Reposted from: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Web-Exclusives/Viewpoints/Meet-Customers-Needs-with-an-Outside-In-Approach-80315.aspx

The “social customer” has arrived and is molding the next wave of CRM strategies. If your business hasn’t felt the impact yet, it’s just a matter of time.

The impact of the social landscape upon business means the relationship between the enterprise and its customers can no longer be singularly focused on transactions. New tendencies in the socially networked economy are influencing every fiber of our culture—from political elections to Internet sales to trendsetting.

Companies ready to embrace this shift must position the social customer at the center of the new CRM landscape, leveraging social channels to establish, nourish, and manage customer engagement and loyalty.

Who is the social customer?

The social customer:

Consumes information from multiple sources, the majority outside the enterprise’s control.
Learns about new products and brands primarily through social media and networks first and traditional media second, engaging the business last.
Expects an organization’s products and brand to be present and active in the same social channels where the customer operates, not in a separate, centrally managed, and disconnected sphere.
Demands the organization with which he engages listen and respond rapidly without regard to the channel or department the customer uses to interact.
Social customers are increasingly reclaiming power in the business relationship. Businesses, in turn, need to earn their trust to convert this exchange into a fruitful relationship.

It’s an evolution, not a revolution

Today, the waves of “inside-out” CRM automation across sales, service, and marketing functions have settled in most enterprises. These were relatively successful in automating a particular customer function in a business unit, although they rarely achieved a clear and single view of the customer across the enterprise. Moreover, many associated, internally focused “success stories” actually created additional disconnects from the perspective of customer interaction.

Next-generation CRM empowered by social networks should not replace the first waves of CRM. Rather, it needs to evolve a different approach, marrying prior generation CRM data and tools with new social CRM capabilities. Above all else, social CRM takes the “outside-in” customer perspective first and foremost. It evaluates enterprise functions and touch points from the customer’s perspective, and then seeks to leverage ways to utilize CRM for customer engagement and loyalty.

The social customer enablers

Cloud computing, social networks, and mobility have fundamentally enabled “outside-in” social CRM. The concepts of “anytime,” “anywhere,” and “any way” are today a reality and a fact of daily life. The social customer not only has instant access to a wealth of information, but he or she can instantly share it, broadcast it, and disseminate it across businesses, society, and geographies—virtually without limits or boundaries. Furthermore, the social customer can abruptly shape opinions, trends, and outcomes.

Visionary organizations recognized this shift early, including the social channel in their multichannel strategy. They continuously innovate, leveraging social listening tools and analytics to steer advocates and influencers. Those who leverage the social customer and create opportunity from disruption will emerge as winners and advance their leadership. Those who don’t will increasingly fall behind.

Value-driven CRM

In today’s environment, every dollar spent needs to yield a tangible return quickly and for as long as possible. Businesses need to leverage and augment their existing CRM solutions, selectively focusing on new capabilities to maximize business benefits.

Value Realization Methodologies (VRM) have proven invaluable to help decide investment priorities. VRM goes well beyond the traditional business case by aligning organizational strategy and business initiatives. It defines target benefits and formulates the road map to achieve them, measuring tangible value through implementation and thereafter. Furthermore, VRM provides a thorough approach and the tools to optimize quantifiable results, while creating stakeholder ownership and accountability.

Traditionally, the business case has focused on return on investment, justification, and project funding, and actual benefits realized are frequently not measured.

Value-driven CRM builds on the business case and, broadly speaking, includes the following stages:

Value Assessment: Associated with the planning phases of the project, including the definition of performance metrics and the identification of opportunities focusing on tangible business benefits.
Value Build: Associated with all phases from design through implementation, embedding business value into business processes and driving priorities and decisions based on business impact.
Value Capture: Associated with go-live and production, focusing on benefits realization and assessment and identifying areas for continuous improvement.
Value-driven CRM provides an effective framework to:

Build consensus and focus executives, business users, and technology professionals on a common goal.
Define achievable targets and metrics.
Build and realize value incrementally across the CRM life cycle.
Drive decision making based on tangible impact on the balance sheet and the strategy of the organization.
Prioritize CRM initiatives, projects, and functionality based on a rational business model.
Foster accountability at all levels and drive change management based on goals and responsibility.
Quantify and assess actual business benefits against benchmarks and targets and provide a mechanism to correct deviations.
Evaluate and benchmark CRM initiatives after implementation for future planning.
Instigate a culture of continuous business improvement and accountability.
VRM can help to determine how, when, and where new capabilities enabled through business technologies can increase business net worth. Value-driven CRM is forged under this concept and recognizes that the interaction between the organization and the social customer not only brings incremental revenues but can help shape every aspect of an enterprise’s strategy as well.

When leveraging the social customer enablers, value-driven CRM can influence product design, pricing, marketing, and customer-centric, strategic directions in a number of ways:

Interactions with customers can foster co-creation and help improve products and services.
Company portals, listening tools, and blogs can influence opinions and set trends.
Effective connections with customers can help identify needs and wants almost instantly.
Open interactions between customers and businesses can foster their ownership and loyalty.
While there is much more that can be explored on this topic, let it suffice to say value-driven CRM leverages VRM to create business value and rationalize investments. It recognizes that value realization is a continuous process. Consequently, it provides the flexibility to navigate and effectively steer the value road map.

Ravi Kumar S. is the global head of the consulting and systems integration business in the manufacturing industry group at Infosys. He has over 18 years of experience in the consulting space incubating new practice lines, driving large transformational programs, evangelizing new business models, and enabling disruptive technologies for market differentiation across industry segments. Raul Fabre is a partner and practice leader at Infosys. He has over 20 years of experience delivering business and CRM strategies and technology solutions. Sean Ryan is a senior principal consultant in the consulting and systems integration unit of Infosys. He has over 15 years of industry consulting experience in the areas of customer experience, business innovation, and technology.

Reposted from: http://www.appmarket.tv/news/1535-study-second-screen-44-of-mobile-owners-research-a-purchase-after-watching-a-tv-ad.html

Smartphones (Second Screens) are increasingly consumers’ first action to research a purchase after watching a TV ad, with over 44% of mobile owners using their devices to do so – according to IAB research.

The IAB research examined the ways in which consumers are using their mobile, tablets and *PCs to research and purchase products and services, and examines the role each device plays along the purchase path.

The Mobile Online Journey Observation (MOJO) study, which was delivered by GfK’s Digital research team, looks to understand how mobile and PCs are changing and influencing the ways in which consumers buy products. Over 800 smartphone owners were interviewed about the purchase journey of their most recently purchased product. Furthermore, the purchase behaviours of 60 Android owners were tracked across mobile and PC (using GfK’s ConnectedLife Panel) for one month and in some cases re-contacted for tele-depth interviews to further understand their journeys.

The study reveals how both devices play pivotal roles throughout the purchase journey. Awareness of the brand purchased (via display advertising and social networks) was 52% on PC, and almost as high on mobile (45%). Moving through the journey, 78% of respondents researched a product on a PC, and 54% via mobile. As the journey approaches the final commitment to purchase, 80% opted to carry out the transaction via PC and a significant 34% made their purchase on mobile.

Mobile and PC advertising works harder together – the majority of respondents were not using each device in isolation at each stage of the purchase journey- in particular during the awareness and research phase most respondents used both devices together.

It’s not only PC that works well with TV, mobile can too – Consumers are looking for convenience – 44% of respondents in this study stated that they reach for their mobile when wanting to follow up after seeing a TV ad, and are most often looking for more detailed price and product information

Smartphones are the shopper’s first port of call – the research proves that twice as many respondents turn to their mobile to follow up on an advert or recommendation, as they do by going in store.

Mobile – the new companion on the high street- The research shows that 38% of respondents use their smartphone in store- and of this group, 55% conducted an internet search in store about a certain product or service, and nearly half (49%) carried out price comparisons with other retailers whilst on the move. This research proves just how much consumers rely on their mobile phones, as 18% of respondents stated they trust their mobile device over their shopping companion (15%) when making in store purchase decisions.

Retailers need a tablet strategy – Almost three quarters of Smartphone owners who also use a tablet use their tablet to make a purchase every week. On average, tablet owners are spending 4.4 hours a week browsing retail sites on their tablet.

IAB’s senior mobile manger, Alex Kozloff said “This research takes us one step further in understanding the increasing impact digital devices are having throughout the purchase journey. By showing the deep impact digital devices are having from brand awareness, to research, to purchase (both in store and online), we hope advertisers will have a clearer understanding of how to adapt their strategy. In particular, the way the way consumers are turning to their mobile phone in store is a strong call to action for retailers to react to this growing trend.”

GfK’s research director, Ryan Garner said “The research clearly demonstrates the importance of a cross device digital marketing strategy. The more connected devices consumers own, the more their behaviours change and the more complex their purchasing habits become. Those brands and retailers that can best accommodate this changing dynamic will be best placed to generate new sales and capitalise on consumers’ desire to use their smartphone for research and purchase more in the future.”

Re-Posted from: http://www.gpsworld.com/LBS/expert-advice-location-context-relevance-revenue-12536

Mobility’s first phase saw fixed-line communications go mobile. The next phase saw the Internet go mobile. We now behold a paradigm shift in the third phase, where real world communication bridges to the virtual world, via richer communications on smartphones.

For device manufacturers and location-aware service and app creators, it’s no longer about creating unique standalone experiences, it’s about enhancing real-time experiences by enriching everyday consumer behavior with virtual content and relevant information to a particular place and point in time. Location is an important canvas to a series of components that will unlock the possibilities of a more fulfilling, spontaneous — and sometimes amazing — mobile experience. By bringing together the quality of positioning and maps, enabling personalization with places and recommendations, evolving the simple check-in, and enhancing the experience with augmented reality, we activate a seamless, immersive experience that adds value to consumers’ daily life adventures.

Most importantly for wireless operators, location, as a key part of context and relevance, provides a unique opportunity to create revenue.

Location Positioning and Maps

As we create advanced mobile positioning technologies, consumers increasingly become accustomed to location-aware services. Outdoor positioning was our entrée into the market, and it has becoming more and more accurate via new satellite systems in addition to GPS (GLONASS, SBAS, QZSS), use of motion sensors, assisted-GNSS enhancements, and software algorithms to enable instant time to first fix (TTFF), and seamless fixes. On the other hand, pinpointing your location indoors still presents challenges from an accuracy standpoint.

At Nokia, we support Open Mobile Alliance Secure User Plane Location (OMA SUPL, incorporating AGPS and cell-ID) standards for our devices, and enhance our proprietary Nokia Positioning Service (NPS) based on leading-edge assisted-GNSS (GPS+GLONASS) technologies. Our NPS service supports global crowd-sourced databases for cellular tower and Wi-Fi access-point location information. These provide virtually instant TTFF everywhere and enable always-on location awareness — even on devices without an integrated GPS receiver or data connectivity.

3-D Building overlay for real-world representation.

Heat map. to see where the action is: concentrations of location-enabled mobile phone users that can provide data on places where others are dining, dancing, or shopping.

We’re also setting our sights on the next frontier: research concept around high accuracy indoor positioning (HAIP) technologies. Nokia’s current HAIP trial system relies on a dedicated positioning beacon, which acts as an indoor satellite when placed on the ceiling. It can accurately locate your position in a room and how far you are from your desired destination in real-time, with an accuracy of up to 30 centimeters. In this manner, we could direct a potential customer to a physical store front, and further to a specific product on the shelf inside the store.

HAIP beacon from Nokia, for high-accuracy indoor positioning.

Another example comes from Shopkick, with its own proprietary solution for indoor positioning that utilizes a similar beacon placed inside a retail store. On the device side, the ShopKick app listens via the mobile device microphone and alerts a company when a valued customer physically walks into its store. According to TechCrunch, one of Shopkick’s partner retailers “is estimating $50 million in measurable incremental revenue as a result of the Shopkick mobile app.”

The business opportunity is clear: retailers can now directly connect to the consumer for one-to-one marketing and engagement. Consumers are rewarded instantly, on the spot, and enticed to collect further rewards through loyalty programs.

Imagine enhancing this experience further with a visual representation of your position on a map in an outdoor situation, which can offer a wealth of functionality and create a 3D representation of the real world. At Nokia we are further enhancing our NavTeq maps that deliver accurate 360-degree panoramic street-level imagery, 3D building overlays and a point-of-interest (referred to as a place in this article) interface as individual layers. The map data collection provides individual high-density content layers that enable more fluid animation and 3D mesh building overlays. Users can highlight and select buildings and places to interact with in 3D within their surroundings. This merges the real and virtual world, allowing physical and digital objects to co-exist and interact in real time. Imagine the endless opportunities: zoom in on a 3D map of a restaurant storefront, click the menu on the window to see the special of the day, or receive a discounted offer based on something you have liked in the past.

Places and Recommendations

The way we interact with our mobile device is evolving to mimic the way we exist in the real world. When we refer to a place or to a location, for example, we don’t talk in terms of coordinates or an address, rather we say “the Starbucks around the corner from MOMA.” In building devices and applications, we build the place with the foundation of core data (name, address, longitude and latitude, contact details) and layer on top of that an ever-expanding amount of rich data that comprises ratings and reviews, hours of operation, wheelchair access and spatial data extended to entrances, and more. Thus, we begin to layer in context and we no longer need to know the Boolean constructs that we learned in Web 1.0 to talk to a search engine and find exactly what we want.

Managing this rich, evolving set of place data in a relevant manner will increase in importance. It will also open the door to getting recommendations outside of your normal social community. For example, heat maps that allow you to instantly see where the action is in cities around the world, quickly sharing insight into where locals eat, dance, and shop. Check out examples from Nokia (maps.nokia.com) and mobile apps like AroundMe or Foursquare Radar. Providing locally relevant content to end users also extends the opportunity to connect local merchants to their specific target audience or entice new ones.

JiWire reported in August that “53 percent of the on-the-go U.S. audience revealed they are willing to share their location to receive more relevant content. Mobile consumers under the age of 34 are more eager to share, with 60 percent offering their location for better information.” Focusing on the qualifier, “offering their location for better information,” is where places and recommendations become a powerful medium, and advertisements and offers become another valuable piece of the rich data set offered via your mobile device.

Consider a restaurant search that returns a result for a Chinese restaurant your friend has rated 5 stars for its Mongolian beef, which in the past, you have indicated you liked. As part of the information presented, you see a 15-percent off promotion when you view the menu prices. Or perhaps you’ve searched for a children’s museum, and navigation finds the destination and starts directing you from your current location. Upon arrival, you might receive an offer for discounted membership. As more consumers gravitate towards location-based or location-incorporating services on their smartphones, there’s a great opportunity for developers and business owners to integrate place and recommendation experiences.

Consumer Engagement

Utilizing positioning, maps, places and recommendations are the building blocks on which you can create contextually relevant experiences that consumers will find engaging and sticky and which can open the door to business opportunities. Research shows that consumers are willing to check-in to a location, either by text messaging or by using a mobile application on a smartphone; the application will use the phone’s GPS to find the current location. Many social networking services, such as Foursquare, Google+, Facebook, and Gowalla allow users to check in to a physical place and share their location with their friends. Comscore reported that “16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers used location-based check-in services on their phones in March 2011, representing 7.1 percent of the entire mobile population.”

I still believe check-in remains a niche as it’s not a natural human behavior but is a good starting point for interacting with a location. Check-in needs to be bundled with offer redemption to encourage people to check-in. Also, check-in data can add a new layer of behavior that may not be reflected in recent purchases. For example, a check-in at a gym adds valuable lifestyle information about a consumer, which can aid in ad-targeting efforts.

Now more than ever, as we explore and engage with the world around us, we want to experience amazing everyday adventures. We can enhance this adventure further by augmenting the rich content associated with places in a visual representation that can be consumed through your mobile device in the real world. Imagine you’re in Times Square in Manhattan and you open an augmented-reality experience like Nokia City Lens or Yelp’s Monocle and start panning around you. Icons might pop up to indicate you have a loyalty card for a particular chain of coffee shop; a consumer electronics store has your favorite Wii game on sale; a good friend just gave a nearby restaurant a 5-star review. Perhaps you’ll even find you can get home in less than half an hour if you take a new suggested route that accounts for traffic that’s moving a little slower than usual on your typical drive.

The Opportunity Ahead

In this third phase of mobility, our mobile devices will be a bridge to enriching our lives with virtual content, as long as it is relevant and engaging. Location is a catalyst to enhance virtual interaction with real-world places, enticing people to visit such real-world places. For developers and marketers, business opportunities lie in using highly accurate positioning to drive consumers into storefronts and directly to the products they want; in enabling highly personalized experiences with places that present the right offer at the right time to the right consumer; and in elevating the check-in to engage and reward the consumer. Context, relevance, and consumer engagement will all provide unique monetization opportunities as location technology continues to evolve.

Re-posted from: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/4-ways-mobile-and-social-will-create-new-user-scenarios-in-2012%E2%80%A8-0122929

One of the realities of business in the current culture is that customers have expressed a preference for companies with whom they can interact, who value them as customers, and with whom they can share a sense of community through social networking. There are also great benefits for businesses, which now can get relevant feedback directly from customers and prospects.

Businesses are using social media to engage their customers more completely, and to maximize marketing, through discussion, special coupon codes or discounts for followers, and other strategies. Consumers are accessing the Internet by mobile phone and tablet more than ever before and the numbers are rapidly increasing.

Let’s look at 4, on-the-rise, Marketing trends of social media and mobile marketing that your business should incorporate into its plans for 2012:

#1 – The Growth of Social Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) will continue to grow exponentially. CRM is rooted in the principle that, rather than making profits, the focus of a company is on fulfilling customer needs, which leads organically to profits. There will also be new tools introduced that support marketing automation.

The use of email and newsletters won’t ever go away completely, but it is increasingly being supplanted by the use of social media. Every business must have a presence on the main social networking sites in order to continue to compete effectively.

We are seeing that businesses are embracing social commerce with innovative campaigns. Many brands are integrating brick-and-mortar stores and online stores into the consumer shopping experience to leverage the ‘social consumer’ who shops armed with social intelligence.

Infographic from Get Satisfaction on the evolution of the social consumer.

#2 – Social Media Content Impacts SEO Rankings

Social media will also continue to grow as a source of search engine ranking, as the primary search engines are redoing their algorithms to include information from social media sites for indexing and ranking. That means that SEO optimization, too, now means having a social networking presence.

This video shares some ways Social Media contributes to SEO rankings:

#3 – Mobile Leads the Way

Along with the explosion in social media use over the past few years, mobile computing has steadily been gaining ground. In 2012, this trend will continue.In fact, by 2014, it is projected that more people will access the web by mobile than do using a laptop or desktop computer. Mobile includes not only smart phones and web-enabled cell phones, but also tablet computers.

Every business needs to have a mobile strategy and website that is optimized for mobile use. 2012 is the year to do so or be left behind.

You Can Maximize Sales and Lead Capture

With mobile commerce leading the way, businesses must be testing marketing campaigns to capture sales and leads from mobile users.Smart Phone AppsText Messaging QR codesAs a marketer, you want to be developing inbound mobile strategies to take advantage of current opportunities in mobile. You will need to plan time for benchmarking and to test, test, test….and then retest.

#4– Daily Deals May Soon Influence SEO Rankings

The incorporation of special deals into search engine algorithms is likely to occur sometime within the next two years. These are the popular “daily deal” websites which offer their visitors a discounted rate on a product or service for one day only, or when a certain number of purchasers are reached.

With the proliferation of these sites, like Groupon, and large online retailers beginning to offer daily deals as well, what remains to be seen is if Google will adjust its algorithm to account for Google Offers based on localized queries, like they already do with Maps and Places (i.e. if Daily Deals will be the next big element that search engines start to gather). Google offers a much larger platform for daily deals and a business model that accounts for the mistakes made by its’ daily deals predecessors.

Just about every business can come up with something to offer as a daily deal, and it’s another way to draw customers and earn their loyalty. Google Offers may be able to take the concepts of integration, digital, and daily deals and implement them in a natural and unimposing way that is beneficial to the consumer and the merchant.

If they do adjust their algorithms to account for daily deals, it might just provide a more stock in their relevancy, and would certainly be another reason for businesses to optimize vertically.

Reposted from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/01/16/for-mobile-commerce-the-year-of-convergence-and-context/

If no one else will say it, I will. Contrary to popular opinion, and what we may want to believe as mobile and retail enthusiasts, consumers have not been buying billions of dollars of products via mobile commerce. The majority of purchases, easily 90% or more, have actually been mobile-enabled e-commerce.  Not mobile commerce. There is a difference. While subtle, it’s extremely important for retailers to recognize the difference because it’s going to change quickly.

Here’s a quick perspective. If you buy a TV via your iPad, is that mobile commerce? In my opinion, no. Yes, a tablet is a “mobile” device, but the experience the purchaser had was with a tablet-optimized website. Ditto for the person who bought a Mercedes SLR via eBay mobile on their smartphone (for $240,001). This is mobile-enabled ecommerce. Not mobile commerce. For the retail and mobile industries to better understand (and report on the growth of) this crazy thing called mobile commerce, or m=commerce, we need to break it out into three categories:

• Mobile e-commerce: Transacting with an e=commerce site via a mobile device. Examples include: eBay mobile, Amazon mobile, the Tesco app in Korea, and the majority of mobile commerce “apps.”
• Mobile payment: Payment using the smartphone as the conduit. Examples include: Google Wallet, PayPal, and LevelUp.
• Mobile commerce (in-store): The ability to purchase physical goods in the store via an app that interacts with the store’s point-of-sale system (and bypass the checkout process). Examples include SCAN IT! Mobile from Stop & Shop, Starbucks Card Mobile app, and Chipotle Mobile Ordering App.

It’s the latter two that offer the greatest opportunity for retailers. They both leverage mobile to improve the in-store experience. Unlike the original promise of e-commerce (to replace the bricks-and-mortar store), m-commerce offers retailers the unprecedented ability to connect with shoppers in and out of the store. By engaging and interacting with the shopper in the store, they connect the physical store with a mobile device to drive a personalized experience for the shopper that influences behavior and boosts spending. This is transformational.

For 2012, m-commerce will experience a rapid maturation as two key elements will be added to the experience:

1. Convergence: When bricks and mobile finally integrate to provide a holistic shopping experience whereby each shopper has a unique experience with the physical store.
2. Context: When mobile couponing, offers, location, check-ins, etc. become personalized to the individual shopper based on who they are, what they like, where they are, what they want, and what they’ve just scanned or purchased.

Convergence

A visit to any store shows (and there’s tons of data to support this) that today’s shoppers are mobile and they leverage their mobility to shop smarter, faster and more efficiently. While apps for price comparisons, online shopping and product information are relegating retailers to showrooms and warehouses, the future of retailing is represented by the convergence of mobile and physical store locations via retailer-centric mobile apps. Innovative retailers must recognize the potential of this convergence now. Retailers who fail to do this will pay dearly as they watch the thousands of shopping, comparison and purchasing apps available to shoppers remove them from the customer engagement cycle.

This isn’t about simple check-ins, games or QR codes. This is about creating an experience (and app) that provides real value to the shopper. It’s about providing an app that saves time and money while providing a truly unique and personalized experience with your store. And lastly, it’s about an app that is integrated to the physical store’s systems to provide for a seamless shopping and buying experience.  That is what convergence looks like, and it’s becoming a reality for the retailers that understand its value and importance to the shopper and the future of their business.

Context

Only 14% of us care about location when receiving an offer, while nearly 60% of smartphone users prefer a personalized offer. While location has impact, it clearly pales in comparison to the value of a relevant, targeted offer. In retail, there has been a long-standing dream of being able to target a consumer with an offer as they walk by or into a store. It’s a great concept… unless the ad I’m receiving is for a product or service which has no relevance to me (a great deal on a tea as I walk by a Starbucks when I only drink coffee, for example).  There are a couple of important things to consider when looking at how context will take mcommerce to the next level in 2012:

• Check-ins: Mobile check-ins were an early attempt at this type of context, but have failed. It’s checkouts that matter to retailers. Offering a deal to those who physically walk into the store and check-in via a third-party app (such asFoursquare or Shopkick) was, conceptually, a good idea. However, the lack of context that could identify each shopper as an individual rendered these apps no more effective than having an associate stand in front of the store handing out the same offer to everyone who walks in. Savvy retailers already have many highly effective ways to get shoppers to their stores. What they’re looking for is how to influence behavior once a shopper walks into the store and fully attribute mobile’s impact on revenue.
• Daily deals and coupons: From daily deals to the over 330 billion couponsoffered last year, we are bombarded with ways to SAVE NOW!!! Over 3,500 a day, in fact. As such, the idea of one-size-fits-all coupons and offers is going to be replaced with offers that are presented in the context of each shopper’s needs, desires, preferences, timing and location in the store. This drives relevance and value for the shopper, boosts loyalty for the retailer and provides measurable lift for the brand. Otherwise, it’s just noise.

This time, it’s personal

The important thing to remember is that m-0commerce can transform the way that retailers engage their customers… if the strategies and campaigns take into consideration both convergence and context . Tihnk about how the e-commerce experience leverages clickstreams, cookies, implicit and explicit personalization and collaborative filtering to drive a personalized experience for the visitor.

With mobile, retailers can emulate many of those components because they know when you’ve entered the store (you open their app), they know your purchase history and brand preferences (because it’s tied into the loyalty program), they know where you are (using in-store, wi-fi based location services), they know what’s in your cart (using mobile scan-and-bag) and they know how you want to pay (using a mobile wallet, mobile payment or NFC). The smartphone becomes the tool by which retailers can directly engage and influence purchase decisions while the customer is in the store and just before they make a purchase decision. Now that is transformational!

Mobile is an incredibly personal channel by which retailers can directly engage their customers. The mobile experience must reflect this desire to be engaged directly, within the context of the shopper’s needs, desires, preferences, timing and location. In 2012, those retailers who integrate mobile and the in-store experience with context will thrive while those who don’t will become showrooms and warehouses for the mobile apps that have displaced them.

Re-posted from: http://www.ricg.com/marketing_articles/digital_marketing/ecommerce_social_become_brands_weapons_in_competition_wars/

Ecommerce is becoming a much more viable source of revenue for retailers and other companies, as evidenced by the more than $37.2 billion in online sales that comScore measured during November and December 2011.

Some corporations are starting to realize that fact, and are creating integrated marketing campaigns that include ecommerce and online components, AdWeek reports. For instance, Verizon Wireless is assessing its current digital creative strategy and is looking to see how it can update social media, online display ads, search marketing and ecommerce, according to the source.

The company has been using a number of firms to develop its digital marketing for various products, but may decide to condense the duties with a single agency.

Walgreens is also beefing up its social media program, but for a different purpose, Advertising Week reports. The company is currently duking it out with Express Scripts, its former pharmacy benefit manager, and has started to recruit bloggers and Twitter users to spread the word about its battle.

It’s trying to draw attention to the struggle to keep customers who are on the Express Scripts network but can’t use Walgreens pharmacies because the companies’ relationship has ended. Yet the plan to buy promoted tweets on Twitter and ask followers to add #ILoveWalgreens to their posts has lead to anger from some consumers and mockery from others, the source reports. Responding tweets have ranged from questions about why it was choosing this “ineffective” route to posts that have nothing to do with the Walgreens pharmacy.

Additionally, the company has been sponsoring blog posts, which the source notes could be seen as “inauthentic” by readers. However, Walgreens is defending the move, and a spokesman said that it was “another way to get the conversation going and give our customers an outlet.”

“It’s an opportunity for people to express their feelings, and they’re doing that,” the spokesman added.

Re-posted from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/15/shoppers-personal-info_n_1208151.html

By Dhanya Skariachan

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Welcome to the era of the candid consumer.

From their food allergies to home addresses, shoppers around the world are becoming increasingly willing to share more personal information with their favorite merchants, as they look for a more personalized and efficient shopping experience, an IBM survey of more than 28,000 people in 15 countries showed.

That is good news for retailers on both sides of the Atlantic as they look for ways to target the right demographic of shoppers with new products.

“They are willing to share information if there is perceived benefit,” said Jill Puleri, global retail leader of IBM’s global business services. “It doesn’t have to be monetary benefit.”

While consumers around the world still have reservations about sharing financial details such as how much they earn, they are less worried about divulging other private information.

For instance, about three-quarters of the people surveyed were willing to dish out details about their media usage such as the TV shows they watch, while 73 percent of the group were fine with disclosing demographic information such as their ethnicity.

About 61 percent of people were comfortable sharing their names and addresses with retailers, while about 59 percent of those surveyed said they were OK with disclosing lifestyle-related information such as whether they owned more than one car, or had moved into a new home, or had a child recently.

“These are things that I think are pretty important to a retailer,” Puleri said, adding that the change in shopper behavior was phenomenal.

“We have always thought the consumer was pretty guarded with their information,” Puleri told Reuters.

More than half of the people surveyed were even willing to disclose their exact location and related information, hoping for a more targeted and smarter shopping experience.

“What it tells us is that they really want a personal experience,” she said. “They don’t want to find advertising in their mailbox or in their email about things they are never going to buy.”

Shoppers in emerging markets such as Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, South Africa and China were more willing to share private information versus their counterparts in mature markets such as Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States, Puleri said.

One finding that binds shoppers around the globe is their love for a good bargain. About 53 percent of consumers said they actively seek out items on sale, but this is not limited to mature markets. Sixty-nine percent of Brazilians who participated in the survey also said they chased sale items.

“We are still seeing that frugality continue,” Puleri said.

FORGET EMAIL, REACH ME ELSEWHERE

Contrary to popular perception, shoppers said they are keen to receive more communication from merchants, the survey showed. That indicates many retailers have not been reaching out to their real target audience, Puleri said.

Shoppers also want information from merchants delivered through channels relevant to them.

For example, fewer shoppers rely on email to find out about new products. Meanwhile, 85 percent of consumers believe social networks will save them time, Puleri said.

Retailers should pay more attention to “noise on the wire” to understand better how their brands are perceived by the public, IBM’s Puleri said.

For example, discussions around some brands focus predominantly on price, availability, where to purchase, etc, indicating that these brands are highly price-sensitive.

On the other hand, discussions around other brands are focused on terms such as “self-improvement” and style, indicating that these brands are less price-sensitive.

With these insights, retailers selling brands with more price sensitivity should focus their marketing around promotions and sales, while the others could adopt a different approach, she said.

While more private information from shoppers will surely help retailers understand their target audience better, the rapid influx of digital data also poses new challenges.

A recent IBM study of more than 1,700 chief marketing officers from 64 countries showed that a vast majority of them recognize a critical and permanent shift occurring in the way they engage with their customers, but question whether their marketing units are prepared to manage the change.

“There is a ton of experimenting going on, but there is not a lot of perfection,” Puleri said, urging retailers to get their act together fast.     (Editing by Dale Hudson)

Reposted from: http://www.spiritmag.com/click_this/article/social_studies/

In his exhilarating 2002 thriller Minority Report, Steven Spielberg conceived a future powered by what, at that time, seemed to be wildly advanced technologies. In one memorable scene, Tom Cruise’s character, Chief John Anderton, who has just been identified as a murder suspect, walks through a mall and is bombarded with highly individualized forms of advertising that reflect his current frazzled frame of mind.

“John Anderton! You could use a Guinness right now,” says one advertisement from the Irish beer brewing company. “The road you’re on, John Anderton, is the one less traveled,” says another from Lexus.

While this kind of neuromarketing, which anticipates your buying mood and needs by measuring things like blood pressure and heart rate, hasn’t quite hit the masses, we’re rapidly moving into the next stage of the digital revolution that will help companies guess what we will most likely buy, eat, or watch next. And, by using data collected from our increasing appetite for mobile technologies and location-based apps, they’re going to get it right.

This type of business strategy is called predictive marketing, and it happens when a brand overlays information it knows about you with smart predictions about what you might like or need. Just as Amazon and Netflix anticipate what book or movie we might like based on what we’re already browsing, smartphones are about to become more concierge-like as well. In effect, our mobile devices will divine what’s going to happen next—and manage our schedules, suggest actions, and generally assist in everyday activities derived from the real data we’re already providing them.

Today, my iPhone 4S Siri personal assistant can set a reminder that I’m having coffee with you in 45 minutes; but, probably in the not too distant future, it is possible that Siri will start making predictions—that are spot-on, by the way—about what I might need for that coffee date based on what it has gleaned from all of our past interactions.

That means the popular app with the friendly, female voice might someday recommend restaurants we haven’t yet tried, pull up OpenTable or Yelp reviews, and, for reservations, map my route, or direct me to a nearby stationery shop, because today is your birthday. Siri will know all of this by pulling up documents, photos, emails, and text messages you and I have shared since our last get-together. And, because it’s raining, the app will even call me a cab—without my asking—because it has figured out from all of the previous times that it has rained and I’ve had to leave my apartment, that I never walk to the subway during a shower.

“Hypothetically, Siri could one day find relations,” says Chuck Martin, author of The Third Screen: Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile. “It could look at how many people, over time, do the suggested activity versus something else.

“Consumers are leading what is truly a behavioral revolution,” adds Martin. They are doing this by using location-aware apps, such as Siri, as well as Google Maps, Yelp, and Foursquare. “And soon brands will be able to predict and strategize more accurately about the behavior of crowds. Serious data is being churned by all this activity. While a lot of people worry about privacy, the data doesn’t look at individuals; it’s looking at aggregate behavior and calculating probabilities.”

Companies are now trying to tap into that wealth of information provided by consumers when they use these location-based cell phone apps. With 5.6 billion mobile phones already on the planet (and smartphone penetration at around 1 billion and rising rapidly), innovation based on consumers’ location and behavior will continue to soar—as will mobile marketers’ efforts.

By now most people are familiar with Foursquare, whose some 15 million users “check in” when they enter a participating retail outlet or restaurant, often receiving rewards or honors, like “mayor” status, in return for their location activity. By checking in via a smartphone app or SMS, you are saying, “Hey, I’m at Best Buy!” and your friends reply, “Great, I’ll see you inside.” Currently, Best Buy isn’t in on this cyber-conversation.

But more and more, companies are starting to home in by innovating with location, says Location-Based Marketing for Dummies author Aaron Strout, who is developing this capability for the San Francisco–based global marketing firm WCG. “Amex and Starwood Hotels are doing something forward-thinking in loyalty marketing by allowing you to attach your Foursquare account, which earns you loyalty program points when you check in at a Starwood property using Amex.”

Ditto, a new location-based app, implements predictive marketing to help its users plan what they’ll do next. Users can incorporate instant feedback from their existing Facebook and Twitter friends into this Foursquare-style service. The service not only incorporates, for example, where you might like to eat based on feedback from your social circle, it also relies on algorithmic results based on your previous behavior. This helps the app coordinate planning via related offers shared through users’ mobile, social, and local information.

To be sure, as more location-based data becomes modeled, companies will be able to gain a very clear understanding of how certain consumer behaviors may be linked. For example, they will be able to see that when a certain number of consumers buy premium gasoline at a specific time and place, there’s a large probability that another behavior will now occur as well, such as purchasing the combination meal at an adjacent sandwich joint if it’s around lunchtime, or heading over to the nearby car wash if the weather is warm and sunny.

Predictive marketing also hinges on recognizing what mode consumers are in at any given time of the day. Because we watch and consume what we want, when we want, savvy marketers must be able to anticipate customer context—the where, the when, and the who we are, which is referred to as persona shifting—and act accordingly. Advertisers will be able to use that information to gain greater contextual understanding and target messages more effectively.

Imagine, for example, that it’s 6:30 p.m. and you have just begun to prepare the family dinner. Not only will companies know that you are wearing your “Mom” or “Dad” hat at that hour, they will also know that your eldest child is about to hit college age, and voilà —a college financial-aid advertisement will pop up on your smartphone, which, like most of us these days, you have sitting within arm’s length at all times.

Or, perhaps even stranger, if you happen to have the television or radio on during dinner, just the right ad will cue up especially for you. Cool but creepy, right? If a retailer can hit you with the perfectly timed pitch—and let’s be clear, this rarely, if ever, happens—you will jump all over it.

“Say I’m on my way to meet my wife for dinner at a mall,” says Dan Shust, executive director of the Innovation Lab at the digital marketing agency Resource Interactive. “As I enter the grounds, my favorite clothier notices I’m near and sends a text informing me of a special sale. I enter the store, ‘checking in’ using my smartphone and the store’s app. Now the app knows I am there—and it informs the sales staff. I receive a warm greeting from them while, behind the scenes, the app gathers my buying history, purchase motivators—Am I here for myself, or more likely to buy a gift?—and makes some recommendations that are amazingly on target for my needs.

“More importantly, it knows what motivates me, and bundles for me an individualized offer. The staff collects these items for me to look at, and by the time I get to the reception area I am ready to check out using my smartphone and the store’s ‘M-commerce’ [mobile commerce] app to pay electronically. I walk out with plenty of time to make the dinner date.”

So while it’s not quite the same futuristic mall experience as laid out in the Minority Report, in which a scanned retina can animate digital billboards that enticingly incorporate your name into their ad campaigns, it is a shopping experience that does still feel customized. And as location-based data proliferates, as well as the ability to purchase items through your mobile phone, companies will gain a much clearer understanding of how behaviors may be linked.

“If you’re a company and 20 percent of your purchases nationwide are through mobile devices, you’re capturing behavioral information,” says Martin. “It might actually take less money to be more effective with advertising. You’re dealing with the subset of your absolute best customers who really want to hear from you.”

Martin’s research also shows that both in-app advertising and short video clips are highly effective formats. “People will watch advertising-oriented short videos on a smartphone.” Martin, who has more than 200 apps between his two smartphones, also realizes marketers soon will battle one another to win a coveted spot for their app on your smartphone’s first two screens.

“We’re only just now starting to hit critical mass with smartphones,” adds Strout, whose research shows that around 25 percent of mobile users have tried a location-based service. “A lot of people out there are ‘geo curious.’ They realize the power of things like Google Maps and Yelp—and even Facebook has location-aware aspects to show where we’re checked in. Companies are figuring out logical ways to use these cool technologies to interact with us.”

But still, all this wizardry so you can finally find, say, that elusive pair of gray cashmere socks? Yes, and you will buy those cashmere socks, just as predicted.

Reposted from: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2137307/7-Social-Media-SEO-Tactics-Businesses-Will-Adopt-in-2012

What will happen in the year ahead? I’m no fan of making predictions, but there are some major social media tactics that we can expect to affect businesses in 2012. Some of these tactics already have been adopted by select companies, but this year we’ll see mass adoption of these tactics by businesses of all sizes.

1. Social Listening for Marketing Intelligence

Last year we saw a plethora of new technology platforms that moved social media monitoring and started crunching some sophisticated data to gauge sentiment to drive marketing campaigns.

In my view, 2012 will be a year where businesses will take a step forward from simply looking at company mentions, debatable “sentiments”, and arguable influencer scores, and instead move toward combining all disparate social data to form a marketing intelligence that drives future marketing campaigns. Quite a few tools are doing this already, but expect to see more.

Marketers will no longer be tongue tied when asked by C-suite “mentions on social media…so what?” Instead, platforms will help marketers make smarter marketing decisions based on social listening.

2. Facebook – Advertisers and Brands will Focus More on Profitability

With Facebook on pace for a billion users, playtime is over. Businesses had in the past put lot of emphasis on the somewhat superficial numbers like number of Facebook fans without taking into account the quality of that fan acquired. What we’ll see instead in 2012 is businesses focusing more on profitability and a laser-sharp ROI focus when it comes to Facebook contests, Facebook ads, and Facebook only promotion.

Businesses will also realize that there is more to Facebook than measuring a linear conversion path from a fan to a paid customer. Marketers will be open to measure non-linear path of ROI measurement like creating Facebook-only promos to drive offline traffic. Retailers are a classic example, where lots of buzz and Facebook-only promotions will be done to drive foot traffic into retail stores. Besides large retailers, we’ll see an increasing number of small and medium-sized businesses adopt this strategy.

Advertisers will start measuring their Facebook Ads campaigns based on profitability that either helps generate revenues or supports in some kind of cost savings. Brian Carter’s new book “The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money with Facebook” is an excellent resource.

3. Google+ – Pedal to the Metal

Google will aggressively roll out new features to Google+ and make Google+ pages more business-friendly. The biggest advantage Google has is its integration with other Google properties, like in its search engine results pages, in paid search ads, Google Reader, YouTube, etc.

Google also put a great internal focus on social last year by restructuring its employee bonus and salary structure based on Google’s success on social. This internal focus ensures that everyone inside the Googleplex thinks of social all the time. So, this internal focus with external push to consumers could make 2012 a year of Google+.

4. Quality Content

We all appreciate the importance of quality content – content that is engaging, relevant, and unique to the user.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen this mad rush (and budget) from companies to create content with the sole purpose of creating content for SEO. But we all know what happened to that with Google’s Panda update! So, in retrospect, Panda was a timely and much needed update from Google.

Instead, what we’ll see in 2012 is a more structured approach by businesses to create content that focuses on provides unique value to readers resulting in higher engagement levels with their community members. We’ll see a more holistic approach from businesses with content, whether it’s videos, how-to content pieces, or other types of content.

5. Community Building

As marketers get sophisticated with planning and measuring their campaigns, we’ll find businesses paying close attention to their existing community members. An increased emphasis will be placed on building an engaged community as opposed to simply amassing numbers. This means community managers must energize their community members as well as engage members for a variety of things like product development, market research, and special product discounts, to name a few.

Community building and management is all about people, content, and consistency. This tactic will be widely adopted in 2012 and will become an integral part of community management.

6. Social, Local, Mobile (SoLoMo)

SoLoMo – the social, local, and mobile triumvirate, will get a strong hold in 2012 with more integrated campaigns combining social media with local offers involving mobile devices. Essentially, socially advocated mobile content has the potential to boost brand loyalty, and this can boost sales among nearby on-the-go shoppers.

Top daily deals sites like Groupon and LivingSocial are perfect examples of this where they using deals to drive local sales. Foursquare is perfectly positioned for this SoLoMo tactic. We’ll see more local merchants signing up with Foursquare.

7. Social Media Drives SEO

Traditional on-page SEO factors will still hold true since it’s all about making your content search friendly, but what we’ll see in 2012 and beyond is strong social media sharing activities will drive SEO results. Last year we witnessed Google’s push to integrate social results into its SERP’s (and the newly launched Search Plus Your World update) and the Facebook-Bing partnership.

Ultimately, SEO will win because conversions will be higher (and relatively straightforward to measure) on organic search. As a result, more businesses will ensure closer collaboration between their search and social teams.

Summary

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the rapidly evolving social media and search landscape. Social and search are also closely intertwined so pushing on few tactics above will impact other tactics as well.

Over to you now: what other tactics do you think we’ll see businesses adopt in 2012?

Reposted from: http://www.businessinsider.com/lets-just-calm-down-2012-1

This week the techno-chamber is losing its mind over Google’s decision to start pushing content from its fledgling social network into its search results.
Mat Honan at Gizmodo says he’s switching to Bing, and our own Matt Rosoff says this might be the biggest mistake Google has ever made.
Oh boy.
Let’s all just take a deep breath here and think about what we’re saying before going nuts.
Was this move from Google somewhat boneheaded? You bet. It’s going to be favoring its own social network’s results in its monopolistic search engine. For a company already under heavy government scrutiny, this is not the most brilliant move.
But, that’s not the primary complaint from Honan. He says he’s switching to Bing because “Google’s new interface promotes Plus over relevancy,” later adding, “I don’t care if Google hurts Twitter or Facebook—or even Friendsterfor that matter. Boo-hoo. I only care if it hurts me. And this does. Google broke itself.”
And how is Google hurting Honan? Well, it seems like he’s assuming it’s going to hurt him based on Danny Sullivan’s explanatory post at SearchEngineLand that shows how Google+ will affect search results.
In other words, it seems like Honan, and others like him, haven’t actually been affected by Google+ in search yet, they’re just assuming it’s going to happen and they’re getting the hell out of dodge before it happens.
Since the announcement, we’ve been using Google search just as much as ever while signed into Google+. Guess what? No impact on our search results!
Maybe it hasn’t hit us yet. Maybe when it does hit us, we’ll absolutely hate it. In that case, we’ll just hit the little button that kills off personalized search results. In that case, everything is back to normal, and we don’t have to go use Bing, which in our experience is an inferior product.
The maddening thing about people crying about Google’s social results is that just a year ago the big meme was that Google’s search results sucked. They were broken because the algorithm was being gamed by spammy sites.
So Google comes up with a clever solution: mix social results with algorithmic results. And now a new batch of people are screaming about crappy results.
Google just can’t win. If it sits on its hands it’s not innovating. If does something innovative it’s breaking search.
Hopefully it will ignore all of the gripes, and focus on the data. If people actually leave Google, then you can bet it’s going to change its results back to the old system. If people don’t click on the new social results, you can bet they’re going to be de-emphasized.
But if people like getting results that have been approved by humans, then Google is going to plow straight ahead with more Google+ results.
And guess what? That’s a good thing! Because it means the results are better. Which is what users and Google want.
Before everyone freaks out and throws in the towel on Google, why not give the new social results a chance? If they blow, then go to Bing.
We’re sure you’ll love how Microsoft  integrates Facebook’s social data into their search engine.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lets-just-calm-down-2012-1#ixzz1jdMF8AeF