Livingsocial Media

Would you like saving from 50 to 90% in restaurants, activities or products? Well, I do, and that is the reason I have signed up to get daily e-mails and alerts about the biggest savings in my city, Miami.

Living Social and Groupon are the two social-buying websites with a fantastic proposal. Both of them offer daily deals on handpicked experiences for incredible deep-discounted prices. The idea is to buy the deal you like and then share it with friends through the different social networks; if some of your contacts buy the same deal, you get yours cheaper or for free. How cool is that?

This is an excellent iniciative because not only saves people’s money but also gives the opportunity to new and small businesses to be known by locals. For example, in Miami there are so many cool things to do, but we might know half of those. With so many options, sometimes the easiest thing is to go to a familiar restaurant, or just stay at home and watch a movie. As a result, we miss out on trying all the cool things our city has to offer. Through these websites, you can know about them and spread the word about them.

For instance, through this websites, I have had the opportunity to go to new restaurants and do activities I did not even know were available to do in Miami. I have done kayaking, going on board on a 50-foot Catamaran to watch the sunset in Key Biscayne, saving 50% in restaurants and going to well-known festivals such as United Way Miami Wine and Food festival for half price.

The founders of these two companies realized the huge power that have e-marketing and the word-of-mouth through social networks. Social media is leading the biggest transformation in communication and advertising since e-mail. When using Facebook and Twitter, big corporations can tailored their message and business to specific geographic areas.The power of social media also gives to small businesses the chance to grow faster when people start commenting, recommending and talking about them on their social pages.

Basing a business in social networks is somewhat challenging because the easiness of using this tool brings more competitors into the game. For example, small business can imitate or enter the market with a business model like the ones Livingsocial and Groupon have. However, since the competition gets harder, people gets more creative and we can end up with such amazing proposals as the ones Livingsocial and Groupon are offering.

Social media brings both opportunities and threats to businesses, but no doubt those networks are transforming and building up new markets, communications, and small and big corporations.

We are all Livingsocial media.

http://livingsocial.com/about

http://www.groupon.com/about

http://e-marketingforsensiblefolk.blogspot.com/2011/03/groupongroupies.html

The era of the mobile wallet

Did you ever imagine the possibility of making payments at the grocery store or coffee shop using your cell phone? I mean, just your cell phone; I did not. Apparently, we are getting closer to the era of mobile payment system. This is an alternative method that allows users instead of buying with cash, debit or credit cards to use their mobile phone to pay for a wide range of services such as music, videos, transportation fare, parking meters, groceries, coffee, books and much more.

This mobile payment system has been well adopted in many parts of Europe and Asia, and soon will be widely used in the United States.

There are four primary models for mobile payments: premium SMS based transactional payments, direct mobile billing, mobile web payments and contactless NFC, being this one the most commonly used when paying at physical stores. The contactless NFC (Near Field Communication) allows consumers to use a special mobile phone equipped with a smartcard that they wave near a reader module. Also, NFC enables cell phones to wirelessly exchange data when they come into proximity of each other. The equipped devices are suited for contactless payments as well as mobile coupons, customer reward programs, contact information swaps and digital receipts.

Obviously the two tech giants, Apple and Google, have got down to work and are developing ways to adapt to this new technology.

Apple is believed to be working on including this new system for the IPhone 5. Apparently, it would allow users to make payments through their iTunes accounts. This is a great advantage for Apple since the company has a distinctive bond with its customers and iTunes has already millions and millions of users around the world.

On the other hand, Google has already built NFC technology in the most recent version of its Android mobile platform, which gives the company the lead over Apple. Moreover, according to Dave Talach, VeriFone’s Vice President of Global Product Marketing, Google as an advertising and media company is focused in targeting its ads and understanding its audience better; therefore this could facilitate the allocation of coupons and rewards to the users based on their needs and behaviors since they would demand a lot more than only the easiness of wireless payment.

Apple has the customer database, and Google has the tools and tactics to target them better.

Talach, sees Google as a more natural provider of NFC services, but some other such as Siegler, a writer for technology blog, TechCrunch, thinks Google does not have iTunes' infrastructure in place to make this happen.

Let’s wait and see.

The only scenario we will have for sure as NFC gets incorporated into cell phones, retailers, credit card companies, wireless carriers, device makers and operating system providers is a tough competition in the fighting for a slice of the emerging market.

http://blogs.forbes.com/elizabethwoyke/2011/03/24/verifone-on-apple-google-and-paypals-nfc-competitiveness/

http://www.nfc-forum.org/aboutnfc/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/iphone-5-nfc/

When Less is More

In these days, companies are striving to give each customer the opportunity to be part of their brands or products; given them the chance to express their opinions and feedbacks about every little thing the company does or does not.

Companies want to keep us so satisfied that sometimes they give us too many options that at the end confuse us and distract us from a main purpose. This could be the case of MySpace, the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006.

The fact the MySpace website could be personalized from the top to the bottom by each member did not give it a pattern, so it became like those complicated sites where we do not know where to go to find the information we are looking for since they do not have a clear layout. Each friend was a different world, with different colors and format, and it seemed each of them belonged basically to a different network. At the end of the day, people would put so much information that was very tiring just to visit their profiles.

When Facebook took over, with a simpler layout and the same format for everybody, it became friendlier to users; it was simpler! We know where the pictures are, the comments, the events and the friends of our friends.

MySpace gave too many tools to their users when they were not prepared for it. Maybe it did not move fast enough or moved faster than the users. Either one case or the other, they are undergoing through a major crisis because of that. The steps to keep up with consumer’s needs and demands were not taken, and someone else came with a proposal that filled that hole and satisfied them.

The same thing could happen to Facebook or Twitter if they stay with the same dynamic throughout a certain period of time or if they move on faster than what the users can handle. We, as marketers, have to listen to our customers and know what make them to be satisfied. We have to be awake and alert to the signs consumers are sending us; otherwise, we can end up in a precipice as the one MySpace is nowadays.

Sources:

http://www.myspace.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/technology/27myspace.html

http://www.facebook.com

http://www.communityspark.com/too-many-features-can-harm-your-community/

E-marketing from head to toe

It was not long time ago when I decided to do my first purchase online. I remember I bought a book for college purposes at Amazon. I was very nervous due to the identity theft issue, but when the book arrived at my doorstep, I felt in a totally new era, in which I do not have to drive anywhere in order to buy an item. Now a days, my list of products shopped online goes from a nail polish to a computer.

E-marketing has not only changed the way people gather information and evaluate the various options about different brands, items or services, but also have revolutionized the purchasing process itself. Sometimes consumers used to browse the web looking for electronics, books, clothes or jewelry they would go to buy at the store; now a day they just buy them directly from the website.

Shopping online can offer so many advantages such as saving gas and time because consumers don’t have to fight traffic, find a parking spot at a mall, or look through products they have no interest in. Also, purchasing online could give people a better selection of item, sizes and colors than the ones at offered physical store. In addition, the buyers have the chance to purchase from a store that has not a branch near their area; for example the closer H&M in South Florida is 80 miles North from Miami, so customers could turn to hm.com in order to get what they want.

Moreover, by using the web, people have the opportunity to find out what other users of the product have to say about the effectiveness or durability of the item they are planning to buy; therefore, avoiding disappointments and saving hundreds of dollars over the years.

Forrester Research is forecasting continued growth for ecommerce over the next five years, saying U.S. online retail sales will hit $248.7 billion by 2014; consequently, E-marketing does not seem to be a new trend, it seems to be a strong process that will gain strength year after year and will rule our consumer behavior from head to toe.