Retail in Asia

In Trends

Vitrue Announces Marketing Platform to Manage and Scale Social Media on a Local Level

Vitrue, the leading provider of social management technologies, announced today the rollout of its Vitrue FMS, designed to provide marketers with the capabilities to create a unified brand presence on Facebook blending both local and corporate content into the user experience.

"Today marketers know they need to create unique, social experiences on a local basis and tap into the ‘long tail’ power of the local social graph," said Reggie Bradford, CEO of Vitrue. "Facebook reports the average consumer has 120 friends on Facebook and a Vitrue study shows the average consumer has roughly 50 percent of their friends in the same metropolitan area. Couple this with the fact that according to Nielsen, 78 percent of consumers buy products from a peer or friend, and you have a strategic bull’s-eye in terms of providing users locally relevant social media to drive and influence purchases."

A key component of the Vitrue FMS is the ability for local marketers to manage their own messaging and content, while still allowing corporate marketing to provide oversight and input into the messaging. Collaboration and review tools are also built into the product, as well as a robust invitation management system that easily scales to hundreds or even thousands of local administrators. The invitations leverage the technology of Facebook Connect, dramatically reducing the amount of orientation or training required of local marketers.

The Vitrue FMS also provides detailed analytics at the local level, giving local marketers insight and tools to refine communications for optimal effectiveness. The data can also be aggregated at a regional, national, and global basis to give corporate marketing insight into the overall impact of the brand’s local marketing efforts on Facebook.

The Vitrue FMS represents "social local" for the world’s biggest brands. The platform now allows retail, auto, restaurant and other franchise brands for the first time to have a dynamic local presence on Facebook. Before the Vitrue FMS, many "rogue pages" were created by both fans and employees causing significant issues ranging from inconsistent brand standards, to a lack of universal navigation, to an inability to roll out a national promotion on a local level.

Marketers know social media is here to stay, and as we enter 2010 there is a clear need for brands to give control to local markets while maintaining the ability to dynamically manage thousands of locations. Using the Vitrue FMS, a brand can roll out a Facebook presence for hundreds or thousands of locations, each localized to its unique content needs including store hours and details, local products or menu items, local blog and Twitter integration and even job postings.

"For quick-serve and fast-casual restaurant marketers, The Vitrue FMS provides a powerful arsenal of tools to maintain a corporate brand while empowering its individual franchisees to market on a local level," said Jim Anderson, Chief Product Officer of Vitrue. "The Vitrue FMS puts the power in local markets to determine their needs and provide their customers with offers and utility that drives in-store traffic while corporate can define national promotions and product offerings."

The Vitrue FMS is perfect for TV networks, movie studios, record labels, quick-serve and fast-casual restaurants, auto companies, tourism, and retailers.

For more information visit Vitrue’s Press Room.

(Source: Vitrue)