With the rise of the internet, communicating with any audience at any time has become a modern day possibility, but just because we can do something, does it mean we should? When thinking of our digital marketing strategy and determining our audiences, one question to ask yourself is should your approach go global, or stay local?
“Glocal” marketing
When it comes to marketing, the more we can nail down our messages for specific audiences, the better, and doing so requires very specific sets of data. Marketing that truly understands its consumer and their individual needs will always outperform marketing that takes a more generalized approach with its communication. Knowing your consumers like the back of your hand is key, and because of this, relying on local data in combination with global and regional trends can help boost your marketing efforts.
One of the benefits of using local data in your marketing strategies is that the more you know your consumer and their behavior, the less room you leave for error in your ad or marketing campaigns. By incorporating local data into your research process, you significantly decrease the chances for mistargeting to occur, making your marketing efforts more efficient from the get-go. Taking a local approach will allow you to factor in social, cultural, political, and economic components that affect consumer behavior, something that regional or global sets of data may fail to take into consideration. Essentially local data allows you to maximize campaign efficiency through accurately mapping out when and how your audience is most receptive to new brand content.
By speaking directly to your consumer through the use of local data, it also becomes easier to build stronger relationships and a more stable reputation. In order to do so, beyond using local data, it’s important to also listen locally. What do local consumers have to say about your product or services? How are they responding to your messaging? Are they even responding at all? What does your target audience care about? We’ve already determined how our audiences behave, now through social listening, we can determine consumer motivations and perceptions towards brands. This can enhance our marketing, by not only telling us what our audiences are receptive to, but by telling us how we can best achieve desired consumer-brand interactions, such as brand advocacy and promotion.
Local data can also help marketers prove or disprove preconceived notions about audience groups. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of basing our strategies on assumptions that come from research that may have been true and applicable at a certain point in time, for a certain demographic within a specific geographical area. But because the evolution of technology and resources are constantly causing markets to change, it’s imperative to stay up-to-date with how consumers adapt their needs and behavior to these changes and vice versa. Since markets in different regions change at different paces, what might be true for one region might not be true for another. Using local data will allow you to get a better scope of what marketing challenges and opportunities your brand may face, and how to approach them.
Whether you solely chose to use a local approach, or combine it with regional and global data, implementing local research can help increase your brand’s ROI by delivering personalized messages and marketing material that truly resonates with your audience, helping them become better connected and invested in your brand.
Source: blog.globalwebindex.com