammer and every aspect of a business is a considered to be a factory/nail.

Another common example for almost any company: Most large organizations have ultra detailed software development life-cycles that continue to grow and bloat over time but with all that detail its amazing how few projects finish on time with happy customers. Why? Because software development is Art.

However, in the software world, people have started to figure out that lighter process can actually generate more predicable results. Agile and its children (Scrum/XP etc) are not processes in the traditional sense, but frameworks that can both provide structure as well as freedom for the art of software development. At Balihoo we use Agile/Scrum to 'sculpt' our Local Marketing Software 'art', and as mentioned above, the Scrum framework can actually be used outside of the software world as a tool to help manage work in the creative economy more broadly.

Unfortunately, some that I explain the framework to get frustrated with the lack of detailed direction, but that is exactly why it works! It is a framework with very basic patters that support creativity, but also the need to produce maximum value for the customer in the shortest time possible. It does incorporate aspects of process engineering such as Lean, but only to provide general direction.

If you find that some or all of your business is more about people creating art than running a factory, traditional process engineering may not be the answer. Agile/Scrum could be the process management framework for the creative economy.

Whether Regifting or Remarketing, Marketing Software Tools Continue to Impress

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Alex Fascilla

Now that we're well out of the holiday season, it's time to take a few minutes--or hours, if your 'haul' was like one of those kids' from the TV show my Super Sweet Sixteen--and conduct inventory on the gifts you received. "Alright," you say to your gifts, "which ones of you is a re-gift, and which ones of you will I treasure for years to come?" It should be a pretty simple task. The Blu-Ray you received probably isn't in this particular pile but rather long been set up in your entertainment center--shrugging apologetically at the progressive-scan DVD player as it was being switched out--while the Hillshire Farms Summer Sausage Sampler Pack is firmly established among this group of misfits, collecting dust since the morning of December 25th, when its brick-patterned wrapping paper was apprehensively removed.

The worst among these is the 'ween-gift--the gift that leaves you on-the-fence about whether to hold or fold. This might be the basket of wine cheeses you can someday see yourself sampling at a spring picnic (heh, yeah riiiiight...), or, conversely, giving to your fiancée's aunt to save yourself some coin when faced with buying a gift for someone who, one, you don't know anything about, and two, don't necessarily care about. These are the gifts that take the longest to relegate to 're-gift' status. Eventually however, your logical side overtakes any romantic vision you had and a re-gift is born. As an aside, please join me in listening to (sorry, copyright laws prevent me from saying watching) perhaps the most hilarious example of a re-gift attempt of all time (at bottom):

So where am I going with all this 're' talk? Well, what if I told you it is possible to 'remarket' or 'retarget'? According to a recent article in MediaBuyerPlanner, advertisers are severely under-utilizing this relatively new retail marketing feature. This is how it works: suppose you go to backcountry.com and find a new pair of Smith sunglasses you want. You add them to your cart, enter your shipping address, and even go as far as to enter the first 4 digits of your credit card before deciding, "I don't want to buy this. This is impulsive." You close the browser window, close your wallet, and take a quick walk, shaken up by your close-call with impulse (your walk invariably leads you outside where you immediately squint at how bright the sun is...).

If Backcountry wanted that business back, it could entice your return by utilizing 'remarketing'--or serving their ads on other sites you visit to constantly remind you of "what you could have had**". As it turns out, many advertisers do have access to this remarketing feature, but as the article reports, only about 31% of them actually use it. A staggeringly low amount given some remarketing efforts have boosted ad response as high as 400%.

Why not turn this into a co-operative marketing solution? I can see these online retailers that have similarly been 'doorbell ditched' swapping impressions on each other's sites, banding together to recover lost sales. Any hey, even if they don't pursue the co-op advertising route, it's painfully obvious retailers need to make remarketing/retargeting a part of any media planning strategy they follow. Good luck ducking those impulses now!

**Thank God my ex-girlfriend doesn't have access to this technology.

Breadmaker sound bite Will Ferrell sound bites

Product Launch Marketing - Integrating Co-op and MDF

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

One of the products Balihoo delivers to our customers is a complete Co-op marketing solution.

As we've discussed this offering with multiple product manufacturers and how it fits into their overall trade promotion marketing efforts, one of the surprising things we've discovered is how often it's not integrated with their product launch marketing efforts.

The objectives are simple - when you launch a new product into the market, it's critically important that your dealer network is informed and prepared to effectively market that product at the local level. Many manufacturers do a great job of this from a product availability, training and sales perspective. However, we're discovering that this is often not the case when looking at their co-op marketing program.

Enabling your dealer network to effectively market your new product at the time of launch is one of the most overlooked areas we've discovered. Combining your national efforts with strong local efforts creates a product launch marketing effect that is highly effective.

The advice is simple: when launching a new product, integration with your co-op marketing solution should be near the top of your list. Effective co-op marketing can be the key differentiator between a lackluster product launch and a highly-successful one.

In fact, we believe so strongly in this that we've been offering our co-op marketing software to some manufacturers as a point-solution to support a single product launch. It's a great way for them to try it out while at the same time supporting their product launch marketing effort.

Interested? Check out our Integrated Co-op Marketing whitepaper or contact us to find out how we can help.

Local Marketing Strategy - Local Email Marketing

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

This is the start of a new series called, "Local Marketing Strategy". The intention here is to take a specific tactic and explore how it can impact your local marketing strategy and provide some specific guidance on how to implement that at the local level.

Today's topic is local email marketing. First, some fun facts:

According the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated a ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009.
Epsilon reports that email drove an average of $.14 in revenue per delivered message.
In general, email is considered the top-performing tactic from a ROI perspective in a marketers toolkit

As you can see, email marketing should be a critical component of your local marketing strategy.

There are typically two types of email marketing campaigns at the local level:
1. "Newsletter" type campaigns designed to stay in touch with your current customer base. These are primarily brand type activities and help you develop thought leadership with your customers and keep your store/product top-of-mind.
2. "Promotional" type campaigns designed to communicate special offers.

The first (and often most difficult) step in implementing a local marketing campaign is developing your list. This must be integrated in your overall business approach. If you're a higher-touch business, you should be including emails with all of your customer data (train your employees to ask). The other approach is the "fishbowl" on the counter which asks your customers to give you their email in exchange for information, special offers or the chance to win something. Either way you choose to implement, it's critical that you start building your list now.

This brings up the issue of "renting" email lists. We believe that at the local level especially, businesses should be very wary of renting email lists. They're often inaccurate, untargeted and can do more harm than good for your business.

The next step is the software you'll use. Of course we thing that a comprehensive local marketing software like Balihoo is the best option, but there are many point-solutions from vendors such as Constant Contact or Exact Target that you can use. The bottom line is to make sure you're using something that will help you manage the deliverability and be in compliance with SPAM laws.

Finally, comes the actual content. "Buy Now" certainly works with local email marketing, but you'll get much better results if you balance that with providing good, relevant content that engages your customers. Remember, they've asked to receive information from you, so make sure it's good. Also, be consistent - if it's a monthly newsletter, ensure that you distribute it monthly at around the same time.

Local email marketing can and should play a significant role in your overall local marketing strategy. Focus on the above items and get started today!

If you would like to learn more, check out some of our resources:

Local Franchise Marketing Playbook
Local Marketing Automation Whitepaper

The Local Marketing Hurricane

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Brian King

If you watched the second week of the Olympics, there is a good chance that you might have seen some coverage on Men’s Freestyle Aerials Skier, Jeret “Speedy” Peterson. Speedy, who happens to be a Boise native, managed to take home the silver medal after stomping a trick he calls The Hurricane. The Hurricane is a jump that consists of three flips and five twists all while soaring 55+ feet in the air over a period of about 2.9 seconds. It’s simply unreal. Jeret named the jump The Hurricane because he said halfway through; you have no clue where you are.

Rather than attempt the jump myself, I’ll gladly take his word for it. Jeret happens to be a buddy of mine so I took particular interest in his success and actually planned meetings around when he was competing to make sure I was near a TV. The meeting I had prior to his event was with that of a dental practice that had been dabbling in local advertising but saw minimal success because they simply, didn’t know where they were. Because they got lost in the mix, they gave up which is common in the world of local marketing and often times the demise of most direct-to-consumer local advertising campaigns.

Fortunately for national brands and franchises, Balihoo is changing this with its local marketing automation platform. It allows the parent company to offer their customers, distributors and/or affiliates the ability to implement strategic local advertising campaigns with the assistance of enterprise class advertising professionals, and all at a fraction of the cost. Rather than attempting to throw The Hurricane (which is actually a fair description of advertising world in general) on their own and risk the bone-breaking brutal landing, companies now have the ability to utilize Balihoo’s local marketing software to take on The Hurricane and nail the landing with the precision to bring home the medal.

For those loyal Balihoo Blog followers who were too busy reading our blogs and missed Jeret “Speedy” Peterson landing The Hurricane, I have attached a link to watch him compete. Enjoy! Click to View

Decide as Late as Possible

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Kevin Donaldson

One of the core principals of Lean thinking is 'Decide as Late as Possible'. Like many aspects of Agile and Lean thinking, they can often be taken at face value and lead to less than optimal outcomes, leaving the organization with a sour taste in their mouth but with the correct application there is power.

In uncertain environments better results can be achieved with an options-based approach, delaying decisions as much as possible until they can be made based on better facts rather than uncertain assumptions and predictions. This is of course a continuum, not an end. If you wait too long to gather facts the organization can become paralyzed, and you may miss the opportunity. An iterative approach with short cycles promotes this principal, giving a team the ability to adapt to changes quickly and also and correct mistakes which might be costly if discovered after long development cycles.

We had a great example of this principal in action just recently. Back in early December a few of us got together to talk about possible product strategies for the IFA (International Franchising Association) Conference to be held in the first week of February 2010. We batted around a few ideas, and as it started to get closer to Christmas we felt that we had to make some decisions soon given that the holidays were upon us, and that we now only had a little over a month to get ready. However nothing seemed to be clicking yet.

After the holidays in early January we decided that introducing a social media offering within our local marketing software tool would be the ideal launch platform for the event. Social media was everywhere, but how to combine it effectively into a local marketing strategy is the question that franchisees are asking. Everyone in the room thought it was a great idea - The only problem was that we had less than 4 weeks until the start of the conference!

At this first meeting a quick sketch was made on a piece of paper of the new offering that would allow a local store marketer to publish a message and send it to Twitter, Facebook, an email list and a mobile phone list. They could then use this message with a shortened track-able URL link to a customized web based landing page for more details about the offer (all designd to tie into their existing local advertising).

Within 3 weeks we took the hand sketch and converted it into a ascetically pleasing, fully functioning prototype of the offering, that we deployed to the production version of our local marketing software on its regular bi-weekly release schedule the day before the conference started. We actually even had all the development work done more than a week prior to this point, so it wasn't an all night-er for our engineering team the day before! So what happened? The sales team at the conference promoted and used it on the trade show to produce one of our largest lead gen opportunities in months.

Just-in-time decision making is critical to allow a business to make the highest value decisions with the least amount of cost or waste. Yes, its a fine line between just-in-time and too late, but you will never get good at it until you practice. Think Lean!

Head Skis. Ever heard of them?

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Jason Hausske

Like many consumers around the world, I've been watching the Olympics on a daily basis.

My routine for the last week has been to relax in my family room, with my dog at my feet, the fire burning in the background, multi-tasking between my work on a small laptop perched against my knees and maneuvering through a day’s worth of DVR captured Olympic coverage.

Given my full schedule, I've had to be selective in my Olympic viewing. Have I had time to watch cross country skiing? No. Do I pause to catch the latest curling match? No.

And, of course… with four quick clicks of the yellow, "skip ahead" button on my remote, I bypass the commercials.

That being said, there are two brands that have jumped out at me…. Fischer Skis and Head Skis. I've never Nordic skied, so I can't comment much on Fischer other than to assume they have a big market share in Nordic skiing, evidenced by the big yellow Fischer Ski logos prominently displayed in every possible slow motion angle on Ski Jumping.

I do know Alpine skiing however. Head Skis has me puzzled. They've received some great coverage in these Olympics. Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller both ski on Head skis, which is evident to us consumers during slow motion replays, end-of-race interviews, and reporter commentary on ski equipment.

Now, I've been a consumer of ski equipment for a long time (I ski weekly, I used to ski instruct, etc.)… and I'm now a consumer of ski equipment for my two daughters as well (and will be for another ten years)…. If you asked me to name fifteen ski brands, Head would not have made the list.

Why is that? I did a search on Bing (and on Google) for "Head Skis Boise" to see where in Boise one might be able to go check out a pair of Head skis. Based on the lack of search results, it's logical to infer that buying Head skis in Boise is not an option. Upon further laborious research on the Head website, I finally determine there are two retailers of Head Skis in Boise. One of which is Greenwood's Ski Haus. (I happen to coach soccer for one of the owner's daughters).

So, my questions are:

How is Head leveraging this week's Olympic coverage?
Why doesn't Head have more consumer share of voice?
How is Head going to convert consumers like me into revenues and raving fans?

Head is apparently banking on establishing a relationship directly with the consumer, through their website, social media, etc. They seem to lack interest in marketing to individuals on a local basis via their specialty retail channels (they aren't alone).

I'm a fan of direct brand-to-consumer relationships, but I believe there is a massive opportunity for brands like Head to build market share and to more effectively market locally via their specialty retailers. Most brands just struggle with the complexities of making that a reality.

Here is a very basic, simple example of a local marketing idea that could be utilized by a brand like Head.

Head produces a professional direct mail marketing template that features Head products/brand messaging on 50% of the piece. The other half of the ad can be branded by the local retailer. The message of the piece leverages the recent success of the Olympic athletes.
The direct mail is mailed to a highly targeted demographic list of local consumers, and has a call to action to drive the consumer into the store.
Head agrees to pay 75% of the marketing costs of the direct mail, which means the retailer is getting 300% more marketing exposure for their marketing dollar than if they'd tried to market without the help of Head.
Head sells more skis, Head builds market share, the retailer captures more customers and revenues, the consumer is excited because they have the same brand of skis that the Olympic skiers use.

Based on my experience of talking to many new brands each month about their marketing, brands have many (historically legitimate) reasons why local marketing is a challenge. These reasons happen to be the same with every brand I talk to.

Local retailers lack marketing expertise and are overwhelmed with the myriad of marketing media available.
Brands have offered to do this for their retailers in the past, and the retailers only use 40% of the money available to them.
Administering this "co-operative advertising" process is a real challenge for the brand and a deterrent to the retailer
The brand's CFO is putting tremendous pressure on the marketing organization to reduce their co-op/mdf marketing spend. Obviously because there is no ability to measure a positive ROI (otherwise, they'd want to invest more, correct?)

Suffice it to say, these reasons are no longer valid (at least, not for Balihoo's clients).

There should be a race by brands to harness the local marketing capabilities of their specialty retail channels to build customer market share on a very intimate/local basis…. Head, K2, Atomic, Rossignol, Salomon, Blizzard, Nordica… the first one to figure this out will have a unique competitive advantage.

Will Head's revenues increase as a result of the success of their Olympic Athletes? Probably…. Will it be exponential and will they become a market share leader for years to come? Potentially, if they crack the code on how to leverage their specialty retail channels to drive local marketing.

Want to learn how? Check out our Local Marketing whitepaper or our Co-op Marketing whitepaper, they can get you started.

Kewords: trade promotion marketing, local advertising, local marketing ideas, local marketing software, co-op marketing software.

Widening our Reach with Kampyle

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 by Kelly Mason

In researching techniques for gathering user feedback on marketing software tools, people seem to agree on many things. They agree on the importance of gathering the feedback. They agree on the importance of implementing changes based on the feedback that is received, and they agree that the feedback should be widely distributed throughout the company.

One thing that people don't agree on is how to go about gathering that user feedback. Companies have different goals, and different customers with different needs. Therefore their methods for gathering that feedback can vary widely.

Our initiative right now is to figure out which methods of gathering user feedback on our ad builder software work best for us and I'm going to use a blog series to track our efforts. In my first blog on the subject, I showed you UserTesting.com.

While there is something to be said for hitting the pavement and seeking out the feedback, it may not be necessary in every case. People want to provide feedback, and if you make it easy for them, you may be surprised and how much feedback comes right to you. Insert Kampyle.

This program provides us with a ready-made, customizable feedback tool which we were able to put right on our ad builder software. With one click, users have the ability to provide us any level of feedback, from clicking on a smiley face or scowl face to represent their general mood while on our site, to typing up detailed questions/frustrations/compliments.

Another big question that follows this effort is what to do with that feedback once we have it...but that is a whole separate blog. However, Kampyle helps us move towards that by not only providing the specific feedback, but by bucketing and summarizing that feedback for us in a meaningful way. We can track our 'grade' as a site and then move towards improving that grade.

We're realistic, and we know that not everyone will provide feedback. The down side is that this is likely still a fairly small subset of the entire user base. And from what we've found so far, similar to the user base who call the support line, that small subset is typically the most frustrated with our ad builder software. But you know what? That's a good thing! This tool is for those people that may have something to offer and feel invested in their local marketing software tool, but aren't inclined to pick up the phone - this is the easy to use, non-committal way to provide valuable feedback. So while it's still a limited customer base, it just got a little wider and we'll take it. In fact, from February 4, when we launched the new tool, to today, we have 25 pieces of feedback. It doesn't seem like much until you think about the 25 phone calls that we didn't have to make.

President’s Day – Washington’s Birthday, Lincoln’s Birthday or a Retail Holiday?

Monday, February 15, 2010 by Jill Coles

Many people don’t really know the origin of the national holiday that we are celebrating today. Truth be told, I didn’t either. The short answer is today we celebrate the birthday of George Washington, the father of our country, who was born on February 22, 1732. Why is it called Presidents Day and not Washington’s Day? Well, in 1968, there was an attempt to change the day to President’s Day, to celebrate both Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809) and Washington ’s birthday on the same day. The attempt failed, but the name stuck – hence we are celebrating Presidents Day.

Most retailers look to Presidents Day as the first retail push following the dismal holiday shopping season. Many of the big chains rely on national advertising programs to reach their local audiences on big holiday sale weekends such as this. Local advertising may come in the form of newspaper, radio, direct mail and local internet marketing. We too believe in the value of these mediums to advertise screaming deals on holiday weekends. As much as I hate the idea of adding another insert into the pile of flyers that fall out of the newspaper on holiday weekends such as this, they inevitably work. Even better, franchisors are slowly adopting marketing software tools to help them develop local advertising strategies, tailored to their local markets. So, not only will their messages reach their local consumers, they may actually be relevant to them!

So, if you aren't working today, pick up a newspaper, turn on your favorite radio station and hit a few sales. The economy could use a little boost.

Social Media and Local Marketing Automation

Friday, February 12, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Balihoo is a Local Marketing Automation company - that is, we help national brands execute their marketing strategy locally to drive demand generation into the stores (local store marketing).

As we all know, social media marketing has become the "darling" of the marketing world. Engagement with consumers in these channels has become paramount for national brands, and interestingly local businesses are not just following here, oftentimes they are leading. There are numerous stories, whether it's the twitter-powered taco truck or the numerous Facebook success stories.

Want some more proof? Check out this great video:

In fact, social media has become so important, last week we announced that we're integrating Facebook and Twitter directly into our local marketing software. Pretty cool, huh? Here's an example of how it's used:

It's 10AM on a Tuesday morning and XYZ Sandwich Shop realizes that because of the rainy weather, their lunch crowd is going to be very slow. In a matter of 5 minutes, the manager logs into Balihoo, creates a "10% off delivery" coupon (fully national-brand compliant), posts that to a temporary URL and distrbutes that link across Facebook, Twitter, SMS and email. In just a few minutes they've directly impacted their business THAT DAY and provided a valuable service to their customers.

If you're interested in seeing how this can work for your distributed marketers (franchisees, retailers, distributors), we would be happy to show you a live demo of Balihoo's local marketing software in action!

Co-op Advertising the Product Placement Way!

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Alex Fascilla

Perhaps the least hackneyed, most unforced example of product placement advertising I've ever seen appeared in the movie that made the phrase "that's what she said," famous. "They made a 'The Office' movie?!" You wonder excitedly, if not a little clumsily because of the whole "a The" part. No, there is no 'The Office' movie... But there will be, relax. The movie I'm referring to is the impeccable 1992 comedy--yes kids, 'that's what she said' is 18 years old and still alarmingly funny--Wayne's World. In one particular scene, we find Wayne quickly cycling through the product-placement agreements the movie was committed to feature as he damns those that--very similarly--"sell-out" to big business. Note Garth's Reebok get-up. I'd pay hundreds for it if I could find it on eBay.

So what's new in the product placement arena these days? Well, shucks, if you have a feeling it's become a new form of co-op advertising, you'd be correct. See, whereas Pepsi, Pizza Hut, and Doritos probably plunked down hundreds of thousands of dollars for each of those blatantly--but remember, that's why they were effective--shameless plugs that were so "seamlessly" integrated into Wayne's World, advertisers lately have pulled off product placement at virtually no cost to them. How? Well, as MediaBuyerPlanner recently reported, via a co-operative structuring.

Oscar bait and recent Clooney showcase, Up In The Air features American Airlines and Hilton Hotels placements almost as much as it does Clooney's muse (and Best Supporting Actress nominee) Vera Farmiga. The deal? Well, as the article outlines, hotel stays for the cast and crew and plane rentals for in-plane scenes were on the house--paid for by none other than Hilton and AA, respectively. In return, of course, they'll enjoy all the benefit those product placements produce--on that note, I assume they'll accrue more benefit as the movie continues to grow in popularity given the recent Best Picture nod. Although, as a media planner, I wonder how you measure ROI on product placements... hmmm... *stroking chin* Interesting medium...

Is this the typical sort of thing we'd be able facilitate in Balihoo's co-op marketing software platform? Perhaps. We currently facilitate co-op advertising for more traditional mediums like TV, radio, magazines, etc. But why not add product placements? I'd love a crack at negotiating a client's request to product place in the next Nicolas Cage bomb. Daydreams aside, it's an exciting time for the co-op model--and startups like Balihoo that foster collective ad spending--as firms discover increasingly inventive ways to band together in their marketing efforts to the benefit of all involved!

So as I calmly slip into daydreams once again as Paparazzi by Lady Gaga blares in my ear buds, I imagine calling Gaga's producer, urging him to change the chorus to "Pe-Pa, Pe-Pa-Roniiiiii" in exchange for a lifetime of stuffed-crust pizzas to the satisfaction of recent client Pizza Hut and of course a very stuffed-crust-loving Lady Gaga. Now that's co-op advertising!

Of course you should judge a book by its cover

Friday, January 29, 2010 by Kelly Mason

Don't judge a book by its cover. I get the meaning behind it - don't make judgments based on appearance. But this seems like the wrong way to express this sentiment.

A book is a product, and typically gets produced when a publishing company makes the decision to do so. Their plan is to make enough money in sales so that the costs are worthwhile. In order to achieve this, it is their job to know the book enough that they can condense it into just a few important points. These points are then analyzed and condensed even more to come up with a marketing spin that will lure the target audience. That marketing spin is used to come up with just the right title, a perfectly constructed summary, and of course, an appropriate cover. Sometimes that cover may be plain, but it can be assumed that the plainness is a strategic decision used to create more sales.

Don't get me wrong, it is what is on the inside, the meat of the product, that truly matters. That is the way that retain loyal customers, and their word-of-mouth helps create new customers. But think about this: the average American adult reads around 250 words per minute. An average novel has around 80,000 words. That means a person will spend about 5 hours and 20 minutes reading a novel, and today that is considered a fairly large investment of ones time. Imagine if you didn't judge a book by its cover and you read them all? You would read dozens of books that don't align with your interests before finding one that does.

So how does this relate to the Balihoo product? In the online world, the home page is the equivalent of our book cover. Imagine if we told our customers not to judge a book by its cover? I guarantee they would not give us a 5 hour grace period to find out if our local marketing software meets their needs. In fact, the grace period of a website home page can probably be measured in seconds. And if they don't know how to start the process of using our local marketing software, then there's no point in analyzing usability in other parts of the ad builder software. The usability focus was clear: the home page - our book cover.

In talking with users, both customers and non-customers, it really is the meat of the product that matters most to them, and to us. They were much more concerned about discussing their local store marketing needs. All feedback is good feedback, and I gladly captured it all, but I had to prompt them back to the home page to finish my planned questions. Often they had a hard time remembering first impressions, or how they started an order, since they have moved on past the home page and on to the local marketing automation.

Once a customer becomes a customer, the cover matters less and less, and that's what we want to get to. But the idea that a book should not be judged by it cover is misleading, because they can't be a loyal customer until they're a customer.

In light of this realization, I'm working on a new saying: Never judge a playing card by the backside of the card. I admit, it's a work in progress, but the backside of a playing card is intended to look like all the rest in the deck. And even if the backside has red squiggly lines or cartoon characters or beer cans, you can't tell anything about it until you turn it over.

Update: Executing Agile Across the Organization

Friday, January 29, 2010 by Kevin Donaldson

For 3 years now at Balihoo we have been using Agile software development techniques and more specifically the Scrum development framework to support the advancement of our local marketing software in an ever changing market.

One reason for this is that Agile effectiveness in an organization is directly proportional to the amount of flux or instability in your product marketplace. That is why it fits perfectly for any start-up, however marketplace instability is everywhere now so it can apply almost anywhere.

As a product team practicing perfecting Agile with Scrum we became both highly productive and highly predictable. Due to this success, in mid 2009 we decided that it might be possible to start applying Agile techniques and the Scrum framework across the organization outside of product development groups for a number of reasons:

all functions in the business were experiencing the same market flux so why not use the same techniques to manage this
Scrum is probably the only framework under the Agile development umbrella that is can be applied outside of a software development context
Scrum is an excellent execution model to apply Lean techniques popularized by Toyota. (In fact Agile and the various frameworks derive much of their techniques from lean thinking)

We began the cross functional deployment of Agile with Scrum using a few simple tools from the Scrum framework such as time-boxed work sprints as well as morning stand-ups. The focus of this initial test was mostly oriented towards increasing the level of communication within teams and across teams about what was being worked on. We saw an immediate jump in organizational awareness - both in what work was being done and not done, translated into faster more informed decisions. We continued to test this for 2-3 months. This left the functional managers hungry for more.

At that point we began applying much more of the Agile/Scrum framework across all functional teams within Balihoo. This included:

team backlogs, with product owners and scrum masters
sprint stories estimated with story points
use of software to track burn-down rates for each team
sprint planning and retrospectives for each group
Weekly cross-team scrum-of-scrums
Identification and tracking of team impediments

Although we are still making refinements and teams are progressing at different rates, agile and scrum are now becoming ingrained in our culture. For instance - we use software called Jira to manage all team backlogs and sprints. We have agreed that if a request does not exist in Jira it does not exist. Another example on a lighter note is a new concept one of my fellow managers made up as we were all making the transition - 'jira-me-crazy'. Yes Agility and Scrum isn't always pleasant but it is an extremely good framework for execution excellence!

Looking back I started thinking a little more about the process we have been going through and put together this simple framework to explain the transition at a high level. (still a work in progress - feedback welcome!)

In our case we started right in at cross functional roll-out however if you are just starting out I have added some thoughts for getting to this point via a pilot process.

It is important to note that in any organization the time involved in the movement from left to right will vary greatly as well as how a company iterates within each of the phases. While we are still actively refining and iterating within the cross functional roll-out phase, as an organization we have now started moving into stage 4 which I am calling Vertical Alignment linking strategy right down to execution using an agile management system with the support of OpenView Partners. Although likely the final stage, you are never really done with this process. Continuous improvement is the name of the Game. As we state in one of our organizational values - 'Make it great and then make it better'.

Twitter - Marketing Software Tools

Friday, January 22, 2010 by Meghann Splittgerber

Twitter is continuing to gain popularity and adoption rates are on the rise. So much in fact, that Twitter is now considered to be an integral part of local advertising and an Internet marketing campaign. In the article, Twitter With a Twist, the author Morrissey, points out many new ways brands have been hopping on the bandwagon, so to speak, of Twitters growing popularity. Brands such as Sweethearts Candies and Tasti D-lite are using Twitter in very different ways including product launch marketing and finding their own successes.

Customer Empathy and Building Great Products

Friday, January 15, 2010 by Kevin Donaldson

One of Balihoo's core values is a focus on the customer where we strive to see the world through the eyes of the local marketer. Whether that person is a franchise owner, local distributor or independent business, local store marketing in a cost effective, efficient way that drives local demand is hard! Helping everyone in our company understand this helps us create a better local marketing software and services.

Interestingly, I just finished a spectacular book by Dev Patnaik entitled Wired to Care - How Companies Prosper when they create Widespread Empathy. In it Patnaik speaks about how humans are literally wired to care for other people stemming from our advanced brain structure that have developed subtle, yet sophisticated ways to understand what other people are thinking or feeling.

One of my favorite comments from the book was Patnaik's point that a great product has to function like a great gift.

It's a physical manifestation of a relationship. It's both an embodiment of who the giver is and what they think of the receiver. When you get a great gift, you can't help but feel that the other person knows you. When you get a lousy gift, you wonder if they even thought about you. The same is true for products. A great one feels like someone out there gets who you are. A lousy one makes you wonder what the company was thinking - or whether it even thought at all.

What a great way to re-frame ones perspective! While most business's are very good at using the advanced neocortex part of our brains (logic and intelligence), it is the limbic system that allows us to feel how others are feeling. The part of our brains is drastically under-utilized at work, however as Patnaik's book argues, this can not only help you increase your sales but also help create a great company with happy employees. Because we are all wired to care, employees that feel like they are making a difference in someone's lives - not just working for a paycheck, will be much happier. Happy employees, happy customers - what better ingredients could you have to build a great company?

Hope for the Rebate

Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Kelly Mason

I don't know about you all, but if I find something I want that's a great price, but then upon a closer look I see that the great price requires the dreaded "mail-in rebate", I will set it right back down. Think about that. I've already evaluated the product enough to know that A) I want it and B) I'm willing to pay the price, and after a couple seconds of evaluation, I can put it right back down, walk away and never look back. (Well, maybe look back, but only once).

One word: Experience. I know, from experience, that I will pay what I deem to be too much for that product, and then I'll go home with big plans to get the cash that is rightfully mine back into my pocket where it will burn a hole until the next can't-beat-it deal comes along. But what will actually happen is that I'll get home and start playing with my new purchase. I'll remember my rebate a while later, and attempt to cut out the UPC code, and then I'll soon realize that my kitchen scissors won't be able to handle the job. So I'll put the box in a 'safe' place and continue playing, with a plan to dig the box cutter out of the garage in the very near future. What happens next is always a little fuzzy. I clean out my purse and ditch what appears to be a worthless receipt. My 'safe' place to store the box will turn out to be a 'hiding' place - from myself. And as a fairly frugal consumer, I'll remember 6 months later and get a pain in my stomach when I realize my money is burning a hole in someone else's pocket and there's nothing I can do about it.

Now, imagine you're a small business owner and the purchase is a year's worth of local advertising. You have a shoebox full of receipts, and instead of one UPC codes, you're cutting ads out of newspapers, magazines, and radio tapes as your proof of performance. Balihoo has designed a co-op advertising solution that redesigns the rebate experience.

Through Balihoo's co-op marketing software program, franchise owners can do it all in one place - select and customize the creative, place their ad in various publications, pay the total costs and yes, receive their rebate RIGHT AWAY. No box cutters necessary. No need to clip ads. Because all the required information needed to get that refund is housed right inside the ad builder software. The system calculates the total, reduces it by the subsidized amount, and then only charges the affiliate - get this - what they OWE! But you know what else happens? People make the purchase! It's what they call a win-win.

As a product specialist, I feel proud to see a co-op advertising solution that works the right way for our users. And as a rebate-repelled consumer, I feel hopeful that the current way isn't the only way.

Convention Successes

Saturday, January 9, 2010 by Meghann Splittgerber

Last week, I had the privilage of attending the Carpet One and Flooring America convention in

Washington DC. It was such a valuable time to meet the different members and many clients that I work with on a daily basis. I believe it makes a dramatic difference to have face-to-face interaction and helps build repore with clients.

Balihoo offers flooring fanchisers marketing software tools to make their local store advertising affordable, easy and effective. It was exciting to help the members learn to use the software. And beyond that, it was great to be able to offer our local media buying solutions at a cost for any budget large or small.

International Franchise Association - 50th Annual Convention

Friday, January 8, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Last year we attended our first IFA Convention without an idea of really what to expect. We were still fairly new into the market with our franchise marketing software and were still trying to explain exactly what Local Marketing Automation was.

I've been to a lot of tradeshows in my day, but I have to say that the IFA show was probably in the top-3 I've ever attended. The biggest difference I found was the engagement-level of the attendees. The show floor was incredibly active with franchisors of all sizes actively looking for solutions. In my industry in particular, I was surprised by the amount of companies looking for ad builder software - particularly a print ad builder. Social media marketing was also a hot topic.

This year, we expect the show to be better than ever. It starts Feb 5 in San Antonio and we're looking forward to it! Are you going to be there? Let's catch up at the show, find us in booth # 627.