3 Ways for Franchise Brands to Rethink Local Advertising In a Cookieless World

For years, brand marketers have relied on third-party cookies to track website visitors and collect data to help with relevant advertising to targeted audiences. Third-party cookies have also been a primary tool for measuring results, or return on ad spend, via attribution in the digital world. 

The effects of a cookieless world will be felt by all brand marketers. Some more than others. For instance, the change will be felt most acutely by franchise brands that continue to execute their digital marketing at a national or DMA level. When addressing audiences at the national or DMA scale, the ability to serve relevant messages to consumers relies heavily on third-party cookies - or a potential alternative, like a Unified ID.

On the other hand, franchise brands who execute advertising per location will be well-positioned to weather the cookie apocalypse. That means deploying per-location budgets, creative, targeting, and reporting for brand marketing.  

With a per-location approach to digital marketing, here are the ways franchise brand marketers will be set up to thrive in a cookieless world.

The information you compile about your own customers, or your first-party data, should be your primary focus. Investing in a CDP or CRM that helps gather, normalize, and activate your customer data is a great first step. Every time a customer logs in, places an order, or takes actions on your website or app marks a chance to gather valuable local data you can use to improve your marketing message.

Google Analytics is also a great source of first-party data, as it collects and stores your brand’s audience data from consumers visiting your site. Understanding audience attributes within your own environments is often the most valuable data you have - because it’s your audience. With individual landing pages per brand location, this audience data can be revealed per location which, as we’ll see, can be used for better brand and local advertising in a cookieless world.

See what Deloitte recommends about Meeting Customers in a Cookieless World. 

Many brands have moved away from locally relevant messaging for a number of reasons. One reason was the ability to target or re-target individual consumers with a relevant ad via third-party cookies. As third-party cookies disappear, contextual and local messaging once again take center stage (if they never left in the first place, big on you). 

Locally relevant and authentic messaging remains one of the best ways to create impactful engagements with your consumers. This has been difficult without technology like Hyperlocology that helps brands centrally manage local advertising across the top digital channels. 

Local audiences that engage with your brand’s ads within specific market areas, or click through to the individual location’s landing page, helps to enrich your first-party data specific to each brand location.  A technology platform like Hyperlocology is able to ingest per-location audience data and sync with your existing CDP to refine and build your first-party data.

Learn How Consumer Behavior and Location-Based Marketing Has Redefined Local

3. Measure real business outcomes per location

As online user tracking becomes more challenging, how do you measure the success of a marketing campaign, creative, or channel? The traditional online attribution models rely heavily on third-party cookies to do this. 

Online attribution has always been a mix of art and science. The truest way to measure the ROI of advertising for a franchise brand is, and always will be, looking to see if it moved the needle in the real world.

With a per-location approach to advertising, and with access to all of the top digital ad channels in one place, you’re able to track business outcomes down to the store level.

With Hyperlocology, franchise marketing software, you see all of this in one place. Did marketing efforts drive more sales? Increased lunch orders? Improve the average order value? Marketing decisions can be made at the location level based on real business outcomes, as opposed to overly broad optimizations at a national or DMA level.

Without third-party cookies, franchise brand marketers will have to shift their digital strategy. Building first-party data per location, focusing on local relevance and authenticity, and measuring real business outcomes per location will help drive meaningful consumer engagements and better results in a cookieless world.

As if better results aren’t enough reason, you'll also build trust with your franchisees by providing location-level transparency for your brand marketing.

If you're interested in more local advertising insights, check out 5 Ways to Localize Your Restaurant Advertising This Year!