TAG | Media Needle
Smartphones have gone mainstream. 65% of mobile subscribers in the U.S. now have them.
As more and more people make the switch and an increasing number of devices become wireless, everyone and everything is becoming mobile. But until now marketers and their money have not been keeping up with this trend.
Hang on to your seats folks, 2012 is the year everyone really dives in. From major retailers to financial services, insurance providers, healthcare companies and medical device manufactures’… a whole new crop of businesses and services are now tapping the “social, mobile, local” movement, and poised to launch major mobile initiatives in 2012.
Businesses increasing focus on mobile means this is the year you will finally see fully flushed out mobile marketing programs make a real impact, across a broad range of industries.
We’re talking about the kind of super strategic, smart, creative thinking that takes branding, engagement and reach to a whole other level. Using mobile payments, mobile instant messaging, augmented reality, location based tagging, micro-targeting, push notifications, image recognition technology and social media promotions that connect with consumers right at the point of action.
We’re not the only ones who think this way. Gartner (IT)recently predicted “brands will increasingly shift their marketing budget to the mobile channel and experiment with cutting-edge apps to capture new marketing and sales opportunities.” In fact, mobile app developer Bitzio (BTZO) claims worldwide, more than 14 billion apps have been downloaded to iPhones, Android, Windows, Nokia, Blackberry and other smaller mobile platforms.
But if you’re only thinking about apps, you’re missing the next big thing.
In 2012 you’re going start see an increasing number of people walking around with all sorts of ATTACHMENTS coming out of their phone…as everybody and their brother begins using credit card readers like Square or Intuit’s GoPayments (INTU ) to accept and process credit cards payments on the spot. Meanwhile companies like Qualcomm (QCOM) are using mobile and wireless technology to reshape the healthcare landscape. Making it possible for hospitals and medical device manufactures or health and wellness companies to launch attachments that turn your phone into an ECG reader that fits in your pocket, a sonogram machine that can be used anywhere or a wireless diabetes monitor that safely stores, analyzes and instantly connects your medical information to your doctor, caregiver or hospital anytime or place you happen to use it and sends alerts back and forth as needed.
Companies, technology and service providers, that embrace the latest mobile developments have a real opportunity to use the mobile channel to make their products stand out from the pack, enhance brand image, retain user loyalty and actually improve quality of life. Now how often do you get to say that?
From mobile payments, to mobile couponing, to innovative location based mobile marketing programs and digital outdoor promotions that enable consumers to wirelessly interact with a brand message, instantly upload or share information across social media, text with digital billboards and connect with a brand message through augmented reality experiences that allow advertisers to speak with consumers at the point of transaction…2012 is going to be the end of the world as we’ve known it…and the start of some crazy, awesome stuff in mobile.
LOCATION BASED FACT
The total user base of consumer location-based services to reach 1.4 billion users by 2014.
MOBILE EMAIL FACT
Gartner expects mobile e-mail users worldwide to increase from 354 million in 2009 to 713 million in 2014, to account for 10.6 percent of the global mobile user base.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/slideshows/show.aspx?c=87261&slide=10
Are you in a restaurant rut? Hungry, but not sure where to go? Often, hitting the old neighborhood standby, with its familiar menu—maybe even a waiter who knows your name—can be the path of least resistance.
But on occasion, a bit of experimentation is in order, and it can be well worth the effort. The best laboratories in the food world right now are pop-up restaurants, in which a well-known chef takes over someone else’s kitchen for a temporary run.
Unfettered of the responsibilities of managing overhead costs or assembling a permanent menu that covers all dietary bases, pop-up chefs let their imaginations run wild. When was the last time you had teriyaki rabbit meatballs with foie gras and yuzu? That was on a recent dinner menu at a pop-up in Los Angeles, in which a French chef took over the kitchen of a casual Asian lunch spot.
So, how does one find out about these fleeting eateries? Social media, of course. Like gourmet food trucks—which rely on food blogs, Twitter, and Facebook to spread word of their ever-changing locations in real time—pop-ups use social media networking as their principal, and often only, marketing vehicle. According to a National Restaurant Association spokesperson, the time-sensitive nature and “experimental aspect” of pop-ups make them particularly ripe for promotion via the blogosphere. And it seems to be working: The trade group has named pop-ups and food trucks as the biggest expected industry trend for 2011.
Indeed, social media are largely responsible for pushing the pop-up concept from the exclusive realm of in-the-know foodies to the mainstream. The Sundance Channel even has a new TV show about pop-ups, “Ludo Bites America.” Now, hardcore foodies are trying to come up with new dining experiences reserved for only the most plugged-in-events such as a “flash mob”-style gourmet dinner served on the New York subway, or a Manhattan version of Paris’ ultra-exclusive Dîner en Blanc, planned for a secret location in August. Will these gourmands succeed in excluding the hungry hoi polloi from their hush-hush “underground” meals? As we know, all it takes is one innocent little Tweet, and the word is out….
Check out more on the business of pop-up restaurants here.
Typewriter Robot by Jeremy Mayer
I’ve been asked to write a blog post.
A blog? Me? But I get PAID to write and to whip other people’s meandering brain-farts into glorious prose! Well, that is, I did until two weeks ago, when I was laid off from my job as editor at a book publisher. You know, moldy old books. Like, paper and ink and four-color printing and stuff.
I’ve been in print publishing for nearly 20 years, writing for and editing magazines and books on everything from international business news to music to architecture. Why should I stoop to a medium that’s attainable to any idiot with an iBook? I mean (to paraphrase the old joke about awards), blogs are like hemorrhoids: sooner or later, every asshole gets one.
The truth is, publishing now really is for everyone, from bloggers to tweeters to the right-place-at-the-right-time bystander who manages to capture breaking news with a cellphone camera.
This may be bad news for the professionals, that endlessly growing pool of talented, out-of-work journalists who are duking it out for the few available jobs at established publications. For everyone else, though, it means access to a wealth of opinions, points of view, and, yes, insane ramblings, which may inform, infuriate, call to act, or simply amuse.
The Web, with its accessibility and immediacy, lends itself intrinsically to writing of an egocentric nature. My own writings have never been personal; my professional duties have always been as a reporter or as an editor of other people’s work. I find it incredibly embarrassing to talk about myself; can’t we discuss that fascinating individual over there?
But clearly I need to get with the program. My profession has changed; hell, even the language we use to discuss it has changed. While I won’t stop looking for a job at a “legitimate” media outlet, in the meantime, I will begrudgingly learn to write snappy, snarky, first-person Web-speak, and to embrace the blogs and Twitters and Diggs and Wikis, and, yeah, I still don’t know what Foursquare is.
So, here’s my blog entry. Maybe some people will happen upon it. But for now, until I get used to the idea, one thing you can count on is that I won’t be posting a link for all of my friends on Facebook. Just give me a few weeks.
*This is the first of a two-part series on social media platforms.
The key to navigating the ever-growing world of social media is to divide and conquer. With three main types of social media platforms- those that help you network, the ones that help you promote, and those that help you share- ease of navigation is a necessity.
A platform that allows you to network, like Facebook or LinkedIn, is the most commonly used. Whether you’re interested in getting back in touch with an old flame or making new contacts in the business world, using a social networking site is the easiest way to do so.
Promoting platforms, like YouTube or personal blogs, allow you to do just that: promote. Oftentimes, it isn’t even clear what someone is promoting; personal-style blogs, for example, seem to be promoting nothing more than daily outfits. Upon closer look, however, many of these blogs feature the latest fashions, both in clothing form and through ads, and bloggers can be compensated, whether with money or gifts of clothing, etc.
Lastly, we have platforms that allow you to share, like Digg and Delicious. These platforms operate through closely-knit communities that are not easy to infiltrate. Try to get voted up on Digg and you’ll realize instantly that it takes months of interaction with other users to build up the trust needed to share within the community
If you’re a networker and you like sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, check out Quora. This platform is a sort of best-of the Q&A platform format; a combination of LinkedIn Answers or Yahoo Answers with the look, feel and simplicity of Twitter.
Also check out Color. The platform uses location-based services like GPS to allow users to share the photos on their handsets with people—both strangers and friends—nearby (within a 150-foot radius of a user). Users can also create albums and social groups for photos from a specific event, and can also comment on photos and shoot video.
If you like YouTube and WordPress, try Instagram. This is heaven for tech-junkies and social networking addicts. Snap a photo with your iPhone and then edit the photo as you like, choosing a filter to transform the look and feel. Then, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s photo sharing, reinvented.
If you like sites like Delicious because you enjoy the thrill of sharing sites with like-minded web users, try a social shopping experience in 2011. Sites like Svpply and Polyvore allow users to create inspiration boards, generate user feedback, and ultimately, mimic a real-time shopping experience, minus the long lines and annoying interactions.
Next week, we’ll discuss some more business-oriented social platforms, like Wildfire and Buddy Media.
Not only has Twitter become the place to record one’s every move and thought, it has also become a place that can extend the reach of a company’s marketing efforts — and not just in the traditional sense of a business tweeting about its in-store promotions to followers. Nowadays, Twitter is often the centerpiece of a company’s entire marketing plan, one that all of its other efforts revolve around.
For instance, in Los Angeles (where Media Needle is headquartered), we have a mobile food truck craze well underway, with various trucks serving various delicacies to an on-the-go crowd. The craze began last year with the Kogi BBQ truck, whose food fuses Korean barbecue with Mexican tacos to create a taste that busy LA denizens don’t mind waiting hours in line to try. The traveling truck used Twitter to tweet about the locations where it would be stationed, sometimes only hours before its arrival. Other trucks quickly followed suit, making Twitter the cornerstone of their marketing plans in a way that rendered all other traditional modes of advertising irrelevant. Brick-and-mortar stores also joined the movement, offering such promotions as Twitter Tuesdays that give customers who mention Twitter 10% off their purchases. In addition, stores have begun giving their followers early access to new products and special promotions, an advantage that increases sales as much as it does subscribers.
So why does it work? With its 140 character count, Twitter is the perfect vehicle to publicize promotions quickly to a distracted crowd, as Web-savvy audiences have already learned how to tune out Flash graphics and banner promotions on a website. Twitter subscribers, on the other hand, make the active choice to follow a brand and read the tweets, creating a captive audience interested in hearing what a company has to say — and sell. Twitter campaigns are also far cheaper to execute, as they don’t incur the costs of printing mailers or hiring graphic designers. With this in mind, we expect Twitter and other social media outlets to continue their slow but steady take over of marketing campaigns until traditional advertising becomes as obsolete as the VCR.
* Image courtesy of http://www.allposters.com
Social media has become part of our life. Today, pretty much everyone is using some form of it. Every local store, cafe, club and event has a Facebook page. Every brand has a Twitter account and every white paper ever written has been turned into a SlideShare presentation, for some self-proclaimed thought leader in a Linkedin group to share.
In this completely connected, totally viral, absolutely transparent, geo-targeted, digital world we live and work in… you have to be social. But how do you justify the time and expense it takes to maintain that presence?
Now that social media has passed the point of “why do I need it” to “what do I do with it” the quest to determine the ROI of social media has become more complex.
Since you are asking people to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are difficult to quantify, trying to determine the exact return on your investment is not easy and in the long run, may not a good idea. To really understand the impact of social media and social technology on an event, promotion, brand awareness or even product sales, people need to measure the “ROE” … return on engagement.
At Medial Needle, we have been finding valuable “returns” manifesting themselves in ways not always anticipated at the onset as a result of our marketing efforts. More and more, we’ve come to see these unexpected fruits and proverbial rewards only appear because social media was strategically integrated into a marketing agenda.
For example, Media Needle recently executed a food campaign outreach program. While servicing a very small, archaic and insular cooking listserv, we uncovered a hive of influential webmasters; each with robust email lists and social media profiles. So what at first appeared initially to be a seemingly insignificant target community mushroomed into one of the campaigns top case studies. Clearly social media bears the markings of what we once more readily called “viral marketing”. Another campaign had us establish a quality dialog with a key target community. Despite a lull in activity on the client’s end, we maintained the relationship. Six months later, the two partnered successfully for a robust promotion. Anticipating these in conventional ROI terms, especially at the onset of the campaigns would have been impossible.
Thinking about social media in terms of a simple bottom line number puts the whole thing on an old school path of problems and risks, missing great opportunities. Essentially, you have to stop relying solely on the numbers. With social media the trick is to focus on what your numbers end up leading to. ROI is an effect of quality ROE.
If your goal is to participate in the conversation, to enhance your relationship with your audience and become a trusted member of the community that surrounds your brand; then your ROE has been set into motion. Once you’ve paved this foundation, the more conventional ROI models of sales, registrations, new followers and fans etc. will begin to kick-in, proving the benefits of a well-engaged social media agenda versus a dry and uninspired one.
Finally, ROE like everything else social media related, has a variety of definitions. Here are two good ones: We wish to cite Jason Falls’ here http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2008/10/28/what-is-the-roi-for-social-media/
Sarah Evans’ different but complimentary tome here: http://prsarahevans.com/2009/05/15-ways-to-measure-return-on-engagement-roe-of-social-media/ as a valuable point of reference.