Can social media and mobile help Australian retail combat showrooming?

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These are not good days for Australian ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers. (image – @M_Hickinbotham)

The National Retail Association generated headlines with a report commissioned by Ernst & Young that states 118,000 retail jobs may be shed by 2015.

In the Sydney Morning Herald’s coverage of the issue, Ian Mcllwraith quoted directly from the E&Y report:

”Regardless of the LVT (Low Value Threshold exception provided to goods purchased from foreign online retailers), the remaining 84,600 jobs would be lost to the traditional sector due to the structural changes and competition caused by the growth of online retailing,” said the Ernst & Young report.

Australian retail is a living case study of an industry struggling under the forces of creative destruction.

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New media and the forces of creative destruction

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Prettier than a redundancy

New media is defining a new era of business. The forces of creative destruction are carving out the corporation of the adjacent future.  Here’s an example.

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Why you may be sabotaging your social media marketing

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Listen all of y’all it’s a sabotage

Fascinated by Research in Motion’s (RIM) efforts to reverse their declining market share, I read with interest a post by Alex Goldfayn titled 7 Marketing Lessons from RIM’s Failures.  One of the marketing lessons was RIM’s inability to determine if their customer was the enterprise or the consumer.

As a social marketer, you could be making a similar mistake. You could be sabotaging your social marketing efforts if you are failing to determine if your objective is to target customers or consumers.

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Here’s what happened at Facebook’s Hack Sydney event

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Opening of Facebook Studio's Sydney Hack session. Facebook Hack Sydney – slide highlights how your fans (i.e. customers) are about retention and media is required for reach (i.e. consumers).

I attended Facebook Studio’s Hack Sydney event at the Carriageworks and wanted to share some of the ideas and themes that resonated with me from a marketing and a 7P model perspective (7P model – using social media to refresh the traditional corporation).

Hack Sydney is one of around 30 global Facebook hack events educating brands and agencies to better engage people using Facebook.  The half day event had around 20 speakers, many coming from Facebook offices from around the world.  This was Facebook’s only hack event for Australia and New Zealand.

Case study shows how Yelp.com ratings can lead to 9% revenue increase

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When seeking senior management approval for a social media based marketing strategy, case studies are usually a ‘must have’ to help turn your strategy into a commercial reality.

Matching form and substance is tough to do (image credit: Carlos Porto)

In a working paper titled ‘Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com’ the author Michael Luca, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, states “a one-star increase in (a) Yelp rating lead(s) to a 5-9 percent increase in revenue”.

While the headline stat of a ‘5-9% increase in revenue’ directly relevant to the restaurant industry, here’s a couple of industry-agnostic insights that could be relevant as you work to get your social media strategy across the line.

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How Australian brands can produce better social media content

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Jeremiah Owyang recently published a post that states the audience needs are changing.  They want ‘faster, smaller and social’.

For better or for worst, mainstream Australian social media is concentrated within Facebook and Twitter.  With Australian audiences being exposed to so much content, from so many different sources, brands are under constant pressure to publish content that will earn the ongoing attention of their target consumers.

The problem is that traditional corporate marketing and PR teams are not built to regularly churn out unique pieces of content for various (social) channels.

So how do Australian brands evolve from strategy that includes a post every Friday that asks ‘plans for the weekend?’ and a post every Monday that asks ‘how was the weekend?’.

 

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This is why more Australian brands are not engaging in social media

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A report by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth states adoption of social media by 500 Fortune companies is static.

The percentage of Fortune 500 corporations that blogged in 2010 and 2011 didn’t change from 23%.  There was a slight increase in the use of Twitter and Facebook.  Twitter increased from 60% to 62% and Facebook increased from 56% to 58%.

 

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How social brands can manage an online PR crisis

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Did you follow the media coverage about Sony and Amazon’s cloud security issues and the Qantaslabour dispute?   What I found interesting about the coverage was the amount of focus given on the respective brand’s online response.In the cases listed above, the brand’s process was considered newsworthy.  In the era of the social consumer, effective online communication is an important element of good customer service.Brands with an online/social presence need to refresh their traditional PR crisis management strategies to include socially enabled customers.  Here’s some ideas how socialised brands can structure their online communications during a crisis.

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