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The 6 Keys to Delivering Exceptional Mobile Customer Service Experiences in Tourism

mobile customer service

Today’s travelers increasingly expect on-demand, mobile-first service from tourism brands when planning or during trips.  In fact, 83% of travelers will do research on a mobile device before committing to a trip. The mobile experience and customer service you provide travelers and tourists is vital in securing their business.

However, offering seamless mobile customer support across multiple touchpoints presents challenges for destination marketers and travel providers. The difficulty in providing such a seamless customer service on mobile devices is matched only by the travelers’ expectation that your destination can do just that.

This article explores six proven strategies and best practices tourism executives should adopt to deliver responsive, personalized mobile customer service experiences that meet modern traveler expectations.  As you are reading this article, take notes and think about how your destination or attraction is utilizing each of these steps. If you aren’t utilizing any of these strategies yet, then you have a chance to make a very positive impact on your destination’s customer support, especially from a mobile perspective. If you are already utilizing some or many of these strategies, focus on the areas that aren’t being utilized, as they could be the missing piece that optimizes and improves your entire mobile customer service strategy.

Conduct Journey Mapping from a Mobile Lens

Journey mapping is the process of visualizing how a customer would perform a certain task. For instance, if a potential traveler in say Utah, wanted to book a tour of your attraction in Greenville, South Carolina, what would that process look like? What steps would the traveler have to take in order to book a tour? Now think about the process that this same traveler would have to go through in order to book a tour using only mobile devices:

  • Map key travel journeys from research to booking to the trip itself from a mobile perspective to uncover friction points. For an added perspective, first conduct the journey on a desktop or laptop, then follow the same steps on a mobile device. Note any differences in the experience, such as load times, display of information.
  • Conduct interviews and shadowing research focused on mobile usage and needs throughout the travel journey to gather insights directly from travelers. Have customers follow a set path on a desktop or laptop, then have then execute the same journey on a mobile device. As they complete the process, note any provided feedback on where the journey with the mobile device is better or worse versus the experience on the desktop or laptop.
  • Comprehensively audit mobile metrics – platform usage, traffic sources, booking conversion rates, transactions, service case resolution speed/quality and satisfaction scores. Compare and contrast all metrics to the experience on other channels to note potential bottlenecks and churn points.
  • Analyze mobile service case topics and types to identify knowledge gaps to address in self-help resources. Flag topics that are consistently mentioned by CS agents. These indicate potential problem areas that should be addressed to ensure a better mobile customer service experience for travelers and tourists.

Analyzing the customer journey from a mobile perspective can help you optimize the experience for travelers.

Expand Mobile App Capabilities

A branded mobile app is a wonderful way to deliver customized customer service experiences to travelers. Make sure your mobile app offers the following features:

  • Your mobile app should allow booking, chat support, and self-service options to handle needs during the shopping journey. Traveling can be a spontaneous adventure for many people, make sure your mobile app gives travelers the convenience to book a trip when they are ready, on their schedule.
  • Provides location services, travel guides, and destination recommendations accessible in-trip. Research will be a critical part of any successful trip. Make sure travelers have destination-specific information available at their fingertips at all times.
  • Share itinerary, loyalty program, and payment details for in-app access throughout travels. This provides an added benefit to the traveler by helping them keep organized and focused on trip details. By linking loyalty program information, it also helps the traveler stay up to date on possible rewards that could be claimed during the trip.
  • Send proactive notifications for flight/event updates, special offers etc. based on context. Allow travelers to store and synch flight and hotel information in app, and keep travelers abreast of any changes in itinerary.
  • Offer a mobile concierge or chatbot to handle common requests on-the-go. Leveraging AI, you can offer a chat assistant that can answer common questions about the travel process as well as answer questions related to the locations and destinations that the traveler will be visiting.  Remember, every time you can give a traveler the ability to answer their own support question, that potentially deflects a customer support event (saving you money) and it increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Apps that give travelers the information they need at all stages of their journey will lead to higher loyalty levels and greater retention.

Train On-Site Staff to Be Mobile-Ready

Your on-site staff should be trained with using mobile devices to bring added convenience and support to travelers:

  • Provide locations teams with tablets and smartphones to assist guests anywhere on-property with lookups, requests, or issue resolution. This allows your support staff to be more accessible on site, which gives an added level of convenience to travelers.
  • Let travelers summon or locate on-site staff via your mobile app. This gives travelers more control over getting support and assistance with issues and questions.
  • Equip roaming customer service agents to handle needs, answer questions, and queue services digitally. Monitor traffic patterns at your destination to understand where agents should be stationed to maximize effectiveness.
  • Set up self-service kiosks around sites for quick lookups or appointment scheduling without staff. Give travelers the ability to quickly print out their itinerary as well as brief travel guides and coupons from the kiosk. Also give travelers the ability to summon an agent if additional support is needed.

Mobile-empowered on-site staff enable personalized support, which leads to higher levels of satisfaction.

Adopt Emerging Mobile Technologies

Continually assess feedback from travelers to identify emerging tech that can enhance the mobile customer service experience for tourists:

  • Robots and drones can be utilized to deliver small packages to tourists poolside, or hikers on a trail. This can address customer support and possibly even safety issues.
  • Implement virtual/augmented reality to provide immersive property tours and destination previews. AR and VR can be provided both on-site, as well as demos given online or at your travel agency. Providing a more immersive experience for the traveler can increase satisfaction in the trip.
  • Leverage geofencing and GPS for hyper-localized, contextual push notifications. This technology can ensure that travelers have location-specific information that adds an additional layer of convenience.

Cutting-edge mobile tech can delight and satisfy guests and improve satisfaction.

Monitor Mobile Analytics Closely

One you have a robust mobile customer service experience in place, make sure you are tracking the correct analytics associated with your mobile experience:

  • Track satisfaction scores, NPS and sentiment specifically for mobile touchpoints. Compare and contrast scores for the same metrics among desktop users to help identify areas for improvement in both areas.
  • Monitor usage and adoption rates for mobile apps, messaging, and on-site technology. Note any areas that are seeing rapid adoption and growth, and try to identify why. If travelers aren’t using a particular mobile tech at certain parts of the customer journey, drill down and see if there are ways to increase adoption. If not, consider abandoning that touchpoint and investing in more promising areas.
  • Measure mobile booking and transaction conversion rates vs. desktop. This will help you identify customer behavior patterns, so you can further customize the overall support experience to deliver higher levels of support.
  • Analyze mobile traffic sources, on-site usage heatmaps and popular device types. Also focus on traffic patterns and tie that to mobile usage. Once hotspots are identified, make it easier for travelers to engage with your mobile tech at those locations.
  • Identify service gaps between mobile and traditional channels. Additionally, if travelers are positively responding to your mobile tech on-site, see if there are opportunities to provide a similar experience via traditional channels. Seek to understand why the mobile experience is resonating with travelers, and incorporate what’s working on-site into the traditional channels.

Traveler data can provide opportunities to enhance and optimize mobile offerings and experiences.

Continuously Optimize the Mobile Experience

The mobile environment evolves quickly. Continually improve by:

  • A/B testing new mobile app features and self-service functionality. Remember that travelers are increasingly expecting to be able to self-diagnose support issues. Give travelers the ability to solve their own problems, especially when they are on the go and on-site.
  • Study your competitors and other destinations to spot opportunities. See how other locations and destinations are leveraging emerging mobile technologies to enhance the customer support experience.
  • Seeking direct traveler feedback on mobile pain points and desired improvements. Compare and contrast this feedback with the same feedback from travelers who book and research trip on their laptop or desktop. Figure out what travelers prefer about the experience on their desktop, and see how you can incorporate a similar experience into mobile.
  • Journey mapping the mobile process for travelers to identify friction and pain points. Find the bottlenecks for travelers and address them.
  • Piloting enhancements, measuring impact on satisfaction and usage, and iterating. Utilize traveler feedback to incorporate improvements, test, then test some more. Rollout your winners and scrap the losers and try again.

Optimization never ends as mobile technology and traveler expectations continue to evolve.

Achieving Mobile Customer Service Excellence

Providing seamless mobile customer service is challenging yet critical in travel. The strategies explored in this guide equip tourism brands to effectively meet rising expectations.

Emerging mobile technologies can greatly enhance the support experience for travelers, but only if properly utilized. Adopting a proactive versus reactive mindset can set your destination up to be the case study that others in your industry learn from.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: BAYC Launches $APE, Magazine/Book NFTs Are Here, Your Grandparents Are Mobile Gamers

Happy Monday, y’all! Welcome to another edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! Every Monday I bring you 3 news stories that caught my eye, covering business, marketing and web3.  Let’s dive in:

 

Bored Ape Yacht Club, the wildly successful NFT collection, launched its $APE coin last week.  The token will help fund community initiatives as well as reward current BAYC members.  The coin debuted at a dollar and quickly shot up to over $37 before settling down and is currently trading in the $10-14 dollar range. This will likely be the first of many such token offerings associated with NFT collections that we will see this year.

 

In January, I wrote about 3 NFT categories primed for growth in 2022; Music, photography, and books.  We are beginning to see some publishers begin to dabble with books and media, as Time has offered a recent edition of its magazine as an NFT for the first time:

https://twitter.com/MarkEglinton/status/1504106432316297222

 

I knew which age group was going to be the leaders in mobile gaming before I read the article. The age group that plays mobile games the most in the US and Canada?  The age group 45 years and older. This age group accounts for 32% of all mobile gamers.  Now to be fair, 45+ is a LARGE range.  But you would be surprised how many people over the age of 40 are playing mobile games.  I’ve been actively playing them for the last few years and the majority of the players are consistently over 40 years old.  Many are over 50.  Often, these games have chat functionality, and for older gamers, they may have limited mobility, and the friends they make while playing mobile games could be a significant part of their social circle.

 

So that’s it for this week, I hope all of you have a wonderful week and enjoy the Spring weather!

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Three Emerging Technologies Will Revolutionize Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Emerging Technologies Impacting Your Digital Marketing Strategy

So many digital marketers focus on understanding every shiny new tool that pops up. And so many CMOs are scared to death of missing out on the next Facebook or Twitter. So every time a new social tool pops up, every marketer rushes there in a sort of cyber land-grab, which often ends up turning into a ghost-town within weeks.

This is why I always say don’t focus on understanding the tools, instead aim to understand how and why people are using the tools. Understanding customer behavior is far more important than understanding tools that may be totally irrelevant in a month. Here’s three emerging technologies that will impact your digital marketing strategies in 2017 and beyond.

 

WiGig – The next generation of Wifi, known as WiGig, promises to greatly widen the internet bandwidth available to devices that access its networks. Theoretically, speeds on WiGig networks could surpass current Wifi by up to 300%. Of course, there will be rollout issues as the market won’t begin to see a plethora of WiGig-capable devices until Summer or Fall of 2017. The good news is that gives you time to plan how this will impact your digital marketing strategy.

WiGig will impact the types of content that customers will consume on their devices. A bigger pipe opens the door to streaming content such as video and more live-streaming from apps such as Periscope. Also, keep in mind that the line between smartphones and tablets is blurring quickly. An iPhone 7 Plus has a viewing screen size of 5.5 inches, whereas the iPad Mini’s screen size is 7.9 inches.

What You Should Do Now:  Start by examining your existing digital marketing strategy and deciding how or if WiGig could impact it. First, WiGig is effectively a bigger pipe for connected devices, especially mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. So a more robust network means you can more easily deliver content that requires more bandwidth, such as video. If you’ve already seen success from your existing content(such as podcasts) being consumed on mobile devices, it could be time to shift to video, as it is going to be huge for digital marketing in 2017.

 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) – One of the more controversial Super Bowl ads of 2017 was a spot for Google Home that accidentally set off customer devices across the country when the commercial aired. While funny (or annoying if you were affected), this is another sign that such digital assistants are becoming more commonplace. Amazon has been experimenting with devices such as Echo for years, and moving forward these devices will continue to improve, and eventually go from being inconsistently weird tech toys to valuable parts of our everyday lives.

Keep in mind that the rise of digital assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo means a change in user behavior. If a customer uses their laptop and goes to Google to perform a search, the terms they use will likely be more exact and precise. But if that same customer interacts with a digital assistant they will ‘search’ for the same item, in a different way. Devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are being marketed as ‘assistants’ moreso than devices, because these companies want customers to be more conversational with the devices. This leads to more conversational search terms.  The user could search for the same thing in slightly different ways based on the device being used.

EX: Search while on laptop: “Best Italian food in San Diego”

Search with Google Home: “Ok Google, what’s the highest-rated Italian restaurant within 3 miles?”

What You Should Do Now: Consider the impact that devices utilizing AI is having on your business now, or could in the future. A good starting point is to get a handle on your existing mobile traffic. What percentage of your search traffic is from mobile devices, and what type of keywords are people using to find your content. If you feel customers will be using digital assistants to search for terms related to your business, then you want to incorporate that into your SEO efforts. As mentioned above, customers use more conversational commands when using digital assistants, and this translates into more conversational search terms being used. As always, a big part of SEO success comes from incorporating user habits into your content creation. The rise of digital assistants is no different.

 

Augmented Reality: Pokemon Go was one of the hottest crazes in 2016, and it introduced many of us to the world of Augmented Reality. AR utilizes a device’s camera to show you objects with additional content overlaid that has relevance to the user. A consumer example could be looking down a downtown street with your camera and having a coupon app that overlays notifications that show which stores currently have sales. A B2B example could be a company utilizing AR with its field technicians when they perform service calls.

For digital marketers, augmented reality offers a way to improve the shopping and research experience for customers, especially on mobile devices. Customers are increasingly using their smartphones to conduct research at the point of purchase that can often decide whether or not a purchase is made. AR apps can provide content that aids in that research phase, and helps close the sale.

What You Should Do Now: As always, the best marketing solves a customer problem. Before you rush off to research creating your own AR app, instead research the customer problems that an AR app could solve. Here’s an example, last year I was shopping for a new car. I would go to car lots and look at the cars by myself, then when I found a few I liked, I would go back and talk to the salesperson about those vehicles. When I found a car I liked, I would pull out my iPhone and bring up reviews and ratings for the car. It would have been much easier if I had an AR app on my phone that would allow me to look at the cars on the lot with my camera, and superimpose the ratings next to each vehicle. This would be a great idea for a car review site like Edmunds or Kelly Blue Book.  It would have solved a problem for me and it would have simplified my research. And it would have made it easy for me to endorse the app to other car shoppers.

In addition to researching AR app options, also consider the type of content that could be delivered via these apps, and the type of customer that will be using them. For example, B2B buyers may want access to more in-depth technical information than a B2C customer would. A B2B customer may want to see the technical manuals, whereas a B2C customer would rather see user reviews. As always, consider the core problems that you will be solving for the customer by leveraging AR.

 

Remember that it’s better to focus first on the macro-influences on your digital marketing efforts, then hone in on the tactics that are only relevant to your strategy. If you have additional questions about how these and other emerging technologies will impact your digital marketing efforts, feel free to leave a comment or email me for a specific answer to your questions.

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Customers Are Increasingly Using Mobile Devices to Research Your Company and Your Products

According to new research from eMarketer, the majority of mobile shoppers are under the age of 44 (78%) and Female (53.4%).  The article also referenced a study done by Payvision that found that 57% of retailers worldwide experienced major mcommerce growth in 2014, and that figure increased to 79% for 2015.

So needless to say, customers will increasingly be viewing your content on mobile devices.  As a result, you should make every effort to make sure that your content is optimized for mobile devices.  Here’s a couple of links that can help you with that.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Checker.  This will scan your site/blog and tell you if it is mobile-friendly.  It will also tell you things you can work on to improve performance.

WPtouch Mobile Plugin.  This is the plugin I use to make this site all purdy when loaded on smartphones.  It’s only for WordPress, and it does have some compatibility issues with certain WordPress themes, so it may not work on your WordPress blog.  But it’s worth trying out, here’s some screenshots from how my content looks on an iPhone with this plugin:

MobileSiteHave you optimized your blog for mobile devices? If so, have you noticed any changes, especially to search traffic from mobile devices?

 

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Is Your Blog Ready For Google’s Mobile Search Update?

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the transcript for this #Blogchat.

Tonight at #Blogchat (4-12-2015) we will be discussing the changes that Google is about to roll out that are aimed at rewarding sites that are Mobile Friendly.  These changes will start to take affect on 4-21-2015, or Tuesday of next week.

Here’s where you can read about what these changes mean on Google’s webmaster blog.  In short, it seems that the main change will be that sites/blogs that google deems to be ‘mobile-friendly’ will rank higher than similar sites/blogs that are not mobile-friendly in google’s eyes.

You can use this site from google to check and see if google sees your blog as being mobile-friendly.

First, what does ‘mobile-friendly’ mean anyway?  In short, it means that your blog adapts to whatever device being used to view it, to present an adequate viewing experience.  For example, have you ever tried to view a blog on a smartphone and it looks like a smaller version of the entire website?  And you have to expand the text with your fingers to read any of it?  That’s an example of a blog that’s NOT mobile-friendly.  This is also called having a responsive design/theme/template for your blog.  It means your blog adapts to the device you are using to present text in a way that can be easily read.

Second, is google going to penalize my blog starting on 4-21-2015 if it’s not mobile-friendly?  Well, yes and no.  I think it’s more accurate to say this latest update from Google is more about rewarding mobile-friendly blogs that it is about penalizing ones that aren’t.  If you go now to your smartphone and do a google search, you’ll see that when you look at the results, some of the sites will have MOBILE FRIENDLY under their entry.  This is telling you that since you are on a mobile device, that these sites will give you an optimal viewing experience.  So the odds are that you will click a mobile-friendly result moreso than one that isn’t.  Additionally, Google has said that starting on 4-21-2015, it will begin using whether a site is mobile-friendly or not as one of its ‘ranking signals’.  Meaning that Google will start to consider if a site is mobile-friendly or not as one of the criteria when it ranks sites for results.  Will this only apply for search results on mobile devices, or all devices?  I’m not sure, maybe someone could chime in?

What are your options if your blog is NOT mobile-friendly?

If your blog is NOT mobile-friendly and you want to make it so, then you will want to either switch to a responsive theme, or make some alteration to your existing theme/site to make it responsive.

The first thing I would do is go to your Google Analytics and see how much of your blog’s traffic is currently coming from mobile devices.  For my blog, about 33% of my site’s traffic is from mobile.  That number is too big to ignore, so over the weekend I made some tweaks to my theme (Thesis) to make it responsive, and mobile-friendly in Google’s eyes.  If your blog is only getting 5% of its traffic from mobile devices, then you might decide to wait and see how your traffic changes on 4-21-2015 (if it does at all) before you make any changes.

Before changing themes, I would check to see if there are any options for making your existing theme responsive.  For example, I am running Thesis 1.8.6 here, and I found out there IS a way to make this theme responsive.  I did so by adding this responsive skin (so if you have Thesis 1.8.x, you can use it to make your blog responsive).  I would google your theme and see if there are any options for making it responsive.

If you do decide to change themes (and your blog is a self-hosted WordPress blog), keep in mind that WordPress 4.0 came with the Twenty-Fifteen theme, which is a responsive theme.  It’s a very simple and no-frills theme, but switching to it should make your blog mobile-friendly and ready for Google’s upcoming changes.

Also, Copyblogger has a nice write-up on what this change could mean for your blog.

So join us tonight at 8pm Central at #blogchat to discuss these changes and how to get your blog ready!  If you haven’t joined #blogchat before, here’s what it’s all about.

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How to Better Track the Ability of Your Marketing Efforts to Drive Sales

Hundred Dollar Bills Folded in a Money Clip

Yesterday’s post from Kerry on a Ford Blogger Outreach program she’s involved with led to a fascinating discussion in the comments on tracking the effectiveness of marketing channels in driving sales.  Thanks to Jerome, Hugh and Kevin for chiming in with their thoughts.  The point was made that it would be difficult to track actual sales that resulted from the blogger outreach, then again it would likely be even moreso with offline marketing channels such as television or billboard advertising.

So then the question becomes how does a brand do two things:

1 – Better track actual sales generated from marketing efforts.  In other words, how can brands better understand which marketing touch point ultimately converted into a sale.

2 – Give its customers the tools they need to help convert those sales.  And which customers should have these tools?

First, let’s talk tracking.  If your marketing efforts have an online element, there’s really no excuse not to at least attempt to track online conversations generated, if not actual sales.  Typically this is done with coding, like a coupon or sales code for tracking purchases or now hashtags are being used more frequently to track online conversations.  The great thing about hashtags is they can be used in print and television advertising as well.  It’s a bit more difficult on radio, other than ‘Like us on Facebook!’ or ‘Tell ’em Jim sent you!’.

It’s imperative to think backwards and ask yourself ‘If this marketing campaign generates sales, how would we be able to track that?’  Other than measuring metrics and looking for clues, think about how you can give customers ways to signal to you that they are either driving sales via word of mouth, or that they interacted with your marketing and decided to purchase.  This approach still isn’t perfect or foolproof (for example if a customer had 4 different encounters with you marketing via different channels, it’s difficult to determine which channel by itself truly generated the purchase, if any).  But it gives you a headstart.

Now as for giving customers the tools they need to help convert sales.  This is important because it’s critical to distinguish between giving referral tools to everyone (such as ‘Refer 5 friends and win a $50 gift card!) versus giving tools to only certain customers.

For example, yesterday Kerry talked about the blogger outreach she’s doing with Ford.  And let’s say when she picked up the C-Max, Ford gave her some advice/training on how she could tell others about the car, if she wanted to.  Maybe use this particular hashtag on Twitter, maybe give them this code for an extended test drive, etc.

But what if Kerry got the C-Max and then hated it?  And here’s Ford, that had given her the tools and ability to tell other customers about her experience with the C-Max, without considering that Kerry might hate it!  

On the other hand, what if Ford gives Kerry the C-Max, then a few days later they follow up with her to see how her experience is going.  Kerry communicates to Ford that she’s in love with the car and has already been telling others about it.  At that point, Ford gives Kerry the tools they want her to have to attempt to refer sales to them, etc.  Ford waits until Kerry has identified to the brand that she is pleased with the C-Max.  It’s a bit more work, but from Ford’s end it pays to sort of qualify Kerry as being excited about the C-Max, then giving her the tools and ability to share her excitement with other customers!  For example in Kerry’s example she’s already proactively created her own hashtag to help Ford track conversations she is generating about her experience, she’s also reached out to Ford to see if they could transfer the car to other friends locally and let them drive it for a period.

So with the tracking it pays to first think about what actions you want your marketing efforts to result in.  It could be sales, or perhaps another action that your brand has tracked in the past as being an indicator of a future sale.  For example Ford might want to track test drives that bloggers in its outreach program generate because it has found that in X% of the test drives, a purchase is made.  So Ford may want to track test drives (it also gives them a way to track the conversion rate from test drive referrals from bloggers vs the larger customer base to see if there’s a noticeable difference).

Figuring out what action to track also needs to consider the audience for your message.  For example, if the marketing effort is aimed at a wide audience, like a television spot, something like a hashtag makes more sense because it can help you track activities toward the bottom of the sales funnel, where you’re in the awareness stage versus action.  But with a more precise effort like a blogger outreach, it makes sense to track actions closer to an end sale since the people involved would be able to have more individual contact with potential customers, plus they would likely have a closer relationship with them.

As always, the more planning you invest, the better results you’ll see.

The question I’d like to pose is, should your strategy for what to track vary according to the marketing channel used?  For example, if you run a television spot should you focus on trying to track increased conversation (hashtags) or should a sale be the goal (call now!).  Do certain channels lend themselves to different outcomes and different tracking strategies?  What do you think?

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How Rock Stars Will Save Your Marketing and Your Business

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Most companies have completely missed the enormous business potential of the marriage of social media and mobile devices.  As smartphone ownership continues to approach ubiquitous levels, marketers are salivating at the opportunity to market to customers at home or on the go.

This is where most marketers tripped over the starting line.  “How can WE use social media to push OUR marketing messages to customers?”

Simply asking this question shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how its customers are using social media, and of its customers as a group.  No one joins Facebook to be marketed to.  We aren’t using social media tools so brands will have another way to pimp their shit to us.

We are using social media tools because we long for human connection.  We want a way to share our voice and make an impact on the world and on others.  We want to interact with friends and to make new ones.  We want to have personal communications with people, not business relationships with brands.

Now if you’re a self-centered marketer, you’ll read that and think that social media can’t help you because you are only interested in leveraging personal communication tools in order to drive direct sales.

But if you’re the smart marketer, you can read between the lines and see that the intersection of social media and mobile marketing could be the most fundamental change in how you market successfully since the invention of  the television.

Think about this for a minute: If we accept that most people use social media tools for personal communications, then we also can assume that most of the same conversations that these people would have offline, they can now have online via social media, and with social media sites and tools on mobile devices.

In other words, Word of Mouth just moved online.  What form of communications is universally accepted as the most trustworthy when it comes to convincing customers to buy from a brand?  A recommendation from another customer.  Thanks to social media sites and tools, those recommendations that were formerly trapped in an offline world where they might only impact 1 person at a time, can now be shared ONline, where its impact could literally reach millions.

This is where the Rock Stars come in.

Rock stars have always understood the business power of Word of Mouth.  As a result, almost all of a rock stars’s marketing efforts are geared toward connecting with its fans.  Because those fans are driving sales via word of mouth.  Rock stars don’t try to ‘acquire’ new customers because rock stars understand that by connecting with its existing fans today, that it will acquire new customers tomorrow.

So now that social media has brought the power of Word of Mouth into an online world, its created an enormous marketing opportunity for your brand if it is willing to embrace and empower its biggest fans to market for you.

In Think Like a Rock Star, I close the book with this passage:

“Because your fans are the real rock stars.  Your job is to build them a stage, give them a microphone, and listen to the beautiful music that they create.”

Your fans are the rock stars that will save your marketing, and your business.

Pic via Flickr

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The Key to Social Selling is to Make Buying More Convenient, Not Marketing

Today Entrepreneur ran an article on FourSquare’s new ‘passive check-in’ feature where, apparently, when you are in proximity to a business, your phone will receive tips and information about the business.

Immediately, you can see how this feature could hold great potential for creating value for members, as well as spamming them.  On the one hand, relevant tips and suggestions upon entering a retail business could create value and convenience for the user.  On the other, it’s frustrating to pull your phone out every time you enter a new store just to hear about the weekly special, which you have no interest in.

In many ways, this represents the demarcation  line between success and failure when it comes to social media marketing.  On one side of the line you have the ability to create value more easily for customers, while on the other you have the ability to more easily market to customers.

Many marketers are drawn to the appeal of being able to more easily market to customers via social media tools and mobile devices.  The problem is, those customers aren’t using their social tools and mobile devices to receive marketing messages, they are primarily using these tools and devices to facilitate personal communications with friends and people they know.

For example, if I walk by a Target and get an ad sent to my phone saying Pepsi is on sale for $1.89 a 2 liter, that has no value for me, as a Dr Pepper drinker.  But if I get a text from my friend Tim that tells me that the Publix in Florence is running a special today on Dr Pepper for $1.00 a 2 liter, that might prompt me to go there to buy some.

So the key, especially with a mobile app like FourSquare is to give me relevant content that also moves me closer to the sale.  And be brave enough to understand that content might not need to come from you or your partners, but instead it might be more value if it comes from other users.  That might not always be your best sales opportunity upfront, but its likely your best way to create more satisfied users.

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Make Your WordPress Blog Mobile With WPTouch

I’ve written about how much I love WPTouch before, but I wanted to sing the plugin’s praises again here.  WPTouch optimizes your blog for viewing on mobile devices such as smartphones.  Those of us that use our smartphones to read blogs know how terrible it is to try to read a blog that hasn’t been optimized for mobile.

Case in point:  I love the big, bold picture of Katy Perry that went with the last post here.  A great picture really makes a post pop.  But here’s what this blog looks like on my iPhone without using the WPTouch plugin:

photo

That’s pretty much the actual size of what you’d be viewing.  It’s impossible to read with the type that small, so you’ll either start pinching and zooming, or leave (probably leave).  Either way, you won’t be impressed with how my blog looks on your phone.

Now here’s how this same post looks on my iPhone with the WPTouch plugin:

 photo (1)

Sigh…isn’t that a thing of beauty?  All of the sidebar and header crap that you don’t need is stripped out, and it’s only the post.  Just gawgeous.  Seriously, you do not realize how awful a blog that hasn’t been optimized for mobile looks, until you add this plugin.

Now, how important is making sure your blog is optimized for viewing on smartphones? I was curious as to this blog’s mobile traffic, so I checked.  So far this year, here’s the percentage of each month’s traffic that’s come here via smartphones:

January – 14%

February – 13%

March – 13%

April – 12%

May – 15%

June – 16%

July – 17%

As you can see, it’s slowly increasing.  Check your own blog’s traffic and see what you find.  BTW those stats are coming from Google Analytics, and don’t include tablets.

But adding WPTouch is a very simple way to instantly make your WordPress blog look ahhhmazing on smartphones.  There is a caveat that it doesn’t play nicely with some themes, but you can always download it and try it out.  The premium version is supposed to solve most of the theme-related issues.  Even if WPTouch can’t work for you, check your blog’s stats and see how your mobile visits is trending.  If you are seeing an increase in mobile visitors like I am, it might be time to go ahead and invest in a solution to make your blog mobile-friendly.

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Three Ways Your Marketing Needs to Adapt Before it Dies

Microsoft

Over the past 5 years or so, there has been a rush by companies to understand how to use social media tools.  Customers are using these tools, so brands rationalize that they need to learn how to use these tools to better sell to those customers via those tools.  The idea is to take a marketing strategy built around using analog channels, and incorporate digital tools into the mix.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t consider how customers are using these digital tools.  As late as 1990, there were three main channels to reach the majority of your customers:

1 – Television

2 – Radio

3 – Print

Because the majority of your customers were using these three channels for their news, information and entertainment.  Today, any person that has access to the internet and a laptop/tablet/smartphone is a potential content creation and distribution channel.  The marketing dynamic has completely changed in that customers are no longer looking to brands to get their information and marketing about a product, they are looking to each other.

So simply incorporating digital tools into your existing analog marketing strategy isn’t enough.  You have to adapt your strategy to reflect the fact that your customers have a greater ability to create and spread information than your brand does.  Re-read that sentence until it sinks in.

So in short, your marketing needs to adapt to make it more consistent with the content being created by other customers.  Here’s how you can do that:

1 – Make your marketing less about the product and more about how your customers use the product.  Think about why your customers buy your product and what they want to accomplish with it.  What problems are they trying to solve, what are they trying to create?  They are buying your product because it is going to help them do something.  Focus more of your marketing on that something.

2 – Make your marketing more useful.  Why have we seen a huge uptick in companies creating white papers and ebooks in the last few years?  Because this content is useful to potential customers.  It educates them, it helps them solve their problems.  Tying in with the above point, it helps them do something.  Create marketing that empowers your customers, and they will spread your marketing.

3 – Make your marketing more human.  Your marketing will resonate with your customers if it is spoken in a voice they understand: Their own.  That means not taking yourself too seriously, sometimes having a sense of humor, and being willing to admit your mistakes.  A couple of years ago The Red Cross had a huge social media faux pas, but they turned a potentially negative situation into a positive for the organization by responding in a human tone.

The main point to realize is that your customers are now creating far more information and content than your brand ever can.  Which means that most of the ‘marketing’ that’s done about and around your brand is not coming from you.  Your customers are now getting their information about your brand from each other, so you need to understand this, and adapt your marketing to make it consistent with what your customers are now expecting.

I also created this short video presentation talking more about this topic.  Let me know what you think!