While I often am
talking to big companies or discussing enterprise solutions. There are times
when individuals ask me about Small or
Medium sized business trends.
Interestingly, the Enterprise
Social, Mobile, and Sensor initiatives I regularly discuss are in fact related
to even the Mom and Pop storefront. The eco-system of new service players in
the Social-Mobile-Sensor space generally emerge developing partnerships with enterprises as
they develop and bring economy to scale to their services for the larger
market. And of course Oracle has an entire division dedicated for delivering products and support to
help emerging companies compete without the need to open an industrial strength
credit line..
So here are some
trends that we are helping large enterprises to deploy today, but small and
medium businesses should be able to take advantage of by the end of this year
and starting into 2015.
1) The typical small
business is generally "Localized". But the ability to be
"Hyper-Localized" will come as location based services become
ubiquitous. Many small businesses have one or several storefronts and theirs are typically within a single regional economic
footprint. While the internet provides global reach, it will be the businesses that invest in social, mobile and local that will win in the end.
Of course I am a huge SoMoLo evangelist. The
SMBs' content and targeting with platforms for Geo-Fencing, Geo-Conquesting and Path-Matching to HHI are
all going to be accessible to them, if not for Mobile Apps, then via Mobile
messaging in Social Networks that offer it.. Expect to be able to target FaceBook messaging not by city, but by store
or mall…
This makes being
able to be "Hyper-Local" even more important. And with new proximity services coming online
more than ever before, SMBs will operate
and service customers with pinpoint accuracy right down to where they stand in
an aisle.
Geo-Conquesting will
be huge for small players to place ads when customers pass through competitors
regions. Car Dealers are doing this now.. But also of course iBeacons are now
very cheap and getting easier to put in retail stores. The ability for sales to
happen anywhere in the store via a mobile phone or tablet is huge, as it will
give the small shop the flexibility to not have to "Guard the
Register" as more or most transactions will be digital. Thus, M-Commerce and T-Commerce will change the job
of cashier dramatically..
2) Intra-Brand
Advocacy, the idea now is that rather than just depend on your trusty social
media manager and his team, you are going to push more and more individuals
with expertise inside the organization to help manage, reach-out, and utilize
social channels to manage the incoming questions and answers customers need.
While for years CRM
was the tool of the enterprise, today CRMs enable this now "Salesforce et
al" capability to trickle throughout the company. This gives greater pressure to organize roles, but also flatten
out the organization. Internal collaboration around topics and customer needs
is going to be the key for SMBs to finally get serious about customer
experiences. Their customers are online and in social networks. This includes
not just B2C SMBs but also B2B companies as well. Don't believe me? To find the
players just use hashtag #SocialSelling and you will see…
3) The Visual
Networks will begin to move from Content Aggregators to Content Collaboration platforms, which means Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, & others will begin to move to add more features
brands want, first marketing platforms, rather than unique brand partnerships
as they do today, but this will open ways for SMBs to engage with clear brand
messaging and metrics.
Eventually providing
more "Collaboration" between Brand and Consumer.. Don't think for a
minute Facebook bought Oculus Rift so you could see your timeline in 3-D. The Social Networks I advise customers to invest
in are ones that are audio and visual intrinsically. Players from SoundCloud to
Pinterest are deploying ways for brands to harness their interactive visual or
audio based social networks to sell ad units aka brand messaging.
While the Social Media revolution is going on, the emphasis was on the social,
today it more and more about the media in social, that enterprises soon small
and medium businesses will be connected to.
