Industry Eye: Case Study - Weaver's Flooring America

Problem: Weaver's Flooring America, a franchise location of retailer Flooring America, sought a more detailed and optimized marketing mix to reconnect with its local customer base.Solution: Outsourced its store and direct marketing planning to a local marketing automation technology and services provider.

Results: Gained boost in sales and cost savings from lowered marketing complexity.

As a family-run business situated in a Shenandoah Valley community in western Virginia for the past 34 years, Weaver's Flooring America became comfortable with its customers, and vice versa. One of the 500-plus franchises of national retail chain Flooring America since 1999, Weaver's followed the same marketing plan year after year. But its approach grew stale, and the local customer base Weaver's counted on no longer came around as frequently.

Lost Personal Touch
"After becoming a franchisee of Flooring America, we lost a bit of our personal touch," says Chad Nussbaum, sales manager at Weaver's. "A lot of why we sell jobs is because of the owner's reputation and how well he's known in the community."

Recognizing that it needed to refocus its approach to determine the optimum marketing mix and media placement plan to recapture local customers, Weaver's turned to Balihoo last November, a local marketing automation technology and services provider specifically targeted to franchises and national brands with local marketing needs. Weaver's implemented Balihoo's AdPro platform.

Year-Round Planning
Weaver's marketing team had difficulty executing its retail, online and catalog promotions effectively without proper planning. The vendor's platform gives Weaver's an in-depth, 12-month media plan, which includes budget allocation recommendations for the various channels in which Weaver's advertises (local TV and radio, direct mail, and newspapers), detailed industry trends and top media tactics.

"We struggled with the time that was devoted in the advertising spectrum," Nussbaum recalls. "We could plan a month or two in advance, but we couldn't lay it out, or we didn't take the time to lay it out. Right now I have a comprehensive plan for the entire year with a budget; now all we have to do is carry it out. If you don't plan ahead, things don't get executed."

While that plan and budget have been laid out for the rest of 2009, Weaver's has the ability to go back to Balihoo and revise it if certain variables change — namely a rebound in the economy in the second half of the year. And that applies to each marketing channel. For example, if paid search proves particularly effective at driving revenue while local radio ads do not, budget allocations can be adjusted to reflect those factors.

"We're able to grab all of that data and sift through it in an automated fashion. We can then present Weaver's with results to show what's working and what isn't," says Balihoo CEO Pete Gombert. "Then we refine those results and make sure that more dollars are going into the effective mediums and fewer are going into the ineffective mediums."

Ally for Cost Savings
Weaver's has the backing of Flooring America for all the creative in its marketing, to which Weaver's adds a local spin. Still, Weaver's traditionally has viewed itself as more seller than marketer, which in the past led to some decisions that weren't the store's best investments.

Balihoo's AdPro platform helps Weaver's determine the most effective marketing channels to invest in. And most importantly, at the right cost.

"We don't have to go directly to a TV station and expect that it's giving us the best rates and placements," Nussbaum says. "We have Balihoo negotiating all that, telling us where we should be advertising and what types of advertising we should be using. That's somebody we can trust 100 percent, who has our best interests at heart. We don't have to trust in someone who's trying to sell me something."