About 6 in 10 senior marketers, presented with a choice of attitudes regarding the importance of local marketing to their organization’s demand generation and revenue, chose the response indicating that it is essential to business growth and profitability, according to [download page] a new report from the CMO Council. Yet in a separate question, only 7% of respondents rated their company’s ability to activate local audiences as being highly evolved.
Instead a plurality (36%) said they are growing in their capabilities and strategies, while about 3 in 10 said they have reasonably effective programs in place. So while they’re not fully confident in their abilities, the general sentiment seems to be that local marketing programs are in place and growing in effectiveness. Just 15% said they are struggling to perform on a consistent basis (8%) or simply underperforming in the area (7%).
Marketers are facing numerous challenges in keeping their local campaigns refreshed and relevant, according to the report, with the main obstacles clearly resource-related. Specifically, 57% cited a lack of resources and bandwidth to stay on top of constant content needs, half suffer from limited budgets to execute fully regionalized campaigns, and 43% lack the resources and bandwidth to coordinate with multiple regions, local marketers, partners, and agencies.
Budget issues, at the least, might change over the coming year, though. According to a study from Balihoo, almost half of national brands will spend more on local marketing this year.
About the Data: The online quantitative audit of 296 senior marketers was conducted between November 2012 and February 2013. 57% of respondents come from companies with more than $500 million in revenues. 41% are from B2B companies, 28% from B2C, and the remainder from hybrid organizations. The largest industry representations are IT (16%), financial services (11%), retail (9%), telecom (9%), and manufacturing (8%).
