Halloween is here, but you should really leave the scare tactics to the haunted houses. Traditional co-op advertising programs are so outdated and inefficient that trying to implement them feels like trying to revive the dead.
Many national brands create a co-op account for each of their retailers. In each account, a marketing budget is set aside for the retailer to allocate towards running local co-branded marketing and advertising campaigns.
Co-op marketing is a broken process with time-consuming fulfillment methods and a focus on traditional offline advertising channels. Many of the world’s biggest brands, like GE Appliances, have been running co-op programs for close to 100 years, and so they started these programs at a time when retailers really only advertised in print newspapers or other physical fliers.
But today’s consumers are digital, and we expect more. We want to engage with a brand or a local store on our phones, on-the-go, whenever the need arises. Co-op advertising wasn’t built for today’s always-on digital world, and it is failing modern retailers’ digital marketing needs at an alarming rate. As a result, retailers simply don’t participate or engage with co-op. This results in wasted money and disjointed marketing efforts that don’t increase in-store foot traffic or brand value at a local level.
Traditional co-op advertising is taxing and inefficient, particularly for local retailers who need digital marketing support and resources to compete with e-Commerce. National brands and local retailers can be a powerful duo for driving sales when working together, but sticking with a traditional co-op model may be delaying progress.
Independent retailers need a better, easier way to obtain digital marketing support from the brands whose products they sell, and co-op advertising is no longer the answer.
I may be leading the witness with that question, but it’s an important one. Give your retailers ‘treats’, not tricks! By providing retailers with faster, easier access to digital advertising content and budget, brands improve goodwill and working relationships with their retailers — which of course makes retailers more likely to actively promote and sell the brand’s products in-store. By removing traditional co-op roadblocks, retailers have more time to devote to digital marketing and increasing local awareness of your brand.
National brands like ADM Animal Nutrition, Patagonia, and Smartwool leverage advertising solutions like Promoboxx Local Ads to provide better, smarter local advertising to their retailer networks.
By effectively engaging retailers and driving local consumers in-store, Local Ads is the better alternative to scary outdated co-op programs. Here’s how:
Co-op Advertising doesn’t have to be the stuff of nightmares when you’re working with Promoboxx. We provide a new and improved way to advertise locally through your retailers because we understand how to make the relationship beneficial and simple for both groups.
Contact us today to learn more about our Local Ads capabilities and how you can start taking the next steps towards a better co-op strategy.
