Marketers Turning into Locovores
Published January 26, 2012
There seems to be a shift in ad agencies' tactics in reaching out to consumers. Rather than use digital marketing to launch national, faceless promotions, brands are using the channel to run local campaigns that incorporate the unique features of the community.
"Local marketing is quickly emerging as one of the biggest opportunities in the shifting marketing landscape, delivering impressive results for national brands who rely on reaching consumers at the point of final preference and purchase," said Shane Vaughan, vice president of marketing for Balihoo.
Vaughan warned that those in the industry would need to have a mastery of social and new media channels to create and distribute messages that would actually "deliver greater customer relevance, response" and marketing ROI.
The company forecasted that the majority of companies will be using local marketing automation tools by year's end. It also predicted that brands would start requiring integrated marketing analytics in order to measure the impact their campaigns have had at the local level.
However, making campaigns relevant to individual communities may be easier said than done. A study released by the Chief Marketing Officer Council in October 2011 showed that brands were starting to treat localized marketing as a top priority, with 86 percent of industry professionals around the country saying they wanted to "modify, adapt and localize their marketing content, messaging and prospect engagement practices."
Direct mail, localized website, experiential events, electronic messaging and social networks were the channels that respondents favored most, but the CMO Council advised them to use digital channels to "repurpose multiple versions of content, collateral, advertising, direct mail, promotional and in-store merchandising materials."