Gartner Recognizes Balihoo as “Cool Vendor” in the Marketing Landscape

BOISE, IDBalihoo the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation technology and services to national brands with local marketing needs, announced today it has been selected by Gartner, Inc. as one of its “Cool Vendors” in the Marketing space for 2010. Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, analyzes a number of industries and identifies a select number of vendors within each category that are innovative, impactful and intriguing. Of the hundreds of CRM marketing vendors, Balihoo is 1 of 4 that were honored.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

“Our mission is to revolutionize local marketing,” said Pete Gombert, chief executive officer, Balihoo. “Ultimately we want to empower the local marketer with solutions that give them the insight to make the right decisions and the tools to deliver results for their business. Being selected by Gartner as one of its ‘Cool Vendors’ reinforces Balihoo’s commitment to this mission and how our platform is redefining the local marketing landscape.”

Balihoo has seen significant recent success in the co-op marketing and co-op advertising space and has recently released a whitepaper entitled Integrated Co-op Marketing (free download). Balihoo also recently created its first ever Local Franchise Marketing Playbook, a 24-page e-book designed to help businesses navigate the complicated local marketing landscape with tips, tactics and insights to build a powerful local marketing strategy. Earlier this year Balihoo also added social media marketing vehicles into its Local Marketing Automation platform, enabling the local marketer to seamlessly and easily integrate social media vehicles such as Twitter and Facebook into their day-to-day marketing efforts.

About Balihoo

Balihoo is the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation technology and services to national brands with local marketing needs. Balihoo brings enterprise-class marketing to the local level and gives national brands full visibility into all local marketing activities and results.

About Gartner, Inc.

Gartner, Inc. is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit our website.