Tag Archives: Tari Haro

How SIM Partners and Vibes Are Changing Local Marketing

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Let’s pretend for a moment that you are in Manhattan on a business trip. Just before an important meeting, you spill coffee all over your shirt. You’re too far away from your hotel to grab another one. You pull out your mobile phone and Google “shirts near me.” Lo and behold, a clothing store a few blocks away not only shows up in your search results, but the store displays an offer for 10 percent off your next purchase, with the transaction made easy via your mobile wallet. Do you think you just might be tempted to accept the offer? SIM Partners (a client) and Vibes certainly believe you will. Today the two companies announced a relationship that will combine local search and mobile technology to make it possible for businesses to make offers to consumers based on their proximity to a business. I believe the SIM Partners relationship with Vibes is changing local search by closing the gap between marketing and sales.

SIM Partners provides a software automation platform that big enterprises use to make their digital marketing more effective at the local level. Vibes is a provider of mobile marketing expertise. Both companies have something in common: they want to help businesses figure out how to capitalize on the popularity of local search. According to Google, “near me” searches have increased by 34 times since 2011 and doubled since 2014. And it’s no coincidence that smart phone usage in the United States has soared. The majority of “near me” searches occur on mobile devices. Consumers are using our mobile devices to find what we want, and when we want it, at the local level. The challenge that both SIM Partners and Vibes are tackling: how to turn local searches into revenue.

SIM Partners and Vibes are addressing a compelling issue. Local searches indicate intent to purchase. According to comScore, 80 percent of local searches on mobile phones convert to purchase — a powerful piece of data that makes perfect sense when you think about it. If you Google “pizza” on your mobile phone when you are downtown Chicago, chances are that you are looking for a place to eat pizza rather than researching the history of pizza. Big companies that operate hundreds and thousands of outlets are working with local marketing experts like SIM Partners to make sure that their names appear prominently in your search results and to ensure that it’s easy for you to find and do business with them. As SIM Partners CMO Tari Haro recently noted in a blog post, such brands have an opportunity to go beyond “being found” in search results and instead entice consumers to conduct business with them. She challenges companies to own “the next moment” of search, or the action that occurs after a consumer finds your business.

SIM Partners and Vibes took a big step in making it possible for brands to own the next moment of search. As discussed in the press release, the two companies are integrating mobile wallet campaigns with the SIM Partners Velocity platform to help national brands create online and in-store offers that convert shoppers into buyers based on a customer’s search intent and proximity.

The following graphic demonstrates how the technology works from a consumer’s point of view. In the example, a consumer uses her mobile phone or Apple Watch to conduct a “shoes near me” search in New Orleans. A shoe retailer working with SIM Partners and Vibes not only show its location in the search results, but also:

  • Displays an offer (“Get instant savings on your next purchase at Shuuz New Orleans”).
  • Allows you to download a 20-percent-off offer in your mobile wallet after you tap a “save now” button on your screen.
  • Notifies you when you are within 100 meters of the store (“Welcome to Shuuz”).

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Once you are in the store, the merchant may also serve up more offers to cross-sell merchandise such as shoe cream. There is a lot more detail behind the scenes than I’ll explain here, but the press release contains more.

I believe the SIM Partners/Vibes relationship is a game changer for these reasons:

  • The two companies are helping brands tap into natural human behaviors such as search, mobile phone usage, and shopping. Enterprises provide the offer when it matters most to consumers, creating a more relevant experience.
  • The relationship is forward thinking, as it relies on iBeacon technology and accommodates the Apple Watch — which plays to the strategies adopted by major brands such as Macy’s (an early adopter of iBeacons) and Target (already embracing the Apple Watch to enrich the shopping experience).
  • SIM Partners and Vibes are closing the gap between marketing and sales. We’re not talking about creating targeted ads to serve up more relevant content based on your browsing history — rather, SIM Partners and Vibes are empowering companies to create a specific offer at the right place and time to drive foot traffic into a store when your purchase intent is strong.

The announcement also promises a win/win for brands and consumers. Consumers win because they not only find what they want, but they get rewarded. (Tari Haro noted in a blog post today that mobile wallet offers have a 64-percent higher conversion rate over static mobile Web coupons and a 26-percent increase in average order value over static mobile web offers.) And brands create more foot traffic and revenue at the location level. If you are a national enterprise with hundreds or thousands of locations, you win at scale, too.

Local Search: “The Next Digital Battleground for Brands”

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If you had to choose the next battleground for digital marketing, what would you nominate? Gamification? Mobile? Content marketing? Well, how about local search? According to a new Forrester Consulting study commissioned by local search automation company SIM Partners (a client of mine), brands with local search strategies are enjoying crucial benefits such as improved leads and brand lift. SIM Partners CEO Jon Schepke says local is “the next digital battleground for brands.” But why? Two words: mobile and context.

First, big brands with multiple locations have made local a priority as mobile adoption increases. According to eMarketer, the global base of mobile phone users was expected to reach 4.55 billion in 2014, and by 2017, nearly 70 percent of the world’s population will own a mobile phone. And mobile phones facilitate commerce: 80 percent of local searches conducted on mobile phones lead to purchase, according to a study conducted by comScore. But local businesses (such as your local pizza parlor) and outlets of national franchises (e.g., Sonic Drive-in; Holiday Inn) aren’t going to get any of that commerce unless users can find them. Hence, search marketing retains the largest share of digital spend according to the Forrester Research US Digital Marketing Forecast, 2014 to 2019 (released in November 2014), with mobile accounting for 66 percent of the growth in interactive spend over the next five years. I don’t think the strength of spending on both areas is a coincidence, and neither does Forrester — the company identifies the mobile savviness of a brand’s customers as a key determinant of how urgent a brand should embrace local.

But something else is going on, too: the rise of contextual marketing. With contextual marketing, brands create more personal experiences based on the context of your behavior, such as where you are located. According to Forrester, contextual marketing is the new marketing remit. Customers, empowered with location- and context-aware devices, expect marketers to customize content accordingly instead of relying on generic messaging that is the same regardless of whether you are in New York or Seattle.

SIM Partners CMO Tari Haro recently noted that according to Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk, contextual marketing will “steal media dollars” to fund “customer-obsessed contextual experiences.” And VanBoskirk suggests that to become better contextual marketers, companies need to adopt a number of strategies, including going local. She recommends that brands have global business stories, but make them local in order to be more context-aware. U.S. Bank, for instance, works with SIM Partners to improve its local presence via social media, mobile, and search.

But the new Forrester Consulting report, Uncovering the Benefits of Local Search Marketing, also notes that many brands have not yet fully embraced local search. Limited resources and lack of expertise are hampering marketers’ efforts with local search. To me, the answer is to develop a strategy that links local to context, especially since Forrester Consulting agrees that brands with local strategies are realizing strong benefits. Local search may very well become a battleground, all right — with strategy separating the winners from the losers.