Digital Marketing & Production

Team Mindshare

SoLoMo – Filling in the Blanks to Rise in the Ranks

“SoLoMo” isn’t a new term in the marketing industry, but it’s one still too often left out of discussions at meetings and in marketing plans.  An acronym for “social, local, mobile,” SoLoMo was incepted because of the rise of importance of its three components – social media, local optimization and mobile marketing.  Why?  As the marketing landscape evolves, these three pillars came to be inseparable from one another and critical to the success of any online marketing endeavor.

Social media, for many companies, is literally a forest of low-hanging fruit with no one reaching out to pick… yes, proper execution and advanced tactics will require someone with the know-how, but is it worth it?  Absolutely.  Social media is no longer just social; it’s a socialsphere of platforms comprised of people and brands, and each of those platforms can be one of your most valuable tools.  Link building, for example, has been a “touchy” subject in SEO since the Penguin and Panda algorithms were released by Google.  While link farming, link reciprocity and directory submissions have not only become obsolete but even penalizable, social media remains one of your most effective link building opportunities.

“In fact, marketing in the social media is fundamentally different from conventional marketing. The depth in which connections can be made with the “audience” or “customers” is far greater than it possibly can be with any other medium. The very nature of influence at this level mans that values and vision must be in tune.”

Facebook Graph, launched in the spring of 2012, revolutionized Facebook and took it from a social sharing platform to a powerful tool for customer insights, competitive research and behavioral target marketing.  While voices from the user side of the platform haven’t been too keen on what might even be considered intrusions on personal privacy, for businesses it’s a goldmine of information about your audience.  With a simple search, you can discover psychographics and demographics never before available, enabling you to create better content, distribute that content more effectively and even gain insights about the best possible strategic partnerships available to you.

Local optimization is a grey but critical segment of your marketing potential.  “Grey” because it’s part social media, part local and largely mobile.  How is it executed?  The Internet today, on its many platforms, will create listings for you even if you’ve never visited the site on which it resides.  This is because of your customers, employees and reviewers who have the power to make a listing – but not the power to claim it.  By claiming (taking and verifying ownership of) these countless off-site listings, a local business can increase its visibility on search engines by an average of 179%, some even as high as 399% within 6 – 9 months.

Mobile marketing – the new frontier.  Without your brand’s promotions being accessible from any device (smartphones, tablets, etc.), you’re failing to reach 60% – 70% of your social media users.60% of Facebook users are using Facebook from their smartphones, and those users tend to spend twice as much time on the platform than non-mobile users.  The average American spends 94 minutes per day utilizing mobile apps vs. 72 minutes of web-based consumption.  And while many businesses clinging to traditional marketing channels are apprehensive about re-allocating their advertising dollars from TV ads to digital marketing, they’ll eventually be surprised to learn that:

  • 88% of respondents use their mobile device while watching TV
  • 45% used their mobile devices to access social networking during TV ads
  • 27% looked up product information for ads they saw (on mobile devices)
  • 22% looked up coupons or deals related to the ads (on mobile devices)

Hence, those traditional channel purists should embrace mobile marketing as the other half of today’s broadcast advertising.  Consumers are even using their smartphones in brick-and-mortar locations, comparison-shopping and price-matching on the spot… they’ll leave if they find a better offer elsewhere, but if your mobile presence falls short of 2013-2014 standards, they won’t be coming to you.

SoLoMo, in its concept, has been boiled down in more articles and blogs than one could count over the past year – yet the interdependency of its components isn’t often carried over into the collaboration of different marketing departments.  The result?  You may have a lot of “retrofitting” to do with your digital marketing presence to be brought up to speed… but by the same token, applying SoLoMo to your marketing plan for the coming year should give you enough strategy to hit the ground running!

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