Social Media Marketing

Getting It Right

Planned marketing campaigns are a passé. New dimensions are being added to the highly dynamic marketplace and marketing strategy needs to be equally dynamic. The best marketing campaigns are the ones that are formed real time in response to user’s digital behavior.

The market is user driven. Unlike the traditional market place users don’t just buy stuff, they recommend it or criticize it, to their friends, on the Internet, to thousands of them, and to the world on the social media. It like handing over a loud speaker to each person, such that they can express their views to the world and giving them the space where they can be heard too.

“Hey, try out this app, it’s great”, or “I was so turned down by their collection, all hype, not worth it”. People are sharing this stuff. It’s a lot more valuable than just an opinion. In the respective social circles this opinion would determine the fate of the company; these opinions influence thousands in one go. This is changing the sales volumes and marketing dynamics for companies, especially in the direct-to-consumer segment. Companies need to shift their focus from traditional marketing to social media marketing. Even more marketing strategies and promotion campaigns now need to be fluid; need to be formed real-time in response to customer behavior.

It’s a little more complex than what you might think. Social media marketing involves a whole lot of analysis of users’ digital behavior, their social circle, preferences, likes and any personal detail that digital media can make available. To make this simple, here are some quick tips to help you set up your social media campaign.

1. Chalk down the profile of potential customers. This might require creating a certain set of profiles, one or two would be like narrowing it too thin.
2. Study social media profiles (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn…) of the potential customers. What do they do? What are their interests, likings and preferences?
3. Design online and offline campaigns based on the findings of your study.
4. Create social media presence. Upload content that suits the likings of your potential customers.
5. Do acknowledge a comment, like, dislike or criticism put by a customer on the social media. Here is where most companies fail. Having a real person answer to all comments, likes, dislikes or criticisms put by a customer on social media adds credibility to the company, which works wonders in the Internet world.

Social media marketing needs to be handed delicately. Mistakes done on the Internet are never forgotten or forgiven. They are engraved on the digital screens and leave an impression every time someone looks for reviews.

Mobile Moment

Seize The ‘Mobile’ Moment

The term ‘mobile moment’ might be new but the concept isn’t. Google’s success story is a living lesson of seizing the mobile moment. And now, as the retail arena becomes more congested with marketers from across the globe struggling hard for much coveted customer attention, capturing the mobile moment becomes the name of the game.

What exactly is mobile moment?

Mobile moment is the moment when a user needs something, say information or a product, and at that very moment she takes out the mobile and immediately gets what she wants, in context.

Consider this scenario: you are in the train going home from work. You catch up with a friend who mentions he’s transferred to San Marino. Curious, you look up San Marino on your smart phone and in a bit you start looking up hotels and start checking fares to Italy. So a simple piece of information went on to a potential sale in a few seconds. This is mobile moment. What is the weather like in the other part of the country? Is this product cheaper elsewhere? How is the culture of a particular place different? Anything. Absolutely anything.

Seizing the mobile moment is giving the user what she wants, whenever she wants it and where ever she wants it from, and in immediate context.

So the new market is the mobile moment, reaching out to the customer with the exact answer she is seeking in the instant in which she is seeking it. This might sound like the conventional marketing mantra ‘being at the right place at the right time’, but it is a little more complicated. Getting to your customers in their mobile moments would broadly involve:

• Knowing your set of customers – who are they? What do they do? What is their social circle like? All these questions can be answered by tracing digital footprints of your customers from across channels
• Tracking their mobile moments – Again, this is about tracing digital footprints but more focused. What are their likings, interests? Where do they spend? Which information is more likely to convert to sale?
• Serving the user’s mobile moments with real-time, rapid response to mobile behavior
• Designing apt yet concise experiences for shorter moments – do not overwhelm users with too much information, keep it long enough to appease them and short enough to tease them
• Wherever the customer reaches you, be there – this calls for a well-networked omni-channel approach
• Proactively creating mobile moments rather than waiting for the customer to come

Trending Hot

Mobile Marketing Trends to Watch out for in 2016

Mobile continues to be marketing’s blue-eyed-boy; a trend that carries forward from 2015 and before that. Mobile shopping has caught up fast but nevertheless it’s steady. Taking a cue from how mobile commerce has evolved over the years and the latest technology innovations that are coming up every day, here are a few mobile marketing trends that will dominate the market in 2016.

Really Mobile

So, while the trend remains to be “mobile-centric”, shopping would not be restricted to smart phones or tabs only. Mobile commerce will include a whole gamut of mobile devices or personal devices that are with us, on the go. Some gadgets that would contribute significantly to mobile commerce are: smart watches, iBeacons or any other wearables.

Payment Gateways

Payment gateway is the latest trend most retailers are trying to catch on. So if a person surfs some merchandise on her smart phone and then has to go to the desktop computer just to make payment, as a retailer you have most likely lost them.

iBeacons

iBeacon make a great marketing tool when combined with mobile apps. Geofencing, instant notifications of customized offers and discounts, new stocks added intimation and so much more.

Omnicahnnel

As customers find new ways to communicate about their products, they need to understand that this isn’t about just-communication they are talking about. A person might look for a product through one medium and but it on the other. From surfing to purchasing, there are important touch points that connect. This chain of touch points mustn’t be broken. Because much before you loose your customer, competition has her.

Customer Engagement

Whether its mobile retail, information website or social media platform, brands would be required to engage and interact with their customers rather than just do one-way marketing. Brands that engage customers also enjoy a rather loyal customer base as compared to customers that do not connect with the brand.