In this chapter you will read:
• What the mobile web is
• About the latest digital marketing tools
• Which social media tools to use
• Which local marketing tools work
• Which mobile marketing tools respond better to the SoLoMo strategy
• About the next-generation SoLoMo applications
• An explanation of the I.N.T.E.R.A.C.T. methodology
• The future implications for marketers
The Mobile Web
The mobile web is the natural extension of the development of the Internet, from the first hypertext pages through “Web 2.0” and onto social. In order to understand what the mobile web offers businesses in terms of marketing, it is worthwhile reflecting on the development of online resources and how they have each shaped and changed the way brands engage their customers.
When the Internet was first developed it was little more than a series of static pages linked together through hypertext links, the so-called World Wide Web. The users did not have any interaction with these websites; they could simply read what was on them and click on links to other pages. When the telecommunications infrastructure allowed higher bandwidths and computers could process more data, the age of “Web 2.0” was born. This simply meant that sites became much more complex, because the technology was there to run them feasibly. This created one major change; rather than simply reading what was on a site, users could now interact with it; they could post up things like text, video, photos, and other such materials.
This meant that sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Facebook, and LinkedIn became possible, because they rely on user-generated content. What is more, they allowed people to put up content and share it directly with people they know, through networks of friends on sites such as Facebook. As this developed over time, it became a key advertising space as it allowed adverts to be targeted very specifically around users’ personal interests, tastes, and browsing habits, much more effective than mass marketing (Evans, 2012).
What is absolutely critical about this shift is that it fundamentally altered the dynamic of information flow between brands and customers. Formerly, brands simply broadcast information to customers through mass marketing campaigns, and there was little possibility of sustained customer feedback or engagement. Social media changed this completely; for the first time customers could give feedback en masse; websites like TripAdvisor revolutionized the hotel industry because it allowed for the aggregation of customer feedback totally outside the control of the hotel owners. More recently, companies that are perceived to have done something wrong can be the victim of a “Twitter Storm” whereby they receive so much comment on the site that it shows up in trending metrics and is all visible to the general public.
Thus, brands have had to become much more responsive in the way they engage with their customer. They now no longer simply talk with them, but seek to build a positive relationship with them based on interactive communications; many businesses now handle customer service enquiries through Twitter because that is their customers’ preferred method of contact. Brands also have to be much more responsive—and careful—about how they deal with customer complaints, because social media means that many of these exchanges now take place in full view of the public, or could very easily end up there (Tuten and Solomon, 2014).
At the same time the web was becoming more social and interactive, the process of technological convergence was changing the devices that were used to access the Internet. Cell phones and PDAs became progressively more complex and able to access the Internet, and then there was the advent of the smartphone. The smartphone combined many of the features found on other devices with an impressive level of computing power to make them, in effect, miniature computers. Smartphones enable high-quality Internet browsing, e-mails, high-quality photographs, play music, play games, and work with an ecosystem of applications that allow the user to do all kinds of things from booking flights to searching for restaurant recommendations.
In the context of this book, there are two key features of the smartphone that are particularly relevant. The first is that they all have a GPS transponder in them, and so can be geolocated with a very high degree of accuracy. The second is that the ecosystem of applications play host to many social networks, particularly Facebook and Twitter. These social networks work well with smartphones because they allow people to create and share content in real time; rather than waiting until they get home to use a computer. The fact that they can take photographs and videos enhances this.
The combination of social apps, local targeting, and mobile devices has given rise to the acronym SoLoMo or Social, Local, Mobile. These are the three pillars of a contemporary mobile marketing campaign, and there are a multitude of ways that people are using the ability to target people based on where they are and the social apps that they use. A good example would be the placement of advertisements for restaurants on the Facebook app based on location, time of day, and recent social activity suggesting the user wants to go out that evening.
There are further examples where companies are using local devices to connect to the smartphones of the shopper as they are walking past the store or they are browsing the shelves. These devices, for example, the iBeacon, connect via Bluetooth or the in-store Wi-Fi network if the user has connected to that, and directly puts adverts on the screen of the smartphone, by means of the messaging service on the phone. This allows them to alert shoppers to special offers, similar products, encourage them to leave feedback, and otherwise make a purchase.
Social Tools
Foursquare is a simple tool that lets people “check in” when they reach a particular location such as a restaurant, coffee shop, or bar. Business owners can register their individual businesses on the site, and then provide a selection of special offers for people who check in with them. Usually these offers are tied in with other social actions, such that they become active when people share their check-in on other social media.
Foursquare business—Foursquare is a program that encourages consumers to “check in” and let their social networks know where they are and what they are doing. As a business you can register your location and provide offers that will provide incentives for your customers to take some kind of action, including sharing with their network.
TripAdvisor—for any business in the hospitality, travel or leisure business, or really anybody with physical premises that customers visit, TripAdvisor is essential. The site allows people to leave feedback about venues that they have visited; venue owners can register and then respond to customer feedback. The site is very large in its own right, but TripAdvisor ratings are used on many other sites as a de-facto measure of quality, and so engaging with the site is crucial.
Twitter—a lot of companies use Twitter as a de-facto customer service experience, because it is very easy for people to ask short questions directly to the brand and for the brand to reply to them in as equally as quickly. Twitter also offers a level of engagement with people, as brands often “retweet” things that people have shared with them when having a positive experience with their company.
Facebook pages—these are becoming increasingly important for companies because they draw together many of the features of other social media sites. It is possible to check in as you would on Foursquare, users can rate the brand out of five stars as you might on TripAdvisor, and the company can interact very simply with customers through their “wall” quite like they would on Twitter. Facebook also has by far and away the largest number of users as well, and is important for that reason alone.
Blogging might not seem like a location-specific tool because they can be read by anybody anywhere. In a technical sense that is true, but the content of the blog tends to dictate the readership in the main. In that sense blogs that are built entirely around a location can be very powerful SoLoMo marketing tools.
A good example of this would be a blog that reviews New York food outlets. While the blog could be read by anybody in the world, the bulk of its readership will come from the New York area. Moreover, the blog can be targeted at particular types of eatery such that this further delineates the audience for the blog. Securing a review or placement on such a location-specific blog can be an extremely powerful take for generating a local following.
Coupon Apps
There are a lot of coupon apps out there. Perhaps the most well-known is Groupon, which allows companies to create special offers for a small fee, which should drive customers to particular outlets. For example, an ice cream store might offer a coupon for a free extra scoop at its Boston branches on the following Saturday. The consumer logs on to Groupon and gets the coupon on their phone, and hopefully shares it with their friends via social media as well. The advantage to the local business is that it is easy to set up, as Groupon provides the infrastructure, and is a fast way of generating local interest. There are aggregators such as The Coupons App which is a free download for consumers to get coupons from multiple different providers, such as local free coupon sites. There are also extensions for WordPress websites that allow small business to offer coupons directly through their own sites for as little as $10 a month. There are services such as Grocery IQ which is the same essential design but focused around a very specific market segment, with some added functionality to suit those industries such as creating copping lists and matching coupons to items on the list.
As mentioned in previous chapters, ensuring websites are responsive to mobile devices is crucial in delivering a SoLoMo campaign. There are a number of tools that will help you understand whether your website is mobile friendly and how to improve its optimization. You need to be extremely thorough in this process, because you need to track your entire customer journey through from start to finish and do so using all the different types of mobile browser that are out there; they all have subtle differences and you need to be on top of them all. A sloppy customer experience on the mobile site will result in an enormous drop-off rate through the customer journey, so it is essential to get it right. A good service is the phone emulator Mobile Moxie, which is a free tool that lets you see how your website will look when displayed on various mobile devices; as it is a free tool the selection of browsers and devices to emulate is limited, but it is a very good start.
For those with relatively limited technical skills there are a number of services that can provide an automatic conversion of your current website to a mobile version, though inevitably this is not quite as polished as designing the site from the ground up with mobile in mind.
Duda Mobile offers free and premium wizards to convert your site to mobile site in a straightforward step-by-step process. Bmobilized is a slightly different option, because you can either follow their step-by-step wizard yourself or simply pay them a one-off fee and they will do the conversion for you. Mobify is a better solution for large websites and enterprise-level solutions, as it has a much more complex level of functionality compared to the former two. When using these tools it is important to use tools like Google analytics to understand how customers have been finding your site in the past, and use the redesign for mobile as a jumping off point for improving that.
Apps
As previous chapters argued, apps are incredibly important, and are not all that expensive to procure from scratch. However, some people may not have the technical knowledge to be able to specify a new application from scratch even if it is just to instruct an app designer on what they are looking for. With that in mind there are a number of free apps and tools available to smooth the process. If you are in a B2B sector, then LinkedIn is a very useful tool for finding and engaging with leads or prospective customers with very little effort. The app is intuitive and has a large subscriber base, meaning it is easy to find and add people whom you meet in real life.
Next-Generation SoLoMo Apps
Venture capital money has been pouring into SoLoMo apps (indeed, it was a VC executive that coined the acronym), and there are set to be a plethora of new services aiming to remake the social, local, and mobile landscape, which underlines the importance of always having one eye on the future. SoLoMo is defined by an incredibly fast pace of change and development, so it is not enough to simply understand and master the apps that are relevant at the moment.
SoLoMo Applications
GetGlue
Allows people to check in as watching particular TV shows or films as you might a physical location, with a view to building a shared community around those things. Serves recommendations based on check-ins.
Trover
Shares discoveries from within locations rather than indicating presence at a location; so, for example, it might be sharing photos of things within a historical site rather than just checking in there.
myShopanion
Aims to socialize the shopping experience for normal products by creating a conversation around them. Browsers can ask questions, seek opinions, and chat about particular products, and they can accomplish various tasks like actually buying the product, or adding it to a wish list.
Allows users to compare and research products as they physically stand in the store. The app uses bar code scanning technology through the camera function to determine what the product is, offering online research, reviews, and alternative outlets. This is combined with GPS tracking that shows the nearest alternative outlets.
ThinkNear
Allows stores to offer flash-sale type short-term offers to customers who are geographically proximate to the store. This can help smooth out slow periods and introduce new customers to the store.
Stampt
This is similar to ShopSavvy in that it uses phone functionality to scan products which then add up to a loyalty bonus within that particular store, so it is essentially a digital loyalty card. Moreover purchases are placed in a CRM system so that the retailer can follow up with targeted offers based on previous purchases.
I.N.T.E.R.A.C.T.
The I.N.T.E.R.A.C.T acronym is short for the following areas of discussion and should frame everything that goes into a SoLoMo strategy.
• Integration.
All of the proprietary and third-party elements of social media campaign, such as the mobile website and Facebook page, should be seamlessly integrated to present an excellent customer experience.
• Notification.
Brands should not be passive. They should be using social media notification settings to actively deliver offers and information.
• Traffic.
Volume is the lifeblood of any online enterprise, so everything that the company says or does in public should be geared around generating more traffic.
Social media is an excellent opportunity to educate consumers about products and services, how they can make the most of them, and how they can be upsold.
• Relationships.
Social media is not just about the “transaction”; it is about building up the long-term engagement with a customer that keeps them coming back for more.
• Access.
Social media knows no opening hours. It is a 24/7 endeavor.
• Community.
Social media is a multichannel experience. Customers talk to each other about your brand, for better or for worse (Kamins, 2014).
• Transactions.
The end goal of every element of social media marketing, however indirect, is to convert sales (Motameni and Nordstrom, 2014).
Implications for Marketers
The SoLoMo phenomenon has completely changed the way that marketers have to operate their campaigns; from the way that they even conceive of their relationship with the customer, through to the way that they design and operate campaigns themselves. The crux of the matter is that there has been a convergence in marketing as much as there has been a convergence in technology.
There are many companies and consultants who will offer to help with any one component of SoLoMo. There are myriad agencies offering social marketing services, consultants for mobile site design, and individual items like the iBeacon for location-based targeting. However, the key to the SoLoMo idea is that they all work together; you cannot do one or two of the three. They are in many ways mutually constitutive; social works because mobiles are portable, location works because it ties in with social habits and so on. Therefore, there is no sense in working on all of these things independently.
Therefore, the implication for marketers is that they need to build their capacities around all three elements. This will fundamentally alter the way that companies engage with their customers, and marketers need to be very focused in order to get the best out of the process. The following elements will be absolutely critical in any SoLoMo marketing strategy:
• Engaging customers through geotriggered ads
• Linking as many parts of the customer experience as possible to the capabilities of the smartphone; using barcode scanning, photo-shopping, instant feedback and recommendation tools, and so on
• Creating instant rewards and incentives delivered through the mobile platform to create and maintain engagement
• Being proactive in dealing with multiple strands of live feedback through social and mobile sources, both positive and negative feedback
• Maintaining brand recognition and brand values in such a dynamic space
These are quite different competencies from digital marketers are used to, because they are not confined to any one channel or tool, or style of marketing, but represent marketing around the behaviors of customers. This will make it challenging to maintain a robust marketing campaign across all the methods of engagement and advertising that are in the SoLoMo world, so planning will be absolutely essential for any marketing team.
The SoLoMo world is also extremely fast paced. The sections above note that there are myriad new apps being developed with venture capital money, and any one of them could forge radical change in any given market space. On top of this, smartphone manufacturers are constantly battling to introduce new technologies into their devices such as retinal scanning and heartbeat monitors, which can all be inveigled into new SoLoMo means of engaging customers. Because of this, marketers always need to have one eye on the horizon; it will never be the case that marketers have got every SoLoMo base covered. They will always need to be aware of the latest developing trends and understand how that will impact upon what they are already doing.