We keep seeing examples of how local advertising is changing. Google + just launched their local pages for small businesses.
This was expected ever since Google + was launched as a direct competitor to Facebook. Now it looks like Google is connecting the data in a dealer’s Places Page to their Google + Page. Lots of questions still about how this will work and we know it will continue to evolve into something better for SMBs, no matter what it looks like today.
The real takeaway here is that local advertising is changing for your dealers. The good news is that much of what is happening is free of publication costs, unlike local newspaper, radio, direct mail and television. The bad news is that it’s confusing and time consuming for most SMBs.
The opportunity for a great brand is to take the guess work and the work out of taking advantage of the new local. Use your ad builder/marcom site to support the free online mediums like Facebook and Google + by providing the necessary assets to promote your brand and then host and maintain the dealers’ pages so you can track every click along the way.
It’s free advertising. Doesn’t require managing co-op funds and it really works. It only requires that you think outside of the box when it comes to thinking about retail advertising.
It’s the new local.