• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 6, 2015

General Motors will roll out a new wireless service this year that makes local search marketing and content even more valuable in cars. Through OnStar, GM's in-car information service will collect data to deliver coupons and discounts to consumers from brands like Dunkin' Donuts and Priceline.com.

The discounts apply directly to local search marketing and will serve up when drivers ask for directions to participating retailers (we knew this was coming) through RetailMeNot, Entertainment Book and a growing list of partners.

The AtYourService program, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show and scheduled for release early this year, will make content and search more valuable for campaigns connected to cars because it will also offer brands travel data through a growing list of partners, such as Parkopedia, which helps drivers find available parking spots at their destination.

As this content becomes more valuable, search marketers will need facts and figures to back up its worth. Search marketers can optimize to the moon and back, but without the hard data to quantify the success or failure of the campaign, the results are worthless.

Conductor surveyed 182 marketing execs on four core strategies: targeting, measuring, technology worth, and interaction with other departments within the organization. The results provide insight on the CMO perspective for 2015.

Some 61% of marketing executives realize that data is "more" or "much more" important than a year ago. To take advantage of the data, 65% plan to spend more on marketing technology in the coming year, with 28% planning to spend 25% or more. 

GM's service will give brands access to local research data. On a four-level scale from "not important" to "very important," Conductor's survey finds that CMOs believe customer research is very important when creating content. Agencies, which are typically more sophisticated than B2Bs and B2Cs, were most in agreement about the need for pre-content research; 85% of agency executives deem it "very important," while 76% of B2B executives also described it as "very important." 

Working together with different divisions across an organization has become more important to accomplish tasks like delivering coupons and discounts through messages in connected cars. Some 90% of those participating in Conductor's survey agree that inter-department support is “important” or “very important” to their brands’ digital marketing success.