Eighty-six percent of marketers intend to look for ways to better localize their content, according to a recent survey by the CMO Council. Other findings from the same research reveal the importance that marketers are placing on localized marketing and demonstrate that marketers have more work to do to make localized marketing effective.
- 49% of survey respondents said that localized marketing is essential to business growth and profitability.
- 41% of respondents said they devote 30% or more of their budget to field or localized programs.
Nearly 50% of respondents said that they are underperforming or need new strategic thinking and capability development in the area of localized marketing.
The need to make marketing messages and materials more relevant is the driving force behind the widespread interest in localized marketing. Prospects and customers have easy access to a wealth of online information, and they are choosing when and how they will access information about potential purchases. That, combined with the ever-increasing amount of marketing and advertising clutter in the environment, makes potential buyers less receptive to generic messages and materials. In these circumstances, relevance becomes as essential element of effective marketing, and localizing messages and materials is a proven way to increase relevance.
There are two key requirements for executing an effective content localization program. First, marketers must know what messages will be relevant and appealing to the local target audience. In other words, effective localization must begin with a clear understanding of local markets and local buyers. This was the challenge to effective localization most frequently identified in the CMO Council survey, cited by 30% of respondents.
The second core requirement for effective localization is a set of technology tools that (a) allow corporate marketers to maintain control of the brand while simultaneously enabling significant content customization by local marketers, and (b) make content localization scalable and cost effective. Despite the critical role that technology plays in content localization, only 30% of respondents to the CMO Council survey said they had embraced marketing automation platforms and tools. Twenty-seven percent of survey respondents said they are currently evaluating such tools, so the use of content localization is poised to grow significantly.
In a future post, Ill discuss how a marketing execution platform can enable two complementary approaches to marketing content localization.
This post was also published on the Adam Software blog. . .
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[...] and materials is prompting marketers to focus on localizing their content. In an earlier post, I described a recent survey by the CMO Council which shows that 86% of marketers intend to look [...]
[...] two earlier posts (here and here), I discussed the growing importance of localized marketing, and I described how [...]