Atlas / Education & Community
Industry profile
Government & Public Sector Marketing marketing benchmarks
Strongest on Brand & Positioning, weakest on Retention & Loyalty. Government & Public Sector Marketing sits above the national average, and that tension shapes how the whole industry markets.
Score signature
Bars are this industry. Ticks are the national average.
Biggest strength
Brand & Positioning
71 out of 100. The engine carrying the whole score.
Biggest gap
Retention & Loyalty
62 out of 100. The dimension dragging the industry down.
Where to start
Retention & Loyalty
The most upside per point of effort: 15% of the score and 0 points below the field.
The map
Where this industry sits
Every dot is an industry we measure. Choose any two dimensions for the axes. Government & Public Sector Marketing is the red mark.
Acquisition Performance →
Government & Public Sector Marketing sits below average on Retention & Loyalty and above average on Acquisition Performance. That tension defines the industry.
The spread inside the industry
Every number is a Marketing Score out of 100. It rolls six dimensions into one figure, so 41 is a business doing the basics and 79 is one that markets like a business twice its size.
The distance between the strongest and weakest performer here is wide. A small cluster is genuinely good. A long tail sits well behind. The bar to lead this industry is lower than the reputation suggests. So where would you land?
The breakdown
How far above or below the field
Each row plots this industry against the whole field. The dot is where Government & Public Sector Marketing sits, the line is the national average and the faint marks are every other industry. Tap a row for what the dimension means.
How modern and capable is the digital setup?
How well does the industry win new demand?
How well does it turn interest into customers?
How well does it keep and grow customers?
How clear and distinct is the brand?
Can any of this actually be measured?
The read
What the numbers say about Government & Public Sector Marketing
On the whole, Government & Public Sector Marketing is an above-average industry. It leads on brand & positioning and trails on retention & loyalty, and the fastest gains sit in retention & loyalty.
Brand & Positioning
Sits right at the top of every industry we measure. This is the engine carrying the score.
Retention & Loyalty
Sits around the middle of the pack. The soft spot that drags the whole number down.
Retention & Loyalty
Carries the most weight in the score and sits below the field. Move this and the whole number moves with it.
A brand & positioning-led industry with a retention & loyalty problem. The reputation says one thing. The pipeline says another.
Go deeper
The hidden sophistication of government marketing in Australia+
Government marketing in Australia is better than most people think. The composite places it above the majority of commercial industries. The explanation: government agencies have professional marketing teams, significant budgets and, in many cases, campaigns that are literally life-or-death important.
Brand and positioning leads the pack. Government agencies like the ATO, Services Australia, state health departments and transport authorities have invested heavily in clear, accessible communication. The success of COVID public health campaigns demonstrated that government marketing, at its best, can drive mass behaviour change at a scale no commercial campaign can match.
Digital maturity reflects the digital transformation of government services. MyGov, the ATO online portal, state planning portals and digital licensing services have modernised the government-citizen interface. This is marketing in the broadest sense: making the service easy to use is the most effective way to drive adoption.
Acquisition with 20% weight is the relative weakness. Government campaigns often need to reach vulnerable or disengaged populations: non-English speakers, rural communities, elderly residents, Indigenous Australians. These audiences are harder and more expensive to reach than the mainstream audiences that commercial marketing targets.
The marketing challenge for government is measurement. Conversion efficiency measures whether campaigns drive action, but the outcomes that matter (improved public health, reduced road fatalities, increased tax compliance) operate on longer time horizons than commercial metrics. The agencies that have built longitudinal measurement frameworks understand their marketing effectiveness in ways that quarterly commercial reporting cannot match.
Balanced weights for a non-commercial marketing model+
The weighting is unusually balanced: DM 20%, AP 20%, CE 20%, RL 15%, BP 20%, DT 5%. Government marketing does not follow the commercial funnel. It exists to inform, educate, change behaviour and maintain public trust.
Brand and positioning at 20% reflects the importance of institutional credibility. Government agencies need citizens to trust the information they provide. Brand here means reliability, clarity and authority.
Acquisition at 20% measures how effectively government reaches the audiences that need to see its campaigns. This is not about lead generation. It is about awareness and engagement with public health, safety, infrastructure and service campaigns.
Where government marketing can improve+
Data and tracking with 5% weight is actually strong for government, but the potential is enormous. Government agencies collect vast amounts of data through service delivery. The ones connecting service data to campaign performance can measure whether a public health campaign actually changed behaviour, not just whether it reached people.
Retention with 15% weight captures ongoing engagement with government services. Digital service adoption, newsletter engagement and repeat use of online portals all contribute. The agencies with user-friendly digital services see higher engagement without additional marketing spend.
Conversion with 20% weight measures how effectively campaigns turn awareness into action: vaccination uptake, tax lodgement, grant applications, safety compliance. The agencies with clear calls to action and frictionless digital pathways convert at significantly higher rates.
Highlighted terms link through to the marketing dictionary.
Frequently asked
Common questions about Government & Public Sector Marketing
How does Australian government marketing compare to commercial industries?+
What makes government marketing different?+
What is the biggest challenge for government marketing?+
How has digital transformation affected government marketing?+
Keep exploring
Where to go from here
Pull any thread.
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Open the profileFrom the Debrief
Video Is the Most Effective Channel for Australian Public Sector Comms. Most Teams Cannot Afford to Use It.
Melbourne-based Punchy Studio has released its State of Public Sector Communications report. Video tops the list as the most effective channel, but 70% of public sector comms teams say they cannot afford to use it at the scale they need. The gap is a content marketing pattern repeating across every sector with constrained budgets.
Read it