“Think globally, act locally” is an environmental call to action, but it’s equally applicable to the way many brands should think about online audiences and interactive marketing campaigns. To help marketers understand and embrace digital opportunities in the local sphere, IAB has published a new Local Buyer’s Guide. Numerous tools and platforms exist for creating consumer context, relevance, and engagement, and navigating these can seem tricky at first. However, adding local to your digital marketing arsenal will make campaigns much more effective.
According to BIA Kelsey, in 2015, local advertisers will spend a total of $139.4 billion dollars targeting local audiences across all media, with the various forms of digital comprising about 26 percent of that total. BIA Kelsey’s forecast confirms that digital’s share of local is only going to grow over time, exceeding one in three local ad dollars spent by 2019. The IAB Local Buyer’s Guide aims to be the definitive industry reference for business decision-makers who need to learn about using digital to advertise to local audiences, and who wish to understand the burgeoning opportunities unlocked by local digital media’s growth and sophistication. This includes large national brands with local presences, small and medium businesses (SMBs), and regional-to-global ad agencies.
The Guide includes:
- Basic statistics on U.S. digital local advertising
- A breakdown of digital platforms available for local media, including desktop and mobile, but also extending to digital TV and out-of-home as well
- Factors to take into consideration when planning a local campaign
- Best practices for the design of ads and creative content
- What metrics are available and how to measure success
- Examples of successful campaigns
In the world of digital media, “local” and “location” are closely intertwined, but not identical. For the purposes of this Guide, “location” is a data-centric and technology-centric concept, while “local” refers to people, and the place or places that are most meaningful and relevant to them. Thus while geo-targeting is a powerful tool with many applications, the guide keeps a focus on a person-centric approach that helps marketers reach customers with useful and eye-catching messaging where they live, work, and make most of their purchases.
The Guide concentrates its advice on several of the key skills marketers need to succeed with local. Much of the guide focuses on the need to balance locally relevant messages with the desired scale and reach of a marketing campaign. Other key recommendations include:
- Think of local and location as a part of who a customer is, not just where they are.
- Leverage mobile as an increasingly vital channel for reaching local audiences.
- Use programmatic to help automate local buying.
- Plan campaign goals to really understand and attribute success, not simply to track every possible datapoint.
- Leverage other IAB tools, services, and capabilities for deeper dives and to help pick effective local advertising sellers and technical solutions.
The IAB Mobile Center extends its gratitude to Cofactor and Hulu, for sponsoring the creation of the guide, to BIA Kelsey for its research and writing expertise, and to the entire IAB Local Committee, for generously sharing their time, advice, and feedback. Download the IAB Local Buyer’s Guide here.