How to overcome today’s shopping mall management challenges: Part VII

Actively engage via social networks

Socialization is very important in every person’s life. It is part of human nature to establish wider and profounder relationships one with another. However, the process of socialization has changed over the years. A big part of social life now takes place on the Internet, where you can find a number of various social networks. Nowadays people spend more time socializing through social networks than in reality. In the U.S. alone, the average time spent on Facebook per month is 114 billion minutes.[1] It is no secret that social networks are growing rapidly. The average time spent on social networks per user has grown by 32% since 2012. During the last 4 years, the number of social network users grew by 84,5% and is expected to grow by a further 36, 3% by 2018 (0.97 billion in 2010, 1.79 billion in 2014, 2.44 billion in 2018).[2] ComScore calculated that 20% of digital time spent is on social networks.[3] Unfortunately, most retailers, and also shopping malls themselves, do not use this opportunity by putting enough time and effort in engaging with consumers on social networks.

SOFT4 Ideas: 

 Social networks are a powerful marketing tool, and this does not refer only to paid advertising. With the social media, retailers have access to great consumer “databases”. One message on a social network can reach millions of consumers. Marketers should exploit the opportunities offered by posting, sharing, announcing and discussing.

Moreover, various competitions, such as photo boosts, or uploading pictures from some shopping mall, creating a song or video about the mall (you can do a fun context with Vine) and sharing it on social networks, are all excellent ways to involve consumers in the life of the shopping mall, engage with them and make them happy.

In addition, Facebook, Twitter, and similar-purpose social networks are not the only channels that can be used for social interaction and engagement with customers. 1 billion users use YouTube and videos are being watched 4 billion times per day. [4] YouTube is a powerful tool for sending a message, announcing events, promoting certain activities for the consumers and attracting them to choose one or the other shopping center. The same video competition results can be uploaded to YouTube for better traffic generation. Moreover, YouTube announced that they will soon start supporting 360 degree videos. Use this innovation as an additional tool to market your shopping mall. In this way, people could see what is happening not only from one person’s perspective, but also from all possible perspectives; in this way, they might want next time to be a part of the event, physically present in the mall.

This can also be a handy tool not only with customers, but also with your tenants, it is a perfect solution for virtual tours of properties. It will save time for the operators and tenants when choosing retail space in the mall.

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SOFT4, as a provider of software solutions for shopping centers and commercial property management companies, created the whitepaper which explains shopper behavior today, the trends, tendencies, and challenges, and give suggestions as to how shopping malls could react to the changing environment in order to stay competitive.

You can find the entire whitepaper athttps://www.slideshare.net/SOFT4/whitepaper-how-to-overcome-todays-shopping-malls-management-challenges and I will be over-viewing parts of it on LinkedIn Pulse.

[1] Business Insider, “Here's How Social Media Time-Spend Is Shaping Up, Now That Usage Is A Lot More Fragmented”, March 19, 2014

[2] Statista, “Number of social network users worldwide from 2010 to 2018 (in billions)”, 2015

[3] comScore, “Major Mobile Milestones in May: Apps Now Drive Half of All Time Spent on Digital”, June 25, 2014

[4] DMR, “By the Numbers: 60 Amazing Youtube Statistics”, January 2, 2015