Do Branding and Regional Retail Marketing Mix?

The big national retail brands spend tons of money on branding. What what about regional and local retailers? It's hard to move away from promotional marketing that moves the weekly sales needle and spend time and money on branding. Over the last 25 years we've created plenty of branding spots/campaigns for our retail clients. And almost every time they've bought into the concept or even pushed it as their own agenda, but went away from in in less than six months. Usually less time.

The problem is that branding is a long game and promotional advertising gets immediate results. It may be good or it may be bad, but you pretty much know if it worked right away. We've always had a "build the brand, sell the goods" philosophy for our retail clients. Is it worth building your brand while you work on selling the goods now? Absolutely. But, it's hard to be patient with building your brand when sales numbers start to slide. And if you're a regional or local retailer, you have a limited budget. So, you usually want as much of that budget to go against what's going to drive sales this week as you can. You'll worry about next week when it comes.

That philosophy has worked for decades. Granted, every spot builds your brand reputation, even if it's just building that of a sale oriented, promotional brand. However, these days it's getting harder and harder to ignore the branding part of the equation. As retailers look to attract Millennials, they're finding that this is a generation who cares a lot more about what your brand represents than previous generations. They want to know that you are a good corporate citizen. That you treat your workers well. That you use sustainable materials and green practices. They want you to provide personalized services and customized products.

So what's the answer for regional retailers? Do you syphon off some of your budget for branding oriented marketing? Do you just try and do a better job of integrating brand messaging into your promotional efforts? Or do you just try and work your brand messaging into your social efforts and online properties? Well, yes. To all of it. But the actual answer will be different for each retailer. It depends on what your brand is, who your customers are, what they want and what you can give. The fact of the matter is our long held belief that you need to do both - build the brand and sell the goods – is more true now than ever. Finding the right balance will be different for each retailer. Fortunately we also have a lot more tools and mediums to work with now to accomplish this.