For internet marketers and businesses alike, 2012 promises to be a movin’, shakin’ year for all organic, social and mobile trends! Despite the tough economic climate in 2011, the rabid run toward strategic mobile marketing as a primary retail sales tool continues unabated with updated analytics, tools and apps.

The growth curve and development of retail-focused mobile marketing is huge, particularly in generating  that retail sale in near-real time!  Push marketing and hyper-local ads with a social media support structure, along with emerging apps like Google Wallet make it easier than ever to search, shop and spend on the go. The benefit to consumers? Competition and price comparisons work in their favor in a big way, not to mention ease and convenience.  The benefit to retailers? Buying everything from a new phone to a gift card to a slice of pizza becomes simpler and more intuitive via your phone, providing opportunities to capture both impulse buyers and smart-search consumers.

It seems that social media has now entered the “public trading” stage, with:

• Google Plus giving Facebook a real run for the money this time around
• Social image sites like Pinterest capturing a big chunk of our online enthusiasm
• Linked In becoming the “Who’s Who” of professionals and companies, garnering information on people and corporate profiles that boggles the mind

Oh yeah…and who would have though that cool QR code would be considered old-fashioned or quaint quite so soon?

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Have you heard about Google+ Pages for Businesses yet? Google is continuing to move steadily into the social media realm! Similar to Facebook fan pages – you can now create a page on Google to help brand your business. Add photos, links, videos and more to help promote your products and services. Although it seemed to have gotten off to a slow start, more and more companies are getting on board – here’s an example of Pepsi’s page:

Whether you’re a mom and pop store or a Fortune 500 brand, we highly suggest getting one now (and do it quick before your competitors find out about it!)

Here are the Top 7 Reasons to Get Google Plus for Business Now:

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This Saturday, November 26^th is the Second Annual Small Business Saturday. This is a day dedicated to supporting small businesses during the unofficial launch to the holiday shopping season. The Saturday following Black Friday is, after all, one of the busiest shopping days of the year. So if you are a small business, you will want to do what you can to take advantage of this national campaign!

To help you promote your small business there is a website with some nice marketing tools. SmallBusinessSaturday.com has tools that may be of use to your business including:

• Printable signage to put in your store window
• An email you can send to your client list promoting the day
• Content for your Facebook Wall and Twitter Feed

The idea behind Small Business Saturday is that if each customer buys just 1 item from a small business, it will have an enormous impact on small business as a whole. And consumers do want to help small, local businesses for a number of reasons: local jobs, their local economy and the uniqueness of many local business products.

So take advantage of this nationally promoted day (you have seen the commercial, right?) and some of the promotional tools available to your small business to increase sales and traffic for your business. And once Saturday passes, start planning for next year’s Small Business Saturday to drive even more sales.

Are you on Twitter? (We are, follow us @mannixmarketing) If you’re not, I suggest you try it out. Many of you are probably rolling your eyes and asking yourself, “Why learn another social network?” or, “What can Twitter do that Facebook can’t?” In a nutshell, Twitter can easily connect you to industry experts, world news, and even your favorite celebrities, where Facebook connects you with people you know. There are some exceptions to this with the new subscribe feature on Facebook, but Twitter is still winning the game in this respect.  You don’t have to have a mutual relationship on Twitter, you just pick who you want updates from, and you can tweet to anybody.

Consumers use Twitter for many different reasons. Some tweet to their favorite celebrities, asking questions that may be answered by the celebrity, or anyone else that views the tweet (most tweets are public). Some tweet to their favorite sports radio show, hoping to get mentioned on the air, or get a retweet. Some don’t tweet at all, and just follow their favorite accounts looking for breaking news stories, or updates on Kim Kardashian’s latest marriage. Corporations use Twitter to announce new products and/or updates for old products. Marketers tweet about upcoming events, or promote new products and services to their followers. There are many ways to utilize Twitter, and everybody does it differently.

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So…what about Google Wallet?  Is it creepy or cool? Is it the logical next step in the mobile march for dominance in the world of marketing, or is it just too far over the Google-wants-to-own-me line? We’re all comfortable with fun and useful mobile apps that give directions, tell us where to eat, shop, train for a marathon or count our calories.  We can be served all the information, ads, coupons and suggestions our battery will allow.  Now, with Google in our wallet, we can just give it over completely and surrender our personal and financial profiles to the internet giant. Really?

The recent video of the Google Bots (aka employees) filtering into stores wearing Google T-shirts and paying for customer purchases suggests a world of consumer ease…one tap shopping for everything from sodas to clothing. Too good to be true? It looks sort of like some strange sort of college sociology class doing an end of semester social experiment. Read the rest of this entry »