When it comes to driving customer engagement and profitability, all signs point to local marketing. According to the Brand Automation for Local Activation—Connecting Customer Engagement into Measurable Local Strategies study by Balihoo and the CMO Council, 59% of the nearly 300 marketers surveyed listed local marketing as a critical component to enhancing growth and profitability. However, marketers seem to have lost their way down the path to localization, as a miniscule 7% of respondents believe they have a solid local campaign, including measurement and analytics, in place.
Measurement, in particular, or the lack thereof, appears to have led marketers down a wayward path. According to the report, while 40% of marketers have created an established, localized measuring method, 37% say their measuring methods are created with an “ad hoc” intention in mind. In fact, 30% of surveyed marketers say they determine the success of a localized campaign based on their bottom line and sales.
However, disjointed measuring methods aren’t the only practices leading marketers astray. Marketers are also straying off the path to profitability by ignoring the voice of the local customer. According to the report, just over a quarter of marketers surveyed (29%) incorporate online voice of the customer data into their campaigns, and only 28% of marketers track and collect social chatter. Part of this data shortage could stem from a disjointed relationship between the CMO and CIO, as only 6% of marketers say they team up with IT to collect company-wide information.
But marketing automation could be just the guide marketers need to direct them down the path to successful local marketing. Although the report says that only 11% of marketers are currently using marketing automation, 30% of those surveyed say they plan on investing in the technology. Out of the 11% who have already used marketing automation, 48% say they have efficient local customer activation strategies, according to the report.
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