Social Media Marketing and Local Search Top Priorities For Ecommerce Industry
Posted by Ahmad Barirani in 
With widespread use of social media by consumers, businesses are increasingly aware of its importance. Compared to a year ago, marketers feel like social media spending should take a larger share of total marketing budget. In five years, close to a fifth of marketing operations will be done one social platforms. My opinion is that this projection is pessimistic as the Internet industry still hasn’t defined a real ecosystem around social media. With semantic web or web 3.0 expected to play a stronger role in the next three to five years, we could very well see more important surge in social media marketing. The fact that there is popular doubt around near to mid future economic prospects, it is normal that forecast be more conservative when it comes to integrating new marketing channels.
Retailers believe that social media is a great way to keep in touch with customers. Videos, customer reviews, blogs and personalization are the most important features retailers went for in 2009. What is happening in my opinion is that businesses are finding new ways to offer an alternative buying experience to offline purchasing. These aren’t things associated with customers saving money or time because of online purchase, but are more related to the pleasure of interacting with the media which can be somehow different and joyful compared to the pleasure of interacting with a salesperson. For instance, a well designed promotional video will be able to create a totally different feeling from that of a salesman pitching in a store. This channel can, by itself, offer new sales opportunities that couldn’t have been realized otherwise. I also believe that this sector is going to know serious transformations as retailers find new ways to arouse customer feelings. Somehow, consumers are looking for new ways to have pleasure in buying. Buying is becoming an increasingly personal experience and the increasing need for interaction between customers and suppliers is there and is real. Therefore, expect greater role of interactive media in online retailers in the years to come.
Of course, interactive media is closely related to social media as a tool for viral propagation of new experiences. Social media have proven to be effective in creating brand awareness through word-of-mouth. Therefore, promotional messages are no more communicated exclusively through the firm’s website. Messages will propagate through social networks and will have a more subtle association with the brand by itself. Again, the point here is to confer a new experience to the customer who is approached even when doing the very act of socializing.
In line with this philosophy of multichannel sales, retailers have spent considerable effort in redesigning their websites. This is an attempt to generate more sales and to acquire new customers. It shows that there is strong consensus around the importance of customer experience and online sales as e-commerce companies try to use cutting edge techniques to stimulate new feeling in customers. These methods have shown to be quite fruitful as last year online sales results show that more people are spending online.
Finally, local search has also gained in importance. Business have shown interest in having a better presence on online maps. Of course, this has to do with a) higher rate of online traffic coming from mobile devices, and b) a change in customer behavior when it comes to searching for services.
The change in customer behavior is very related to the concept of economic gains associated with online purchasing. If it is true that, due to increasing returns of scale, online retailer can offer the same product for cheaper than offline retailers, the opposite is true for services which have a very geographical nature. With customers looking for services in their proximity, it becomes essential for business to have a presence on all location-based services.
My view is that these statistics are showing a trend where the Internet and especially social media are supplanting traditional media.
Chris Peterson says:
You are right, this tow process always gives more important in ecommerce industry. Most of visitor’s searches locally and also in social media.