you easily by cell phones. Businesses also need to spur consumers to come into the shop and experience by any possible means such as SMS, regional SEO, regional discount or trading information. These marketing technologies, based on positioning marketing, have a good effect under SoLoMo.
Geofeedia is a US social media company, which specializes in social positioning and geo-fencing technology. It has developed a series of tools, allowing developers to mark and trace the geographic information from an individual’s social media. By using complex positioning and geo-fencing technology, it shows what social media content has been published in a certain area, like a stadium or a public place. The business can use its technology to obtain social media information that has been publicly released, helping them to conduct market research and data collection.
1.1.1.7 App
The surge in the number of smart mobile devices has increasingly made users rely on mobile search functions. According to Google’s data, 94% of the users look up the address of physical retail stores. In addition to social applications and local searching applications, apps of retail businesses will become more common in the next few years. WeChat as a large app can replace many singular-function applications. This is also a factor that should be weighed before investing in an application.
Specialized apps can provide more specific action targets as well as a simple and direct user experience. In the 2013 Nelson study, 53% of Americans used applications of retail businesses, which had already begun to dominate the mobile ecosystem. In 2013, consumers on average spent 2 hours and 31 minutes on mobile devices every day, including smartphones and tablet computers. About 80% of the time (2 hours and 7 minutes) is spent on apps, while the remaining 20% is spent for mobile network. Digital marketing people attract consumers based on marketing content on the webpage, but currently, it is a good option to put part of the resources on their specialized app.
1.1.2 Digitalized interaction for clients
1.1.2.1 Social media
Social media is a channel for enterprises to have a deeper and easier conversation with clients thanks to digital technologies. It also serves as a tool to build brand loyalty in the digital era. In the current age, enterprises must go further beyond the relationship of not only passing on information but also establishing social relationships to cultivate brand affinity that enhances communication, understanding and trust.
Social network and community connect people together, allowing them to share and transmit real-time information. Social media can be regarded as contact and interaction of online culture in the virtual market.
• Around 27% of the time, Internet users have been active on social media;
• Around 70% of B2C companies say that they obtain new clients via social media channels;
Traditional methods of marketing in most cases have resulted in linear growth rate, while marketing on social media helps to achieve an exponential growth rate. Social media can help enterprises to amplify the brand influence and obtain better outcomes by more effectively using their own marketing content. When a company launches marketing content on an official account, followers will forward or comment on the content. Once the content has been forwarded many times, even non-subscribers can also receive the information shared by these followers. By such means, social media can help brands obtain unimaginable attention. We also discuss methods on how to “go viral” on social media in the later chapters of the book.
However, being seen or having many followers is not enough. Enterprises need to encourage users to participate. Digital technologies provide an unprecedented chance, which enables enterprises to have deeper communication with the existing clients and potential clients and build closer brand relations. Enterprises should master a richer range of interactions to foster brand affinity. To improve the level of participation, Google’s research team has made a research project. Research results show that the full process includes four steps: user choice, interactions, sharing and conversion. And the research team believes that the key method for improving the participation of clients is “during the information boom, those enterprises who attach importance to social participation are more likely to succeed compared with the enterprises that only concern about exposure. For example, in terms of investment in Chinese social media, investment in microblog is to reach more users; that in WeChat is to focus on depth. The traditional way of marketing makes a lot of advertising work to a target group, but these enterprises adopt the completely opposite approach. They give priority to the most critical and important people who can amplify brand influence by their opinions and suggestions”. The research team suggests that the former mode of transmission that spreads on a large scale based on sales funnel needs upgrading. Enterprises need to attach the most importance to brand opinion leaders, spend majority of the resources to maintain this group and cover other clients by this group’s influence and social media accounts. Enterprises with strong social media marketing capability such as Starbucks, Amazon, Xiaomi and Tesla adopt this method.
For marketers, this means that the major part of the role shifts from publishing and dissemination to operations. In customer service, there are many opportunities for interaction with customers about the brand. Customer service is a great communication tool and savvy marketers are looking for ways to get the most out of it. The new focus of marketing campaigns has shifted to understanding and managing social interactions between customers and businesses and turning customers into a medium for brand communication.
In the current era of social interactions, social media has provided consumers a way to express their personal opinions for free. Enterprises should reasonably organize so that consumers could share opinions that help the brands.
• Around 90% of consumers recommend a brand after social interactions with others.
• Around 83% of consumers say that user comments often or sometimes influence their purchasing decisions.
• Around 80% of consumers change their purchase intention after having read negative reviews online.
The special feature of social media is that it is the result of the spontaneous and endogenous behavior of the user and is not the result of external imposition. Brands can adapt to this truly customer-centered approach. Product extremes, customer service, user-generated content (UGC), customer loyalty management and corporate fan management have changed the traditional approach to brand marketing. Social media gives consumers the ability to influence the branding preferences of those around them, which would not have been possible with traditional marketing practices.
1.1.2.2 Crowdsourcing/Crowdfunding
Crowdsourcing is similar in principle to cloud computing technology, but it focuses on gathering many people to address challenges more effectively or complex problems via the Internet rather than servers. Whether to produce a new solution by brainstorming or to raise funds (also known as crowdfunding) for a specific project, crowdsourcing has already become a non-negligible social phenomenon and a business tool. Crowdsourcing in nature has pushed new business models to grow, by which individuals or organizations create new ideas and produce more competitive products and services in a more effective and low-cost way.
Crowdsourcing has even left an impact on the publishing industry. The industry used to be a typical vertical production system, from writing to ISBN, from publishing to marketing. But now these vertical systems can operate in a “flat” way, which means that marketing for the 4Ps (products, price, placement, promotion) can be done in the meantime. Now many chapters of a book can be made available on the Internet for reading, commenting and criticizing. During this process, fans can be attracted and works can be improved. By
