About LOCAL
LOCAL is a Change Marketing™ company that works with senior leaders at some of the world’s best organizations to plan, launch, and sustain change through an innovative, people-first approach. They compete in a space dominated by large firms, selling a deeply consultative, vault-tight service to a small, elusive audience of CHROs and senior HR executives.
The Challenge
How do you build trust among clients who are difficult to connect with in the first place? As storytellers, LOCAL understood the value of content that sparks connection, but leveling up their outreach called for strategic and creative solutions:
- Connecting with Hard-to-Reach Prospects: LOCAL’s ideal client is a senior executive at a major enterprise: someone who is risk-averse by nature, perpetually inundated with vendor solicitations, and comfortable defaulting to the names already in their network.
- Building Credible Clout: Earning clients’ attention, differentiating LOCAL from other boutique firms, and generating enough buy-in to initiate a meeting requires more than a good pitch deck.
- Nurturing Leads Authentically: Piquing prospects’ interest is only part of the job; nurturing that relationship afterward is equally important.
- Keeping Content Channels Connected: Booking speaking engagements, generating quality LinkedIn content, blogs, and newsletters, managing individual assets, and ensuring continuity across everything became what LOCAL co-founder Andrew Osterday calls a “full-time logistical nightmare.”
“It’s a very competitive, small, hard-to-reach audience, and a lot of them have a lot riding on it. Trust has to be built, and the only way you can do that is by being a thought leader.” — LOCAL Co-Founder Andrew Osterday
The Approach
Rootstock’s first and most foundational role was to help LOCAL re-articulate who they are and the “why” that drives them. Next, we strategized how to express that identity consistently across every possible platform. Now our ongoing charge is to maintain continuity across their full content ecosystem so that every touchpoint reinforces the same voice, message, and positioning, and that new content is leading where clients want to follow.
Building a Thought Leadership Foundation
Rootstock conducted Kernel of Truth sessions for three LOCAL executives, as well as one combining individual voices into a unified story for the company overall. With these truths as our building blocks, we shaped LOCAL’s thought leadership strategy: a clear and executable roadmap for building LOCAL’s content and community both on- and offline.
“If we didn’t have thought leadership content behind us, we’d just look like any other vendor that’s knocking on the door.” — LOCAL Co-Founder Andrew Osterday
Creating an Ecosystem of Credible Content
No matter how a prospect discovers LOCAL, it’s clear they almost always do their own research before responding. (And the data backs this up. According to Gartner, 83% of a typical B2B purchasing decision is complete before a buyer ever reaches out.) Rootstock ensures that when they do, what they find is compelling, consistent, and credible through:
- LinkedIn as a Sales Enablement Tool: LOCAL doesn’t run paid LinkedIn campaigns, but the organic content Rootstock produces still moves the needle through the steady signal it sends to prospects doing their due diligence.
- High-Quality Newsletter: LOCAL’s newsletter earns high open and click-through rates each month with content that recipients are really engaged with. Rootstock manages the strategy, brainstorming, and execution, pulling ideas from LOCAL’s leadership team and weaving them into cohesive, on-brand content that speaks to subscribers.
- Strategic Speaking Engagements: Rootstock helped LOCAL shift from running their own events (a heavy lift with limited reach) to a more strategic mix of partnering on events with aligned organizations that have buyers in the room, and booking speaking slots at industry conferences where LOCAL meets people who don’t already know them.
“I can see increased effectiveness when we do outreach — because that content exists and comes out regularly. It’s almost like my content is doing the legwork.” — LOCAL Co-Founder Andrew Osterday
Organizing the Back-End with a HubSpot Integration
The value of monthly newsletters as business development tools increases exponentially when coupled with the right insights. Rootstock’s digital marketing expert helped LOCAL build a CRM infrastructure in HubSpot that integrates with their marketing and events activity, so that the LOCAL team knows who’s been engaging with what.
“You have to have a partner like Rootstock helping you choreograph and then deliver high-quality work.” — LOCAL Co-Founder Andrew Osterday
The Impact
In complex B2B sales, direct attribution can be difficult to track, but for Osterday the pattern is unmistakable: prospects are now coming into sales conversations already informed, warm, and leaning toward yes, making the time between first handshake to signed contract much shorter.
New clients have encountered LOCAL across multiple channels that reinforce LOCAL’s distinct brand and best thinking, so any questions are more about “How much?” and “When do we start?” rather than, “Why should we choose you?”
“Once we get in front of somebody, they come in knowing LOCAL — basically wanting to work together. You help them get so much further along because of all this great content that lets them get a feel for whether they want to work with us.” — LOCAL Co-Founder Andrew Osterday
Thought Leadership That Establishes LOCAL as Experts
By organizing, connecting, and delivering all the separate pieces, we’ve empowered LOCAL’s founders to focus more time and attention on doing what they do best, and expanding their business beyond original goals.
Enhanced Clarity for Follow-Ups
Through an intuitive CRM infrastructure, LOCAL now turns event attendees and newsletter subscribers into a rich pipeline. We’ve enabled proper contact segmentation and email tracking for intelligent follow-up with their warmest contacts.
An Influx of Qualified Leads
Through our collaboration spanning nearly a decade, Rootstock has helped LOCAL achieve a number of verified business outcomes, including:
- New work streams secured at Chick-fil-A through a Rootstock-coordinated event
- Expanded engagement with Sherwin-Williams from multiple touchpoints
- New business through AT&T generated from a LinkedIn post
- Speaking slots secured at SHRM (the leading HR association) and industry conferences
- Qualified meetings booked through cold outreach supported by thought leadership content
- A strong inbound recruiting pipeline, with candidates often citing LinkedIn as their discovery point
“Your ability to broker those relationships, to bring us in and get us those slots, help us coordinate with partners, get discounts on sponsorships — I don’t know who would do it if you guys weren’t there. If we don’t do that stuff, we don’t grow.” — LOCAL Co-Founder Andrew Osterday
Rootstock’s ongoing partnership with LOCAL is an excellent example of what we can do through collaboration over time, and the value of growing your well-established brand through thought leadership that speaks for itself before a sales conversation ever begins.