Store Visits: The UNIVERSAL Bottom Line

Local Small Businesses GROW With Local Data

*They* use terms like “cross-channel” and “omni-channel”, and other jargon that would be more impressive if small business owners actually understood it.  (I first wrote about this more than a year ago, and several other times since, on this blog - check the archives.)  Ironically, it’s because they’re writing for each other, not for you.  Local small businesses are not even on their radar.

Because *mobile* and “mobile marketing” are growing in bursts, the information about both tends to come out sporadically (and I have to “mine” for what’s relevant to local small businesses), I had occasion this week to review articles I received over the past months, from  Marketing Land (4/15/16, 2/3/16 and 10/15/15).

“Mobile” has been the primary access point (more jargon) for the internet for nearly a year (maybe longer; the data was published in September of 2015).  But now, enough time has passed that “the experts” have been able to discern that *mobile*

“enables… an apples-to-apples comparison of performance across channels.”

They’ve determined this because

“analytics/store visits can operate as a kind of “universal metric for media”.

Translated, that means it’s now possible to measure the actual impact of “traditional” advertising.

Historically, it was difficult or impossible to accurately measure what medium provided the biggest “bang for your buck”.  Print and direct mail came closest, but only when they included coupons that were mandatory.   Billboards and television were “institutional” or “name recognition”, and untrackable “except through call tracking, which is useful but incomplete”.

Thanks to mobile data, pretty much ALL media, print, billboards, direct mail and television, can now be tracked to mobile, and to "real-world" store visits and sales.

The most important statement was:

 “For marketers, mobile is the nexus between the digital and physical worlds for impact measurement.”

For local small business owners that point – where  digital meets physical, “where the rubber meets the road” – is even more important, because “clickers and buyers are not necessarily the same when it comes to offline conversions.”

Let us help.

CALL 602-618-6626

EMAIL info@localmotivemarketing.com

DO IT TODAY.

LONG LIVE THE KING!!!

I've been promising a blog-link all week in a series of Facebook posts.  It can be found at http://www.localmotivemarketing.com, but it's duplicated here. 

"Content Is King" is the new chant, the new mantra. So what? A sovereign without a realm doesn't rule much. Fortunately for "King Content", a "Kingdom" does exist. That kingdom is "Context".  

"technologies... allow for more profound relevance and connection... insight into context..."

The right message is important, right? But how does a business know what the right message is?  That depends on a number of factors: Who? When? Where? Why?
How?  Context.

Who's looking for your product or service?  Someone who needs it? Now?  Someone who wants it (or might, someday)?  Are they even in your market area?

All of these newly-available insights - type of device, channel, location, even brand - make it possible to deliver the right message at the right time.

All of these newly-available insights make it possible to avoid "scaring off" someone who only wants to look for now, but might buy someday; to avoid offending a buyer by a perceived lack of interest in their business.

The King maintains the Realm with notoriety.  "Known throughout the world" used to be a difficult description to achieve. And one of the most effective ways to achieve it is, to this day, LINKS. Links are Caesar's Legions. Links are Arthur's Round Table.

Relevance is important on 2 levels: to the Customer and to the search engines. King and Realm - Content and Context - exert their influence on both levels.  But Links - "authority" - have been the means of determining how authoritative a website is for most of Google’s existence, and remain so.

People want information.  Google wants to deliver the best - the most authoritative - information possible.

And "Content" maintains "Context" with its own Knights, In the workd wide web, they're known as "Links"

LEARN MORE about how adding mobile to deliver the right message at the right time - by understanding why a Potential Customer visited - to multiply the power of your marketing.

CALL TODAY!!!  602-618-6626

Evolve Or Die

Evolved Customers Want Evolved Interactions

It was a good business model in the beginning.  

A brunch/lunch business, in the heart of a downtown area that - to use an old metaphor - "rolled up the sidewalks" at the end of each business day. With almost no "nightlife", "Open 8 - 3" made sense.  5 years later, that model broke down.

Living in downtown Phoenix was once only for the heartiest of souls (we lived there in the mid-90s, with few friends and family even brave enough to visit, even though we lived in a quite nice condo complex).  Working downtown was an adventure in "9 to 5" for most. There were attempts to "revitalize" in that era, but the time had not yet come 20 years ago.

In the last 5 years, downtown grew, and evolved "into more of a 24-hour city center".  Two universities opened downtown campuses.  More restaurants and bars - concert venues - opened and became popular.  Development started on mid-rise apartment buildings.  Downtown's demographics evolved.  Downtown grew, in popularity, and population.

But "The Corner" didn't.  They stayed true to their model. Instead of extending their hours to serve sandwiches coffee and juices to a bigger, perhaps younger, and definitely later customer market, they maintained their brunch/lunch hours.  They stood their ground.

And now, they're gone.

No one has given a specific reason.  It could be that downtown became the most expensive submarket in the Valley.  And that higher expense extended to commercial space, which has tripled in recent years, prompting some restaurateurs to "opt-out" of downtown.

The moral of the story is clear:  When the time comes to "pick up the pace", don't shoot yourself in the foot!

If you're ready to acknowledge that your small business needs to evolve, Local Motive Marketing is here to help you develop a marketing strategy that reaches customers that already have.  If not, get some crutches now.  You'll need them sooner than later.

‎Mobile‬ Impacts Your Small Business. "How" Is Your Only Choice.

CITI knows "digitization" is the most powerful, disruptive force on the planet, and it impacts nearly every business model.  They experienced a 25% increase in mobile interaction by engaging their customers where they want to be engaged.
JC Penney has discovered that "old metrics and models need to be thrown out".

Customer research interviews of one major marketing conpany revealed that certain factors in the shopping experience - choice, price value, service, speed, convenience, contextual relevance, and frictionless purchasing - are now taken for granted (particularly by millenials).

Local small businesses are not immune. ‎Mobile‬ impacts local small businesses, in one way of two ways, because more and more buyers every day search "near me" for what they want, when and where they decide they want it, on their  ‪#‎smartphones‬. Buyers can't - and won't bother to - find businesses that aren't there.

 

It doesn't end when buyers find you, of course.  Starbucks knows that once a buyer finds you, you have to build an emotional connection with them. And that you do that by telling your own story; by refusing to be defined by anyone else; by sticking to your values.

 

And you have to maintain that emotional connection.  Millenials are not alone in feeling empowered and entitled.  If your ongoing communication isn't relevant to and personalized for a particular buyer, the message they receive is "we don't actually care about you <<NAME>>".    This is where national (and international) "brands" and "marketers" often fail.  For example, texting marketing messages at 9 AM Eastern Time to customers in the Pacific Time Zone (and Alaska & Hawai'i), about products they have no interest in.  They know the value of their personal information, and are willing to share it.  But they expect - they DEMAND - preference-driven personalization as a fundamental requirement. 

They expect you to know, just because it's knowable, whether they're "just looking", "deciding", or "ready to buy".  Google calls these "micro-moments".  (more about this next week).

 

If you're ready to bring your local small business into alignment with their expectations, we stand ready to make that a reality.