How to Find the Perfect Spot for Your Restaurant

Share this:

A huge key to the success of MULO (multi-location) brands is knowing which cities, neighborhoods, streets (and even which side of the street) to put a location. Technology is now playing a huge role in distribution planning. Brands used to pick their locations using maps and a wide range of demographic data. They would also […]

The MULO Dozen: January Brands in Review

The MULO Dozen: January Brands in Review

Share this:

2024 is off to a fast start! As MULO (multi-location) retailers, restaurants, and service businesses head into a new year, they face new challenges and opportunities. And, of course, “The Big Game,” when brands get to flex their creative and digital muscle. Here’s what we saw this month. Have news? Please e-mail me. Fridays is […]

The MULO Dozen: October Brands in Review

Share this:

Last month, we launched this new section,  recapping some of the highlights across MULO (multi-location) brands — retailers, restaurants, c-stores, service businesses, and any other establishment that have multiple locations (or aspires to scale to that level), as well as the agencies that help them flourish. We cover: INNOVATION: Here are the brands that are […]

To Scale or Not to Scale? 10 Factors for Brands to Consider

To Scale or Not to Scale? 10 Factors for Brands to Consider

Share this:

Multi-location (MULO) brands are complex and sometimes filled with risks. In the retail sector alone, more than 3,000 stores have closed so far this year. However, establishing a brand in one region and scaling it to multiple geographies (sometimes even global) can be very profitable in the long run. But with that complexity comes a wide […]

Simon Says "Your Product is In-Stock!" The Rise of Product Search Today and How MULO Brands Should Respond

Simon Says “Your Product is In-Stock!” The Rise of Product Search Today and How Brands Should Respond

Share this:

Simon Property Group recently expanded its Simon Search technology, enabling mall-goers to determine if the brands they want are in-store,  before they head out to shop and spend. Product search before visiting a multi-location (or other) business is nothing new. Google reports that 74 percent of brick-and-mortar shoppers will do some online sleuthing before they […]

5 Brands Using QR Codes to Drive Traffic to Online Platforms

5 Brands Using QR Codes to Drive Traffic to Online Platforms

Share this:

The predictions were correct. QR codes are back — in a big way. After debuting in the 1990s, then losing relevance in the early 2000s, QR codes came roaring back to life in 2020. Now, three years after QR codes re-entered the mainstream during the Covid-19 pandemic, some of the biggest brands in the world […]

A Dozen Predictions for Multi-Location Brands

A Dozen Predictions for Multi-Location Brands

Share this:

Over the past few years, we’ve seen cosmic shifts in consumer shopping and dining behaviors. Our lives have been forever changed by the pandemic and the proliferation of a wide range of technologies (not to mention supply chain challenges).  Our focus on multi-location brands qualifies us as futurists, so here are some of our observations […]

Consumers Continue to Spend with Department Store Brands

Share this:

When Commerce Signals, a TransUnion company that provides credit and debit card insights for retail, restaurants, and entertainment, discovered that department store brands TJ Maxx, Kohls, Nordstrom, and Bergdorf Goodman took market share from the likes of Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Saks, Nick Mangiapane was not surprised. “That’s exactly the kind of question that Commerce […]

Lauren Niehaus Shares 7 Things Retailers Can Learn from the Cannabis Industry

Direct Mail is Having a Moment. Incorporate it Into Your Mix

Share this:

Snail mail never really died. It just went back into its shell during the digital advertising boom. During the pandemic, letter-writing and sending cards became popular. Beyond that, however, multi-location brands are seeing that the good old-fashioned postcard or direct mail may have value. In fact, 58% of marketers have more marketing budget allocated to […]

Boom & Bust: Learnings from Multi-location Brands

Share this:

What do Brooks Brothers, White Castle, and 7-Eleven have in common? They are among the multi-location retailers, restaurants, and convenience stores founded 50+ years ago and are still operating today. Restructuring, downsizing, and a move to omnichannel sales are inevitable. When you read about brands that have survived and even thrived over the decades, many […]

5 Pointers for Driving Performance with Brand-to-Brand Partnerships

Share this:

Leading brands are realizing that it is no longer sustainable to rely on the old paradigm of large, brand-to-brand collaborations. To elevate their business and up their partnerships game, brands need to expand their understanding of who a partner is, how more relationships can be managed efficiently at scale, and why performance-based compensation is the future of partner marketing. 

Here are five pointers brands need to consider when looking to grow through mutually beneficial brand partnerships.

Heard on the Street, Episode 24: Lowering Friction for Video Ads Part 2, with Waymark

Share this:

Video has always been a coveted ad medium for local businesses. It carries a certain vanity factor and a high perceived ROI (and real ROI, depending on other factors). But one barrier has always been the creative production, which often results in low quality. We’ve all seen those cheesy auto-dealer ads.

Fortunately, technical barriers are lowering, says Waymark CEO Nathan Labenz in the latest episode of Street Fight’s Heard on the Street Podcast. In this episode, we feature part II of our interview with Labenz and pick up where we left off in discussing distribution strategies. If half the battle in video ads is creation, the other half is distribution.

As Brands Move Marketing In-House, Agencies Push Back

Share this:

The number of big brands moving their marketing in-house is growing, but whether that decision actually leads to lower costs and faster turnaround times is still a hotly debated topic. Holly Robowski, associate director of paid media at Cardinal Marketing, offers a perspective contradicting the pro-in-house zeitgeist.

Street Fight Daily: Brands Shift Digital Spend to Local, The Enduring Benefits of Mobile Apps

Share this:

BRANDS, PUBLISHERS, CUSTOMERS… Survey: Multi-Location Brands Continue to Shift Digital Budgets to Local… The Enduring Benefits of Mobile Apps for Brands…
Top 10 Programmatic Publishers of 2018…

Thunder CEO Sees Both Media and Creative Strategy Changing in 2018

Share this:

Rather than applying marketing information based on devices, marketers will increasingly be able to target actual people, Wong told Street Fight in an interview. Knowledge about customers is more precise, and that’s going to change both the media and the creative strategy.

How Brands Determine Their Local Marketing Effectiveness

Share this:

Website analytics are the most popular means of evaluating local marketing for multi-location brands. While that’s a logical tactic for analyzing digital marketing and advertising effectiveness, it hardly presents the full picture of multichannel marketing or online-to-offline attribution.

Survey: Enterprise Marketers Are Increasing Local Digital Mix

Share this:

As enterprise local marketers become experienced with digital tactics they originally used to promote their corporate sites, they are getting more savvy about digital marketing. Today, most of them spend less than a third of their digital budgets on local campaigns and programs, but 40% say they are increasing the local mix.

The ABCs of Reputation Management for Brands

Share this:

Every multilocation brand today has a social media agency or department, and most, though not all, are running some type of local listings management program, whether internally or with a partner. But plenty of brands are neglecting to do anything about online reviews of local stores.

Enterprise Local Marketers Treat AI Hype as Means to an End

Share this:

Our research suggests that big brands and retailers don’t have AI high on their list of local marketing priorities. But it appears that if brands are very email- and direct mail-focused, and that’s where they’re thinking of applying AI.

Using Social Media for Enterprise Local Marketing: Comparing Twitter and Facebook Marketers

Share this:

Surveys suggest social media is pretty influential for shoppers, particularly young ones, although they gravitate to Instagram and Snapchat. Big brands are taking heed. Although packaged goods giant P&G said it was paring back its most highly-targeted Facebook ads, it recently confirmed that it was maintaining its overall Facebook spending.