Mobile Shopping This Cyber Monday and Black Friday

We noticed a large percentage of our client's traffic comes from those using mobile devices. This observation made us wonder; for this year's biggest shopping days, who is doing their shopping via mobile, and what kinds of mobile shopping trends are we going to see?

The mobile shopper
Mobile shopping has nearly doubled every year since 2010. From a demographic perspective, among mobile consumers, the majority are men, but women more than men use their smartphones to save money with mobile coupons. It isn't just based on gender of course, there are are regional differences as well, an interesting article comparing mobile shopping on the East and West Coasts finds East Coasters are 26% more likely to click on nightlife deals than West Coast shoppers. Mobile marketing makes way for a lot of targeting, be it by their location, which sites your consumers visit, the time of day, income, etc.

Where are they shopping?
We have seen a $24 million increase over last year's online sales and the prediction for next year is an increase of $26 million. Taking a huge piece of this pie are the most popular online shopping websites, number one being Amazon.com. Amazon might be king on the internet, but for mobile shopping, it trails slightly behind EBay according to this Nielsen report. This difference could be because consumers perhaps feel more secure using PayPal on eBay from their phones vs. Amazon because PayPal doesn't expose payment information to the merchant. It could also be because of the gamification aspect (auctions) of eBay that keeps people engaged more regularly.

What can we expect?
After perusing various websites, it seems retailers offering Cyber Monday and Black Friday deals will be offering a majority of their deals on electronics like tablets, portable laptops, gaming consoles and more. From a strategy perspective, we think in the future we will see marketers take a hint from Amazon.com for holiday shopping as Amazon built an impressive lightening deals page for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These pages will not only help people who want to look at deals ahead of time, but it also has deals daily leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday which helps keep their consumers engaged.

And now we wait
It would be nice to see more shopping done online and less people being trampled over in the stores. Cyber Monday already offers this and now Black Friday is getting in on the online action. All signs point to more mobile shopping and it seems that many marketers were prepared for these colossal shopping events and have their online mobile deals ready

Can Internet Marketing Really Help My B2B Business?

My Marketing Still Works Just Fine.

While it is common practice for manufacturers and industrial businesses to have a website, these businesses often shy away from online advertising and instead invest most, if not all, of their marketing budgets in more traditional forms of advertising. Traditional advertising is where these businesses feel most comfortable, as they have a long standing history with these mediums and know what to expect. However, while each business has its own methods of attributing income to each marketing campaign, the reality is that most traditional methods of marketing offer no way to calculate an exact return on investment, as the true level of exposure the business is receiving is often unknown.

Take print campaigns, for example. If you place an ad in a niche trade magazine, you may know the number of subscribers the magazine has, but how many of those actually read the magazine? How many readers actually saw your ad? How many took action based on that ad? The same holds true for direct mail campaigns. Of the targeted addresses you delivered to, how many reached their destination? How many did a clerk or secretary toss aside? How many actually made it in front of the CEO?

Can Internet Marketing Really Do Any Better?

Unlike traditional methods of marketing, Internet marketing campaigns provide businesses with statistical analytics that they can use to track the outcome of their marketing campaign and determine their exact return on investment (ROI). While Internet marketing can provide accurate tracking of exactly what works and why, it is not cheap, and some manufacturers may struggle to justify the initial investment in an environment that demands lean operations. Internet marketing is also not an overnight fix. Campaigns have to be conducted for a number of months to achieve the vaunted ROI, and it takes highly trained technical work by optimization experts, such as those at Net Site Marketing, before businesses will begin to see an improvement in revenues.

However, statistics show that online marketing is well worth the investment, provided you do your homework and go with an accredited Internet marketing company. According to a 2012 State of Digital Marketing Report, 59% of B2B marketers credit Internet marketing with having the biggest direct impact on lead generation. And while the initial fees charged for Internet marketing services may seem pricey, a 2011 Hubspot study found that inbound Internet marketing actually costs 62% less per lead than traditional, outbound marketing.

That's Great, but My Business Doesn't Rely on Website Sales.

Even if you don't use your website to generate leads or sales right now, a properly optimized website will help your target market to find your business when researching product vendors and suppliers. According to a 2012 Buyersphere Report, 73% of B2B industrial buyers use the web to gather information prior to making a purchase. This means those buyers you used to receive through distribution chains and trade shows are turning more and more to the Internet as their primary means for making a purchase decision. This behavior is the driving force behind a trending shift in marketing budgets away from legacy marketing streams and towards Internet marketing.

In addition, younger industrial buyers are much more likely to use the Internet for information than older generations. As the workforce matures, the Internet will become increasingly relied upon as a primary resource and will steadily continue to dominate sales in the marketplace. Those manufacturers who have invested in optimized websites to the point where they are achieving high positions in the search engines, will continue to have an edge over the competition, and will be primed to capitalize on this ever-growing revenue stream.

Commercial Contractors: Marketing Yourself Is Key

The industry of commercial contracting relies mostly on new clients or jobs to gain income. Thus, it is highly crucial for them to embark on marketing themselves. Commercial contractor marketing strategies include personal marketing to other businesses or cooperate and use of the internet. A selling point for anyone is this business is the performance of timely, professional and complete work. This majorly helps your contracting business to get potential new client through referrals.

Strategies to Marketing Yourself

Personal marketing of your contracting company is highly recommended by most experts in marketing. It involves establishing a long-term relationship with potential, reputable companies. This is helpful because most of these companies like having personal relationships with local contractors.

After acquiring the necessary knowledge, you can then design portfolios, business cards and distribute theme to these companies. The portfolio should include:

    Contact information
    Previous work done
    License verification

In addition to your commercial contractor marketing, a personal visit is recommended, as you will get a chance to answer hiring mangers' questions as well as offer any other necessary information.

Marketing Yourself through a Website

Designing a perfect site for your company is another strategy in commercial contractor marketing that can help win new, potential clients. The website should include:

    Your business logo
    Information regarding areas of specialty work done previously
    Information regarding ongoing work (if any)
    Previous clients

The contact information should not miss in your website, which should include your telephone number and email address. In additional, having someone who can answer calls day or night will be helpful.

Marketing Yourself through Promotional Products

Another strategy for marketing yourself is the use of promotional products. Some of the promotional products that will help your business standout from the rest include coffee cups, metric rulers, tape measures, key holders, pens pencils and any other unique gift that comes to your mind. All these products should bear your company logo and contact information. They will help amplify your presence in the market and possibly turn potential clients to seek your contracting services.

Your New Word of Mouth Marketing Plan

Word of mouth marketing is when your efforts are put into empowering your consumers to tell other consumers about you. This can come in many forms such as a viral video that is shared by your consumers, to an online community where your consumers share their interests, content and information.

Word of mouth marketing is a far more effective way of getting your message out and can do wonders for your brand awareness & reach. So below is a plan that you can follow to make your word of mouth marketing as effective as possible:

Encouraging Communications
First things first, you must make it easy for your consumers to share your message. These are the essential things you should do:

- Get yourself on Facebook & Twitter, and then on LinkedIn, Pinterest & Google+ dependent on your industry.
- Add share buttons on your website so people can share on various social networks
- Add social network buttons in your email signature
- Encourage visitors to your establishment, add you on your social networks, and talk
- Chat with followers & fans on social networks
- Add a feedback page or widget to your website

Give People Something to Talk About
Now that you are connected with your consumers, you need to give them something to share! This is where you can get creative and generate lots of content in different forms. Try doing some of these:

- Take pictures of your food, drinks & venue and share them online
- Create funny related memes
- Write blog posts about the happenings at your venue
- Give people useful recipes to your dishes and drinks
- Give offers to loyal consumers

Connect People
Now that you have your consumers connected with you, it is time to connect them to each other. The more that they talk you up between themselves, the better!

- Create groups, events and fan clubs on social networks where they can hang out and discuss
- Put on nights & events just for hand picked customers

Identify Influencers
In order to grow your reach, you are going to need to get in front of the industry influencers at some point. The influencers on your social networks will be really approachable and really honest so make sure you are ready to impress them when you do get their attention!

- Identify bloggers & critics in your local area and ask them to check out your venue
- Ask them to share specific content of yours to their networks
- Support their work too by sharing and replying to their stuff

Customer Feedback
So many people visit restaurants, bars and clubs on a weekly basis yet not many venues capitalise on the opportunity to get a lot of customer feedback. Start now by asking people to tell you about their experience and ask them to go one step further by sharing their experience with others:

- Give people an incentive to leave reviews & feedback online (as a status or on review websites such as trip advisor)
- Track all conversation about your organisation on social networks and review websites
- Respond to all reviews, regardless of whether they are positive or negative

Involve your Consumers
One way to really seal the deal is to get your consumers actively involved in the development of your venue & co-create.

Personnel That You Don't Want to Break at Any Cost

Marketing to the government is very different than marketing to commercial customers. With most commercial customers, you can wine, dine, and entertain them. Not so with the government. If you do, there are two outcomes: government personnel will either start avoiding you outright because they will know that you don't know how to work with the government, or they might be corrupt and accept your gifts-and when that gets out in the open, you will lose your job, and your company will lose government business in a big scandal. It's simply not worth it.

You have to know and abide by the rules. Government employees cannot solicit or accept gifts from any entity that does or seeks business with the government. A gift is any item with a monetary value, except for very modest items of food and refreshments, greeting cards, or plaques and certificates. There is a small exception: all gifts given in a year must not exceed a total of $50 in value from your entire company, and no single gift can be worth more than $20. You can give a personal gift to a govie if they were your relative before business-related contact was established, for example, but you cannot be reimbursed by the company.

If you go to lunch, it should be at a place where your government contact is able to pay for lunch out of his or her salary, which is probably lower than yours. Govies will normally offer money to you for their portion of the food, which you should not refuse. When they visit you at your facility and you offer food to them, put a donation jar there so that they can contribute a symbolic amount of money-otherwise they might have to do a tremendous amount of paperwork.

If you offer a discount to a government employee, make sure that it does not discriminate against other government employees. In other words, once you give a discount to one government employee, you have to give it to others as well. You can offer free training to the govie if it can be considered a "widely attended gathering."

So, as you can see, there is much to learn in the world of interfacing with the government and building customer relationships-but it is not as complicated as one might think.

The government will meet with you, but you have to start early-at least a year ahead of the RFP-to prepare in style. You can do many things in capture as a last-minute crunch, but building relationships is not one of them.

Olessia Smotrova-Taylor is the President and CEO of OST Global Solutions, Inc. (http://www.ostglobalsolutions.com). She is a currently practicing capture and proposal manager who has won more than $17 Billion in new business. As one of the proposal industry leaders, she is on the Board of Directors of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals' (APMP) National Capital Area (NCA) chapter and served as the editor and chair of the APMP NCA Executive Summary e-zine from 2008 to 2011, and as a chapter President for 2012.