Social media, while powerful, authentic and important only works if people see what you’re doing and that’s where advertising comes in as a symbiotic partner

The problem we see today is that people expect everything to just go viral. We’ve all be asked [told?] to make a viral video; to make a product get “out there” with sharing alone. The reality is that very few products even have a chance to “go viral”. For every blendtec or old spice is a thousand more brands with a good product that simply isn’t what people want to share around the web. That’s why on any given day the top 50 YouTube videos include one product related videos. Yup, one.

Advertising is the dependable version of viral

Instead of asking “how do I make this ‘go viral’”, which is something you can’t control or guarantee, you need to ask yourself: “how do I take something that is credible, authentic and trustworthy and make it get exposed”. This is why advertising becomes remains so important in an era of social media – advertising is your guaranteed source of visibility that insures success whether or not a viral pickup takes place.

Social Media changes how you advertise

Google AdWords, Targeted Banners, Lead Generation Campaigns, Facebook Ads. Advertising has been used to sell your brand’s value under your voice, with your credibility attached. Social integrates into this chain to make your ads authentic and stand out [at least until everyone gets on board].

Rather than saying “50% off on the Amazing Widget” say “50% off on the 5-star rated Widget” with quotes from reviews visible around the ad unit. Rather than a stock photo of actors enjoying their new RV pull in a video from your Facebook campaign of a real family talking about their experience with a link to read more stories. Bring the same transparency you have on your reviews, Facebook page, user community and other social features right out and into your advertising – the more real time and authentic, the better.

Product packaging is another great place to bring social to life and get in front of the customer. Think about two boxes with nearly the same product, one has a summary rating, an expert rating and a QR / RFID / short url link to read more reviews while the other doesn’t even have a mobile friendly site. Even at a higher price the brand willing to put it all out there is worth a closer look. Mobile has become far too prevalent to think you can hide or out impulse research, so instead beat the customer too it.

Don’t assume that simply because you have UGC on your website or social channels people are going to find it. You need to tell them it’s there.

The iPad changed that for me in less than a day. An interesting email caught my eye and I shared it with a marketing co-worker. She looked at the creative but was pulled in by the product, handed back my iPad and went online to make a purchase.

This is revolutionary.

While the iPad has been widely talked about for its ease of use, it’s quick access to the web, apps and other interface and usability features, the real game changer that I see it bringing is in sharing content. Let’s face it, few people take the time to zoom their iPhone in to a page to hand off or unplug a laptop to pass across the room. Where the personal computer is, well, personal the iPad is an open screen. This makes it ideal for collaboration – simple items are quickly passed along and whether that’s to show a new game, results from a project, or an email with an interesting product, it works.

If the experts are right and the iPad brings in a world of tablet computing (I for one see it happening) we can expect to see the term ‘social’ take on a whole new meaning as people share content in ways we may not have considered before. For web marketers this represents a whole new school of thought, design and even offers as we move to a world where what one person gets, others will often be shown. And how do you measure that?

1 – Store Finders.

The scenario: Here I am out doing errands when it hits me, I need that new super product you’re selling but where is your store again?

If you have any sort of retail presence be it your own stores or retailers you sell through it’s absolutely essential that people can quickly locate them using a mobile device. Google Maps is a great tool but when someone really wants to find one of your stores there’s a good chance they’ll end up on your site looking. If they can’t get around game over.

Example:

- Here’s target.com from my iphone. As you can see the store locator is one of very few options.

- On the other hand here’s blockbuster.com where I have to zoom in and pan around just to find the link. It works but it’s not optimal, it’s not user friendly.

2 – Product Description, Ratings & MRSP.

The scenario: I’m talking about making a purchase and a friend recommends a competitor’s product. Being the smart shopper I want to get the scoop on what you sell and what they talk about.

If you sell products people want to be able to learn about them. This use to mean pulling up to the home computer and doing some research but there’s no longer any need to dock to a monitor. Now consumers are doing research on their couch with a 4-inch screen or even more importantly, while they stand in a store ready to make a purchase. Every company needs to show their listings, what they cost and ideally what people think of them. This is comparison shopping at the point of purchase.

Example:

- I’m looking to buy a BluRay player but don’t like the selection at Walmart. Luckily bestbuy makes it easy to compare a few options.

- On the other hand I’m lost with Costco and have to search around, scroll and try to understand what if anything they offer.

3 – Customer Support.

The scenario: I’m on the road headed to my flight and the snow starts kicking up… do I turn around or keep going? [While at the side of the road] I pull up your mobile site to get a hold of a human.

Mobile is all about actions and customer service is all about accessibility so mirroring up the two is a no brainer. Most sites already have service numbers but if a mobile user can’t find it in a click or two it may as well no exist. Just as importantly the information you present needs to be actionable – phones highlight numbers they can identify so be sure yours is in a common format using text.

4 – Drop the flash.

Scenario: I’m looking up show times for the new hit film you just released but there’s no way for me to get to it on your site – all I see is a big box with a question mark icon. Next activity.

Flash isn’t going away but it also isn’t really something mobile has got down yet and while we will be there one day it’s never going to work the same as it does on a desktop (screen size people). If you can’t build a true mobile site you need to insure the one you have works without flash, with minimal javascript and without any sort of crazy dropdowns or validation.

5 – Search & PPC.

Scenario: I’m googling your company and the first listing is for an offer only when I click it I get to a landing page that’s 3 pages long on a normal monitor. Next.

The whole point of having a mobile site is to make it easy for mobile users to get to it without having to do research. So while you may be promoting your mobile site in every email what really matters is that your normal site detects mobile and redirects to it automatically. Otherwise what’s the point.

Example:

- In California I get directions from Sigalert who has both mobile and iphone optimized options.

- United Airlines has a whole set of mobile features but as my iphone shows, I don’t get to them unless I know the special url.

Wrapping it all together.

Today mobile is about quick tasks, simple information and moving from a to b. The 5 features I’ve mentioned are all important parts of any mobile site but they mean nothing if your mobile site isn’t mobile friendly to start with. The biggest part of designing mobile is to make it light and friendly… yes phones are getting smarter and can view more and more content but that doesn’t mean they should be made to. If your site is optimized for a new 20” monitor with 9 navigation options they’re going to be the size of a pinky on an iphone or blackberry which means that clicking them will require multiple levels of zooming. Fail.

Keep your mobile site basic. Use a simple logo, a few colors and links that are to features people want. That’s all you need – not fancy promotions, not cool looking designs, function first, aesthetics that support it.

And one more thing, since more phones can support full site browsing be sure to let people get back to your main site so they aren’t jailed in mobile forever.

Admittedly I’m a bit late to the game having just moved from a Samsung Blackjack to the iphone but then again, with over 1.75 million iphones sold in Q4 of last year, there are a lot of people who are late to the game and a lot more coming along. In any event there’s no doubt that the iphone revolution and really the smartphone revolution is here, heck you could even say it’s already behind us. There’s more than 14 million iphones on the market and tens of millions of other super smartphones out there (super smartphones being new age phones that combine email and other smartphone features with advanced web browsing, multimedia and other computer like features), yet so many businesses seem to continue marching on like consumers aren’t able to access a world of data right in front of them. It’s time for that to stop.
Case #1 – Last fall I made a trip out to the Big Island of Hawaii to enjoy a few days away from the buzz and grind. After being approached for a few timeshare / vacation property pitches I succumb and decided to hear the pitch in exchange for a nice meal for two at the Hilton. The pitch went like most upscale vacation property pitches do; friendly talking, a nice tour and then a whirlwind of numbers that are made to seem impressive and a huge push for a close. In the end I told the sales agent and his manager that I’d never buy something like that on the spot and held to it after “an amazing offer” was made. I said I’d call if I was interested, they could have cared less. A minute later I knew why.
Out of curiosity I looked up property resale rates on my phone as I walked out and sure enough it was a joke. Costs ranged from 40-60% of the “amazing deal” rates and just about every property was on the block, including the brand new one I looked at. While I was interested and seriously considered the offer during the conversation my feeling after doing 30 seconds of research was anything but positive. The sales agents, the nice, “honest seeming” people I had just talked to were completely trying to pull a quick one and I was able to figure it out within seconds using my phone. 10 years ago I understand the timeshare market did great because there was no comparing and very little reselling, 5 years ago the internet changed the entire market with “used” properties and 6 months ago a phone stopped me from considering the offer altogether because of information.
Case #2 – We’ve all been here and done this one… you walk into a retail store looking for a product that costs more than few bucks and as soon as you find it, you walk out to check another store and another and another until you find the right deal. The internet has of course made deal hunting easier but companies still bank on you walking in, seeing the bright lights, the awesome product display and a sales associate offering you what feels like a killer deal to close the sale. With no internet in front of you it’s easy to get caught up in the moment… but now there is internet in the store, now you can compare on the fly. Today when doing something as simple as looking at cases for my new iphone I had immediate access to get the full range of options, to know the prices at other stores and to find out which product people liked best. The result, I walked right out of the Apple store and Frys and found the product I wanted elsewhere and that was for a $20 item, you don’t have to be selling to tech geeks to assume someone looking at a $2,000 bed or a $1,5000 plasma tv would do the same.
And if the ability to search wasn’t enough, a few of the comparison shopping sites have built apps to make the process even easier. Buzzillions (the company that owns PowerReviews) has a top 10 app that’s absolutely free which lets you search through millions of reviews on their network. A quick seconds of typing and you can get Amazon style feedback on just about any major product. Other companies are offering the same functionality for checking prices, finding store locations, even getting discounts sent right to a phone.
So 2 very different examples but the same story and a simple point. The world has changed and while 50% of consumers may not have smartphones today, tens of millions have the very best and tens more have something with at least basic web abilities. Even those that don’t can reach out and passively ask a dozen friends for price checks and opinions at the touch of a few keys. The world has changed and businesses that try to sell products under the guise of a hard sale or a can’t resist offer are going to find a customer that knows the real story. I’ve watched sales people cringe as someone pulled out a phone to review their claim and I’ve watched customers walk off disgusted as they discover a lie.
As a retailer you’re in a tough position, price is comparable, information is available and consumers have infinite choice for almost every decision. This doesn’t mean you have to offer the bottom of the basement deal to win the sale but it does mean acting transparently and selling your actual value. Apple sells millions of laptops for far more than a Dell or HP costs not because they’re 50 times better technically but because of the experience, the product quality and the buzz and truth about their quality of service. Zappos sells a product that people said would never sell well online and they do it to the tunes of millions of dollars a month all without discounts or super bottom prices. Sure they have a good deal but they also have remarkable service and a guarantee they are known for. Those items and not their end of the day price is what makes them a winner.
As a retailer, service business, travel agency or any other offline entity it’s time for you to step up and offer the same level of service that you tell the world you offer. Anything less isn’t going to cut it.
I wrote about mobile several months back and even asked the LinkedIn community what they were doing to address it. The response I got was often a shrug, a dismissal as if the mobile world wasn’t really that big. You may not have 5,000,000 pageviews to your mobile site but I don’t have to view 50 pages to get the info I need nor do I even have to visit your site. Applications tell me what your price is, others tell me about your quality and even more tell me about your product. So as At&t, Verizon, Sprint and the other cell companies put more and more devices in the hands of consumers will you step up and offer the technology solutions to market to these individuals and the service to get them to convert or will you wonder why they walk out the door.

Click in for real world examples of websites using a mobile browser as well as advice on how to make the most of your own mobile site.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know the new iPhone hit stores last Friday but what you may not know is that trying to find a place to buy the phone using another mobile device is downright painful – neither apple nor at&t automatically supports store lookups on the [lite] mobile web. Unfortunately Apple and at&t are not alone in this problem; despite the fact that over 30% of wireless users have browsed the internet on their mobile device, many of companies still fail to provide suitable mobile versions of their sites.

Before I jump any further into this point, let’s be clear on my point. Not every business needs to build a robust mobile site capable of supporting purchases – to the contrary, most businesses should be able to get away with the most basic wireless site [for now] and many don’t require one at all. But when you think about the numbers, 30% of over 200 million devices — if you sell products, operate brick n mortar stores, or have any reason why people would use your site when they aren’t in front of their monitor and hope to keep your customers shopping with you today pay attention – this concerns you.

A couple of years ago this wasn’t an issue; phones were just that, phones and while some could check email that was the main “smart” feature. Now we have 3g, we have millions of phones with browsers, we have a mobile web. Not everyone with a phone that can browse is going on every day but from time to time millions do go on and I’d venture to guess they’re more likely to surf when they need information for a decision – when it’s time to research a product or purchase. Walk around any high cost store and you’re certain to catch a few people pulling out their blackberry’s to compare prices against other stores (apple has a commercial to this effect). Join in a conversation with the typical group of 25-34 yearolds and at some point it will touch on something that requires pulling out a phone to prove a point, research an idea or make a purchase. Even when mobile isn’t about transactions it has people Google searching for a book title or directions, updating their social networking status and doing many other things which puts people in front of mobile ads, ads which only do you good if you have a mobile site to send the person too. Mobile may not be the #1 way people get things done but for millions and millions of people – people with money – people who want to buy, mobile is a part of their everyday life.

To illustrate this point, here’s how a few major businesses look on the mobile web (screenshots made using Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile 6.0).

	Apple’s iPhone Site Upside: None Downside: You can barely navigate the site. Turning off images lets you see the links but without a wider browser it’s just too difficult to access areas and most features rely on JavaScript which Internet Explorer Mobile doesn’t have.
	At&t Store Finder Upside: None really although if you’re really patient and wait a week for the page to download and render you can kind of search. Results are possible to see but on a similarly difficult to navigate page. Downside: Same as for Apple.com, you can’t do much of anything effectively.
	Target Upside: Target auto detects mobile browsers and shows two key functions – a store locator and their weekly ad making it possible to find a location (preview results) and see a few deals (preview deals). As an added upside for more advanced devices, there’s an easy link to the full site. Downside: You can’t look up product information, pricing or availability to compare prices online but at least you can find the store’s phone number to call and ask. The features also don’t do a great job with cookies so you have to reenter your Zip Code fairly often.
	Best Buy Upside: Good alt tags make it possible to understand (I use the term loosely) the site’s structure but that’s about it. There was however an RSS link at the end of the very, very, very long homepage… in case you want an RSS feed. Downside: Navigation via mobile is possible but between the long, long list of links, background images and clutter you can’t really navigate to anything meaningful. Side Note: Google helped point me to a mobile beta of the site (see preview) which is many times better. Like Circuit City’s mobile site (next site profiled), Best Buy mobile has a store look up and you can find products complete with a small photo thumbnail, price, customer rating and sku/upc/model information (see preview). They’ve also included a quick link to dial the number directly. Hopefully this site goes live soon (it’s working as best I could tell but not loading up via bestbuy.com) so I can rescind my current upside/ downside comments.
	Circuit City Upside: Short of being order online, Circuit City’s mobile site does just about everything you could hope for from finding a store to looking up product listings, availability and prices. You can even sign up for mobile updates. They also have links to the full page along with their phone number on every single page. And those links don’t just take you to the homepage… you’ll actually end up on the same product/ category page that you were at on the mobile version which is just plain sweet. Downside: Aside from being able to order online it would be nice to have access to track past orders or at least pull up local pickup orders so you can verify the item list (and remember which store you had the order sent to) from your mobile device. But that’s much more wishlist nice to haves… the site is great for lite mobile. Really great.
	Bed, Bath & Beyond Upside: Don’t let the screenshot fool you, the site isn’t mobile. It’s long and while I was able to get myself to the store locator page, I’d pull up Google Maps long before I did that again. Downside: Besides having a horribly long url to type the site is like Apple, At&t and Bestbuy… Basic navigation is possible, but extremely difficult and what you get to is almost entirely meaningless.
	United Airlines Wireless Upside: The website allows you to perform basic functions related to traveling and managing your mobile account including looking up your flight status (see preview), getting TSA wait times, finding red carpet club locations, getting your mileage plus summary and other basic functions. Downside: There’s no way to book a ticket and with constantly increasing fees to book over the phone there’s money being left on the table for competitive booking sites to pick right up. More importantly, united.com doesn’t auto detect wireless browsers; you have to key in the mobile url to get there. Similarly you have to know your frequent flier number to access most of the tools – the email login used on their website won’t do you any good.
	CheapTickets.com Upside: They tell you they can’t serve you… That’s almost an upside. Downside: CheapTickets doesn’t just not support mobile browsers, they deny them access to their site entirely. In one sense this is a better message than nothing – not knowing you’ll have problems is annoying but at the same time, I often manage to make it through sites that aren’t mobile optimized when I have to (hence the at&t store finder results) so not being able to play at all is probably worse than being able to play but getting a notice that the ride will be bumpy at best.
	Orbitz Upside: Like at United.com, you can look up your current itineraries, check your flight status and perform a few other basic features. Orbitz doesn’t allow bookings on their mobile but they have started showing a limited number of hotels to users complete with pricing, star rating and location with a phone number to make the actual reservation. Downside: There’s still no way to book or compare prices. Luckily Orbitz doesn’t penalize phone based ordering so while it’s a major pain to wait on hold and comparing prices on a trip to Hawaii while you sit around in the airport waiting to fly to Maine in the winter isn’t going to happen, you can at least book in a pinch without a fee. Also like at United.com there’s no auto detection of wireless browsers so going to Orbitz.com results in a horrible experience as it almost looks like you can actually search for flights… only the search never works.
	Amazon Upside: You can shop online. Downside: See downside. Ok, here’s a bit more explanation… Amazon has a very, very lite site which lets you search for products, view their listings with more information than I’ve seen on any other lite mobile site (title, small image, larger images, author, free shipping eligibility, price, customer rating and actual reviews, bundles and marketplace listings). You can add items to your basket or a wishlist and from there it’s into the Amazon checkout process without any of the graphics – select your shipping address, shipping speed, credit card, gift certificates and coupons. Things go quickly, ordering via credit card is a bit of a pain but hey, it’s mobile ordering. It would be nice to see Amazon adopt a quicker way for mobile payments although perhaps if I used one-click checkout I’d have that already. But seriously, entering a full credit card number is a pain so how about PayPal, obopay, a cell phone bill or another method? Saved credit card entries work fine so it’s not the end of the world for existing account holders. It would also be nice to confirm the item but have it alert your email so you can place the order on your full computer later (ideal if you have to setup new addresses and look at more options for a gift). Right now my tests didn’t get items into my normal shopping cart so it was either order via mobile, put into a wishlist or lose the product. Again, just a few wishlist items… The point is you can order on your phone and that rocks.

As you can see, many businesses are all but ignoring mobile users, while some have the chance to give them basic service and a few even let them transact without having to log on to any “real” computer and you can do it with a simple smartphone, the kind corporations give to their employees.

Perhaps the biggest downside with mobile sites these days is the failure to auto detect mobile browsers and redirect people to them. If you offer a mobile version of your site be certain people actually get to it when they use a mobile phone… I tried almost all of the above urls on multiple phones so it’s shocking to see that some didn’t pick up on my browser type.

To take things to the next step… mobile browsing problems don’t stop with traditional “lite” mobile. Even assuming that iPhone-like full browsing takes the world by storm (which seems likely), it’s still going to show up on a 2-4″ screen with a much more limited connection rate (3g isn’t everywhere after all). So while showing people your full site may be technically possible, it’s not necessarily the best way to serve them and capture their business. At the end of the day, the site that gets the most relevant information to the user quickest wins – so drop the lengthy shopping process, the full blown navigation and 500 photos per page on your enhanced mobile version and serve up something that looks good, gets your brand across but is also usable on the subway, walking down the street or while I’m staring at a competitor’s offering at the local mall.

Don’t see why you should allocate the budget to tackle mobile this early in the game? Better hope your competitors are just as far behind the times.

A few relevant links and tools to help you test and refine your mobile site:

• Windows Mobile 6 PC Based Emulator 
• Opera Mini Online Emulator
• One of many code snippets to auto detect mobile browsers using php
• And another code snippet using JavaScript