Finding the perfect time or place a potential buyer will be receptive to social media engagement with your brand can be difficult. Research suggests there are a number of good ways to integrate social media marketing with your in-store mobile marketing efforts. Google has released a study that shows that 84% of smartphone users are using their phones to help in their purchase decisions within brick-and-mortar store locations. This means that in retail locations and other physical locations where the phone user has purchase intent, mobile social enabled advertisements can help drive sales. Let’s explore the potential impact of integrating mobile social marketing with in-store video advertisements.
1. The Retail Video Kiosk Ad and Initial Capture
The video advertisement captures a customer’s attention and prompts them to text a keyword to a short code in order to opt-in to engage with the brand. The reply SMS may contain some information as well as a link to a mobile landing page that contains a Facebook “Like” button. The customer is prompted to “Like” a certain page in order to receive a digital coupon. Once the “Like” button is pressed, a Passbook® Pass or a 2D barcode appear on the page, ready to be redeemed as a coupon in the store. The discount is conditional on Liking the brand.
Alternatively, the video kiosk advertisement could contain QR code on the screen pointing to the same URL as would be delivered in the text message. Scanning the QR code will lead users to the mobile landing page as before. While this method may take fewer steps to complete, the brand will not obtain an affirmative opt in from the customer for future communication like it does with SMS. The marketer would have to request the phone number or contact information separately. Leaders in the Kiosk TV space such as IZ-ON Media enable brands to purchase advertisements across many networks of in-store systems making it easy to run in-store mobile social campaigns on demand.
2. Mobile Social Options and Viral Circulation
While sending a coupon to a phone can prompt an immediate sale (and possibly influence future purchase decisions), the social element can ensure continued brand engagement and top-of-mind awareness, as well as spread the word about the brand. The Facebook plugins on the mobile landing page are built in such a way that any interaction with them is posted to the customer’s Facebook news feed and will often appear in the news stream of the customer’s friends. Whether the customer clicks a “Like” button, or adds a comment, this information is spread to the customer’s friends and draws their attention.
3. Tracking Integration Success
Once the campaign has run its course, you can measure its success in various ways. You can count the number of people who text messaged to opt-in or scanned the page’s QR code. You can also track the number of people who clicked “Like”. Additionally, you can measure the redemption rate of the coupon. Best of all, you can use Facebook Insights to analyze the success of your page and get insight into the visitors who interacted with it as well as the viral trend.
Whether you just direct people to like your official Facebook page, or create more complex objects, Facebook Insights allows you to see what sort of viral impact your campaign has. It’s easy enough to measure the direct impact of the campaign by tallying “Likes” or coupon downloads. Facebook Insights, however, goes beyond that and shows “virality” (i.e. how many times messages about customer engagement with your brand appear in customer’s friends’ feeds). If you discount your social engagement results by the baseline social media growth rate of the page and by the static growth number from the campaign, you are left with growth that resulted from the campaigns social viral circulation. Armed with this information you can adjust your media spend to account for the social media component.
As you can see, mobile social integration allows you to engage customers and influence their decision in retail locations, where purchase intent is strongest. Aside from the direct and immediate impact on purchase decisions, your campaign is adding to the lifetime value of the customer by having them engage with your ad as well as broadcasting that engagement to their friends.