The Distributed Marketing Frontier: Realizing the Dream of Truly “Glocal” Marketing
For large distributed marketing functions that support localized marketing efforts, managing brand consistency, communication, and customer engagement is an ongoing challenge. But, managing communication and brand compliance in this environment can be extremely challenging. There are often conflicting goals between corporate marketing and local entities, such as agents, branches, or field offices. Corporate marketing is tasked with developing a consistent brand across marketing channels, regions and local audiences, while local field marketers need autonomy and flexibility to customize the brand and marketing message. As a result, local marketers often view corporate or headquarters marketing as a compliance mechanism.
This paper demonstrates how technology can help local and corporate marketers create a direct dialogue with customers via the local operational entities. It also demonstrates how organizations can better focus on campaign optimization by eliminating inefficient processes between corporate and local entities and reducing redundancy in technologies.
In addition, the paper explores the four fundamental ingredients to managing a distributed marketing organization, including:
• Marketing Asset Management: Centralizing brand assets for use by corporate and local entities.
• Measurement: A holistic view of asset utilization and campaign performance across corporate and local entities.
• Campaign Management: Providing flexible campaign management capabilities for local entities while simultaneously allowing corporate to
manage brand consistency.
• Process: Standardize and automated workflow and approval processes reduce cycle time and help ensure corporate and local objectives are met through
each cross-channel engagement.