Social, Mobile, Local. Why SoMoLo is Criticial for Your Business

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SOCIAL. MOBILE. LOCAL.Why SoMoLo is Critical for Your Business

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Index of Contents

What is SoMoLo? 03

Drivers of the Movement

Social Media Landscape 04

Smartphone Adoption and its Impact 09

Leveraging the Social-Mobile Connection 14

Creating a Local Presence 18

The SoMoLo Trifecta 20

How Can You Capitalize on This Phenomenon? 21

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What is SoMoLo?

SoMoLo is an acronym for Social, Mobile and Local marketing. In our unified context, it describes the ways people interact in our technologically savvy society.

Most of us are constantly checking the news, Facebook, emails, and many other things while on the go or at work while trying to manage our daily lives. We as individuals are constantly social, mobile and local.

Let’s dive into each one of these areas to learn some interesting facts, see some study results, and envision how we can each apply these to our own businesses.

SOCIAL MOBILE LOCAL


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Social Media Landscape

We often hear the question, “Do you really need to spend time on social media for your business?” The answer is Yes. The reality of modern commerce culture is that customers and prospects will talk about you and your business online whether or not you choose to participate in the conversation.

Electing to be a part of the social media conversation gives you the opportunity to change perceptions and create loyalty while driving traffic to your website with the goal of ultimately generating sales.


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Social Media LandscapeNot an Option, But a Necessity

The following statistics indicate that it’s no longer optional – social media is a necessity.

Social Media by the NumbersFacebook – 1.3B active monthly users, 802M active daily users; Average 338 Friends

Twitter – 500 million tweets per day = 143,199 tweets/second

LinkedIn – Two new users every second; 2.1M+ Groups

YouTube – Most watched video, Gangnam Style – 1.6B Views. It reaches more 18-34 year-old Americans than any cable network

Blogs – Three million new blogs every month! 181M blogs exist today! A new blog is created every half-second.

Pinterest – 80% of users are female.

Social media has become an effective tool for building and maintaining relationships with prospects and current customers. Moreover, many people consult third-party resources and others in their social networks, so it’s important for your brand to show up.


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Social Media LandscapeYour Competitors Use Social Media?!?

Social Media isn’t slowing down anytime soon

US Companies Using Social Networks for Marketing Purposes, 2009-2014

2009

57%

2010

72%

2011

81%

2012

88%

2013

91%

2014

92%

Note: Companies with 100+ employees; includes use of any of the proprietary public-facing social network tools for marketing purposes

Source: eMarketing, Aug 2012


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Social Media LandscapeWhat Can Social Media Do?

If any doubts remain about using social media, think briefly about how you use social media yourself. The most likely answers you’d provide are advice-seeking, reading or writing reviews, or sharing experiences with your friends and followers. You’d like to provide a venue for your happy customers to share that with others, right?

Here are some of the positive effects of a strong social media presence:

Increase brand awareness – Get your name out there!

Build long-term loyalty – Create followers via continued communication and relationship-building

Stronger SEO rankings – Integrate your online footprint and ensure that everything is leading traffic back to your website

Immediate product/messaging feedback – See what people are saying, even if the sample can be somewhat extreme and skewed. It’s better to hear complaints than not be among those listening.

Increase sales and leads – Social media, when properly used, can be among the most compelling venues for sales pitches and product conversations.

Identify potential evangelists – Find a frequent commenter on your social media outlets? Use their praise as a segue to building a relationship with that individual so they can keep spreading the word. Consider offering them a discount. Remember: Social media costs less than most forms of marketing.

Become a part of your customers’ story – Think about how your business affects the daily lives of your customers, and then make it fun and easy to include references to you in their posts and profiles. Not only will you appear on their Facebook timeline, but their linked references to your business can also pop up on your own timeline and searches. Instead of hard selling, you’re letting your customers’ status updates do the talking.


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Social Media LandscapeWhich Social Media Platforms Should I Use?

If we have convinced you to at least investigate using social media as a business tool, the next step is determining what social media platforms provide you the best audience.

Each social media platform has its own characteristics and advantages. Some businesses benefit from using all of them, but a lot of businesses are going to find that they just want to use one or two to start out. The most important thing to remember is who your customer is and who you are trying to speak to. That profile will guide you to the best social media outlet.

Here are brief descriptions of the core characteristics of the major platforms:

Less social and more company-oriented, LinkedIn is great for connecting with other businesses, joining industry-related educational groups and posting job openings.

Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, so most businesses use it for sharing links to company news and other content, “retweeting” (sharing) other industry announcements, responding to customer mentions and support questions.

Facebook has good tools in place for running contests, posting photos or videos, and writing longer posts. It allows for “followers” who subscribe to your posts.

Foursquare is good for restaurants, stores, and other businesses with physical locations, and is often most important as a hub for customer reviews. Customers can “check-in” on Foursquare to announce their location. Creating a Foursquare profile for your business allows anyone seeing that check-in to learn more about you. Some businesses also offer customers rewards based on check-in frequency.

Whatever platform you choose, be sure to add buttons on your website encouraging people to follow you, like you or connect with you. These buttons are available for free download at AddThis.com – one of many resources.

Remember: You cannot be all things to all customers, so choose the platforms that work best for your business and customers.


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Mobile: Smartphone Adoption & Its Impact


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Mobile: Smartphone Adoption & Its Impact

Intrinsically connected to the social media trend is the increasing use of mobile devices in commerce and communication of all kinds.

Here are some statistics to kick off this topic:62% of all online shoppers read product-related comments from friends on Facebook75% of these shoppers click through to the retailer’s site (source: Sociable Labs Social Impact Study)82% of smartphone owners said they always have their phones with them when they are in-store (source: Vibes Mobile Consumer Report).

It’s easy to review the ways that we use social devices in buying decisions. Have you or someone you know ever been in a store and been curious about a product? Or hoping to compare prices with other outlets?

What do you do? You take out your smartphone and search for the answers you need: Prices, stock, reviews and more are available to aid your purchasing process.

Mobile devices are empowering consumers with information, so it’s important that your information – your products, your specials, your positive reviews – are there to be found.

62% 75% 82%


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http://www.vibes.com/personalization

Mobile: Smartphone Adoption & Its ImpactPrimary Driver = Smartphone Adoption

To understand the power that mobile technology can have on your business, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the relevant statistics:

Breakdown of Smartphone Users and Usage Stats

Two-thirds of U.S. consumers currently own smartphones, up significantly from 44% in 2011. (Mashable)

Between 2013 and 2017, mobile phone penetration will rise from 61.1% to 69.4% of the global population.

81% of adults aged 25-34 have smartphones, the highest smartphone age group penetration in the U.S. (Heidi Cohen)

The average person owns about four mobile devices (smartphone, tablets, etc.) and spends60 hours a week consuming content on them. (Mashable)

The same study showed that 62% of emails were opened on a mobile device.

Leveraging mobile technology for your business connects you to a primary point of contact for many consumers. Dependent on your industry, those consumers may constitute your most crucial demographic.

The 25-34 year-old demographic has the highest rate of smartphone adoption, so if you create loyal customers with this audience – if it makes sense for your business – you are sustaining the buying power of not only this demographic, but also for future eras.

Bottom Line: People are always connected to their phones, so try to leverage this channel for your business.


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Mobile: Smartphone Adoption & Its ImpactSmartphone Adoption and Apps

Smartphones are becoming the primary place where consumers store, access and leverage information. It’s the primary reference source for many.

Consumers use smartphones for 195 minutes per day, but spend only 25% of that time actually talking on the phone.

Mobile devices have become one of the few methods through which people are willing to divulge data about themselves in exchange for getting what they want instantly and from anywhere. For instance:

Trade location (GPS service) in order to find nearest vendor location.

Share interests and brand affinities (checking in on FB, following companies, etc.) to save money, collect points or win sweepstakes.

Discuss personal experiences (Yelp, other review sites) for the good of community.

If your business is popular enough, you may want to design your own application. Applications, or apps for short, are mobile device software that help make connections, whether that be to people, brands, services, information, places, or anything else.

Here are a few interesting stats about apps:

Apple sold more iPhones & iPads in a single year (2011) than it sold Mac computers across 28 years.

Apple’s App Store is about to hit the 25 billion download mark.

There are more iPhones sold every day than babies born!

Mobile devices will outnumber humans by 2016.


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Mobile: Smartphone Adoption & Its ImpactSmartphone Adoption and Apps

THE 10 MOST POPULAR APPS IN THE U.S.Average monthly users (18+) of the most popular smartphone apps in the United States in 2013

As you can see from this chart listing the 10 most popular apps in the U.S., the social trend is completely intertwined with the mobile surge. So is local marketing – which we’ll discuss later – with the apps like Google Maps.

Facebook

Google Play

Google Search

YouTube

Pandora Radio

Gmail

Google Maps

Apple App Suite*

Yahoo Stocks

Apple Maps

86.1m

60.9m

59.7m

55.7m

51.6m

51.3m

50.5m

49.3m

34.1m

29.5m

* Includes iTunes, App Store and Game Center Source: comScore Mashable


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Leveraging the Social-Mobile Connection

So how do we connect social and mobile so that they work together? Here are a few ideas on how you can leverage both of these channels as you communicate and engage with your prospects and customers. We will illustrate this through the standard who, what, where, when, why and how model.


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Leveraging the Social-Mobile Connection

Communicate and engage with your prospects and customers.

WHO: Social profiles tell you exactly who your customers are, down to specific individuals.

WHAT: Review sites tell you exactly what your customers are thinking and what their experience has been with your company.

Once you read through the feedback, then what?

Determine if you can make any changes to your business.

Communicate back – regardless of whether the feedback was positive or negative – to let them know you care and you are listening.

WHEN & WHERE: Searches for your business performed via mapping applications and navigation utilities tell you where your customers are.

WHY: Following the online conversation tells you what problems with your offerings current and potential customers are trying to solve.

HOW: How were they referred to your business?

Google Analytics (free tool) can help you understand how people are getting to your website.


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Leveraging the Social-Mobile ConnectionIs your Website Mobile-Friendly?

We can’t cover SoMoLo strategy integration without briefly addressing the increasing importance of having a mobile-friendly website.

It’s becoming more and more of a problem if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website – a recent study claimed 72 percent of consumers prioritize wanting a site easily browsed on their mobile devices.

A recent Google survey of mobile users said that 96 percent have visited a site that doesn’t work well on their device. Those survey respondents are five times more likely to abandon a task if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search and try to find another site to meet their needs.

Not sure if your website is mobile friendly? Use your phone or a friend’s phone to go to your website. If the text is hard to read or the buttons and images look crammed or out of place, then your website is not mobile friendly.

Friendly=More likely to buy

67%“A mobile-friendly site makes me more likely to buy a product or use a service.”

Unfriendly=More likely to leave

61%“If I don’t see what I’m looking for right away on a mobile site, I’ll quickly move on to another site.”


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74%Get directions oroperating hours

64%Contact the store

61%Find product information

50%Make a purchase ororder a service

Leveraging the Social-Mobile ConnectionIs your Website Mobile-Friendly?

So what constitutes a mobile-friendly site?

Site speed – Your page should load in 5 seconds or less, and have large buttons so that users don’t have to zoom in too far to navigate your site.

Limit the scrolling and pinching where possible – try to give users a mobile-optimized portal with immediate access to the most sought-after things, such as business contact information.

Any phone numbers should use “Click to call” access to make it simple for someone to get in touch.

Make sure you have links to your company’s social media profiles.

At the end of the day, a consumer should be able to do all the basics by visiting your mobile-optimized site:

Learn the basics about your company

Find hours of operation and directions

See contact information

View product details

Purchase products or services

The bottom line: Consumers seeking retail information are looking for things they can take action on immediately.


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Creating a Local Presence

According to Pew Research Center, at least 65 million Americans use mobile or location-based services.

The proportion of smartphone owners using location-based services grew almost 35% in less than a year to 74% in February of 2012, according to Pew’s Internet & American Life Project. This significant uptick helps underscore the importance of having a local presence.

Based on another study by Consumer Perceptions of Mobile Marketing for Strongmail, 38% of smartphone owners were open to receiving promotional messages via SMS when the messages were based on their location. This statistic reveals what a huge opportunity exists with local marketing.

Indeed, local relevancy heightens consumer interest in receiving messages.

20% of the more than four billion searches conducted on Google each day are local searches; 50% of mobile searches are local.

75% of American consumer spending occurs within 15 miles of the consumer’s doorstep.

38% of users would use a mobile device to find a store location, 34% to compare prices, 28% to research deals and coupons, and 27% to find a product review.

However big e-commerce is, most people would still rather buy locally. Your easiest targets are those right around the corner, because those people seek the opportunity to make either face-to-face relationships and/or relationships with people who share many commonalities.

SoMoLo marketing puts you in the best available position to attract and identify nearby potential customers. It’s your signpost along the Internet Superhighway, and you have to be seen to get business.


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Creating a Local PresenceWant to get noticed?

How do you get your business noticed? You need to be found where customers search.

These are some of the principal types of local information available to Internet users seeking local businesses:

Internet Directories (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.)

Online Maps (CityMaps, Mapquest, etc.)

Online Yellow Pages (YP.com, SuperPages, etc.)

GPS and Navigation Systems (TomTom)

Mobile Search Applications (AroundMe, Foursquare, etc.) and Mobile Mapping Applications

Social Sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Another useful tactic is to leverage your customers’ lifestyles for your marketing efforts.

Monitor Online Reviews: Take Yelpers and other similar review sites seriously. Try to convert your detractors with customer care. Let them know you are listening. You won’t be able to please everyone, but you’ll learn from the feedback and apply it to your business as it makes sense moving forward.

Use positive reviews as “testimonials” and integrate those on your website.

If you get a negative review – at some point you will – take it to heart and take corrective action when needed to improve your products and services.


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“The whole is greaterthan the sum of its parts”“The whole is greaterthan the sum of its parts”

SoMoLo Trifecta

Why is combining these techniques crucial?

38% of smartphone owners were open to receiving promotional messages via SMS when the messages were based on their location

88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours

By 2015, more people are expected to access the Internet through mobile devices than through wired connections

Bottom LineAll three types of marketing create an exponential effect on the potency of each technique. Real-time engagement with local customers now exists through a variety of media accessible via a variety of devices. Your business simply has to be present to win.


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How can SMBs Capitalize on this Phenomenon?Eight Ways to Get Started with SoMoLo

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It may still seem daunting to dive head-first into SoMoLo marketing. So here are some basic things to get you started. Remember: Social media is free marketing, and the time you spend is likely a safe tradeoff for the opportunity to build a community and emotional ties with your customers.

Once you get a social presence started, get followers. Family and friends count – leverage who you know. The main point is to get that initial engagement.

If you already have a page, start looking more in depth at your followers. Gather information about your customers – what are they saying, what other companies do they follow, where do they live, are the majority of your followers male or female? Learn from their social profiles to help you with your messaging and business strategy.

The next phase is about building two-way conversations. You can start with a post that shows up in your followers’ feeds instead of clogging up their inboxes. If it catches their eye, they can respond. Test the content you post on social – try a picture, a question, a quote, promotion, fun fact about your industry or business, or whatever else comes to mind. Build a consistent posting schedule, and be respectful of all activity and comments in the social sphere.

Keep in mind that, for each follower of a corporate social feed, on a site like Facebook, their friends will occasionally gets ads in their news feed related to those corporations. When your followers interact with your posts, it can pop up on many of their friends’ feeds. This is how your word can spread. Get your message in front of people through their connections.

Back to the mobile aspect, and a few reminders of what we’ve discussed:

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly, and that its content is optimized for users on the go. If you have a brick-and-mortar location where people gather for extended periods of time, like a restaurant or coffee shop, consider offering free wi-fi to draw in the modern Internet user on the go.

Finally, the local aspect, and this quick tip:

Get your business listed online, and monitor the conversation that’s out there by setting up Google alerts for your business. This free tool ensures that you’ll be informed when someone uses your business name so you know what people are saying and you can determine if you should respond.

Integrate all three for maximum impact, exposure and SEO value.


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https://www.google.com/alerts

What We Hope You Take Away

In the end, these are the key points to remember when considering the SoMoLo trend:

Social media communication is a must.

Understand that there are no silver bullets among these three components. Don’t just do social or a mobile or local: Combine them to capture your audience and keep them coming back to you.

Be accessible. Show up where your customers are searching. If you don’t know where that is, Google Analytics will come in handy.

No matter what, you need to build and maintain relationships with your customers. This is key in making your company a success for years to come.

Be prepared to adapt. Online marketing constantly changes. Your strategy must evolve to keep pace.

Your customers can be your most loyal brand advocates. Ultimately, that’s the goal – to create those product evangelists. Using these strategies should help create that connection, and that’s what constitutes SoMoLo success.


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Go SoMoLo TodayLeverage the Social-Mobile-Local Connection

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ToolboxTools to help you build a SoMoLo presence

Website Builder

Mobile friendly options : http://www.hostway.com/website-builder/

Check list for launching your website: http://www.hostway.com/blog/12-essential-checks-before-launching-your-website/

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Find out where your competitors stand: http://www.compete.com/us/


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https://biz.yelp.com/

Q & A

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