What Is a CoMarketing Cloud + Why It’s Important

In the United States, more than one billion searches containing the phrase “near me” are used monthly. The data speaks for itself — consumers crave a local connection. As a multi-location enterprise, it’s your job to provide that. 

Meeting consumers where they are is critical, but with 100s or 1,000s of business locations, and hundreds of thousands of channels on top of that, it’s often easier said than done. Finding a solution that can help you manage and execute your digital marketing efforts at scale is essential. Enter the comarketing cloud. 

Within this blog, we’ll define the comarketing cloud and why it’s a must for multi-location enterprises and share tips your business can leverage when choosing a partner. Let’s get started!

Defining the CoMarketing Cloud

You’ve likely heard of the term comarketing before. Comarketing  is defined as a collective of intelligent assistants across crucial areas of marketing that analyze data, make strategic and tactical recommendations, and automate the process of marketing to buyers across channels, locations, and platforms. 

In short, comarketing combines hard-working employees with finely tuned technology to the specific area of marketing they assist in. A comarketing cloud (CMC) is a single place where marketers can scale their marketing efforts to win more customers, ultimately improving their bottom line. 

Top Benefits Of Using a CoMarketing Cloud 

Now that you understand what a CMC is, let’s look at why it’s a must for multi-location enterprises.

1. Improves Localization 

SOCi data found that localized content performs 12x better than content not considered localized. As an enterprise, speaking to new and current customers at the local level is imperative. 

A CMC can help ensure your brand keeps messaging consistent across business locations while keying into how location can influence the specific needs of their different customer bases. Think about the software potentially drafting localized social content or optimizing your local listings for you. Adding an emphasis on localization will allow your enterprise to build a powerful presence in every location you serve. 

Download our Localized Social Content Guide for additional tips on creating a localized strategy specifically for social media. 

2. Automates Personalization 

As a multi-location marketer, you likely understand the importance of personalization. Whether you’re responding to reviews, interacting with your target audience on social media, or optimizing your chatbots, including a personalized experience is critical. 

While it’s essential, maintaining personalization across all aspects of your marketing strategy and business locations is nearly impossible. Advancements in generative AI can be used to seamlessly create personalized, allowing you to implement more effective content into your marketing campaigns. Our blog on how marketers can incorporate ChatGPT into their marketing efforts can provide helpful insight. 

Although using generative AI can help solve some of your problems when it comes to personalization, finding a CMC that has integrations with AI and includes personalization features can help your enterprise master a personalized customer experience more seamlessly. 

3. Leverages Third-Party Integrations 

Third-party integrations are the attachment of an API from one application to another. For instance, if you’re a restaurant brand, you may have food delivery applications connected to your local listing. Similarly, fitness brands often need an integration to allow customers to schedule classes through their local pages. 

These added integrations can help differentiate your enterprise from competitors while providing customers with added convenience. Often, CMCs offer various third-party integrations that your enterprise can use to various digital platforms that your target audience spends time on. 

However, the true power of the third-party integrations is providing additional signals of data to influence the other aspects of your marketing strategy. 

4. Alleviates Your Marketing Team’s Workload 

One of the most significant benefits of a good CMC is that it reduces the workload of both corporate and local marketing teams. CMCs can automate many processes your team has been doing manually, saving time for your teams to focus on other efforts. 

If you want to ensure you’re selecting a CMC that will help reduce workload, consider the following questions: 

1. Can corporate and local teams use this solution?
2. Does this solution allow me to scale my marketing efforts? 
3. What are the workflows and automation that the CMC can create? 
4. Will this solution solve multiple aspects of my marketing strategy or just one?
5. Are there cost benefits associated with a platform?

While we’ll dive deeper into how to select a suitable CMC for your enterprise later, these questions can help ensure you’re choosing a solution that will save your team time and effort rather than adding extra work. 

5. Reduces Current Gaps 

Finally, an effective CMC can help minimize any current holes in your marketing strategy. For instance, are you currently spending too much time responding to reviews that you’re not optimizing your social profiles to their fullest potential? Or vice versa? As mentioned above, a CMC can help create efficiency for your marketing team and local managers, which leaves time to reduce any gaps. 

If you want to find current gaps and ensure your marketing strategy is up to par, download our Guide to Localized Marketing ROI to calculate how your efforts are performing. 

You’ll likely find that adopting a CMC will help consolidate your marketing tech stack and give the cross-channel insight missing from your current toolset. Effective CMCs should also allow you to track data and insights across marketing efforts, allowing you to provide a more personalized and engaging customer experience. 

Find the Best CoMarketing Cloud for Your Business 

A CMC can help enterprises achieve digital marketing success while taking a lot of pressure off internal teams. Before getting started with a CMC, your enterprise needs to assess the current state of its marketing efforts. Doing so will allow you to understand how much a CMC has helped improve efforts once implemented. 

When choosing a CMC, it’s essential to find one equipped to handle large-scale operations for all locations, products, and solutions your enterprise oversees. CMC providers with experience in a specific industry or business type will have the most highly trained models for an enterprise’s use case. 

That’s where SOCi comes in. SOCi was recently named a comarketing cloud by Aragon Research. Through the use of advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, the SOCi Genius platform provides multi-location enterprises actionable insights and recommendations while automating their most important workflows at scale. With SOCi, businesses can strengthen their digital presence across local search and social pages while protecting their online reputation, driving improved customer engagement and market leading results. To learn more about SOCi Genius click here.

To learn more about why SOCi may be the best CMC for your multi-location enterprise, request a demo today!