To give you a jump start on the new year, we asked industry experts about their predictions for the future of location, marketing, and technology in 2017. We'll be posting their responses over the next month here on the Yext blog. Follow us on Twitter @Yext for new posts, and tweet at us with your own predictions.
By Chris Malone
Executive Vice President, Sales & Account Development, Mindstream Media
'Tis the season for marketing leaders to make final evaluations regarding their strategies for the coming year. For many, meeting ever-inflating growth objectives with flat or shrinking budgets has become quite the quandary. However, for those marketers who have spent the past year executing on the leading edge of the location-based marketing space, 2017 could be the year to steal share of mind and wallet.
Never before have marketers been more effectively equipped to influence consumer behavior throughout the buying journey. The incredible synergy of delivering targeted brand messaging tailored to the specific intent and location of an individual customer is delivering up to a 9x increase in CTR, and a 2.5x improvement in conversion. The majority of national advertisers are taking notice and beginning to shift budgets, with forecasts suggesting that nearly half of the local media investment will be made by big brands by year's end.
As this shift takes place across 2017, expect advertisers to follow three primary trends:
Location-based advertisers will move well past the basics of listings accuracy and begin to adopt true local cross-channel philosophies. Anticipate a shift to hyper-local targeting across paid search, display, video and social campaigns.
Investments will be funneled away from the national digital AOR in favor of agencies that can deliver location-based expertise at-scale.
Advertisers will leverage content management systems that organize location data, attributes and creative to enable rapid deployment of campaigns, regardless of channel or device.
Whether focused on disrupting, challenging or breaking through marketing plateaus, expect big results from advertisers that successfully execute these local marketing strategies throughout the coming year.
This post is part of a series of 2017 predictions from industry experts.
