It’s about that time again. Time to take a deep breath and erase that line we’ve drawn in the sand. Think back 10 or 15 years when cell phones had finally become portable and affordable enough for almost everyone. We all did it, we said “Fuck it, I guess I’m going to let people call me whenever they want.” Well now we’re at another tipping point and it’s name is Location.
I hear a lot of people say things like “I don’t want people to know where I am all the time” or “What benefit can FourSquare possibly have?” Well, when it comes to the latter, a lot. Not only are businesses starting to offer discounts to location Mayors, but as a business owner you can promote events and daily specials through the application to people that are ACTUALLY WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE OF YOUR BUSINESS. It’s the most targeted, targeting advertising gets. And it’s only going to get better.
With Facebook launching location based services soon, we’re going to see how half a billion users are going to impact developers of location based advertising. Since Facebook will be utilizing an API for location, companies like FourSquare are going to grow more exponentially than we saw happen to Twitter. That means bigger discounts, “swarm” discounts and real value to offer business partners.
It’s also fun to track where you’ve been and see your travel patterns using tools like weeplaces.com
I’m sure we’ll see a lot of localized companies (here’s looking at you BlockClub) take advantage of Facebook’s API and start to really interact with their customers in ways that 5 years ago seemed crazy and annoying (remember the short lived TXT Marketing concept?).
Sure, we’re going to experience some growing pains with location. That’s to be expected, in the early days we’ll see 50 companies doing it totally wrong for every one brand that “gets it.” But like with Twitter, brands and users will come around and the disparity between “power” location users and the general public will start to shrink. Before you know it you’ll be walking into the mall and your smart phone will buzz and using your previous check-in history as a guide will let you know that Store X is having a sale today, and you’ll be happy about that.
Location sharing is a good thing. For consumers, for businesses and for the evolution of this thing we call social media. So take that deep breath, say “Fuck it,” and turn on location.
Please feel free to Re-Tweet this to your friends. Email me if you think I’m way off base or just wanna chat. If you’d like to publicly mock me you can find me on Twitter.
If nothing else, I’m a salesman. I always have been, and—with any luck—always will be. I look around at businesses in all sorts of industries (real estate, publishing, banking, whatever) and it’s shocking to me that people are so shitty at selling their products and at taking advantage of the consumer outreach channels available to them. I’m not sure exactly why these companies miss the boat, but they’re really letting opportunities pass them by.
What I’ve found in most organizations is that people forget the most important rule: everything is marketing, and all marketing is sales. Period. I don’t care if you’re fielding customer service complaints—you work for the marketing department. If you’re a receptionist, you work for the marketing department. Any aspect of a company that has any level of contact with the public is either helping or hurting their marketing efforts. Here’s a very simple example: I can walk into a car dealership wearing either a suit or a T-shirt. If the cute girl they’ve hired to greet me chooses to dismiss me because she thinks me and my T-shirt can’t afford one of their cars, she just wasted the thousands of dollars that the dealership and manufacturer spent to get me into their showroom. Try fitting that into your ROI formulas.
That’s point number one. Point number two: why the hell are you spending so much money yelling at potential customers when you could be talking to them? If you’re running a full-page print advertisement that isn’t event-specific (a sale, for example) or is merely for branding, you’re seriously throwing away money that you might want to put into a medium where you can actually talk to your customer. (Let’s be honest here, don’t bother with creative for a branding ad, just print the name of your company and website in huge letters—it’ll work just as well.)
I shouldn’t have to say this—because it’s a pretty well established fact by now: the old way of doing business is dead. It’s not because Twitter and Facebook are the new cool things. It’s because outlets like Twitter and Facebook allow people to find what they want with user-based search features. It’s a better way to communicate with potential customers—just don’t be an asshole about it. If you’re selling insurance, don’t use LinkedIn to find the COO of a company, friend him on Facebook and then try to sell him via private messages. Do, however, find out who he is, learn about the culture of his company and whatever you can about his personality. Then you can tailor a cold-email or cold-call and watch your closing rate soar.
What’s the easiest way to identify people who need your product using new media? Set up some Twitter searches that cover your product’s features, solutions, etc. Guess what? It doesn’t cost a damned thing—but time—and it’s a great prospecting tool. I just did a search for a hash-tag that no one should be using, #carinsurance, and came up with dozens of hits from users looking for quotes. If I sold insurance, I just saved myself a hell of a lot of money that I would have wasted on direct mail in order to find 20 people who are looking for car insurance.
This stuff is easy, people. Get on it. Want more? Need help? Got a question? Think I’m totally wrong? Email me: joedinardo@gmail.com.