The Evolution of Search and Social: Marketing Predictions for 2025 (Part 2 of 3)
How To Dominate Your Co-Op Marketing Program With the Help of SOCi
How To Dominate Your Co-Op Marketing Program With the Help of SOCi
Distributor brands often need help gaining local visibility due to heavy competition, varying consumer preferences, and no localized marketing strategy. You're missing out on local consumers if your brand doesn’t appear in organic searches or has minimal social media presence. Even worse, you’re potentially losing them to competitors. To gain local customers, distributor brands must start leveraging a localized marketing strategy, as well as a co-op program. This entails partnering with local dealers that sell your products or services and creating a mutually beneficial partnership. By combining these approaches, your brand can establish a powerful local presence, optimize localized content and campaigns, and ultimately drive sales in targeted markets. Keep reading to learn how…What Is Localized Marketing?
Before we get any further, let’s define both localized marketing and co-op marketing programs. Localized marketing focuses on creating an online presence within specific local markets, leading to improved brand awareness and increased sales for your distributor brand and local dealers. The three pillars of localized marketing are local search, local social, and online reputation management. Your job as a distributor brand is to work with local dealers to define local markets and then use localized marketing tactics to improve sales and brand recognition for the local dealers within your geographic areas. Read our blog post on localized marketing for distributor brands for a very in-depth guide on localized marketing.What Is a Co-Op Marketing Program?
Once your brand and local dealers have defined your local markets and areas, it’s time to implement the three pillars of localized marketing into each area to support your dealers better. To implement your localized marketing strategies, you’ll need a co-op marketing program, or a co-op program for short.A co-op program is a collaborative initiative where the brand and its authorized local dealers contribute resources to create and execute marketing campaigns.Together, your distributor brand and its authorized local dealers will focus on promoting your brand’s products or services to your defined local markets.
How to Make Your Co-Op Programs Successful
Co-op programs are a symbiotic relationship between your brand and local dealers. Therefore, both parties must ensure they get the most out of the co-op program and partnership. The following tactics will help establish a successful partnership.1. Ensure Dealers Reap the Benefits
Local dealers need to feel like they’re getting something in return for their partnership beyond increased sales of your products or services. You can ensure your co-op programs run successfully by doing the following for your partnered dealers:- Have brand guidelines to help maintain brand standards and integrity
- Shift to digital to better define and measure desired marketing outcomes
- Give dealers exposure as well by including their special promotions and programs in marketing campaigns
- Make the co-op program as “turn-key” as possible, where you’re doing the majority of the lift early on