Local Social Summit took place on the 19th of November in London, organised by Rising Media. Krystian Szastok was a guest blogger and wrote up a summary of some of the key sessions from the day.
Opening Keynote: Big Trends Overview – 2013 Edition
Speaker: Greg Sterling – Founder, Analyst, Contributing Editor – Sterling Market Intelligence, Opus Research, Search Engine Land
Greg discussed examples from Google Now and showed it as one of the examples of the new trends. He also spokes about some bad metrics some companies use in their measuring of the online campaigns. He spoke about cross conversion attribution and universal analytics. He showed the new ‘Chrome Sign In’ and talked about it in light of improved tracking to correlate ad exposure versus offline conversions.
Greg also discussed the increasing number of ‘offline impact of digital advertising’ and companies utilising that.
Key takeaways:
Internet access moving from static devices and smart watches or smart glasses will be becoming mainstream and soon enough be as popular as smartphones.
Future things to come thanks to Google Universal Analytics, for example how your staff on the floor impacts the conversion rate
Google Maps is slipping in the market against it’s competitors
The Future of Indoor Mapping
Speaker: Joseph Leigh – Head of Venue Maps – Here (Nokia)
Joseph started by introducing ‘here’ a new division of Nokia (rebranded NAVTEQ) and the history of maps:
25 years ago everything was focused on outdoors
15 years ago PNDs revolutionised consumer personal navigation
10 years ago internet mapping revolutionized consumer map exploration
5 years ago Nokia announced ‘all future Nokia handsets will include GPS’ and acquired NAVTEQ
2 years ago digital maps started appearing on smartphones in almost every country around the world
Today it’s time to go beyond streets and beyond GPS – to get indoors.
Indoor maps will also be used within hospitals, public places, not just for retail.
Searches in large retail spaces will change from general ‘painting supplies’ to searching for colour of paint where your mobile device will lead you not just to a store, but to a shelf with a given product on it and a coupon presented to you to entice you to buy right now.
Explore: How the Mobile Consumer is Transforming Local Retail
Moderator: Greg Sterling – Founder, Analyst, Contributing Editor – Sterling Market Intelligence, Opus Research, Search Engine Land
Panel:
Ross Sleight – Chief Strategy Officer of Somo Global, Evelyn Timson, – European MD of Engage121, Graham Halling – Commercial Director of Shopitize. Sam Critchley – Co-Founder of Spaaza and Joseph Leigh – Head of Venue Maps of Here (Nokia)
‘Retailers want to currently use mobile as a disruption tool to propose coupons and offers, rather than enhancing the experience’.
49.5% of users check product prices while in store – on their smartphones (data from Shopitize – Graham Halling).
Most users didn’t care about small differences in prices – but would change their mind if finding a big discount somewhere else.
Ross Sleight commented that in fashion people usually use smartphones to share purchases or products in social, in electronics they look at product reviews, in retail or generally, users very often look at price comparison.
Evelyn mentioned that many huge retail chains have very old systems that don’t integrate, all work in their silos. They have the data but it’s not working together.
Key takeaways from this round-table:
The biggest opportunity in mobile for retailers is understanding and using mobile – successful customer segmentation on their mobile.
The same information on a desktop website could have no impact at all – displayed locally to mobile only users can potentially influence the conversion rate noticeably.
‘Most loyalty schemes are only about pricing, not about helping users achieve their goals – this should change’ Ross Sleigh.
Shuttle (recently acquired by ebay) was mentioned as another nail in the coffin for shopping offline. If you can get goods delivered in an hour – the last barrier to buying online is disappearing which may result in many more stores being closed.
Make yourself dispensable – offer great content to users in store, helpful content and help customers accomplish their goals and enhance their experience. Help them buy the products they need and they’ll become more loyal, enjoy the experience more and buy more.
Graham Halling – Mobile should be disruptive and viral, but interesting and captivating, not blending into offers only, but clever promotions based on your actions within the store for example. He mentioned an amazing example from Meatpack:
http://vimeo.com/44351185 and http://adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/meat_pack_hijack)
Lab: Local Content Marketing – How to Increase Your Local Visibility in Search and Social Media
Speaker: Kevin Gibbons – Managing Director UK – BlueGlass Interactive, Inc
Kevin spoke about the fact it is important to start small and local and then scale up the content/strategy as it grows in traction. His example of the first keyword and first niche to dominate the SERPs was ‘oxford online dating’. There is a lot of potential behind the long tail keywords which may on first appearance look small (10 searches per month) term.
You need to ask yourself “What is the best piece of content?” It is important there is either a strong brand behind you, or a strong piece of content.
Kevin shared a few tips with the audience on how to rank locally, ie:
Have local map listings
Have a virtual location near the city centroid.
Have locally focused content with unique content proposal
Tip: to find out what the city centroid is – which will help you rank locally, call up the local council as they have to share this information.
Kevin then went on to a few other examples to raise your local profile (once you developed your content page):
Have a radio interview
Sponsor a show
Start local advertising (it’s affordable compared to national)
Twitter advertising
Facebook advertising.
Participating in local forums and
Talk to local bloggers, ask about local issues and ask them to use their stories and photos
Kevin also mentioned how important it is to have many forms of traffic and a multi-channel strategy. Don’t just rely on organic or ppc to make your content popular. Test every source of traffic possible and compare in your analytics how the users interact with your website.
Navigate: The local media landscape in a mobile world
Moderator: Mike Nutley – Media Consultant & former Editor-in-Chief
Panel: Roger Green – Managing Director, Digital Media – Newsquest Media Group, Chris Brake – Managing Director – Digital Kitbag (part of Johnston Press), Paul Hood – Digital Director of Archant, Jon Kingsbury – Programme Director of Creative Economy – Nesta
Key takeaways:
Problem with hyper local is their legacy and comfort zone is selling print advertising – Chris Brake.
Key content for hyper-local media outlets may be curated content, but well filtered and with a unique take – Chris Brake.
Chris Brake suggested that media outlets should sell AdWords to the businesses they have relationships with to ‘keep at least some of their media spend’.
Paul Hood emphasised that a local media brand has a reputation to uphold, you can rely on Twitter and other purely user generated and unmoderated sources, but you may get burnt and there will be no one to blame.
‘Crucial thing for hyper-local is authenticity’ – Jon Kingsbury
MumsNet are now setting up local sites for local mums – so they’re grouping content not ‘per mum’ but ‘per location’ which is a very interesting. This is a new demand that is being recognised. Mums want to have recommendations by other mums in their area.
What’s next ‘geomums’?
View Points: Small & Medium sizes enterprises
Flash talks: Neal Polachek -Independent Industry Advisor & former CEO of The Kelsey Group, Faisal Laljee – Global Head of SME Advertising Products of Telefonica Digital and Robin Allenson – Managing Director of InnerBalloons
Neal spoke about how it is crucial for companies to market via authentic proposal rather than marketed, advert message.
Key takeaways:
Being on the web, being responsive, social will be crucial in 2018 Neal said.
There is great growth of social media generally in Latin America.
Finding a local partner can be a great way to get in these markets.
SMEs in US and Europe tend to be 6 times as productive as these in Latin America – Faisal Laljee. This also related to the fact that many companies in Latin America still do cash transactions.
Having a local sales force is crucial in targeting these markets.
New products sold as utilities will penetrate the SME market easier. So stop selling them as total new inventions, sell them as useful additions to the SME.
Ride: The Next Wave for Local Ecommerce
Moderator: Simon Baptist – Director, Marketing EMEA – Adknowledge
Panel: Dave Scheine – Director of Operations of Yelp, Pankaj Chaddah, Co-founder and COO of Zomato Media, Tess Tucker – Group Digital Marketing Director of Just Eat and Lior Zaidner – Head of Marketing of GetTaxi
One of the best ways to enter the market is a unique content proposal/functionality.
Pankaj spoke about the case study of Zomato. He is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of this company.
Zomato entered India by being the only website offering photos of menus and dishes of meals. They went out into the market, spending every weekend scanning and publishing menus online. Slowly they developed the content proposal which filled a gap in the market. There was no one else there to bring standardised, moderated content to the user.
JustEat is another example of a company that ‘brought it all together’ by allowing people to order online. Previous to JustEat, some restaurants would not accept online payments. JustEat recognised this gap in the market and through their website allows customers to place orders with these restaurants and pay online via JustEast.
Key takeaways:
Local websites like Zomato become winners once consumers trust them. If you’re offering the menus of all restaurants, you better make sure they’re all correct and current.
Yelp created a programme where they recognise most active users and give them a special badge. Then they invited them to special events and initiatives, beta testing of features etc.
Yelp has many algorithms that checks how genuine your profile versus other profiles.
It’s better to create genuine content, genuine businesses processes that influence happy customers to submit genuine reviews, rather than creating shady tactics that result in short-lived reviews that in turn lead to short lived success.
Keynote & Fireside Chat with Foursquare
Speaker: Omid Ashtari – MD, Europe – Foursquare
Omid started by explaining the current proposition of Foursquare.
Check-ins are very high engagement types of interaction. You actually have to get up, go somewhere and say ‘I’m here!’ compared to just sitting your couch and pressing the ‘like’ button.
When Foursquare started, check-in was very unnatural. Nowadays it’s so natural that many mobile apps include it as part of their engine.
Foursquare explore currently shows you suggestions in new cities based on your past history – so if you always go to young hip places and then visit a new city, the suggestions will be based around that niche.
Similarly it reacts to weather so if it’s raining foursquare will not recommend a place with a rooftop terrace.
Current consumer challenge of foursquare is that everyone still sees it as a gaming check-in platform. It seems foursquare is going far into deeper functionalities and everyone choses what they exactly what to use it for. What it lacks currently is an actual profiling for different types of users.
Guest Blogger
Krystian Szastok is a Senior SEO Manager at a top UK digital agency: Jellyfish. Krystian is passionate about everything digital, keeping fit, newest mobile phones (and tech generally) and constant self-development.
When he’s not managing online campaigns and SEO processes he enjoys swimming, improving his productivity, juicing vegetables into tasty, healthy mixes and reading Terry Pratchett.
Post from Guestpost on State of Digital
Local Social Summit London 2013 #LLSS