social marketing Archives | waveSpawn Marketing

August 10, 2011

Small businesses and social media

Marketing tools These days, small business owners have a lot of marketing options to consider. There are a number of traditional marketing platforms including newspaper ads, print ads, billboards, direct mail, and TV commercials. Then combine these with a slew of digital and social media marketing options such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogging, a custom mobile application development, Groupon, Places, foursquare, Yelp, PPC advertising, and mobile marketing to smart phones. Now you’ve got an extremely large pool of potential marketing combinations and strategies for small businesses to exploit.

The number of options and evolving technologies can be overwhelming for small businesses. Staying current with various platforms can be a challenge in itself. The amount of time required to simply manage and maintain a handful of online accounts can be daunting. In fact, a recent survey by Hiscox revealed that many small businesses were not using social media channels to promote their products and services. Only 12% of businesses considered social media promotion a necessity, 14% indicated they don’t know enough about it, and nearly 50% of respondents weren’t using social media at all.

Over 40% surveyed said that word-of-mouth was the main way they got business. This is an interesting statistic – as social media is essentially a word-of-mouth advertising vehicle. While offline forms of word-of-mouth remain critical for all brands, and certainly for small, local businesses, social media also plays a valuable role by giving customers a louder voice for their recommendations and helping to amplify that voice beyond their immediate circle of friends, family and colleagues.

So how can a small business focus on what they do best while at the same time take advantage of social media marketing? Easy – you don’t have to go it alone. There are marketing specialists to help sift through all of the social media options and develop a custom marketing strategy that fits your business model and budget. For the same reason you wouldn’t attempt to fill a cavity in your child’s tooth, there’s no need to take on tasks which exceed your limits.

Small businesses need to open their minds and be creative. Innovation is paving new opportunities for businesses to market themselves and secure customers. Integrated marketing campaigns can yield meaningful results. Whatever your objectives are, social media can be a powerful communication tool to help spread your message.

waveSpawn provides a full range of customized marketing solutions for small businesses. Please contact us to discuss your specific goals.

March 24, 2011

Creating customer loyalty and retention with mobile applications

Mobile application development Customer satisfaction and retention is the underlying goal of most businesses. A happy customer that buys repeatedly from you and perhaps even acts as a reference or ambassador on your behalf is invaluable. How do you effectively monitor or stimulate this behavior?

While there are a number of traditional methods to reward and retain customers, new technology is providing a number of innovative formats. Mobile applications and even web compliant websites can be a powerful way of monitoring and rewarding loyal customers. Imagine pushing highly targeted specials or promotions to regional customers based on their location or buying patterns? Companies right here in Buffalo are embracing new technology as effective branding and marketing tools.

This trend is influenced by the escalating statistics of smartphone users who are the target of mobile marketing. Digital advertising is projected to reach the $1.1 billion mark by the end of the year and over $2.5 billion by 2014. This is an opportunity for businesses to reach a much more diverse demographic audience and influence their purchasing decisions, all happening in real time.

According to Gartner, by the end of 2013, 12.5% of all ecommerce transactions will be undertaken from mobile devices and context-aware data based on location or personal user profiles will be used to validate 90% of them.

William Clark, a research vice president at the firm, said: “Enterprises that want to remain competitive in electronic commerce over the next five years should begin exploring context-aware applications by year-end 2011 for both fraud detection and later on for customer acquisition and retention activities afforded by personalized and customized marketing and advertising information.”

For both small and large businesses the challenge is implementing an effective strategy to compete in this mobile space. Since many small businesses rely on regional customers, GPS and other social networking tools are available to help identify and reach prospects. Voice of the customer (VOC) is a powerful vehicle to gain valuable feedback on your products and services which can directly lead to quality improvements and enhanced features. These types of customer satisfaction surveys and suggestion features can all be deployed through a custom mobile application. These are immediate ways to capture and analyze essential information. More importantly this data can be harnessed to better serve and reward customers.

According to the JiWire Mobile Audience Insight Report, location-based ads and marketing are soaring, and it’s also the key factor that’s compelling people to shop online with their mobile phones. This is why many large companies are jumping onboard to take advantage of the trend. Facebook, for example is a recent supporter of location-based mobile marketing. However, a recent Microsoft survey sees that a part of the location-based trend is an opening to several forms of private data exploitation such as identity theft.

Early adopters of mobile technology are seeing immediate results. Furthermore, they are providing convenient methods for customers and prospects to express themselves and stay connected. As companies discover innovative uses of mobile technology, they can help differentiate their services, reinforce corporate culture, and build long-term customer loyalty.

February 4, 2010

Brand yourself – build your own brand

The today show featured an interesting segment on branding yourself. It emphasizes the importance of standing out in the crowd. Especially those people who are looking for employment. In today’s job market, it’s more important than ever to create a way of being remembered. Be unique and build your own personal brand. They suggest focusing on your best qualities – become known for one thing that you do well. It all starts by defining who you are and who you are not.

While this sounds like an interesting concept, it takes time and effort. Most importantly the brand needs to be realistic and believable. Let’s be honest, most people can’t just decide they want to be a rock star, and poof, they morph into Bono status. No, the focus is building an attainable brand. One that accurately represents you and that you can be proud of. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this topic… have you built a personal brand? If so, how?