Brand Networks, the cross-channel managed media software and services provider, announced a suite of local social advertising solutions to help brick-and-mortar brands reach, engage, and sell to their local communities in an authentic, credible and extensible way. Brands of all sizes can now generate local awareness, emotional connections, and store footfall with these solutions, leveraging and enhancing relationships with patrons.

“Brick-and-mortar businesses are under attack in today’s digital world. They are looking for new ways to leverage their community presence to build local relationships,” says Dave Fall, CEO of Brand Networks. “Store managers and employees live in the community. They should be the ones localizing content so it resonates. However, optimizing social ad campaigns to maximize performance is an unreasonable requirement for in-store staff. With Brand Networks’ automation, a single digital advertising professional can operate thousands of local digital campaigns all running simultaneously.”

Brand Networks is already powering local advertising at 5,000 brick and mortar locations nationwide. The value of these solutions doesn’t start and end with large enterprises either. Boutique brands like luxury leather retailer Schott NYC have also felt their effects.

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“The success of our new flagship store in Chicago was largely predicated on whether we could connect with local Chicago shoppers. Social advertising was a great place to start,” said Jennifer Goldszer, Vice President of Marketing for Schott NYC. “Brand Networks’ local social capabilities allowed us to connect our store and employees with the surrounding community, helping us create real content from real people while making the best use of every media dollar. In light of the pilot’s success, and knowing that today’s brands must authentically connect with consumers to remain competitive, it’s a strategy we plan to replicate across store locations.”

With Brand Networks, Schott NYC took a hyper-focused approach to audience targeting and brought their new store to life through daily updates on Facebook and Instagram that keyed on local moments, local events, relevant hashtags, and surrounding businesses. Compared to the previous month, the hyper-local strategy led to a 27% increase in average weekly traffic at the store — and, impressively, a 111% increase in average weekly sales.

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The new Brand Networks’ suite offers five core capabilities for local social advertising efforts:

• Local Inventory Ads: Control SKU promotion on a regional, local, or national level while adding or removing items on the fly; automatically pause ads when inventory runs out to reduce customer friction and eliminate wasted impressions.
• Locally Sourced, Relevant Content: Empower local employees to promote in-store events; respond to weather or news-related specials; give local shoutouts to build community, or profile stellar staff. Regional or corporate brand managers still retain oversight and approvals while incentivizing local employees to live the brand out loud.
• Local Audience Activation: Set radius targeting parameters to reach in-market customers on a per-location basis. Extend campaign reach or focus by leveraging first-party audiences and lookalike modeling to find ideal prospects for local campaigns.
• Local Measurement: Achieve a holistic view of online performance across stores through unified reporting and unlock location-level insights to inform future campaigns. Measure the impact of digital campaigns on foot traffic and offline purchases.
• Local Support & Professional Services: To ensure adoption, Brand Networks trains local teams, customizes tools and technology, and provides strategic and technical media management, empowering advertisers from setup to execution, from reporting to insights derivation.

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