National Brands
National Scale Shouldn’t Mean Treating Every Market the Same.
Book a Demo Talk to MarketStormNational brands have an advantage most businesses spend years trying to build: scale. They have recognition, resources, established markets and the ability to reach consumers across the country. But scale creates its own marketing challenge.
Consumers don’t experience a national brand nationally.
They experience it locally and personally. Competition differs by market. Economic conditions differ. Weather, culture and seasonality differ. Consumer needs differ. Even the behaviors that indicate someone is becoming interested in a product or service can change from one part of the country to another.
The brand may be national.
Intent is often local.
MarketStorm helps national brands maintain the advantages of scale while adding intelligence at the market and consumer level.
One Brand. Thousands of Different Consumer Journeys.
Traditional national advertising is exceptionally good at creating broad reach. But reach alone doesn’t tell us which consumers are becoming relevant right now.
Two people may fit exactly the same demographic profile and have completely different relationships with a category. One may have no current need. The other’s behavior may indicate that a need, interest or decision is beginning to develop. MarketStorm uses AI, behavioral data and custom algorithms to help recognize those differences.
Through the MarketStorm Intelligence Engine™, we look for behavioral patterns that may indicate emerging intent and use those signals to build more dynamic audiences. Rather than beginning with the assumption that everyone who fits a broad national audience definition should be treated equally, we look for evidence that something is changing.
That allows a national strategy to become much more responsive without losing the advantages of national scale.
NO CURRENT NEED
Broadly relevant, but not actively in-market.
EMERGING INTENT
Behavior suggests a need may be developing.
ProtoSignals™ Finding Opportunity Before
It Becomes Obvious
For national brands, one of the biggest opportunities may exist before consumers make their intentions obvious.
MarketStorm calls the early behavioral patterns that may indicate a developing need or interest ProtoSignals™. Individually, these signals may mean very little. Together, patterns of changing behavior can help indicate that a consumer is becoming increasingly relevant to a brand.
This gives national marketers an opportunity to enter the journey before the consumer necessarily conducts an obvious search, visits the brand’s website or takes another action that makes demand visible.
That timing matters because once demand becomes explicit, the competitive environment changes. The consumer may be comparing products, searching Google, visiting marketplaces, reading reviews or evaluating competitors.
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Broad Relevance Consumer fits a general audience profile.
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Emerging Intent Changing behavior signals an opportunity to influence.
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Obvious Demand Searches, website visits, comparisons and reviews.
MarketStorm is designed to work earlier, while intent is emerging and preferences can still be influenced.
National Intelligence.
Local Resolution.
One of the biggest mistakes a national marketing strategy can make is assuming that the same audience behaves the same way everywhere.
A consumer in Phoenix may encounter a completely different set of needs and competitive choices from a similar consumer in Boston. A category may be highly seasonal in one market and relatively stable in another. A competitor may dominate one geography and barely exist in the next. Cultural differences, local economics and even weather can change which behaviors matter.
MarketStorm’s technology allows us to maintain a larger national intelligence strategy while examining behavior at much greater local resolution.
Phoenix, AZ A different set of needs, competitive choices
and local conditions.
Boston, MA Different market dynamics, consumer behavior,
and competitive choices.
- Climate & Seasonality
- Consumer Behavior
- Competitive Landscape
- Local Economics
This isn’t simply geotargeting. Geotargeting determines where an ad can be delivered.
Market intelligence at local resolution helps us understand why the opportunity within that geography may be different.
For national brands, that creates a powerful combination: a consistent strategic
framework that can adapt to what
is actually happening in individual markets.
The Consumer Doesn’t Think in Channels
National media strategies are often organized by channel. There is a CTV strategy, a Display strategy, a Streaming Audio strategy, a Native strategy and perhaps a Digital Out-of-Home strategy. Consumers don’t experience brands that way.
Someone may see a television commercial at home, encounter the brand online the next morning, hear it during a commute and search for it several days later. Another consumer may encounter the same brand in an entirely different sequence. MarketStorm’s approach begins with the audience rather than the channel.
Once a relevant consumer has been identified and human-verified, our Intent Retargeting capabilities can allow that audience relationship to continue across available media environments. The screen can change. The context can change. The consumer’s underlying relevance doesn’t necessarily disappear with it.
The audience comes first.
The channel comes second.
JourneyIQ™ Orchestrating a Journey the Consumer Controls
National brands don’t control the order in which consumers encounter them.
Consumers research, compare, stop, return, encounter competitors, see advertising, ask questions, visit stores, search online and change their minds. The journey is not a funnel moving neatly toward conversion. JourneyIQ™ reflects MarketStorm’s approach to that reality.
Rather than trying to force consumers through a predefined sequence, MarketStorm uses audience intelligence to remain relevant as consumers move through their own journeys. Intent creates opportunities for influence. Influence can change subsequent intent. Over time, that interaction can develop into actionable demand.
- DISCOVER
- RESEARCH
- COMPARE
- PAUSE
- RECONSIDER
- ACT
Our job is not to dictate the journey. It is to recognize where the consumer is and create opportunities to influence what happens next.
Influence While Preferences Are Still Forming
WHEN DEMAND IS EXPLICIT Competing for attention Search results, marketplaces, retailers, comparison sites and competitors all become part of the decision environment. By the time consumers are ready to search, compare or buy, they may already have preferences and alternatives in mind. MarketStorm works earlier in that process.
WHILE PREFERENCES ARE FORMING Creating opportunities
to influence The Intent & Influence Layer is the period in which needs are developing, research is occurring and preferences are still being formed.
By identifying relevant consumers during this stage, national brands have an opportunity to become part of the
consideration set before the consumer reaches the point of explicit demand.
That changes the relationship between influence and demand capture.
Google and other demand-capture environments remain extremely important. But instead of asking those environments to both create preference and capture demand at the same moment, brands can use the Intent & Influence Layer to build familiarity and consideration earlier. When the consumer is finally ready to search, visit, compare or buy, the question is no longer simply whether the brand will appear.
The opportunity is to have influenced whether the consumer is already looking for it. We don’t compete with demand capture.
We help shape preference before demand is captured.
Brand Building and Performance Don’t Have to Be Separate Ideas
National marketing has traditionally separated brand advertising from performance advertising. One builds awareness. The other generates measurable action. Consumer behavior doesn’t respect that organizational boundary.
A CTV commercial can create awareness while also influencing someone already demonstrating emerging intent. Display can reinforce brand familiarity while maintaining a relationship with a relevant audience. Native can introduce information while someone is actively researching. Streaming Audio can continue that influence when the screen disappears.
The same media can perform different jobs depending on the consumer receiving it. MarketStorm’s audience-first approach helps connect those traditionally separate objectives. We can use behavioral intelligence to understand who may be becoming relevant, then use the appropriate media environments to build familiarity, reinforce preference and remain present as intent develops.
For national brands, brand and performance can become parts of the same consumer journey rather than competing marketing philosophies.
Connecting Digital Influence to the Physical World
Depending on the campaign, we can use footfall measurement to help understand whether consumers exposed to advertising subsequently visit relevant physical locations. That creates a way to evaluate marketing impact beyond clicks and website conversions and can be particularly valuable for national brands whose products are purchased through retail or distributed sales environments.
Digital Out-of-Home adds another dimension. DOOH can create awareness in a physical environment, MarketStorm can build an audience from that exposure, behavioral intelligence can help identify consumers within that audience who are also demonstrating relevant intent, and digital channels can continue the relationship.
The movement can work in both directions: physical exposure can inform digital audience strategy, and digital advertising can be evaluated against physical-world behavior. For national brands, this creates a much more complete view of the market than treating online and offline activity as separate consumer journeys.
For many national brands, the most important consumer action doesn’t happen on the brand’s website. It happens in a store, dealership, restaurant, branch, distributor location or another physical environment. MarketStorm’s capabilities extend into that physical world.
Digital Influence Advertising exposure, audience intelligence
and relevant intent.
Physical World Store visits, dealership traffic
and real-world behavior
Measuring Brand Lift,
Not Just Conversion
Not every successful advertising interaction should be expected to produce an immediate transaction. For national brands, one of the most important questions is whether advertising is changing awareness, consideration, preference or other meaningful brand measures among the consumers being reached.
MarketStorm can incorporate brand lift measurement into campaign reporting to help evaluate those changes. This gives national marketers another way to understand whether media is having an effect even when the consumer’s eventual transaction may happen later, through another channel or in a physical location.
Brand lift and footfall measurement are particularly valuable because they examine two different consequences of influence. Brand lift helps us understand whether perceptions or consideration are changing. Footfall helps us understand whether behavior in the physical world is changing.
Combined with digital engagement and conversion data, they help us move beyond a measurement model in which the click is expected to explain everything.
Brand Lift Changes in consumer perception
32% Awareness
24% Consideration
18% Preference
Footfall Measurement Changes in physical-world behavior
Store
visits
Restaurant, branch
or distributor
locations
Dealership
traffic
Measurement Beyond
the Last Click
At national scale, the more channels involved in the journey, the less likely it becomes that a single attribution source can explain what caused the final action. MarketStorm does not attempt to solve that problem by claiming every conversion. Instead, we use an open measurement approach to understand as much of the journey as the available data responsibly allows.
Depending on the business, campaign and technology environment, that can include media exposure, website behavior, branded search, direct traffic, engagement, conversions, CRM outcomes, brand lift, footfall and physical visitation, along with other meaningful business signals.
A consumer influenced by MarketStorm may ultimately search for the brand on Google, visit directly, purchase through a retailer or walk into a physical location. For some campaigns, the important signal may not be a conversion at all. It may be a measurable change in brand consideration among the audience we were trying to influence. The last click tells us where the consumer arrived.
We are also interested in whether we changed what they thought, what they considered and what they did next.
National Scale
With Market-Level Intelligence
Book a Demo Talk to MarketStorm MarketStorm was built for a media environment in which scale and precision no longer need to be opposites.
A national brand can maintain a consistent strategy while allowing intelligence to adapt by market. It can build broad awareness while identifying consumers demonstrating emerging intent. It can operate across multiple media environments without rebuilding the audience independently in every channel. It can measure changes in brand perception and physical-world behavior in addition to digital activity. And it can support demand-capture investments by influencing consumers before that demand becomes visible.
The result isn’t simply national advertising delivered more efficiently.
It is a different way of using
national scale.
One brand. One intelligence system. Thousands of markets, moments and consumer journeys.
Good to Know
Programmatic can be complicated. It doesn’t have to be. Here are a few things worth knowing.
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Can a national campaign really adapt to local markets?
Yes. A national strategy does not require assuming consumers behave identically everywhere.
MarketStorm can maintain a larger strategic framework while allowing audience intelligence to reflect differences in competition, consumer behavior, seasonality, economics and other market conditions.
The brand may be national. Intent is often local.
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Is market intelligence at local resolution just geotargeting?
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Can MarketStorm measure brand building as well as performance?
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Can MarketStorm connect national advertising with physical locations?