Naked Marketing

Our mobile devices allow us to find information more easily, but the reverse is true as well…information about us is found more easily via our cellphones…

Footpath has given retailers the opportunity to find marketing data on consumers by tracking mobile devices – It uses monitoring units distributed throughout a mall or retail environment to sense the movement of customers by triangulation, using the strength of their cellphone signals. That data is collected and run through analytics by Path, and provided back to retailers through a secure website – Read full article -  Wired

Why does this help retailers?

• measures how many people walk by a display or advertisement (similar to “page impressions” in online advertising)
• measures how many people go to store after seeing the display or advertisement (similar to “click-through” in online advertising)
• these measurements can determine where optimal advertising locations are

To watch video on how it works click here…http://bit.ly/iBKw6e

Why do companies use social media? To grow their brand. Why do companies   want to grow their brand? To increase sales and be profitable. Is social media increasing sales?

“What does this mean for you? Rather than viewing the social web as a TV channel and limiting your activity to advertising, develop a broader-reaching collaborative program that pulls suppliers and customers inside your business. Transparency and participation build trust, and trust builds advocates. The businesses that do the best job of building vocal advocates will emerge as the winners in their markets…” – Read article : Social media marketing and consumer retail – it’s more than just Ads.

Suggested social media source to increase transparency and interaction:

Google Goggles – allows consumers to take a picture of the product in-store and find reviews, as well as compare to competitive products to build trust that they are making the right purchase decision. Otherwise, consumers can’t typically do this without browsing the web, which can be difficult or time-consuming from a smartphone.

Suggested social media source to gain consumer insight:

Communispace – get emotional with your consumers; engaged, talking, innovating.

The benefit of twitter is that brands can build relationships with their consumers no matter where they live. However, if the goal of building relationships is essentially to improve the bottom line, several companies may not move toward this goal despite the number of followers they have. For national companies with locations all over the map, or online businesses, it's not necessarily an issue to know where your followers are. But for brands that depend on the physical locations of their products or services (mom and pop retailers), tweepsmap can help figure out which followers to specifically target to capitalize on the effectiveness of a campaign and convert followers into sales.

tweepsmap.com

It is becoming more and more important to use tools to analyze the effectiveness of social media campaigns, and tweepsmap helps brands see which followers are engaged. If the followers in the ideal location are not engaged, then the brand can then take another direction to influence interaction with their preferred followers - based on geographic region.

* A bonus is that for us visual learners, tweetmaps allows us to see our followers layed out on a map (see above).

Read article from Mashables

There have been concerns with kids growing up without learning the skill of writing with a pen or pencil, but now we may potentially have to worry about kids growing up without having to learn how to type or read, search for answers, complete medial tasks, or even communicate with others?

SIRI will allow us to be more high-maintenance, more spoiled, lazier, and less independent because she finds a lot of our answers for us…does a lot of our tasks for us…and essentially can become our personal assistant.

If our Iphone batteries die, will we remain helpless? Can corporations save money on executive assistants and secretaries? Can Siri do it all?!

We are all consumers, and therefore targets for brands. If we can’t hear every brand message from every twitter, Facebook, linkedIn, or google plus activity thrown at us, then how do we expect our consumers to? HubSpot teaches us 20 ways to increase content visibility on the top 4 social networks.

I picked my favorite tip for each network…see below…

Do something different. Everyone has a Facebook page now, and most brands are learning that they need to constantly engage with their followers. Start an interactive contest. Offer exclusive content only available to Facebook fans. Give your fans a reason why they should “like” you.

Be strategic about your Circles. When you share content and information, use the Circles to determine who will be the most interested in that information.

Twitter Advertising: Four Marketers Test the New Ad Platform -  eMarketer, June 2011

With the rise of inbound marketing and fall of outbound, twitter appears to be more and more the key tool to start, fuel, and sustain the brand conversation with consumers. Twitter is the new link to complete the marketing campaign circle, as it better encourages engagement and interaction, due to its flexibility to fuel the fire and watch the brand messages be controlled by the several brand ambassadors out there. Twitter is going to continue to increase its presence in the social media channel, and for companies to compete, they better jump on board, and execute effectively….

First check out these stats in the Twitter Snapshot…

Twitter Snapshot

Challenge: How do we increase that 20% who are not only clicking on the links, but retweeting, mentioning, or replying (which is way more engaging)? Those highly engaged tweeters are like having an external marketing team. They are a group of brand ambassadors doing the work for us. Marketers have to know how to add fuel to the fire, so that the followers can grow and sustain it the conversation, and in turn , the brand.

Some more food for thought…

1. twitter has worked with marketers of these companies on nearly 7,000 promoted trend, tweet and account campaigns.
2. eMarketer estimated Twitter would earn 250 million in advertising revenue in 2012.
3. in 2011, eMarketer estimates that 11% of US adult internet users will be on Twitter, increasing to 14% by 2013.
4. twitter allows for earned media
5. 64% of twitter users would be more likely to make purchases from a business that answers their questions on Twitter – consumers want to use twitter to interact with brands
6. 61% of twitter users who followed a company or product talked about it, 59% recommended it.

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