Tag Archives: Vibes

Welcome to a New Era of Convenience Shopping

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Buy buttons are taking convenience shopping to a whole new level. In recent weeks, Instagram and Pinterest announced new buy button features that make it easy for consumers to purchase goods and services directly from their apps. Facebook, which began testing shoppable ads in 2014, announced an expansion of its program. Google confirmed that the search giant is developing a buy button so that shoppers can make purchases directly from Google ads. Why the interest? In a word: mobile.

It’s easy to see why these digital brands are instituting buy buttons. In the United States, online commerce accounts for but 7 percent of all retail sales. According to Forrester Research, by 2017 the Web will generate $370 billion in U.S. sales, or 10 percent of the total. By making it easier to conduct transactions online, the likes of Google, Instagram, and Pinterest hope to stake a claim to the $3.3 trillion in sales that will occur offline.

But why are we seeing a proliferation of buy buttons now? There’s something else going on: since 2013, consumers have preferred using their mobile devices over laptops and desktops to interact with retailers online. The shift to mobile has profound implications:

  • Mobile consumers have an immediate intent to purchase: according to a recently released report by Google, I Want-to-Go Moments: From Search to Store, half of consumers who conduct a local search on their smartphones visit a store within 24 hours. Nearly half of consumers trying to decide on a restaurant do their local search within an hour of actually going.

In I-Want-to-Go Moments: From Search to Store, Google noted that the number of “near me” searches (searches conducted for goods and services nearby) conducted by consumers have grown by 34 times since 2011; and 80 percent of those searches are conducted on mobile devices.

“With a world of information at their fingertips, consumers have heightened expectations for immediacy and relevance,” wrote the report’s author, Matt Lawson. “They want what they want when they want it. They’re confident they can make well-informed choices whenever needs arise. It’s essential that brands be there in these moments that matter — when people are actively looking to learn, discover, and, or buy.”

You can sense the wheels spinning at Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter, where consumers and brands share the same space: if consumers are collapsing the journey from awareness to purchase on their mobile devices, why not remove the friction of sending them offline to buy something? Why not use buy buttons seal the deal the moment when initial research and consideration occur on mobile devices?

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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.