Smart Watches But on Steroids is the Future
Facebook just announced that they are building a smartwatch that will focus on messaging and health tracking, potentially powered by Google’s Android OS in order to compete against the Apple Watch. Smart watches’ technology isn’t novel or exciting. But, I do believe that Facebook is going even further with their wearables, and it involves Main Street, e-commerce payments, and loyalty reward cards.
Before we dig in, we need to understand some things: First, we need to get more creative with how we rebuild the economy and our local business ecosystem post COVID-19. We need to be innovative and embrace technology, or else profits will drop like a rock tossed in the lake. Businesses need to build their infrastructure for the future, not for today. They need to predict customer needs and adjust.
Consumers are behaving like it’s 2030. The adoption of contactless payments and e-commerce happened swiftly. Businesses were forced to figure out overnight entire new biz models. Communicating those changes overnight was a major hurdle. Your audience and consumers are smart, they’re savvy, they can adjust to new things as long as they are gradually updated. We need to bridge the gap between Main Street and Silicon Valley.
During the first wave of COVID, COMMS/NATION formed multiple local business coalitions to monitor the evolving issues facing small businesses.
Here are top-line items we found:
New Service Offerings Using Tech (Creating Extensions to your Biz Model)
Consumer Confidence Increased Use in Tech (Different Ways to Pay)
Awareness Issues For Customers (Ensuring Your Customer Stays Up-To-Date)
These findings make perfect sense as to why smartwatches are going to soon become a Small Business's best friend.
Sales and interest for Smart watches made by Garmin, Fitbit, Apple, Samsung are on an intense rise.
From the Google Trends tracker, historically you can see that there is a steady increase of searches that traditionally only happens during holidays and back to school time led by Southern and Mid Western states. Why?
A fitness tracker is the only way to measure that you’re maintaining some sort of healthy lifestyle during the winter months trapped indoors. The tracker switches to an accessory bonus for the warmer months, where messaging and scheduling become the main focus.
People use the wearables for different reasons throughout the year. Which, I’m sure Big Tech hopes that users would just be consistent in their reasoning and usage. But… humans are fickle and think cyclical.
So, what does this have to do with your small business and Main Street?
People need to move in order to hit the recommended daily steps. This means, they walk around their neighborhoods at all times of the day. But, because more people are working from home, I’ve noticed that more people are walking in pairs and exploring their communities together. This includes the increase of dog owners during the pandemic (yes, I’m counting dog and dog owners as pairs too).
This presents an opportunity for local communities. Maybe an incredible renaissance for coffee shops, bookstores, speciality stores and local collective artisan shops. YOUR TIME HAS FINALLY COME!
Since everyone is talking about mass exoduses out of cities. Let’s focus on where people are temporarily relocating… suburbs.
In the suburbs there is green grass and more space to move. City dwellers are very social. They will bring that sociability to the neighborhoods who are friendlier and WANT to get to know their new neighbors.
This means that small businesses need to get involved in their local communities. It’s essential to their business. Even if your business is in your home or exclusively online. Getting involved in your local community will increase awareness, build local relationships, and make you happier. How do we do that in 2021? Social media.
What Does it matter if Facebook does a watch?
Short answer: FB needs to change up their business model. The Facebook platform is known as the go-between for small business owners and their customers. But, most small biz owners soon find that buying ads on FB are just not effective, but don’t really have a choice. Also, with all of Facebook’s mounting legal antitrust issues means that they need to find a new way to bring value to small business owners -- other than just telling you to buy ads. Enter in the smart watch.
If your customer can pick up their item, pay, like your store’s profile in a millisecond at the swipe of a watch...this makes the buying experience for everyone involved effortless. And, we all know what smooth buying experiences mean -- MORE RETURNED CUSTOMERS!!