SoLoMo, an acronym for social, local, and mobile, is a marketing approach that combines these three elements to effectively reach potential customers.
Because customers are more digitally connected than ever, it’s essential for businesses to include SoLoMo in their marketing strategy to stay competitive. In fact, recent studies show that 82% of consumers who use their mobile phones to help them shop use local search, meaning SoLoMo presents a significant opportunity for brands to connect with customers and increase brand awareness.
By understanding consumer behavior and leveraging location-based marketing, businesses can create highly targeted and effective marketing campaigns to deliver personalized experiences that resonate with users on a deeper level.
Here’s what you need to know to successfully add SoLoMo to your digital marketing strategy.
Related reading: Local SEO for Multi-Location Businesses: How to Dominate in Every City
SoLoMo: A New Marketing Dynamic
The modern marketing landscape is characterized by the convergence of social, local, and mobile marketing, and it’s a powerful force for brands seeking meaningful connections with their audiences.
To succeed in this environment, marketing teams must adapt by creating a dynamic and relevant customer experience. This means businesses must be aware of location-based applications such as Google Maps and Yelp, which allow consumers to rate and review their experiences.
A successful SoLoMo strategy that leans into these apps and platforms not only results in increasing business but also transforms consumer behaviors, leading to more informed and engaged customers.
Related reading: How to Sell in Today’s Market
Building a SoLoMo Mindset
At the heart of a SoLoMo marketing strategy is the customer experience, with consumers wanting to be part of the process. To achieve this, marketers must shift from a “sell” mindset to a “help” mindset—one that helps reduce friction for potential buyers, so they can more easily find, buy, and use products or services.
This new mindset for marketing teams is about providing relevant content to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions. By focusing on creating a dynamic and relevant customer experience that meets consumers’ needs, businesses can foster lasting, meaningful relationships.
Leveraging Your Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is a free tool that can help businesses reach consumers who may not know about them yet.
Dominating nearly 82% of the global search engine market share, investing in Google pays off. By optimizing a Google Business Profile, businesses can improve user experience and increase their visibility in local search results.
This platform allows businesses to connect with customers and provide relevant information about their products or services, making it a valuable tool for any business looking to enhance its online presence.
Creating a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy
A successful SoLoMo strategy requires a comprehensive marketing approach that balances the resources invested in social media, local search optimization, and mobile marketing.
To develop an effective strategy, businesses must first understand their target audience and create marketing campaigns that meet their needs. Marketing teams should use data collected from social media platforms and location-based marketing to inform their strategy.
With a well-rounded SoLoMo approach, businesses can increase brand awareness, customer loyalty, and ultimately, their bottom line.
Related reading: What is the Messy Middle? Here’s What Google Has to Say
SoLoMo for B2B and B2C
For SoLoMo, its true power lies in its ability to combine user preferences, location data, and social activity to deliver highly relevant, personalized content. By engaging in-the-moment users with location-based offers or tailored recommendations, brands can foster deeper connections that drive action.
By activating cross-channel integration, SoLoMo creates a cohesive experience across social platforms, search engines, and mobile apps. This happens when users discover a product while browsing Instagram, research it on the brand’s mobile-optimized website, and then receive a targeted email with a personalized offer based on their location and browsing history.
While SoLoMo is often associated with B2C industries like retail and hospitality, it also holds significant potential for B2B marketers, and for any business interested in event marketing. Consider a B2B software company using LinkedIn ads to target decision-makers in specific industries and geographic regions, then following up with personalized content and demos tailored to their needs.
For example, in the events space, SoLoMo can be a powerful tool for driving attendance and engagement. An entertainment company could use targeted geo-fenced ads to reach potential customers near an event venue where they’ve secured a booth that showcases their latest products, offering exclusive show specials. Similarly, a company in the financial and accounting sector could leverage SoLoMo to promote awareness and events, engaging potential attendees with real-time updates and personalized agendas delivered through a mobile app.
From CES to industry-specific conferences, SoLoMo offers endless opportunities for brands to connect with their target audiences in meaningful ways.
Related reading: How To Generate Buzz Around Your Brand at CES 2025: Lessons From Previous Years
Measuring SoLoMo Success
Measuring the success of a SoLoMo strategy involves tracking key metrics such as engagement rates, website traffic, and conversion rates.
Businesses must use social media analytics tools to monitor their engagement rates and adjust their strategy accordingly–- but don’t forget about dark social, which includes all the untraceable shares between consumers happening in DMs, messaging channels, emails, text, and more.
Related reading: B2B Social Media Marketing Strategies, a Curated Guide
A successful SoLoMo strategy can lead to a win-win situation for both businesses and consumers, as it helps brands better understand and serve their customers’ needs. By regularly measuring SoLoMo success, businesses can identify areas for improvement and continuously optimize their marketing efforts.
Social: Building Brand Awareness and Engagement
It’s no secret that social media platforms have transformed the way brands interact with their audiences. In fact, social media engagement is crucial for building relationships with customers and increasing brand awareness. And with over 5 billion users across major networks like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, social media offers unprecedented opportunities for reaching and engaging target demographics.
To maximize the impact of social media, businesses must use these platforms to engage with their target audience, respond to customer inquiries, and address comments. Here’s how:
3 Key Strategic Elements for Social Success
1. Community-First Content Strategy
Promotional content alone won’t cut it anymore. Modern social engagement requires moving beyond typical promotional content to create value-driven communities. Successful brands are those that:
- Encourage user-generated content through challenges, contests, and collaborative initiatives.
- Create content that resonates with local community values and interests.
- Develop social listening programs to understand community needs (and adapt accordingly).
- Implement regular community feedback loops to refine their social strategy.
2. Social Proof Integration
The power of social proof has become increasingly important in the digital age. Essentially, “social proof” indicates that your brand is trusted by others and delivers on its claims. To incorporate this into a SoLoMo strategy, smart brands are:
- Showcasing authentic customer stories and experiences
- Leveraging micro-influencers within specific communities
- Converting satisfied customers into brand advocates through ambassador programs
- Integrating real-time social reviews with local business profiles
3. Cross-Platform Social Ecosystem
While you don’t want to waste time on a platform that doesn’t serve your brand or doesn’t have many members of your target audience, a modern social strategy requires a holistic approach across multiple platforms:
- Creating platform-specific content that maintains brand consistency while respecting each platform’s unique culture
- Developing cross-platform campaigns that drive engagement across multiple touchpoints
- Building integrated social communities that complement local physical presence
- Using social insights to inform local marketing decisions
Innovative Implementation Approach: The Hub-and-Spoke Model
Think of your social strategy as a hub-and-spoke system where your brand’s central message (the hub) connects to various local communities (the spokes) through tailored social content. This approach allows for:
- Consistent brand messaging while maintaining local relevance
- Efficient resource allocation across social platforms
- Better tracking of social engagement metrics
- More effective community management
Social Listening and Response Framework
At the same time, you’ll need to be listening to your audience so your brand can remain nimble, responsive, and adaptable to relevant news and trends. For this, implement a structured social engagement approach:
- Monitor conversations about your brand across platforms.
- Analyze sentiment and identify trends in different local markets.
- Develop response protocols for different types of engagement.
- Create feedback loops that inform both social and local strategies.
Measuring Social Success in SoLoMo
When evaluating the effectiveness of your social strategy, consider these key metrics:
- Community Growth Rate: Track not just follower count, but meaningful community engagement.
- Social Sentiment: Monitor the tone and context of community discussions.
- Local Engagement: Measure how social activities translate to local business impact.
- Cross-Platform Performance: Analyze how different platforms contribute to overall goals.
Future Trends and Considerations
The social aspect of SoLoMo continues to evolve with augmented reality social experiences tied to local venues, AI-powered community management tools, and the integration of social commerce with local inventory. Also trending is greatly enhanced personalization, powered through social data analysis to foster meaningful conversations and authentic brand-to-customer relationships.
Local: Connecting with Customers in Your Backyard
Location-based marketing is at the heart of SoLoMo, allowing brands to reach customers in specific geographic areas, and for businesses with a physical store or location-based services, local search optimization is critical.
To attract more customers, businesses must optimize their website and online presence for local search. In addition to claiming and optimizing their Google Business Profile, businesses must consistently provide accurate information across all online directories. Leveraging other tools like local SEO strategies and geofencing enables businesses to connect with nearby customers at the right time and place.
Imagine a restaurant using geofencing to send a push notification with a special lunch offer to users within a 1-mile radius during the noon hour. This type of targeted, real-time engagement can drive foot traffic and boost conversions in powerful ways.
While investing in local search optimization can help businesses increase their online visibility and drive more foot traffic to their physical store, encouraging customer reviews on local search engines and amplifying user-generated content on social media can also help new customers discover a business and learn about it through the eyes and experiences of other customers.
Related reading: Boost Your Online Presence with Expert SEO Strategies
Mobile: Optimizing for the On-the-Go User
Mobile devices are influencing consumer behaviors in ways that were unimaginable only a few short years ago. With over half of all global web traffic now coming from mobile devices, businesses must prioritize mobile marketing strategies to effectively reach their target audiences.
SoLoMo strategies prioritize mobile-friendly websites, ads, and content to ensure seamless user experiences across devices. This means businesses should optimize websites for mobile, create mobile-friendly content, and leverage mobile-specific advertising channels like in-app ads and SMS marketing.
SoLoMo puts the mobile user first. We see this when ticketing companies or event spaces create mobile apps that allow users to easily purchase and access event tickets on their smartphones, streamlining the user journey. Providing a more seamless and personalized mobile experience results in greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Real-World Success: SoLoMo in Action
Curious to see some examples of SoLoMo succeeding in the wild? Read on!
Elation Lighting’s Viral Event Strategy
One compelling example of SoLoMo success comes from Elation Lighting. This renowned stage lighting company was preparing to unveil next-gen products at a massive industry event, and the brand sought support from Zen Media to generate interest and inspire attendees to visit their immersive experience booth. To accomplish this, our agency launched a SoLoMo entertainment lighting event campaign, which masterfully combined viral trends with hyper-local targeting to achieve remarkable results.
Leveraging Viral Trends with Industry Focus
The campaign demonstrated how brands can adapt mainstream social trends to niche markets:
- Identified trending social media content formats and reimagined them through the lens of entertainment lighting design
- Generated over 150,000 organic views by connecting popular cultural moments with specific industry pain points
- Created content that resonated with lighting designers while maintaining broad appeal
- Used industry-specific language and references that made the viral content feel authentic to the target audience
Pilot’s Community Engagement
Another exciting example of SoLoMo is a masterclass in harnessing the power of targeted local engagement for rapid results. Pilot, a comprehensive, expert bookkeeping and accounting firm for startups and small businesses, sought out Zen Media’s marketing pros to generate awareness, interest, excitement, and attendance for a local event they were hosting in less than 30 days for small business owners in Nashville, TN. To reach their goals, our agency developed a super-focused SoLoMo event campaign that helped Pilot’s event become a major success.
Hyper-Local Engagement Strategy for Pilot
For Pilot, our agency showcased the power of targeted local engagement with:
- Strategically crafted social content with region-specific language that spoke directly to potential attendees
- Real-time engagement with audience comments and questions
- Online-to-in-person conversions, helping drive enrollment
- Brand-building specific to the event and community, creating the foundation for long-term relationships with a growing community
Best Practices: Lessons Learned from Elation and Pilot
In both cases, the keys to success included:
- Studying trending content formats and adapting them to maintain industry relevance
- Focusing on geographic-specific engagement to drive local attendance
- Maintaining a professional tone while embracing social trends
- Prioritizing real-time interaction with the target community
- Creating content that serves both broad awareness and local conversion goals
Common SoLoMo Mistakes to Avoid
To ensure the success of SoLoMo efforts, businesses must avoid the following common mistakes:
Neglecting Mobile
Failing to optimize websites for mobile devices ignores a large percentage of potential customers and can lead to a poor user experience and high bounce rates.
Inconsistencies in Brand Identity
Maintaining consistent branding and messaging across different channels is critical to successfully implementing a SoLoMo strategy. When overlooked, this confuses customers and dilutes brand identity.
Ignoring Feedback
Additionally, businesses must not ignore customer feedback and reviews on social media platforms, as this can damage their reputation and discourage potential customers.
Forward-Thinking: The Future of SoLoMo Marketing
As more businesses adopt a comprehensive SoLoMo approach, the future of this marketing strategy looks bright.
Tapping into multiple channels across devices allows businesses to harness the strengths of social media, local targeting, and mobile optimization for more personalized experiences that match the evolving needs and preferences of their target audiences.
To stay ahead of the curve, businesses must stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in SoLoMo marketing. This includes leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze customer data, personalize marketing messages, and automate certain aspects of the marketing process. As consumer behavior continues to evolve, a deep understanding of these shifts and the ability to adapt location-based marketing strategies will be key to success.
By embracing the power of SoLoMo and staying attuned to the changing digital landscape, businesses can position themselves for long-term growth and success in 2025 and beyond. Is your brand ready to embrace the SoLoMo revolution? Contact us today to learn how our digital marketing experts can help you develop a winning SoLoMo strategy tailored to your unique goals and audience.
