Geo-Marketing: The New Effective Marketing Tool for Growing SME’s
E-commerce sales have surpassed $1.5 trillion sales since 2014. Customers do now shop online. Luckily Online advertisement has become accessible to small and medium businesss. A good portion of online marketing has become localised. Small business owners can now advertise to their local communities, drive sales and strengthen their relationships with their existing customers, and build new relationships with new customers.
Location-based marketing has found its way through social networks particularly Yelp, Zomato (in Asia) and Foursquare. Online ads are most effective when they’re customized according to customers’ interests and location (salad bar restaurant vs. hot dog stand). Foursquare and Yelp are grossing millions in revenues in North America and globally. Small and local businesses are the main business clients of location-based marketing startups such as Foursquare. For a few-dollars ad, expect an ROI of a +200%. Incredulous? Read the account of success stories.
1- Social networks offer free Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Sharing and promoting your restaurant’s pictures on social networks is the best free marketing strategy you can opt for in the market. This is called Word of Mouth Marketing. The best part is that it’s free. Social networks are all about imagery, flash news and conversations. And if you’ve got a food business, you’ve got plenty of pictures to share!
Everyone loves sharing and peeking at food pictures. As of now, there are more than 100 million food pictures on Instagram. While only 67% of these Instagram pictures come associated with a business location, locked within them are insights about your business, food and service.
Click and mortar businesses (businesses with online presence) can benefit immensely from geomarketing since it offers extra online space to advertise for their products which are already displayed to shoppers online. Geomarketing will drive online conversion up. Click and mortar businesses can mix up their online and direct marketing strategies by offering incentives to shop at the physical store.
2- Social networks are places to fix relationships & bond with customers
Instagram is a great channel to reach out to customers after sales or to track new customers who are interested first in how the products look. Thanks to hashtags on twitter and Instagram, you can now reach out to your customers after sales. Some big companies such as PayPal have transition to full customer service through Twitter. Many airlines do rely on their support accounts to fix their customer problems and share other positive experience to new potential customers. You can play on social media through sweepstakes, contests or native Facebook game apps to nurture your relations with customers.
3- Social networks are great for distributing sales coupons
The online space and social media are the perfect places to distribute coupons and track their impact on sales growth. Facebook allows business pages to run special offers for their fans. Since the last Twitter update, you can now pin your coupons or twitter social cards to your tweet feed or sponsor it as well. Websites such as Groupon has become increasingly popular among internet buyers. You can (you better) choose different social networks according to your customer segments’ preferences and the best time to reach them. Every social platform (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) provides free analytics to users (impressions, clicks, engagement). Use t his data wisely.
Yes, local social media marketing is important!
No matter what the nature of your business is, your new potential customer is just a couple of clicks, a picture and a sentence away from you. We live in an age where customers are constantly bombarded with marketing information. Customers pick business that speak to them (literally). By investing your time and money on location-based marketing, you will not only attract those free roaming lunchers that are looking for new salad places (Foursquare basic customers), but also build new relationships with your customers and strengthen your brand among your competitors.
Talk to us for a free call on how you can invest in location marketing to drive up your sales and customer engagement. Call us at +971 528 096 442 (Dubai) or +61 490 201 530 (Sydney, Australia) or email us to info@ichanical.com.