Sensei Blogs

7 People-Connecting Strategies for #B2B Marketers

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week I wrote a post claiming that Business-to-Business Marketers’ self-inflicted aversion to people is the reason they’ve been slow to adopt mobile and social technologies; thus, failing to adequately leverage either channel. I argued that their marketing focus is also business-to-business and not people-to-people.

Today, I’d like to follow that up with a few suggestions on infrastructure changes B2B organizations can embrace in order to get better acquainted with the people that make or influence buying decisions.

Below are seven strategic and infrastructure considerations that will aid B2B firms make more personal connections with their audience.

1. Don't Hog the Mike. Open social engagement to all employees not just your sales and marketing teams. Buyers will appreciate hearing from those in the shipping department, accounting or product development. If your brand cannot create personal connections, allow your people to do so.

2. Private is OK Too. Not all social conversations have to be public; consider a private social network framework within a private extranet that allows your staff to engage customers directly. Or better yet, allow your customers to engage each other in an open, un-moderated format.

3.Seek Out Advocates. Influencer marketing strategies are well suited to the B2B space; however, there are few online channels for advocates to share their recommendations. Seek out customer or employee advocates, encourage/reward them for their efforts and most importantly, identify or create the channels for them to share their recommendations publicly.

4. Ground Yourself. Taking a lesson from the B2C world, create a hub that connects social conversations, articles and industry news to a central source such as your Web site or blog. Connecting all the few or many external channels you choose (including email and offline marketing) will help focus conversations and allow you to manage them with less effort.

5. Don’t Moderate – Engage. It’s too easy for B2B marketers to jump in with “Here’s how this product will sell through” or “Here’s how this product will increase your revenues”…it’s OK to let the conversations flow to non-product or non-business related topics. Businesses sell businesses. People talk to people and often, the first step in selling to people is not to sell to them at all.

6. Laugh. Don’t take yourself too seriously when communicating with “people”. B2B executives (and by extension B2B marketers) are notoriously stiff when it comes to business communications and branding. They’re trained to live, breathe and sleep features & benefits, cost analysis and logistics. Taking a lighter approach connects with the people that make those business decisions far more than specification documents and training videos. Take Ottawa-based supply chain software company Kinaxis, that produced a series of videos that made light of their own industry.

7. Measure & Benchmark. Begin measuring the number and sentiment of social conversations you have with specific individuals and categorize them as purchase influencers or decision makers. Over time, benchmark the share of wallet, retention and conversion you’re receiving based on the frequency and nature of those social conversations with individuals to determine the revenue impact from the businesses they work for.

Change does not occur easily in B2B firms yet the market is ready for someone to take the lead. The strategy suggested in these seven points requires a fundamental culture change in the organization that seems counterintuitive to these traditional thinkers, yet often is the counterintuitive executions that set a business apart. The B2C world has tremendous examples of counterintuitive customer experience strategies like Starbucks encouraing you to sit for long periods of time, Costco reducing the number of SKUs sold in aisles with no signage, etc.

The one area that is not counterintuitive for B2B firms when adopting social strategies: they are already more focused on the net results (bottom line impact) of engagements than their B2C counterparts that wrestle with generic brand awarness and branding metrics.

It’s a brave new world. B2B marketers and execs have been the laggards but we're starting to see the cracks. Forrester Research forecasts that B2B social media marketing spending will grow from just $11 million last year to $54 million in 2014. Still a fraction of the total digital spend planned but moving in the right direction.

Can B2B Marketers effectively alter their DNA to be more focused on the people they sell to vs. the businesses?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Mobile Transcends Tactic to Become the Complete Brand Experience

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Businesses must quickly rethink their concept of mobile.

Mobile is not a device. It’s not a new payment gateway. It’s not another marketing channel. Mobile isn’t just a channel and frankly, it’s evolving beyond a strategy.

Mobile is the new Web that connects and I'd argue sustains other social and communication channels. Mobile devices have morphed beyond a select communication device to THE communication device. In fact, it has become a personal, 24/7 key to the “information highway”, social channels, personal and professional communications.

Paul Gelb, vice president and mobile practice lead at Razorfish calls mobile “a connective tissue that ends up being a thread through many of the stories and strategies that you end up doing”, which is an interesting point of view. It suggests that mobile is the new brand story teller or, at a minimum the disseminator of the brand story.

The mobile ecosystem

The mobile ecosystem is growing exponentially with new devices, responsive web design, mobile apps and even mobile-only social networks that there’s no single mobile strategy any longer. For example, Apps are recommended for developing existing customers and social CRM support whereas mobile-optimized Web sites are pitched for new customer acquisition by relationship marketing firms.

On the device-front, tablets are now the focus of unique content executions that were not possible via smart phones and strategies, most of which are more instant and viral than via PCs. If you doubt the growing importance of the mobile channel on businesses, research from Compuware found that 57% of consumers will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. Further proof is demonstrated by the 40% who reported they’d go to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.

Mobile-defined value proposition?

Has mobile become so critical and central to our brand story-telling that the business’ value proposition is being defined by the experience?

Current estimates indicate that 30% of all searches are being conducted via mobile devices; more interesting is the mindset of those customers performing mobile searches. The public has a unique need or desire when one searches for a product, service or content on line; some refer to this as “Mobile Intention”. There’s a built-in intention to take some action when searching via mobile devices. Searching for software, for example via a mobile device carries the intention of purchase or identification of closest retail location unlike the same search on a PC, which is often skewed towards research and recommendations.

Within the retail industry, we’re seeing the rise of “showrooming” where customers are browsing other store’s inventory and pricing while psychically present in the competitor’s store. Mobile technologies and channels are changing the way consumers shop. Amazon took a lead position in this area when it gave shoppers an App that allowed and encouraged multi-store comparisons and even gave a discount for using the app.

At the 2012 MMA Forum in New York City, Jesse Haines, head of marketing at Google Mobile Ads said “Showrooming isn’t going away, and it’s the innovative retailers who are thinking about how to transform their value proposition that win.”

The growing impact of mobile on the business’ brand and value proposition is the topic of this week’s #bizforum debate on Twitter. Join the business community as we debate all sides of this emerging marketing trend by following the #bizforum hashtag between 8 and 9 PM Eastern on Twitter, Tweetchat or your favorite Twitter client.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Challenging the Rules of Social Darwinism

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

"Survival of the Fittest”, first championed by philosopher Hebert Spencer is an extension of Charles Darwin’s theory on “natural selection”, which describes the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. Spenser’s sociological adaptation of Darwin’s biological theory has been sometimes referenced as "Social Darwinism” (note: the term “social” was not used to reference modern day “social media”).

In the business world, the term has been interpreted in many fashions but the main premise always remains: a product or brand whose attributes (naturally occurring by characteristic or manufactured by marketing) predisposes it to being beloved and supported by a the majority of consumers.

The economic applications of this principle have rarely included the social media factor; a new, disruptive player in the ecosystem. Can popularity, amplified by social media, alter the premise of Spencer’s fittest paradigm?

Case Study: Research in Motion (RIM).

Spoiler Alert: this is not another blog post about how RIM is circling the drain or speculating why or who should buy it. It’s about you and your part in dictating its history.

Recently, I engaged in a rather heated debate with colleagues about the merits of Apple vs. Google vs. RIM devices and operating systems. After what seemed like an eternity of technical diatribes, someone asked a simple yet pointed question and one that may be closer to the heart of the issue: how do consumers go from being diehard fanatics to diehard detractors over night?

Of course they were referencing the meteoric fall of RIM, which decended from "inventor of the Smart Phone”, enjoying the world’s largest marketshare to vulture food in what was really a nanosecond when you look back. RIM’s Blackberry was supposed to be (and for a short while was) to the smart phone what Kleenex is to facial tissues.

Was the debatable innovation or technical missteps of RIM’s executives what caused it to go from the world’s mobile “fittest” to economic “weakling” overnight? Even passionate advocates of Social Darwinism will concede that any form of natural selection does not happen this quickly without some external factor such as an economics-version of a tsunami or meteor storm that kills off a species in one fell swoop. So what’s the external factor at play here?

Disrupting Social Darwinism

While we’re still charting the full impact of social media’s amplification factor vis-à-vis social influence, social status and networking, we can all agree that social bandwagonism is alive and in fact, rampant.

What is the impact of social media’s mob-mentality on the rules of Social Darwinism? In the case of RIM we might argue that it expedited – or possibly created – the speed at which it has lost public and investor favor.

Is RIM’s product so poor, so deficient that its death should be preordained? It has a proven history of innovation, an international network and large recurring revenue stream (albeit drastically lower than it once was) so why have consumers jumped off the bandwagon so quickly to avoid the “Blackberry plague” that threatens to kill their social cool-factor?

It is possible that RIM or its Blackberry device would have failed regardless of social media’s spotlight but would it have happened so quickly? The new world-order for consumer brands seems to be ruled not by the survival of the fittest but social-popularity. Blackberry fanatics have thrust their “blue thumbs” into their pockets way too quickly for us to not concede that social media peer-pressure elevated social popularity to the top of the priority list over technical considerations and brand loyalty.

Mission Impossible: Overcoming “Social Media Darwinism”

In fact, I would argue the point a little further and state that it has created a hostile environment where even a very fit business can’t survive. RIM has not closed its doors yet pundits and analysts have all but written their epitaphs. The same way they wrote off MySpace, which despite the reports is enjoying a surge in popularity …and even revenue growth today.

I understand that this is their job...whatever sells the news but the general public isn’t selling anything? Or is it? Are we selling our own popularity…our own status? Are we all too happy – and too quick – to join the cool-kids that we’re inadvertently poisoning the environment for fit brands?

What are your thoughts? Has social influence created a social media tsunami? Have the rules of "survival of the fittest" been changed? Can a business overcome it?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Yoru Community, Not Your Ego

Customer Experience – The New [Again] Definition of Business Success

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Call it the Trust Economy, the Social Economy, Social Business or other, much has been speculated, theorized and debated when considering what it takes for a business to grow and thrive in whatever this “new economy” is.

The reality is that we don’t really know what this new economy is. Social Business is the trending paradigm-du-jour but wait 6 months and there we'll probably see another great revelation about what’s next in corporate strategy. With each passing year the frequency of paradigm-shifts - real, invented or perceived – seems to increase.

Is it a new operating archetype created by the increased power of the consumer through social channels?

Is it the democratization of information enabled by the growing list of mobile and social technologies?

Is it the realities of a new post-recession world-order where foreign countries have become economic superiors?

Back to Basics [Again]

My advice to business leaders: monitor trends but never lose sight of personalized customer experiences if you wish to weather future strategy tempests. The one rule that will not change, regardless of what the future has in store for us, is that a business’ success will be measured by its ability to act as if it was the customer.

Back in the “wild-west” days, the General Store owner knew each of his customers by name, who their families were, what they did for a living. He didn’t stock his store based on trends, predictions or his own brilliant ideas but on what he knew his each of his customers would need. This basic yet profound rule is missing from many of the blogs and whitepapers issued today that try to capitalize on the latest technologies and trends to predict “what’s next” for businesses.

Many have called this a "customer centric" approach but it goes beyond simply thinking about your customer's needs and wants; it's about becoming your customer and making decisions as if you were them. It's a fine line but an important distinction.

Case in point: Amazon. Arguably one of the most unsung success stories in our economy. Their revenue (and profit) diversification is inspiring and can be credited to their ability to run a business as if they are their own customers.

Invent For Your Customer, Not Your Business

Lisa Utzschneider, global vice president of digital advertising sales at Amazon referenced their customer-first strategy at an ad:tech conference recently. When Amazon thinks about its customers, the company thinks about three things:

the product that it wants to develop
the ability to innovate on behalf of the company’s customers
how to anticipate their needs

As a seller of books (among other things), when that filter was applied, the unlikely and even illogical business strategy of moving into the tablet & hardware business becomes logical. “Who could have imagined that we would get in businesses like Prime or Kindle? Who would have thought we would get into the hardware business and start building hardware?” Ms. Utzschneider said.

Don’t Disrupt the Customer Experience

When Amazon started its advertising program, they understood that advertising on web sites, apps and networks were very disruptive to the user experience. With their core philosophy in mind (remember, Amazon invented the one-click purchase), it planned how to enhance the customer’s online shopping experience through the placement of advertising.

“When we think about advertising, it’s about personalization,” Ms. Utzschneider said. “The personalization and recommendation engine is the backbone of our company.”

The adoption and click thru rates of this basic strategy is reaping rewards for Amazon, their advertisers and customers. For example, a recent partnership with Universal Studios to promote the Lorax movie, resulted in a 25 percent increase in unaided awareness and a 50 percent increase in likelihood of parents wanting to take their children to see the film, surpassing all of Amazon and Universal’s sweeps, video streams and social activation benchmarks.

Reduce Friction

In a study of top-ranked applications across iOS, Amazon and Android, Flurry Analytics found that the Kindle Fire manufacturer delivers more than three times the revenue in its app store compared to what Google generates for developers.

While the report lists Apple still reigns supreme, Amazon is not far behind. Google/Android, however, does lag behind the other two by some margin.

“The issue comes down to commerce friction,” said Flurry Analytics' VP Peter Farago. “Amazon has all consumers payment-enabled, manages a curated store and has deep merchandising understanding." Google has built a great app market but on the back of a leading search and advertising technology. Good for them, but for the customer – not so much.

Whichever division, strategy or tactic you look at, what has made Amazon’s so successful is their placement of the customer experience at the center of other business strategies.

So plan for social media, m-commerce, gamification, social business or whatever other business strategy you’re considering, but never forget that a basic customer experience strategy must remain at the core of each new paradigm shift you explore for your business.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The 7 Deadly Sins of Market Leaders.

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I responded to the recent news of the resignation of RIM’s Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with mixed emotions. As a Blackberry user and fan, it signals a possible change in direction to what I saw as an arrogant disregard for my patronage and loyalty. On the other hand, after reading some of the comments from the newly appointed CEO, Mr. Thorsten Heins I am saddened because it seems my love affair with this Canadian institution may just come to an end. Mr. Heins' sentiment that he will mostly follow the path set by his predecessors is disheartening and does not give me confidence in the future of this once global market leader.

I don’t believe you have to hold an International MBA in business to understand that for an incoming CEO to follow his predecessors when they were semi-forced to resign from their positions is a flawed strategy. Mr. Heins, have you not been paying attention? RIM, credited for inventing the smart phone industry, was once the most valuable company in Canada and essentially owned the world’s smart phone market share. Today RIM is losing market share (down to approx. 10%), losing value quickly (89% since 2008) and been plagued with system outages, delayed product launches, terrible customer service, horrible PR and marketing and a complete and utter lack of innovation.

Even its original and most loyal customer base: businessmen and bankers are feeling neglected and let down. In a note to investors the BlackBerry was called “a secular loser to Apple and Android devices,” by Ittai Kidron, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York.

Doing more of the same yields, well, more of the same. And given RIM’s shameful loss of market share and stock value, the “same” is not something the new CEO should be striving for. Be Warned. RIM and your predecessors are guilty of committing the 7 Deadly Sins of Market Leaders.

1. Greed

We all want success. And we love winners. It’s the famed “American Way”. And in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with that. However, market leaders can make strategic missteps when they try to overreach their success.

After dominating the North American smart phone market, RIM turned its sights to the international market where their networks were well suited for the Blackberry. On the surface this was a smart move; however, while the company’s resources were being funnelled to growth in those markets, the US market migrated to high-end mobile computing on the 4G platform and RIMs products were simply not ready for it. In their global domination efforts, they lost sight of what was happening at home and with their core market…and fell behind.

2. Distraction

After achieving market dominance, when the money and fame starts rolling in it’s not uncommon for an owner/CEO to take advantage and play out their fantasies. You can hardly blame them after all, they’ve earned it. However, history is proving that every product and business has a lifecycle and the corporation cannot maintain a market leader roll without constant re-invention. And this requires a singular focus. The late Mr. Jobs and Apple are the poster children for this rule and the resulting benefits. If you cannot live this rule, step aside and let someone else do it before you’ve lost too much ground.

During the last few years, most of the news reported here at home about RIM’s Mr. Balsille was his battle to win a NHL hockey franchise when maybe he should have been focusing more on where market and consumer demand was evolving and innovating new products to meet those demands?

3. Pride

When a business becomes about the executive’s ego and not the company, market leading businesses quickly lose their position. Today, even a publicly traded business must be seen to be more about its customers’ wants and needs than those of its executives.

The contributions of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to RIM’s initial success are unquestionable but their efforts to hold on to their titles (and presumably: pays, perks and notoriety) blinded them to what was going on around them. They rarely left their ivory towers to engage their loyal customers and the results speak for themselves. Ego will not only cost you market share, it will kill the business completely.

4. Arrogance

The social world we live in has made every person – customer or not – as impactful to the business’ bottom line as the people who work for the company itself. Through social media, the power of the pen is so much more powerful than ever before and so no executive of a market-leading company can rest on their laurels and become aloof to the trials & tribulation of their customers. Keeping customers and even non-customers happy and engaged with your brand is critical.

The fall of RIM is as much about arrogance as it is about its lack of innovation. A series of critical outages to RIM’s formerly well-regarded network was met with practical silence from the company’s executives: little in the way of updates and little in the way of heartfelt apologies. Adding insult to injury was a feeble attempt to offer old, ill-working apps at no charge, which were received with distain from loyal customers. In the absence of personal, well-intended communication we were made to feel that we should be lucky that RIM allows us the privilege of owning a Blackberry and so we should stop complaining.

5. Becoming Boring

Today a product and its business must be more than product’s quality and utility. It must have personality. In the era of social media, reality TV and instant-celebrity, people are more interested leaders who are comfortable being themselves and having a clear and definable message. Case in point: Richard Branson or Steve Jobs.

Can anyone tell me what RIM’s Jim Balsillie or Mike Lazaridis look like? Stand for? What they preach? What their vision is? Exactly.

6. Losing Sight of a Vision

It’s possible for a market-leading business to have multiple products in multiple markets but it must always communicate a central principle and vision. Further, it must demonstrate that in every action they take, not just in the communications they push out through PR firms. Consider companies like Coke, Starbucks or 3M as an example.

At RIM, the company's leaders have been notoriously inconsistent and confusing about their vision and future plans. When asked what makes RIM unique, Mr. Balsillie told Bloomberg BusinessWeek: "We've taken two fundamentally different approaches in their casualness. It's a causal difference, not just nuance." What?!

Founder Mr. Laziridis is even more famous for his incoherency about the business. Reactions to his presentations at industry conferences are usually quite comical with phrases like: "Sorry, can't follow what he's saying" and "He isn't making any sense at all. Quite literally, we don't know what Mike is talking about right now."

7. Believing your own hype

A business executive can spin so much hype that it becomes ingrained into his psyche, which prevents him from seeing what the trend currents are predicting: what the public’s perception is and how their needs are changing. The public is fickle and their loyalty is even more fickle. A market leader can never believe its own hype.

Case in point: RIM built an industry around a smart phone for business, which could also help personal communication and productivity. It was lauded for this innovation and it played on this premise so much that it didn’t see what was coming.

Apple (and more recently Google, Android and now even Microsoft) understood that the public would rather see the smart phone as a personal device on which they could also conduct business needs. They understood that the smart phone was becoming integral with our daily lives; almost another human appendage. Plus, there are more people out there than Blackberry’s beloved CIOs for whom RIM has relied on to build a business.

Eventually, the lack of personal apps, speed and ease of use – and dare I say: sexiness – of the Blackberry in the face of Apple and Google’s products rallied enough workers to push their CIOs to reconsider their allegiance.

If RIM’s new CEO follows in the path of his predecessors and continues to commit these 7 deadly sins of market leaders, he will be writing the business’ epitaph. Do you agree that these deadly sins were committed by Blackberry’s leadership during their rein as market leaders?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
Follow on Twitter

Mobile Marketing Reality Check [In] Part One

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

During last week’s #bizforum debate, the community predicted 2012 Marketing Trends and one of the more hotly debated predictions was that mobile would take center stage for marketers and consumers alike in 2012. Some argued that technology and consumer adoption have already arrived while others forecast that we wouldn’t see wide-spread adoption till at least 2013 or 2014.

Technologically, there’s no reason mobile marketing isn’t more prevalent in North America especially when you look at what’s already been happening in the UK and the rest of Europe and Asia. We have the bandwidth, the smart phones, GPS connectivity and now a fast growing tablet market. So what’s the problem? It isn’t lack of technology; it’s a lack of creativity and innovation.

Services like FourSquare and Facebook Places certainly have increasing (albeit slower than predicted) adoption but to what end? Yes, they support the public’s desire to overshare but what have they really done to drive the business’ profit? With just a few exceptions businesses have not made a concerted effort to drive profitable business through these networks and those that have, launched limited and overly simple campaigns.

Geo-location ‘check-in’ networks can be applauded for their excellent use of gamification tactics, which are credited for the increased usage to date but can anyone point to the real business (bottom line) benefits? Any service that focuses its efforts on gamifying their audience (EG FourSquare, Klout, etc.), is not building long term, sustainable profit. Without profitable financial or operational benefits to the users - or to the businesses trying to reach those users - consumers will grow weary of being played.

Discounting trains customers, it doesn’t increase profits.

The vast majority of campaigns that use geo-location based services to promote their businesses do so by offering some form of discount for “checking in” at a physical location. What they’d like us to believe is that a consumer will choose to frequent their establishment over another if they see a coupon or offer associated with your location while scanning the region on their smart phones. In reality, for the vast majority of users, “check ins” have been a reactive vs. proactive effort.

For those that do search for coupons, discounts and offers, geo-location technology is another platform for them to add to their newspaper and Internet coupon-clipping efforts. But is this what your business needs? Fair-weather customers whose only loyalty is to the discount vs the business?

One of the few companies focusing on building profitable experiences through Geo-location marketing is Amex. The program, called “Spend $10, Get $10” allows card members the option to sync their American Express card with their foursquare profile to receive a one-time $10 statement credit when they “check-in” and spend $10 at participating small businesses across the United States.

The biggest users of geo-location marketing campaigns are retailers and hospitality businesses and for them, what really counts is acquisition and retention. One of the benefits of technology is to reignite the loyalty that comes from the patron remembering your name and last order. Yet, most focus on discounts.

Don’t Blame the Consumer.

Many of my friends and clients in the retail & hospitality industries claim coupons and discounts are the bane of their existence. Discounts train customers to shop on certain days or to try specific products but have rarely proven to drive long term profitability and loyalty to a brand. I often hear them criticizing coupon-clippers as “not real customers” and yet their mobile marketing is focused on attracting the very people they blame for lack of profits.

Call it laziness, lack of inspired marketing or simply cowardice to try new things. Whatever the reason, the technology available to us in North America today is sitting on the shelf rotting. All dressed up with no place to go. Where’s the innovation?

Instead of promoting discounts for check-ins, why not:

Encourage mobile check-ins that provide feedback on the service received or recommendations for product improvements?
Sync those comments to an online customer portal for community discussion and collaboration? Build a community?
Append the check-in and commentary to the customer’s CRM profile for personalized responses and better market research?
Reward frequency of visits? Reward those whose engagement contributes to product and service offering improvements through that engagement?
Monitor check-ins and send personal thank you email/tweet and public acknowledgements of your appreciation?
Partner with vendors or other businesses to encourage a series of check-ins within related, non-competitive businesses to cross-pollinate customer bases?
Integrate the geo-location service into a contest where you reward “timed check-ins” (specific days, specific locations) with one of multiple game pieces or codes required to play an ongoing game on the Web or through a social network?
Coordinate with a charity where every check-in generates increase awareness and possible donations to causes that are close to or related to the business location?
Create a “consumer-eye” campaign that allows your fans to show the world your brand through their eyes by using GPS technology now being built into digital cameras along with mobile phones?

These are just a few of the many other engagements that geo-location marketing can provide with some forethought, courage and innovation.

What’s next?

What’s next is up to you. What’s clear is that innovation is still sorely lacking in geo-location marketing and through no fault of the technology. Is your business ready to take the lead?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
Follow On Twitter

Next Up: Part Two: QR Code Fail, Part Three: Re-Inventing B2B Mobile Marketing