Social and mobile media are familiar terms to most people with a business interest in marketing and PR. But the emphasis is increasingly falling on localised access and information, meaning these concepts are now vital if your business is to remain competitive in the modern marketplace.
You don’t need me to tell you about the launch of EE, the UK’s first 4G service, currently available in the country’s largest cities. Kevin Bacon has done a decent enough job explaining the ins and outs of high speed Internet on the go during the organisation’s no-doubt phenomenally expensive TV campaign.
What this means for the British public is those irritating buffer symbols, and default ‘Failed to open’ screens will soon be a thing of the past. Crucially then, consumers and customers will become less inclined to surf the web from their desktop or laptop. Not that browsing has been confined to computers for some time now.
Over the last three years State of Search contributor Neil Walker has been studying 402 Google Accounts, 70% of which were linked to B2B websites, with the majority therein small to medium sized enterprises. According to the statistics, since 2010 the percentage of visitors to participating URLs using mobile devices like tablets and smartphones has leapt from 1.6% to 20%.
More importantly, actions on mobile devices, i.e. when a person buys something via their phone, also increased exponentially, and currently account for over 10% of all online transactions made on the sites involved in the study. As such it’s not surprising SoLoMo is a term on everyone’s lips right now, not least fellow attendees at the recent SAScon media conference in Manchester.
Social, Local, and Mobile media is set to be the focal point for progressive British business in 2013, which quite simply means an amalgamation of the three platforms. Google+ accounts, for example, now have a Local tab, giving users area-specific information whenever they are logged in. It’s another step down the route pioneered by the likes of Foursquare and Facebook check-ins, and also indicates how Google sees SoLoMo as imperative for continued success.
The impact on PR of our improved online access and the proliferation of GPS programming will be pronounced. The same goes for sales, marketing, and advertising, as more geographical campaigns are launched to target specific people in particular places. In addition to the social networking aspect, ‘geofencing’ also offers much potential, namely by automatically issuing promotions to mobile users when they are within the vicinity of a business. Certainly food for thought, it should also be impetus to invest in innovative, customer focused ideas based on these concepts, if you’re not already doing so.
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