[This post
was originally written for socialmediatoday.com as
a guest post and was published on Sept 1]
The world is
increasing becoming mobile. The technology creators of today are creating goods
for the SoLoMo consumer – the one who is social, location and mobile savvy. The
social networks are realizing this fact and they know the social networking of
tomorrow (and by that I mean in the next 2 years) would move vastly to mobile
phones and the social web would be heavily accessed with a location layer. Here
are a few stats to get a better idea:
- Research shows
that one-third (33 %) of the Facebook postings are mobile
- Americans spend nearly 2.7
hours per day connected to mobile web, and a vast majority of
their time goes into social networking with mobile phones
- Mobile users tend to be more
‘social’ than the traditional desktop users. This can be seen from a study that
91% of mobile phone users go online to socialize compared to only 79% of
traditional desktop users
The numbers
above along with the rising mobile penetration predictions clearly show the
future shift in social networking towards mobile and the social platforms
giants, especially the big 5 – Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Foursquare and
Google, clearly understand this. Hence it is not surprising to see that almost
all of them have come up with their own set of mobile strategies. Moreover
these platforms also know that in order to generate revenues in the fast
growing mobile world, to attract brands that want to go mobile and boost up
their own revenue models from a mobile consumer they would need a heavy focus
towards m-commerce.
Therefore, I
thought it would be a good idea to see how the mobile strategies of social
platforms are powering m-commerce. This article will tell you how each social
giant is coming up with mobile strategies and how their mobile strategy is
imapcting the mobile commerce of today and tomorrow.
Scope
I believe
that m-commerce has a greater meaning than just monetary transaction using
mobile phones. In this post I have tried to derive and work upon this greater
meaning and not limited myself to the transaction part. Hence, I have tried to
use m-commerce in the context of marketing, commerce, sales and CRM; basically
the use of mobile to move a consumer across every aspect of the sales funnel.
Facebook
The social
network is seeing heavy shift in its traffic on mobile phones. Here are few of
initiatives for powering mobile commerce
Facebook
launched Facebook places in USA and Europe. With this initiative, they
partnered with a couple of brands that offered discount deals to consumers on
checking-in at various places. The idea led a lot of brands to create marketing
campaigns using Facebook places.Starbucks
offered free filter coffee to those who check-in, while Mazda offered
free cars and cars on discounts. Dallas
airport offered discounts from hospitality brands inside the airport
on checking-in while Jet Blue launched the go places campaign and
a Facebook app that rewarded badges and real gifts to people who checked-in.
You can see some of the most creative Facebook Places mobile marketing examples
in this mashable
article.
(An update
here – Facebook recently ended
its deals initiative after testing it in 8 cities)
Another
mobile commerce initiative taken by Facebook is to facilitate Facebook credit
purchase with mobile payment. What this means is, you can buy Facebook credits
and the charges would be reflected in your mobile bill. Facebook has partnered
with mobile payment companies Zong and Boku to help consumers buy credits with
mobile payment. If you are wondering how you can do this, visit the help post
by Facebook
Help Center
Similarly,
Facebook’s seriousness about m-commerce can also be seen from its HTML 5
efforts. It appears that Facebook
is creating a platform that is fully mobile compatible so that users
can access Facebook apps using the mobile browser. With this, facebook can sell
credits via the mobile browser and keep the complete control of the platform to
itself by bypassing the Apple and Android appstore. This would greatly help
Facebook in increasing its revenues from the credit purchases made by the
mobile phone users who will be buying virtual good while using the Facebook
apps.
Twitter
For Twitter,
having a mobile strategy is even more important as 43% of
Twitter users access it from mobile while 9% access
is through tablets. Moreover, Twitter’s mobile focus is obvious, especially as
it started with an SMSing service. The Twitter’s 140 characters were decided to
that they can fit within an SMS.
Twitter too
has created tools to help brands in the mobile marketing. I find the FastFollow
tool most fascinating through which you can SMS twitter handle of a brand to
get its updates on your mobile by sending ‘follow (Twitter handle)’ to 40404 in
the US. Similarly using the ‘Get’ tool you can get the latest updates from a
user even if you do not follow him. [SMS ‘Get (username)]
Another of
Twitter mobile strategy that is interesting for brands is the location
tagging. This feature with which you can tweet with your location can be
enabled if you have a browser that supports HTML5 and geo location, or with
iPhone or Android phone. Your followers can see where are you Tweeting from.
The mass
popularity of Twitter clubbed with location tagging and SMS features makes it a
great marketing tool for brands. However I am yet to see some interesting
mobile marketing campaigns with Twitter. The only campaign that comes to my
mind is by Kogi
Barbeque that uses Twitter to update users about the location of the
food truck. The customers, who can constantly check the tweets on their mobile
phones are able to know the exact location of the food truck.
Foursquare
When it comes
to the mobile strategies for social networks, in my research, I have realized
that foursquare has the smartest initiative for brands to power mobile
marketing and commerce.
To begin
with, Foursquare has a lot of partner brands that reward customers for checking
–in their store (something like Facebook places deals). Customers can exhibit
their loyalty with frequent check-in and brands get to know and reward their
most loyal customers.
But it does
not end here. Foursquare has another offering of Foursquare pages for businesses.
With these pages, businesses can add tips for their consumers at various
locations. These tips can be brand’s way of sharing its expertise with its
followers or engaging them around something more interesting.
Brands have
made good use of Foursquare pages for innovative campaigns to increase sales
and gain promotions. For example, New York Times partnered with Four Square
during 2010 Winter Olympics and guided the visitors to the best tourist’s spots
across Vancouver. Similarly, Foursquare partnered with restaurant reviewer Zagat to help
users find the best restaurants around them with reviews and ratings. You can
see some of the best Foursquare marketing campaigns at the following articles (1) and (2).
Another
Foursquare feature that has great marketing and sales potential is Foursquare lists.
With foursquare lists, consumers can create tips for their networks like best
places to eat at a particular place, top things to buy or visit by tagging
brands. Brands can use these lists to generate advocacy, know their evangelists
and engage their customers through an effective CRM program. I will look
forward to some interesting mobile marketing by brands using Foursquare lists.
Groupon
Groupon’s
mobile strategy is more like a location layer above its deals model. You get
the groupon experience but on your mobile phone that can help you customize
your deals based on your location.
Groupon’s mobile apps help
users purchase deals from their mobile phone, bypass the step where they have
to print the proof of purchase and see the deals near their location. Moreover,
with Groupon ‘now’, the
mobile users need not even wait for the deal to get activated. They can check
the deals around their location and grab them right away at the touch of a
button.
Surely
Groupon has some great ideas to facilitate mobile commerce. Their mobile apps
are adding a location layer which is greatly improving the consumer experience
of purchasing deals.
Another
interesting aspect of Groupon’s mobile commerce strategy is Groupon’s
attempt to become world’s largest mobile advertising network. Groupon is
partnering with big mobile apps and app makers to run real time promotions of
Groupon’s deals from its clients based on proximity. Hence, the next time you
will use an app like Loopt and are near a Groupon deal, you will get a
notification on your phone.
Google
With the
recent launch of Google plus and the integration of search with social, it
would be difficult to not call Google a social giant.
Google has
some very interesting mobile commerce tools in its arsenal of mobile
strategies.Google Shopper app helps
users simplify their everyday shopping experience. The app can be used to scan
barcodes or book covers to get more information about the product. The app can
also be used to find products or know the best prices from online stores or
even get information about the stores nearby your vicinity. Certain versions at
certain geographies also give you daily deals and deals in proximity.
Google
Catalogs, a free app for tablets makes catalog browsing and product
purchasing a very engaging experience. Users can browse across multiple catalogs,
get rich media info like videos and high resolution images and really enhance
their product research experience. The app helps users to share their findings
with friends and even purchase them online or find nearby stores.
Google Wallet is another path
breaking initiative by Google to make your payments quick and simpler. Google
wallet will hold your payment cards that hold in your wallet today. The app
uses NFC (near field communications) to make the fund transfer really simple.
All you have to do is just tap your phone on the reader and get your payment
done. The eventual aim of the app is to sync loyalty card, receipts, boarding
pass, tickets etc all in one mobile app. Google even plans to use this apps for
customers to avail Google offers.
I hope this
article helped you understand how the mobile strategies of world’s major social
platforms are impacting mobile commerce. You can find the research summarized
below:
How top social networks are powering mobile commerce
View more presentations from Kuliza Technologies
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