Local Marketing Survey: Executive Analysis

This past February, we published the inaugural LOCALACT Annual Marketing Survey results and report. The goal of the survey was to gain key marketing insights from franchisees and local business owners across a range of business categories that included retail, healthcare, education, financial services, restaurants & QSRs, real estate and more. As a follow up, we asked Location3 CEO Alex Porter to share his analysis of the survey results and report.

Note: surveyed franchises were currently participating in a paid digital marketing program at the time of the survey.

Highlights:

Franchisees’ marketing budgets are spread out across a number of different channels.  This means their budgets are stretched and their time is spent organizing across a number of tactics.

Where do you plan to spend your local marketing budget in 2021?

Marketing at the local level is going to grow in 2021. 38 % of respondents plan to increase their digital marketing budgets, and only 5% were planning on decreasing their budgets.

What is your general projection for your local marketing budget in 2021?

However 38 % were not confident that their local marketing was working, 26% had an increase in local competition and 20% needed guidance on how to spend their marketing dollars.

What is your biggest local marketing challenge right now?

Takeaways:

The local marketing landscape remains complex and challenging. Managing multiple marketing programs without clear understanding of impact is the largest challenge/opportunity for assisting franchisees market more effectively.  Providing guidance for marketing programs within digital options and across all tactics is an area of improvement. Digital marketing will grow in 2021 and will likely lead the way in budget growth due to the transparency of ROI if education and guidance is provided to the local franchisee.