Three trends dominating marketing communications
Large, national advertising campaigns are being replaced by activities that are locally focused.
This trend is being driven by media fragmentation and an increase in consumers who want to connect one-on-one with brands and support businesses that will boost their own local economies.
Significant shift in spending from traditional forms of media to digital.
Local businesses are embracing email and other forms of online marketing (microsites and landing pages, paid search, banner advertising, and now SMS) because they deliver a relatively low-cost way to reach consumers quickly via smartphones and mobile devices.
Considerable shift from mass production of marketing materials to advertising on-demand.
Economic challenges have forced marketers to re-analyze expenditures to ensure every dollar invested is generating the best possible return. While long-run printing still has valid applications, many have found that recent advancements in digital printing is allowing for cost-effective production of more personalized and effective pieces while reducing the cost and waste associated with warehousing materials that quickly become outdated. Digital media further accelerates the shift to personalized one-to-one communications.
How to leverage localization
Web-based local marketing automation solutions like BrandMuscle’s make it possible for corporate marketers to support brand-compliant local customization and deployment of marketing campaigns by local affiliates to address geographic, demographic and local competitive considerations. From customizing a print ad to delivering an email containing a link to a personalized landing page, BrandMuscle’s solution provides a cost-effective way for marketers to ensure global brand compliance, improve operational efficiency, and increase speed-to-market.
While having the right technology in place is critical to executing local marketing in a decentralized environment, it’s equally important to provide ongoing professional support to ensure local affiliates adopt and use the solution vigorously. While ease of use remains a key consideration, BrandMuscle also provides tactical and strategic local marketing support to both the corporate marketer and local affiliate to achieve optimal ROI. A key challenge many local affiliates face is understanding what types of advertising or campaigns will work best for their businesses and limited budgets. BrandMuscle addresses this by providing an option for local affiliates to work one-on-one with local media planning and buying specialists who can make recommendations and execute more strategic buys that will generate favorable returns.
As Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council notes, “Localization is the name of the game for national brands with significant field, channel or network marketing organizations.” With today’s consumer driving the conversation, marketers are forced to rethink their messaging and how it’s delivered to increase relevancy and speed-to-market. Local marketing automation platforms deliver a way for brands to centralize the origination of localized content while providing significant cost savings, global brand compliance and increased participation, interest and enthusiasm by the field to drive channel, and field sales performance. As new forms of media emerge and are tested with favorable results by corporate marketing organizations, it becomes even more critical to leverage technology that allows the brand to quickly scale high-performing tactics across sales channels to secure a competitive advantage.
Click here to download the full report from the CMO council.