How to Craft a Cross-Location Campaign Using Social Media

When your target audience resides in multiple locations across the country or around the world, a single marketing campaign can’t always speak to everyone. Between cultural differences and location-specific needs, messaging that appeals to customers in some regions may not resonate at all with others.

With cross-location campaigns, you can create a unified brand presence and deliver relevant messaging while adapting your marketing to local audiences. Social media is an essential channel for crafting campaigns across locations.

In this article, we’ll cover how to plan, execute, and measure cross-location campaigns using social media. We’ll also cover how to coordinate with teams across locations so you can run successful campaigns.

With Agorapulse’s social media publishing tools, customizing campaigns across cities, regions, or countries is much easier. Sign up for a free trial and try our social media management solution with your team.

Key Considerations for Cross-Location Campaigns

A cross-location campaign is a coordinated marketing initiative that targets audiences in more than one location. As a result, the biggest challenge of running these campaigns is balancing localization with consistency.

Ideally, you need to keep messaging and branding consistent between locations. But you also have to make sure the content is relatable for each audience.

Some of the most common considerations for cross-channel campaigns include:

• Differences in local tastes and cultural preferences
• Variations in social media platform usage
• Distinct pain points and goals for each location

Below, we’ll cover how to manage these challenges while adapting content for various locations, including insights from experienced digital marketers and social media managers.

Set Up a Cross-Location Campaign Framework

To build a cross-location campaign, start with this basic framework.

Define key performance indicators (KPIs)

First, set goals for the campaign and get clear on what you need to accomplish. Set SMART goals, which are:

• Specific so you know exactly what you want to achieve and why
• Measurable so you’ll know when you’ve achieved them
• Attainable so they’re realistic given available resources
• Relevant so they align with your business goals
• Timely so they have clear deadlines

Then, establish the KPIs you need to reach in order to achieve the right return on investment (ROI).

Not sure what’s realistic? You have a couple of options. If you have performance data from past campaigns, use it as a guide. If you’re running paid campaigns, use the ad platform’s estimates to forecast performance.

Segment and research your audience

Next, get clear on who you need to reach and how you can successfully connect with them. Identify the locations you need to reach and determine the level to which you need to segment your audience.

For example, say you plan to target customers in California. Depending on your offer, you may need to segment by different metro areas or by urban vs. suburban vs. rural prospects.

Once you’ve decided how to segment your audience, research each group to identify the demographics, behaviors, and preferences that define each location.

Use Google Trends

Tools like Google Trends are helpful for understanding who’s talking about what in various locations.

For example, Google Trends shows how popular certain search terms are throughout different metro areas in California. It also highlights specific topics popular among people in these areas.

Use social listening

“Social listening tools are your best friend because people are already saying everything you need to hear on socials—you just need to tap in.” (Elisa Montanari, head of Organic Growth at Wrike)

“It’s much easier with a listening tool that allows you to segment audiences to slice and dice your data across geography and other variable,” Montanari continues. “You get some keen insights into regional trends when you can separate out the right data.”

Poll or survey customers

Don’t stop there. Spencer Romenco, chief growth strategist at Growth Spurt, recommends talking directly with customers whenever possible.

Spencer explains that when running a recent campaign for a fitness app client, “What helped us succeed was talking directly to locals, gathering input through polls and comments to refine our content in each market. This created engagement that wasn’t just high in numbers but high in meaningful, local connections.”

Choose social media channels

Use your audience research to identify the right social media channels to use for your cross-location campaign. Keep in mind that your team may use different platforms to reach people in different locations.

For example, Facebook and YouTube are the two top social media platforms with global reach. But Instagram and TikTok tend to work well for younger audiences, while WeChat is the most popular platform with Chinese users.

Craft Unified Campaign Messaging with Local Adaptations

Once you’ve created the campaign framework, focus on the messaging.

Develop the core message

Start by defining the central campaign theme. In most cases, you’ll want to choose something that speaks to your brand’s value proposition and that’s relatable for all of your potential customers.

Leave plenty of room to adapt the campaign to target locations as necessary. You’ll likely need to incorporate changes to the wording and tone for each location.

For a recent campaign promoting productivity software, Mira Nathalea, CMO of SoftwareHow, worked with distributed teams to balance campaign messaging with local adjustments.

“To maintain brand cohesion, we set up a global messaging framework with specific brand voice guidelines, but allowed local teams flexibility in tone and format,” Mira explains. “We made sure that all content reflected local characteristics and was in line with our brand standards by checking in with these teams once a week.”

Define visual consistency

Create a brand style guide that defines the visual guidelines for the campaign. Clarify which elements teams should keep consistent and which components they can adjust as necessary.

For example, you may want to keep your logo and the campaign color scheme consistent. But you may be open to teams incorporating local imagery and models.

“Much of Wrike’s branding is universal across countries and locations because we want to build something instantly recognizable,” shares Elisa Montanari.

“You need recognizable colors and brand guidelines that help every team understand the tone of voice. Building a few simple social media templates makes it easy to maintain consistency while also scaling marketing efforts and tailoring your content to different international audiences.”

Localize the content

After defining the core messaging and visuals, take steps to localize the content.

Customize the language

In many cases, the first step is translating the content into various languages. During the translation process, take care to maintain the right meaning and capture relevant cultural context.

Include visual adaptations

Consider the images and symbols that each target audience finds familiar. Then, make visual adaptations to make campaign content as relatable as possible.

“Balancing a brand’s message with preferences requires a unique touch,” shares Inigo Rivero, Managing Director of House Of Marketers. “I usually develop a brand manual that details the brand’s voice, intonation, and visuals to maintain uniformity.”

“However, I give teams some leeway to adjust things, like language and imagery, to better connect with their target audience. For example, I oversaw a skincare promotion that used the same color scheme everywhere. We tweaked visuals to mirror local beauty trends.”

Incorporate local trends and events

Make local customers feel like you’ve created the campaign just for them. For a fitness app client, Spencer Romenco used a central campaign theme with localized messaging and visuals.

“In Miami, for example, we tapped into the city’s beach culture, creating visuals and messaging around outdoor workouts and wellness by the ocean, which matched the relaxed yet active vibe of Miami locals,” he explains.

“In contrast, in New York City, we leaned into a no-nonsense approach with high-energy visuals and fast-paced, motivational content that felt right for a busy, urban crowd. We even tested hashtags and local influencers, making sure each post felt grounded in the local culture.”

Factor in local preferences

It’s just as important to consider the goals and challenges of local customers. When promoting the AI study assistant tool Knowee across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, CTO Sabas Lin worked with his team to create a “consistent visual style and core slogan centered on efficient knowledge management.”

“We discovered notable variations in the factors that influenced engagement,” Sabas explains. “In North America, productivity and ROI resonated best, so our local team used case studies with specific time-saving metrics, like ‘saved 40% on knowledge retrieval time.'”

“In APAC, where LINE and WeChat hold more sway than LinkedIn, we adapted not only to the platforms but also to audience values, focusing on innovation and collaboration. Here, we modified the message to highlight ‘seamless knowledge flow,’ and we shared testimonials that featured regional businesses.”

Publish content at the right local time

To get your content in front of the right audience, publish at the optimal time. Create a social media schedule for each target audience based on the ideal engagement times.

Agorapulse makes it easy to find the right time to post. Check the “Best day and time to publish” chart for each social profile. Then, use Agorapulse to schedule posts at the right time for each profile.

Add location-based labels to each post you schedule in Agorapulse. Then, you can easily organize content by region and create reports for location-specific campaigns.

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Adapt Cross-Location Marketing Campaigns for Social Media

To adapt campaigns to each social media platform, take advantage of built-in tools.

Use platform-specific strategies

Consider each platform as you develop your content strategy. Here are a few platform-specific strategies to keep in mind:

• Use TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook stories to share limited-time content.
• Geotag specific locations on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok content.
• Post location-specific short-form video to YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.
• Add local campaign hashtags to content on TikTok, Instagram, and X.
• Share news and time-sensitive content on X.

Create locally relevant hashtags

Hashtags can boost discoverability on Instagram, TikTok, and X. To maximize the effect, use a couple of different kinds of hashtags:

• Keep global campaign hashtags consistent across the initiative.
• Add local hashtags when relevant to capture regional attention.

Hashtags can also be helpful for collecting user-generated content (UGC). Encourage customers to add your campaign hashtag to relevant content so you can feature it on your brand’s social profile.

With Agorapulse, it’s easy to monitor hashtag activity across social profiles. Use our social media listening tool to track each hashtag. Then, keep an eye on the search volume, engagement level, and customer sentiment.

Our social listening tool automatically collects UGC that features your campaign hashtags. You can click through to view and engage with customer content from your Agorapulse dashboard.

Collaborate with local influencers

Working with influencers can also increase the visibility of your campaign. Finding social media influencers in the areas you’re targeting is a great way to add authenticity and improve results in these locations.

When you work with local influencers, it’s important to make sure their messages align with your central campaign message. However, they should also feel natural and relevant to the local area.

“During a campaign for a fashion label, I collaborated with influencers from Paris to showcase street style outfits. In Tokyo, our focus was on edgy and experimental fashion,” Inigo Rivero shares. “This strategy guaranteed that every audience established a bond with the brand.”

Coordinate with Teams Across Locations

When you manage global campaigns, coordinating teams becomes one of the biggest challenges. Use these tips to manage cross-location teams.

Use the right tools to collaborate

Map out campaigns and assign tasks using a project management tool. “A project management tool creates a centralized, single source of truth so everyone works from the same space,” says Elisa Montanari.

“With so many working parts, you need full visibility over workflows and centralized communications to share project expectations, status updates, and post-mortem feedback and deal with challenges as a unit throughout the process. You shouldn’t have to dig through email chains to find what you need or wonder about status updates—automated technology is a cross-location team’s best friend.”

Create a content library

When you have a central content library, you’ll have an easier time keeping visuals consistent across social profiles. But there’s no need to add another tool to the mix.

When you use Agorapulse for social media management, you can also use our asset library to store content. Within each campaign folder, you can create separate subfolders for each location.

Then, you can upload location-specific images and videos—with labels to keep everything easy to find. Since our asset library integrates with Canva, you can easily customize and upload designs for each region.

Establish communication protocols

How often will your teams meet? Which tools will you use to communicate? Establish guidelines from the very beginning to set teams up for success.

For example, you might opt to host weekly check-ins. If team members need to connect or share ideas in between these check-ins, encourage them to use async videos or Slack messages.

Measure and Optimize Campaign Performance

Once you launch the campaign, track metrics and monitor performance closely.

Track KPIs

Monitor campaign performance using the KPIs you set at the beginning. Monitor metrics like engagement, reach, click-through rates, and conversions to gauge success.

Evaluate results for the entire campaign and for each location. If you’re falling short of goals, identify what isn’t working and make adjustments. For example, you might need to dive deeper into research and update messaging for a specific location.

With Agorapulse, you can track essential metrics and generate social media reports in seconds. In addition to tracking audience growth and engagement metrics, you can use our reports to find top-performing content—which you can use to inform future content.

When our standard reports don’t provide enough location-related nuance, our power reports can help. You can create custom reports for any campaign to track all the metrics that matter to your team.

Plus, Agorapulse also tracks social media ROI automatically. With our social ROI report, you can see which profiles, campaigns, and content generated the most website visitors, transactions, and revenue—which can also drive decision-making.

Split-test campaign elements

If making major changes doesn’t seem like a smart move, take a different approach. Instead, do A/B testing to experiment with different versions of the campaign.

You can run unofficial A/B tests on organic content by experimenting with different language, visuals, and posting times. And with paid campaigns, you can set up A/B tests that collect statistically significant results.

With this data, you can make informed decisions about the best social media content to create for each audience.

Next Steps to Get Started with Cross-Location Campaigns

Successful cross-location marketing campaigns require core messaging and branding but plenty of flexibility to customize the content for local audiences. By adapting copy and visuals and incorporating local hashtags and influencers, you can run relevant campaigns that connect with the right audiences.

With Agorapulse, you can manage campaigns, create content, and report on results while collaborating with global teams. Sign up for a free trial of Agorapulse to try our social media management solution with your team today.