National brands are expected to spend $62.7 billion in 2019 to target local consumers, according to BIA’s latest report. While national brands continue to invest heavily in national advertising to build brand awareness and favorability, they’re increasingly taking their marketing programs to the local level to drive engagement.

“Of course, the most successful local marketing programs are not only about advertising and branding, particularly in a growing franchise organization,” said Kandi O’Connor, COO of Vya, a leading provider of simplified local marketing systems for distributed organizations. “As a franchise organization grows, it has to be concerned with how to scale marketing programs to support franchisees at the local level. How do you enable more self-service for franchisees while ensuring brand-compliant materials and campaigns that support the branding you’ve worked so hard to establish? How can franchisees customize things like pricing to align with what their local market demands?”

The answers to these questions lie in having the right processes and systems in place for managing brand-compliant campaigns, materials and products. These processes and systems are also essential for creating efficiencies, which is particularly important for a growing franchise brand that is attempting to scale marketing support for an expanding network of local franchisees.

This is where “Local as a Service” (LaaS) companies play an important role. LaaS is the convergence of marketing technology (martech) and data to reduce workflow complexity and friction, improving data-driven targeting, and ultimately driving higher lift in brand and engagement campaigns. LaaS solution providers work with brands to maintain control over brand policies, assets, and business rules as well as facilitating policy-based media activations and co-op reimbursements for franchisees.

More franchise local marketing trends are examined in BIA’s 2019 Brand and Franchisee Advertising and Marketing Insights report, which features results from franchisee respondents to BIA’s Survey of Advertising and Marketing (SAM™), including advertising budget allocations, top media channels and ROI by marketing channel.

Download the full report for free, courtesy of Vya.