Marketing for a multi-location business, on the surface, is about bringing new customers or clients to your great products or services. But what makes that all work? Efficient, organized backend operations and marketing teams, that are all put in place from the start to scale efficiently – that’s what makes it work. Without coordination between corporate and local teams, even the best marketing campaigns can fail to get results, which wastes time, money, and opportunities.
This article explores how streamlining your operations can lay the foundation for consistent growth. From integrating technologies to aligning teams, we’ll look at a few strategies that help businesses find and fix inefficiencies and improve collaboration between teams at all levels.
The Importance of Streamlined Operations in Multi-Location Marketing
Simply put, streamlined operations are the backbone of scalable marketing. When operations and marketing work without friction, and in tandem, businesses can:
- Ensure True Brand Consistency: At every level of the business, when teams are aligned, the branding remains consistent.
- Reduce Costs: Eliminate wasteful duplicate efforts and allocate your resources and budget far more efficiently.
- Improve Local Customization: Give your local teams the power, and the tools, to adapt national strategies to their local markets.
- Drive Better Results: Improve ROI by putting a system in place that makes sure campaigns are executed seamlessly, from planning all the way to implementation.
Common Operational Hurdles in Multi-Location Businesses
Before we get into the solutions, it’s important to understand the problems. Here are some challenges multi-location businesses face when managing their operations and marketing:
- Decentralized Teams: Disconnected corporate and local teams tend to lead to inconsistent messaging and misaligned marketing priorities.
- Resource Allocation Issues: With improper distribution of budget and marketing focus, both national and local campaigns can suffer.
- Communication Gaps: Bad communication between departments almost always results in delays, poor quality of work, and even missed opportunities.
- Technology Silos: A large number of different technologies, systems, and platforms can create inefficiencies, and make it much harder to measure and improve performance.
Strategies for Streamlining Operations and Marketing
With a clear understanding of the problems, and what failing to meet those challenges might result in, let’s look at some of the strategies we can put in place to not only avoid operational inefficiencies, but turn them into learning experiences and positive practices.
When you’re able to streamline your operations, you create a system where corporate and local teams collaborate openly and efficiently – that’s where the real magic starts happening.
1. Centralized Strategy with Local Execution
A good central strategy is the foundation to any good framework, with local teams adding customization to give it relevance to their local markets.
Best Practices:
- Create Playbooks: Create detailed marketing guides that include branding standards, campaign templates, and FAQs for your local teams.
- Empower Your Local Teams: Give them the flexibility to adapt national campaigns to fit their needs and customer preferences.
- Real-Time Support: Offer your local manager a dedicated support team to assist them with any operational challenges they might have.
2. Invest in Integrated Technology
Great technology makes the gap between operations and marketing much more narrow (and far less daunting), giving teams what they need to work more efficiently.
Some Top Tier Tools to Consider:
- CRM Platforms: Salesforce or HubSpot are great for centralizing customer data – this lets you keep track of everything, but also give personalized experiences at scale.
- Marketing Automation Software: Platforms like Marketo or Pardot make email marketing a breeze, and also provide lead tracking and analytics across multiple locations.
- Project Management Systems: Tools like Asana, ClickUp, or Monday.com are excellent for collaboration, task tracking, and keeping your campaigns and teams on schedule.
Example: A behavioral health network does the work to integrate its electronic health record (EHR) system with a CRM like Salesforce. This then allows marketing teams to send automated appointment reminders, share personalized mental health resources, and track patient engagement. And they can do all of that while meeting privacy regulations.
3. Create Clear Communication Channels
Efficient communication cannot be understated. This is the primary way that corporate and local teams stay on the same page regarding goals, timing, and campaign execution.
Best Practices:
- Weekly Check-Ins: Schedule recurring weekly meetings with regional or local managers to review campaigns and share updates.
- Centralized Communication Hub: Use tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to keep all discussion in one place.
- Feedback Loops: Get periodic feedback from your local teams about their campaign performance, any challenges they’ve faced, and opportunities they might see for improvement. Oftentimes it’s the people on the ground who see the best opportunities.
4. Standardize Reporting and Analytics
Data-driven decision-making becomes a lot easier, and far more effective when everyone is working with the same data and benchmarks.
Best Practices:
- Unified Dashboards: Develop centralized reporting dashboards. This gives any involved parties a much deeper understanding of the key performance metrics at both corporate and local levels.
- Customizable Reports: Let your local teams generate reports for their specific goals and market conditions.
- Consistent KPIs: It’s important that all of your teams use the same metrics, like ROI, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs, to name a few.
Real-World Example: A Retail Chain’s Transformation
A national retail chain struggled with very fragmented operations. This caused problems all across the business, from inconsistent customer experiences to completely ineffective marketing. But when they started using an integrated CRM system with built in reporting, and then launched a company-wide comms platform (think Slack), they saw the following results:
- 30% Reduction in Marketing Cost: By eliminating a large amount of duplicated efforts in different locations.
- Improved Campaign ROI: Centralized reporting allowed for better analysis, and this led to more efficient campaigns and better targeting.
- Higher Employee Satisfaction: Better communication and a robust software platform gave the local managers the confidence they needed to run marketing campaigns that saw real results.
Emerging Trends in Operational Efficiency
1. AI and Automation
AI-powered tools can make operations more efficient by automating repetitive tasks – like content scheduling, ad bidding, and performance tracking (all of which are already possible).
Example: Many national brands and chains already use AI to analyze local market data and automatically adjust ad budgets.
2. Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics tools are used to forecast trends. This helps businesses allocate resources proactively, and stay ahead of lagging competitors. .
Example: A restaurant brand predicts seasonal surges in specific locations, so they can have adequate marketing support and a budget in place well in advance.
3. Sustainable Practices
As businesses adopt more and more eco-friendly practices, make sure marketing and operations highlight any sustainability efforts – this can strongly resonate with modern consumers.
Example: A multi-location retailer promotes its local involvement in recycling programs, and they use social media to bring more attention to the initiative.
Measuring the Impact of Streamlined Operations
Here are some ways you can track your operational efficiency, which can at first glance be more elusive than tracking typical performance with traditional metrics and KPIs. They are:
- Campaign Efficiency: Measure how quickly and accurately your approved campaigns are executed across locations.
- Operational Costs: Monitor any actions you’ve taken to reduce wasted resources, like duplicated tools or redundant efforts by staff. Measure the operational costs saved by these efforts.
- Customer Satisfaction: Use surveys and reviews (before, and after) to measure if improved operations turned into better customer experiences.
- Team Productivity: Track whether or not operational improvements have had an impact on the workload and the satisfaction of your teams. Review project completion times (before and after operational changes), and use internal surveys to get feedback from your teams.
A solid operational framework lets marketing teams do what they do best: connect with customers so they can deliver value. And with that solid framework, they can scale the business out without compromising on quality. Create a system where every location, from the smallest to the flagship, works together to achieve the shared goals of the company. You’ve got this.
