National brands who shift their marketing efforts to local campaigns have produced millions of dollars in new sales, with no net changes in total ad budget.

That's according to the Harvard Business Review.

I wrote this thought leadership piece to be useful to brand marketing managers investigating something called channel marketing.

What is channel marketing?

When done correctly, channel advertising can be a win-win for brands and their local retail channel partners. Brands gets a boost in awareness and product visibility at the local level, while retail partners gets the sale and the top-of-mind association with brands.

In the past, brand marketing managers using traditional marketing channels for co-op have been frustrated that their messages were sometimes diluted or mishandled in local markets. Add to that frustrated retailers are trying their best to follow complicated rules to redeem co-op requests, it’s no wonder more than $1 billion of the $22 billion brand set aside by brands for co-op isn’t redeemed.

While co-op advertising has been a fixture in print and broadcast media for decades, it’s still relatively new to the world of online marketing. That’s especially surprising, given that the Internet gives brands total control of their messaging, along with precise data on which ads in which markets are working to quickly and inexpensively switch out creative.

Useful tactic (via Netsertive blog):
Channel Marketing for National Brands