Marketing automation is a key topic in local advertising these days, as lots of tools previously reserved for large advertisers are becoming “democratized.” This is parallels the down market shift happening with big data, an underlying theme at our September SMB Digital Marketing show.

BIA/Kelsey analyst Abid Chaudhry will continue this discussion at our next conference — Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media — now just 3 weeks away.  We’ll be in San Francisco again this year and unpacking the marketing automation topic as well as many others.

“There have been lots of efforts to bring the high scale marketing practices of brands and agencies into local media,” says Chaudhry. “But there’s been varied success. We’re going to talk about the opportunities that still exist.”