If your client isn’t overly confident in their current digital local marketing strategy, they’re not alone. According to research from CMO Council, 67% of marketers aren’t too confident their strategies will produce the desired results. Want to move your client over to the 33% of marketers who are confident in their strategies? Here are some things you need to know.

How to Optimize Digital Local Marketing

Expand the Meaning of Success

CMO Council says marketers judge the success of their digital local marketing, media marketing and advertising by various categories:

A lift in sales: 64% of marketers use this to measure the success of their strategies
Return on ad spend: 59%
Reach of the targeted audience(s): 47%
Brand lift: 45%
Clicks and online engagement: 41%

All of those are great metrics to measure the success of marketing strategies. However, there’s a critical part of measuring performance via sales lift that marketers are leaving out, says CMO Council. You should also include incremental sales in the overall sales lift.

According to HubSpot, incremental sales are the difference between the sales generated during the current digital local marketing and media marketing strategies and what your client estimates they would have made without the current promotion. In short: “Total Sales — Baseline Sales = Incremental Sales.”

So, in order to truly optimize your client’s digital local marketing and media marketing strategies, you need to be examining ALL sales. Comparing total sales to how much your client spent on the campaign may initially show that the promotion was worth the investment. But calculating the baseline sales may suggest that your client would have made a comparable amount without the promotion. Measuring the success of your client’s strategy using incremental sales will help you both know whether you should stick with the digital media you’re currently using or experiment with another media type.

Focus on Retaining Customers

If you have a sales background, you know that it is SIGNIFICANTLY less costly to retain current customers than try to win over new ones. So, why is digital local marketing primarily focusing on obtaining new customers? Businesses have likely decided they want to capture additional market share as the new year begins.

CMO Council points out that only 16% of marketing leaders say that retaining customers is extremely important to their digital local marketing, media marketing and advertising strategies. However, winning customers is extremely important to 37% of them.

One way to cater to loyal customers is to promote your client’s loyalty program. According to a previous SalesFuel blog, featuring data from AdAge, loyalty programs grab the attention of both potential and existing customers with discounts, deals and low prices. Existing customers who are also part of loyalty programs are even more beneficial to your client. According to the blog, “Customers who engage in loyalty programs and self-identify as fans of the brand are also often less price sensitive and will spend larger shares of wallet with that brand.”

So, focusing on retaining customers with your digital local marketing and media marketing strategy will help make them more effective. And don’t forget to spotlight your client’s loyalty program!

Use the Media Your Client’s Target Audience Responds to

These improvements to your client’s digital local marketing, media marketing and advertising strategies will mean nothing if the ads don’t reach their intended audience. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time and effort going down the list of digital ad types and seeing what works, you should take a look at AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel. By looking up your client’s target audience on AudienceSCAN, you’ll discover which types of ads, both digital and traditional, were the most popular among that audience within the last year. That research will give you a good place to start when planning your next strategy.

Photo by Elisa Ventur