Why All Marketing is Local Marketing
Posted on Wed, Mar 03, 2010 @ 09:55 AM
Saepio has quite a few white papers and educational materials that discuss the divide between national and local marketing and how all marketing ultimately boils down to local marketing, but these conceptual discussions aren't always as clear as a personal experience.
Last week, I was in a store aisle reading the packaging for a digital camera I had come to get for a family member's birthday. Beside me stood another shopper, fully engaged in his iPhone.
A store associate approached us and asked if we had any questions. I indicated that I had already completed my research online before coming to the store and was just making sure that I had the correct model. The other shopper also declined, noting that he was currently reading online reviews online for a product. "Wow," the associate joked, "you all are going to put me out of a job."
He could be right.
Consumer buying habits are changing rapidly. The way we decide what products we will buy and where we will buy them is very different today than it was just a few years ago.
I had made the purchase decision in the comfort of my home. The trip to the store was merely the outcome of my research on price and inventory availability.
My fellow shopper selected a store, then was using his phone's recognition technology to find reviews about the products that were available at that location.
Missing from both scenarios was any conversation, outside of packaging, between the brand and the buyer. My only interactions had been with CNET, customer reviews, search results on where the brand and model could be purchased and a price/feature verification at the retailer's website. My fellow shopper was not getting information from the brands' websites either. Neither of us had any interaction with any of the manufacturers competing for our business.
That has to be challenging for manufacturers. All of the decision influences were in environments outside of their control. But, I don't think it had to be that way. Surely, there must be some way to engage me in a dialogue before I'm at the point of decision.
Cannon, for example, should have been all over me. We had purchased multiple Cannon digital cameras over the past five years (thanks to my penchant for dropping them from great heights to hard surfaces below) with the last purchase happening over three years ago. We like Cannon products. Cannon surely should have been part of the conversation. I had spent several hours searching and reading independently to try to determine which camera would be the best one for my family member. Cannon never found a way to help me with this process. Nor did any of the other manufacturers. They seemed content for me to sort through information on CNET until I reached a brand agnostic decision.
My fellow shopper was in the same situation. He simply moved from brand to brand, comparing features, prices and reviews with all of the manufacturers' investments in brand messaging lost because there was no connection to the national branding efforts at the time and place of decision. The failure to make marketing local had negated its effectiveness.
Consumers want to be engaged in meaningful ways. I would have been open to a dialogue with Cannon or any other manufacturer, but was never provided an opportunity. Instead, any generic, national brand messaging was simply ignored. Or worse, it was never even noticed.
Smart manufacturers must move quickly to find a way to enable relevant and timely engagement with consumers. This doesn't equate to more national brand marketing, but instead means that they must move marketing messaging closer to the consumer and closer to the point of decision, reaching the consumer at the individual, local level - and when he or she needs it. Putting marketing platform technology in place to enable this will be key to being part of the conversation. Otherwise, other consumers like myself and the the shopper next to me at the retailer will continue to make our decisions completely outside of the marketing process.
Maybe Panasonic will figure this out before I buy again and make the steal of this Cannon customer complete.
For more on the effects of disconnected local and national marketing, try one of these Saepio whitepapers:
Changing Consumer Practices Require a New Approach to Marketing