One of the biggest misconceptions we hear is that programmatic media requires deep pockets reserved for only the largest of corporations.

In reality, however, businesses of any size can use programmatic advertising.

Programmatic advertising automates the process of advertisement purchasing by targeting specific audiences and demographics. Programmatic advertising companies makes it possible for you to use tons of data to show highly relevant ads to people based on their online behavior or customer profile.

This is particularly important for multi-location paid advertising strategies being managed at the corporate level. Through the use of data and technology, you can automate the display buying process across all of your locations. That means no more wasted time and effort by your marketing teams as they negotiate targeting types, number of impressions and price.

If you want programmatic display ads to work for you, you have to focus on these three things:

1. Audience – reaching the right person:

When looking to reach the right people, you’ll want to consider the many customer attributes that programmatic can take into account, including:

• Behavior
• Demographics
• Interests
• Actions on your site
• Past purchase activity

Let’s say you own a pizza shop and have a customer who’s never visited your site, but is showing behaviors that indicate that they are pizza lovers.

You can use interest-based targeting to try to reel in these prospects.

If, however, your prospect has heard of you before, or has visited your site/used your app, you’ll be best served with remarketing to reengage with these past visitors.

Now, let’s say that you discover that these audiences are performing quite well. Then you’ll likely want to use lookalike targeting to grow volume based on your existing, profitable customers.

2. Showing the right ads

Now that you know how to identify your right audience, it’s time to reach that right person with the right messaging.

Let’s say that you run a pizza franchise with locations throughout the East Coast. With programmatic technology, you can deliver ads that have messaging specific to each market. For example, football season is a great time for pizza franchises to ramp up their business. With programmatic display, you can target a New England Patriots fan in Boston (who happened to go online to look for the kickoff time of the game) with a deal on a delivery order.

The ad could say something like: Order one large pizza now, before the Pats’ kickoff, and get the second half off!

That type of targeted messaging can funnel through to all of your locations – from Dolphins fans in Miami to Bills fans in Buffalo.

The key to making programmatic display ads work for you is to harness the nearly limitless data you have courtesy of your website. The analytics compiled from your website will help you dissect your visitors’ behaviors, demographics, interests, as well as shopping stages.

Combine that data with ads delivered based on certain actions, and what you have is the makings of the right ad, delivered to the right person, at the right moment.

3. Bidding the right amount:

The beauty of programmatic advertising is that it can react fast to changing market dynamics. It’s constantly at work analyzing data signals, measuring performance, and adjusting campaign bids so that you get the best bang for your buck.

To keep things simple, you’ll want to automate bidding based on your specific business goals.

For example, let’s say your goal is increased conversions. AdWords gives you two advanced bidding options:

1. Enhanced cost-per click (eCPC)
2. Target CPA bidding

eCPC is a lot like manual bidding, except that your max CPC can be boosted by up to 30% more.

Target CPA handles all of your bidding based on a CPA goal.

If your campaign is lacking in historical conversion data, or if you use 3rd-party bidding tools, start with eCPC.

If, however, you’re looking to automate the entire bidding process towards conversions, use Target CPA.

Don’t delay any longer if you haven’t already implemented programmatic advertising for your Multi-Local™ company.

As confusing as it might seem at the onset, it’s actually fairly straightforward and can deliver an unmatched ROI for each of your individual locations.

When it comes to managing the marketing of multiple locations, flexibility and fast-thinking are key. What works for one location may not prove to be effective for another.

That’s why it’s important to constantly monitor your strategies and data, as well as listen to your managers at each location. In general, you’ll find that implementing programmatic display will yield positive results.

However, you must be able to adapt these strategies at the local level, based on the needs and demographics of the surrounding communities.

This may sound like a complicated task to manage at the corporate level; however, through the use of modern technologies and digital approaches, you’ll find it easier and less taxing to develop individualized marketing strategies for each of your locations, without exhausting your budget or resources.