The grand opening of a new location can ultimately determine the overall success or failure of the business. After all, you don't get more than one chance to make a first impression in your community. When it comes to local marketing, here is some advice to follow that can help ensure your franchise starts off with the greatest chance of success.

Traditional forms of marketing (TV, print, mail) and digital forms of marketing (email, social media, web) are not mutually exclusive – in fact, they are better together. Here are five ways traditional and digital can come together for amazing results:

Last week I attended Brand ManageCamp in Las Vegas where 400+ marketers gathered to discuss branding best practices. Aside from picking up tips from the lineup of keynote speakers, I also popped across the street for a visit of Madame Tussauds wax attraction. Celebrities are masters of personal branding, so much so that some of them only need to go by one name - so among the 100 wax celebrity figures, I discovered some branding lessons to share:

If your business is not seeing the volume of new customers you would like, here are 6 proven tactics to give your location foot traffic a boost:

Often the hardest part about running a local business is getting customers through the door. But once that hurdle has been passed, you can optimize your marketing to take every advantage to upsell a customer for an increased transaction total.

Cause marketing has been on an upward trend for the past decade as consumers continue to align their spending with their personal values.

Businesses typically know what their existing customers “look like." By taking these demographics of their existing customer, which may include age, gender, children in the home with ages and/or gender, home value, income, length of residency or other data points, we can acquire a consumer mailing list with matching attributes.

Convenience is king when it comes to consumers, which is why almost every major restaurant franchise is investigating adding delivery to their operations in the near future.

As the expectations and preferences of consumers change over time, it's important that your franchise keep up with trends to avoid looking outdated. In the growing segment of restaurants transforming to fast casual from fast food, enhancing the brand image and interior appeal becomes a top priority.

The competition in retail is always brutal and stores are focused on getting people through the doors and making their monthly sales goals. Here are four new ideas for refreshing your retail showroom and signage for an improved customer experience and to make the lives of your store employees easier as well: