As the relationship between businesses and customers continues to evolve, the value of the customer experience has been magnified greatly. Customer-facing social media channels and the general ease with which anyone can find information about anyone/anything online have made businesses and their employees and managers more accessible than ever before. This means businesses – the whole business – must be ready to address customer needs across any number of outlets. But good customer experience doesn’t just mean effectively handling complaints, issues or questions; it means having a real relationship with your customers.

While perusing the Internet for new ideas and to keep myself updated on the latest business happenings, I came across this excellent presentation on marketing localization and thought it had some very interesting statistics that make the case for why you need to localize your marketing efforts. The first number isn’t a huge shock, but does lay the foundation for nearly everything I’m about to say: 97% of consumers do online research before making a local purchase. Translation: If you can’t be found locally and aren’t targeting locally, you aren’t going to beat the competition.

So how are companies making their local presence felt? In short, many aren’t. We all know one of the laws of marketing is to be where your customers are. Yet somehow, the fundamental tenet has slipped many companies’ minds. According to ReachLocal, of marketing organizations surveyed:

Distributors can be a valuable asset to a corporation, if the organization uses them correctly. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges of driving sales through distributors and what the manufacturer/vendor can do to overcome those barriers.

Challenges
One of the primary roadblocks to improved distributor sales is motivation. This can be especially true with smaller distributors. Often times they are comfortable with their current sales levels and are not interested in really growing their business. The manufacturer also bears some responsibility for making the information needed to sell effectively accessible and convenient. For example, not having a single point of contact is a hassle that will cause many distributors to disengage.

On Tuesday, we discussed how mobile wallets, money movement and the branch experience are changing the game, and in many ways those three factors affect and are affected by the rising tide of mobile. The question now facing banks is: Will they rise with that tide, or be consumed by it? It was one of the major topics covered at Net Finance 2013 last week, so let’s continue our recap with a look at three mobile-related issues banks will have to adapt to:

IT and marketing cross-over
A big concern for banks is the new demand placed on their IT departments. And it really isn’t so much the demand, rather the expanded role it gives IT, one that has a tendency to cross over into marketing’s territory. Usability and consistency across mobile devices is critical and it’s IT’s job to make sure both of those elements are in place.

Last week I had the immense pleasure of attending Net Finance 2013 in Phoenix, AZ. Speakers included big names like Larry McClanahan, VP of Digital Delivery at Fifth-Third; Patrick Myron, VP Distribution Marketing at Fifth-Third and Marc Warshawsky, SVP Mobile at Bank of America, and there was a lot of good information to take away from every session. I thought it would be great to share some of the highlights and key messages in this week’s posts and discuss how it all ties back into digital marketing.

One of the biggest topics (and one I found most interesting) was a panel discussion breaking down disruptors in the banking industry. There are currently three major issues banks have to answer and adapt to: mobile wallets, money movement and the branch experience.