Localization is not new to marketing, particularly for marketers that manage global brands and need to accommodate a variety of languages and cultures. Nevertheless, local marketing has its own challenges in terms of understanding the intricate details of multiple regions. Local marketing is often tied to location-based services or social networks (e.g., Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook Places), or even one of the many deal Websites (e.g., Groupon, Living Social) that have gained popularity over the past few years. The common characteristic linking local marketing and location-based services is the ability to bring awareness to where businesses are located.

As children, many of us heard the golden rule—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to govern your life” from parents, schoolteachers, and other role models. That same message can be applied to how businesses treat their customers. The implication is that if you are good to your customers, they will be loyal to your business. The benefits of having a loyal customer base (e.g., return business, word-of-mouth promotions) present a case for businesses and marketers to leverage their existing customers to create “brand evangelists” that support growth and awareness.

Brand evangelism in marketing is nothing new per se; it is essentially a term for word-of-mouth marketing in the sense that businesses benefit from their loyal customers spreading the word about their products and services to their friends, family, and colleagues. Today’s marketers find brand evangelism attractive because customers are now interconnected with one another through multiple media channels. Because of this, businesses can rely on their loyal customers to spread the word, for free, on their personal sites to raise brand awareness and increase potential sales.

Today’s consumers are increasingly mobile-savvy. In addition to using their phones for making calls or texting, these devices are also used to watch videos, play games, stay active on social media sites, and interact with apps. This behavior enables marketers to develop new ways of reaching consumers through mobile advertising. According to the Business Insider, mobile advertising spend increased from $1.4 billion in 2011 to $4.1 billion in 2012. It is projected to grow to $7.3 billion in 2013, with the bulk of spending being directed to iOS platforms. Nevertheless, not all mobile technology is relevant for every marketing need and there are a diverse range of options that need to be considered when using mobile as a marketing communication channel.

The use of augmented reality in mobile campaigns provides a diverse new opportunity to engage with consumers. Mobile ads can be interactive, fun, entertaining, engaging, and even highly targeted. With so many options on how to reach customers through mobile technology, it would seem that the capabilities provided by mobile technology would have been exhausted by now. New research and trends suggest that this may not be the case. Marketers and consumers alike have recently taken an increased interest in augmented reality.

There’s no doubt that across all media channels, personalization is a key buzzword for 2013. Whether its social media, e-mail, or another channel, today’s consumers want the “all about me” experience when engaging with sales and marketing materials. Video is no different. Although Tuesdays with Tukaiz covered the growing interest in personalized video last year, not all marketers are ready to take the leap into completely personalized videos.

With the inception of eCommerce in the 1990s and continuous developments being made in mobile commerce technology, the processes through which consumers choose to make purchases have changed dramatically. In addition to viewing traditional brick-and-mortar stores as an option for making purchases, today’s consumers also turn to the Web to find more attractive deals. Web-only companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, Craigslist, and most recently Quibids have been major contributors to drawing consumers away from brick-and-mortar locations.

The past year has seen rapid developments in wearable computing technology. Google launched its glass product, which has been randomly spotted throughout New York City and on Runways during Fashion Week. Telepathy, which was founded in January of this year, announced that it is in the process of releasing the Telepathy 2. This product is a competitor to Google Glass and is actually expected to hit the market first. Additionally, there have also been rumors that Apple’s next big product to come to market will be an iWatch. With all of these new developments, the social experiment of wearable computing is expected to reach a new level.

Mobile technology can provide a wealth of data about its users based on the variety of sensors and signals found in today's smartphones and tablets; one of the most compelling pieces of information that marketers and advertisers are leveraging with increasing frequency is location. With GPS technology integrated in the majority of smartphones and tablets on the market today, along with more platforms tapping into these types of location-based services, opportunities abound to deliver more contextual, hyperlocal experiences to users that help drive value and results.

It's been over three years since we first highlighted location-based services for marketing on Tuesdays with Tukaiz. Back then, a lot of the applications that utilized location data were user-initiated, such as finding the nearest store or checking into a physical location on a social network like Facebook or Foursquare. While those use cases are still prominent and the experiences around them have been enriched over the past few years, marketers are figuring out new ways for location data to provide greater relevancy to target audiences. One key enabler to these new experiences is geofencing.

The use of multiple screens in peoples' everyday lives is becoming commonplace. According to a 2012 study conducted by Google and Ipsos Research entitled The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior, found 90% of consumers move between multiple devices-smartphones, tablets, personal/work computers, and in the near future, smart televisions-to complete tasks throughout the day.

This reality is a challenge for marketers and advertisers that increasingly want to deliver a holistic experience to their target audiences across all of these devices. While strides have been made over the past year or two to use intelligence to tailor content for specific devices and even specific contexts, being able to actually track how an individual moves from screen to screen and have marketing and advertising follow that person remains a major complication.