Are you a Social Showroomer?
What is a social showroomer? With 70% of people trusting reviews by their "friends" than a company's own site, a social showroomer is one who leverages social before they purchase. But they do it in a uniqure way. They come into a real store with their smartphone and scan a product's barcode to see the reviews, and lowest prices for the item. Then they search both online retailers to compare with those of brick and mortar.
First a factoid, 1/3 of showroomers bought from an online-only retailer, the other two-thirds from a multi-channel retailer.
Who are these new social shoppers?
Showroomers are more often male than female with the largest gender gap being in consumer electronics but women are still quite capable of showrooming. In fact,women still constitute 80% of Pinterest users. (Search Engine Journal)
On age & income dimensions, this is not an older group but not particularly young. Most likely to be 26 to 34, however in some categories like consumer electronics, home decor and healthcare, showrooming skews as high as 35 to 44.
The showroomers are also more affluent on average but has quite a contribution from the middle-income group as well.
And the final point, this group is very vocal. 57%, had written a positive review of their online retailer. They are a dynamic group having positive experiences and wanting to share them with their peers.
Are you a showroomer? Tell me about it. What do you think about showrooming? Is it fair to local merchants?
Social selling: Tip #5 Build your social graph!
Happy Monday!
We are continuing our social selling series and today will focus on one of the top 5 pieces of advice for strong selling in the blogosphere!
The Blogosphere is a connected community of all blogs and their interconnections, including micro-blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on. Essentially all social tools online.
Have fun building your social graph!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR7NOuZ0OO0&feature=youtu.be]
Mixed Audiences into today's Social Business World
Today, I was chatting with a client who proclaimed that he wished everyone was using social! The world would be so simple!
Yes, it would but we don't live in that world --- and won't for a few years.
Today, I see us having 3 types of people.
- Digital Natives. These are people who grew up online and in social networks. They work in a collaborative fashion -- they grew up this way. They do not do email or even answer phones. (Note: The post-millennial "digital native" was a term coined by U.S. author Marc Prensky.
- Digital Immigrants. These are people who have not grown up digitally but have taken to the new social world and use the tools like a native. They have a foot in each world... being able to leverage email, and traditional forms of collaboration, with the new world.
- Non Digitals or affectionately called The Analogs. Yes we all know they and they are in very significant places of influence today. They email, they dictate, and they don't use Facebook. These are some of your best clients, so you cannot leave them behind.
Yes, and today there are digital outcasts. These are folks who would grow up digitally but globally have not been blessed with the resources to do so. Many companies are working on these issues which I believe must be fixed before we do see people across the globe plugged into the "AORTA," which is Always On RealTime Access, a term coined by Mark Anderson, the chief of the Strategic News Service.
What do you see? How long before the Natives overtake enough influential positions?
Privacy - Interesting study for your Social Profiles
In an IBM study of the Empowered Customer with a sample size of 28,000 global consumers, a fundamental change is emerging. Customers are increasingly open to providing information about themselves in exchange for perceived benefit such as improved personalization, service, etc. And remember, this is on a global scale .. not something that is a US only trend.
In fact, I was surprised to see that 75% are willing to provide information on media usage and demographics but almost 60% of global customers are willing to provide information about their lifestyle and locations which will enable companies to further tailor the shopping experience.
I think this is significant as 73% of CEOs are investing in customer insights. These factoids tell us that a client would be willing to spend an additional 20 minutes if you provide them with some value.
Do you need a coffee break? Social Selling Series Begins!
Today we are starting a series on Social Selling!
Once the overview is done, we have a series of 5 core areas to focus on for social selling!
Enjoy!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJUOxAxxZI&feature=youtu.be]
IT's FRIDAY!! 4M Strong - IBM DeveloperWorks runs on IBM Connections!
I wanted to share this external version of IBM Conenctions for the Developerworks community!
There are about 4M strong in the community and it saves IBM about $100M a year in support costs with great satisfaction occuring at the same time!
Some factoids ... on the Community!
Does social matter to you Personally? 50% said more influence YES!
From the latest research at the Smarter Planet summit, presented by jon Iwata, IBM's CMO, provides a way to view social not just for a company but for you as an individual!
66% said social helped in innovation and almost half said it makes you more influential
Takeaways from Social Airline Summit in Prague
I just returned from the 2013 IBM Airline Summit in Prague where I met with about 40 senior executives from airlines worldwide. The summit was two full days packed with stimulating panel discussions, group activities and breakout sessions with speakers from airlines, industry analysts, and other consumer-facing businesses such as Coca-Cola and Netflix. I led a discussion about how nimble businesses are using social tools and techniques to help their employees be more effective, innovate, and share their knowledge.
Here are a few take-aways from the Airline Summit:
IBM’s Eric Conrad kicked it off with a fascinating vision for the near term future of travel.
Travel customers expect a truly personalized experience, before during and after their trip. That means airlines will need to become much more engaged with customers by using social business tools, big data and analytics. Eric issued 4 challenges to the group:
- Automate the ordinary to deliver the extraordinary
- Collaborate far beyond current comfort zones
- Elevate customer data analytics to an art form
- Aggressively dismantle barriers to change
New IBM and PhoCusWright study about social business in the travel industry
PhocusWrights’s Norm Rose led a session about the new study PhoCusWright and IBM have launched for the travel industry. The study takes the pulse of the travel industry's use and abuse of social platforms and reveals the strategies and tactics they are using today. Surveying all sectors of the travel market, the survey will dig deep into their tools, techniques, benchmarks, question marks, successes and flops. If you’re in the travel industry and you’re asked to participate, go for it! Then watch for the results which will be published in a few months.
Why big data matters to airlines
We saw a panel discussion about “Airlines, Big Data & the Customer Experience.” Panelists discussed how airlines can take advantage of analytics to drive revenue growth and reduce costs. The consensus was that many organizations will need to change their culture and how they think about managing information. Here’s a fascinating white paper about Big Data and Analytics for the travel industry.
Saving fuel with analytics
Fuel is a very big deal to airlines, accounting for about one third of their total operating expenses. Air Canada’s Director for Fuel Efficiency, Captain Claude-Martin and IBM’s Lori Brewer presented a session describing how IBM Research and Air Canada have developed a solution using advanced analytics and "Watson-like" technology to provide decision support to optimize fuel usage. Attendees saw a demonstration of the fuel solution, named SIMON. Very impressive stuff!
Learning from Coca Cola Social Presentation at the Global Airline Summit
Lessons from Coke on their Social Journey!
1. We speak in storytelling. We make sure the story is engaging, surprising, and grounded in experience. It is choked full of emotion. The new generation wants to be engaged in something exciting. Coke showed a great video of bringing the world together featuring India and Pakistan. Very Powerful! We strive for Shareability.
2. We embrace our new SalesForce. Most openness comes when something goes wrong. But look at something like TripAdvisor. They have postive and negative. Social networkers are willing to provide feedback both positive and negative. Coca-cola has 24M impressions from themselves, and 124M impressions from consumers.
3. Listen first and then engage. Everyone wants to be heard. But they want a response. If you start you must go all the way! Coca-Cola uses gen y's to answer the social questions.
4. Speed trumps perfection today. Gave an example of the response of a top retail fashion company and it took 10 days for a response. And it was in the form of a 3 line PR release....not in social! Stock price took a beating while they polished the story. Great example. Oreo cookie speed on their "You can still dunk in the dark" when the lights went out unexpectedly at the US Superbowl. Brillant social marketing in 5 minutes from Oreo! It took over the social conversation -- be ready, and give people the freedom to embrace the principle of speed.
5. Allow transparent conversation and play well. Both positive and negative. The way that you handle and manage them really matters. Make sure you establish long term relationships.
Leaders in a Social World! A Video Blog!
I am ending my series on the Trends of Social!
Today we are ending on Social leadership. What are the qualities of the new leader? They seem to be more of servant leader.
Take a listen and tell me your thoughts!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZkttEBJI8k&feature=youtu.be]