Why Enterprise Marketers Are Such an Elusive Market

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The truth is, they aren’t. But when it comes to local, they’re often sticking to the tried-and-true — which means traditional media and email marketing.

In a survey we conducted of 200 executives at some of the biggest brands and retailers, we found that they are fairly focused on local, with nearly half reporting that they allocate 33% of their digital marketing dollars to support their local branch stores, franchises, and distributors. And a full 40% of them expect that budget mix to increase. But outside of email marketing, these enterprise brands are struggling to make digital as effective as traditional tactics and media.

What’s more, when it came to ranking a range of digital and traditional options, email and social were the only ones that fared well. Direct mail and local print, TV, and radio were reported to be far more effective than digital technologies. In particular, SEO, digital display, and paid search rated very poorly.

Ugh.

But the news isn’t all bad. For one, there are big brands and retailers, from Target to Starbucks, that have been impressively innovating in local digital marketing.

Secondly, the pain points we uncovered point to hope. Some of the biggest challenges brands and multi-location retailers faced centered on integrating marketing technologies and contradictory data analytics tools. These are solvable problems — in other words: opportunity.

Other good news: They are comfortable with a diversity of vendors, preferring “best in breed” to the simple convenience of an all-in-one approach. What’s more, big, recognizable brands hold no more sway than upstarts with a really great solution.

Our new report, packed with data and insights into this market, offers an essential strategy tool for anyone whose business it is to capture enterprise customers. Brand marketers would do well to read the report, too, to better understand where their peers are finding successes.

We cover: spending trends and outlook; buyer characteristics and behavior; effectiveness and preferences for tools and platforms; and recommendations for delivering produts and services that solve problems for brand marketers.

Click here to purchase your copy of “National-to-Local Marketers 2016.”