In the final class of Online Marketing we discussed email marketing. Email marketing is a form of direct mail, which uses electronic mail as a means of sending a message to an audience. Because email marketing is so cheap to conduct and it reaches such a wide audience it is often overlooked and difficult to distinguish between SPAM. I’m going to focus this blog on the challenges that marketers face with email marketing and how they can improve their changes that the message reaches and is read by the intended customer.

            Businesses started using email in the 1990’s and since then it’s become part of our everyday life in our workplaces and in our homes. Email is a more convenient form of communicating with one another. From a marketing perspective however, it’s fast, effective, cost effective. The people you are contacting are consumers that have signed up to receive your emails and are interested in you products and services. The return on investment is phenomenal and said to be $57.25 for every $1 spent on email marketing.

            However, marketers face challenges such as collecting email addresses that are legitimate, getting the emails to recipient, getting them to open them once they get them, and finally keeping an eye out for new forms of technology and trends. Markets have to be extremely cautious on how they obtain their client’s email addresses, because if they buy them from a third party they are violating PIPEDA. They can obtain these email addresses by simply asking the potential customers if they’d like to receive emails and ask their permission to send them information. According to Implied By Design site, suggests that it’s important for the customers to Opt-In themselves and not have the box already checked. Maintenance should also be kept so recipients are also able to unsubscribe themselves from the list at anytime. Joe Soltis’s video also suggests that continual maintenance and upkeep be kept making sure the appearance of the message is revitalized and refreshed to match the website and contents.

           There are always new forms of electronic communication opportunities that markets have to keep an eye out for. Recently RSS feeds have become increasingly popular and may even replace email marketing. Users can subscribe to RSS feeds and receive automatic updates right to their Blackberry. Although Simon Wakeman argues that RSS feed won’t replace email marketing until it goes mainstream. In the upcoming years it will be more likely that more sites will have RSS feeds for subscribers and until the majority of the population have Smartphones, RSS feeds won’t catch on as quickly. Marketers have to figure out a way to make RSS feeds more personalized towards customers. 

Think about how many times a day you’re bombarded with advertisements and commercials everyday. From the time you wake up and hear the radio ads, to reading the local newspaper during breakfast, then seeing all the buses plastered with advertisements as you drive to work, and so forth. On average a person is exposed to over 3,000 ads per day. That is an outstanding number considering we aren’t aware of many of these and subconsciously ignore and block out these advertisements.  What are advertisers to do, when they spend millions of dollars with advertising and are often over looked? This is a great concern because the traditional ways of advertising does not yield the same results as web advertising. I’m going to focus my blog on the new ways of marketing for the future.

No longer are billion dollar companies advertising using tradition media alone or the web. There has been a media shift into using social media. Mobile marketing is the new form of advertising using the mobile phone. Most people have some sort of mobile device and ever since Short Messaging Service (SMS) has become available more companies have been collecting phone numbers and sending wanted and unwanted content.

There are many benefits of this new form of mobile marketing because the audiences are targeted and messages can be personalized. Many of the mobile marketing campaigns are opt in, therefore making them more effective than other forms of advertising. Also because people carry their mobile device everywhere they go and it’s more likely they read the message sent to them than the email sent to their PC.

There is a privacy concern with this new form of advertising. Mobiles are personal and for so long we have been about to stay clear of telemarketers and ads but this is about to change. There is a general concern of receiving advertising messages on your personal mobile device. But the biggest concern is the low usage of  WAP based mobile search to support investment in creating mobile sites.

Mobile marketing is a great way for your company to generate buzz about your product/service when you’re in the buying process. According to Netregistry, companies have to be careful of how they advertise depending on whom they are targeting. When it’s teens and young adults, then mobile marketing is the best way to go. Neilson Mobile’s research shows that mobie text messaging has increased by over 450% in the past two years! Teens alone send and receive 1,700 text messages monthly with, 18-24 year olds sending and receiving 790 per month. It is clearly evident that mobile marketing is a way of the future.

In one on the final lecture classes of Online Marketing we looked at search engine advertising. With the power of the Internet so readily available for consumers to research and purchase whatever they want without leaving their own home, it is important for companies to understand how to provide exposure for their business. Owning a business it is almost essential to have a website to accompany with for customers to visit. Companies want to be on the first page of search engine because it’s a better chance that potential customers will actually find and click on their link. This unit we primarily focused on buying keywords for your advertisement link so when users type in specific words into Google, your advertisement will appear on the first page of results.

The tool is called, Google Adwords and it works by you choosing keywords or phrases that will serve as a “triggers” to make the ad appear.  The Google text advertisement is short one title line and two content text lines with a display URL at the bottom. Adword Ads appear on the Google search page and on thousands of affiliate sites that contain contents that is similar to the keywords that the advertiser has selected. The advantage of this is you’re advertising to a market that is already interested in you. The Adwords tool also has several functions, including offering keyword suggestions, keyword search volume, keyword competition, along with providing information of the average CPC bid for each keyword.

Adwords is an excellent marketing tool for businesses of any size. Advertisers are able to create daily budgets and specify the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click (PPC). Once the daily budget has been used the site ceases for the day.

Google Adwords also features Geo-targeting. This allows PPC advertisers to target a specific continent, country, city, or region to display their ads. Geo-targeting is a very effective tool because it narrows down the redundant spending time and restricts unwanted users from clicking on your ad. For example, you own a dog grooming business in Nanaimo and only want to target dog owners living in Nanaimo only and not people living in Europe or Asia. This video sums up how Geo-targeting is one of the more effective ways of target advertising by geographical location.

Google Adwords is an excellent source for businesses to use for their advertising and marketing. Especially in the competitive market they are in. It allow businesses to keep on top of advertising and for them to set their own advertising budget. It also filters out the unwanted users from your advertisement.

This week in Online Marketing class we explored the two elements of search marketing; search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine advertising. Search engine optimization is the process of improving the amount of traffic to a web site from search engines thru organic search results. Which returns results by indexing pages based on context and keyword relevancy throughout the site. Search engine advertising on the other hand, earns its top placing position on search engines thru paid placement. This blog is going to focus on why companies choose to use organic searches.

When people want to buy a high involvement product they usually use search engines first as research and as a source of data collection. They already have the product in mind so when they type it into a search engine, such as Google thousands of page results appear and usually only the first few are visited. WebProNews states that 78% of web users abandon their search if the first 3 pages don’t provide information on what they are researching, and 28% don’t scroll past the 2^nd page of results. This is why it is important for companies to find their way on the first page of search engines.

One article argues why organic searches are better then paid searches. The first reason argues that organic search will have a greater click thru rate with in depth relevancy than a sponsored link. Secondly, power of branding makes sure your company’s name is positioned at the top to give the sense of importance. Finally, submitting to Google is free so why not get some exposure on the most popular search engines? People are willing to trust organic searches more than sponsored because the information is less bias and commercially motivated.

To remain on the first page in search engines, companies have to maintain keyword positioning throughout their web sites. Although this constant maintain is timely it assures your company is up to date and par with the other company’s sites. It may take several months to get the top position on the search engine and therefore awhile before traffic is created so keyword choice is very important! The organic searches are more trusted and known to be clicked on more often than paid results. Although, choosing between organic search and paid placement depends on what you are selling; if the product is inexpensive then paid placement would not be worth it.

This week we studied public relations in marketing. The main goal of public relations is to enhance the company’s reputation. Public relations provide service for the company in helping to give the public and media a better understanding of how the company works. They also help the company to achieve its full potential. They provide feedback to the company from the public. It usually takes the form of research regarding what areas the public is most happy and unhappy with. According to the article, working in public relations can be very stressful and organization skills are an asset; it’s an ongoing activity to ensure the organization has a strong public image.

According to the news broadcast, Ed Lamoro explains that the world of marketing has shifted, and over the next 5 years we are expected to see more change in marketing than we’ve seen in the last 50 years. This is due to the fact of the Internet. The Internet has changed how organizations communicate and how we communicate; we live in a ‘tell me, don’t sell me world.’ Everything in marketing is conversational and in order to be successful marketers are realizing they have to build a product that people want to talk about or come up with a campaign that causes people to talk about what you have.

 Public relations’ supports marketing by building product and the company image. AKA Publicity. But, there are other stakeholders the companies reached through public relations function, such as employees and non-target market groups. Many people have the perception of people with jobs in public relations to have a glamorous job; constantly partying and networking. But the fact is, it’s long hours and hard work in this sector.

In this weeks lecture we learned about viral marketing. Viral marketing is a phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along the marketing message; kind of like a virus would replicate itself. Viral marketing depends on a high pass along rate from person to person. It can create a “snowball effect” if a large percentage of people send the message along very quickly. It can also have a negative response if the message moves around too slows the message can quickly fizzle. This type of marketing is a great way to build buzz and recognition quickly while reaching a wide range of people for a relatively low cost. My blog is going to discuss if viral marketing is effective or a nuisance.

Videos and internet websites are the most effective internet platforms for viral internet marketing but is it an effective way to market? Viral marketing has been around for more than a decade and it depends on the audience to spread the word along with the message in order to survive.  These campaigns only work 15% of the time because people are bombarded with ads constantly and often ignore them and block them. Seth Godin’s article argues that viral marketing is not the same as word of mouth because work of mouth eventually fades. Viral marketing on the other hand spreads like a virus throughout the population. Unless the creator of the viral video designs something different and attractive it will not be passed on to others for viewing. Older people are more inclined to forward virals to friends or use word of mouth, while the younger crowd use social networking sites.

Here is a viral video on YouTube that has been passed around to over 5 million viewers that brings awareness for cyclists on the road. This video is very effective because it’s short, gets the viewers involved and than at the end tells you what they are advertising for. For viral marketing to work it has to build some sort of interest for the audience. As this article states when virals are sent to others its given the stamp of approval from their friend, so word of mouth is key!

Viral marketing is very effective because the price is relatively low and research on the audience is not needed. The Viral will be sent among people with common interests, who with in turn voluntarily forward it to their friend. With internet and YouTube so popular, viral marketing can be found everywhere and shared more easily. It is no wonder many companies are using web sites and videos on YouTube for virals. Using the web is an excellent source of reaching your audience but creating an effective viral that creates lots of buzz is difficult.

This week in lecture we focused on researching and planning an effective web presence. Creating an effective web site is a very difficult and grueling process.  It can potentially be the only contact that a customer has with the company and the primary reason for the visit is to assess the company and it’s offering.  Sites have many purposes, but the main function is to convince consumer spending. When people want to research a company or particular product they use the Internet because it is so convenient and informative.

With the internet usage so readily available it is no wonder all the companies have hopped on the web presence bandwagon. Nveevo’s Blog explains it’s become a more cost effective way to trade worldwide and to find your global market niche. On way to stand out from other organizations sites is to offer more customer service or added value, which is a great solution to low the hiring of additional employees.

Company, Pixel Bridge says, “content is still the number one reason why people return to their favorite sites.” The company argues that for successful web presence the site should focus on 3 important criteria; impression, information and interactivity. Such as the usability, navigation throughout the site, and organization of each page. Web designers have to keep in mind how the visitors found information and what they see when they get there. If the site does not relate to what the visitor expects or it difficult to use then they will leave.

This video found on YouTube encourages online videos to enhance your web presence. The majority of people use the internet as a medium to find a solution and if they can’t find it in the first couple of paragraphs they are on to the next site. This video argues why would people spend 10 mintues reading an article with they could watch a video that tells them the same thing in just 3 minutes. They believe the best way to get your point across is through video and audio.

Effective web sites provide the best opportunity for organizations to communicate their proposition to interested parties. Investing in an effective web presence has a positive payout. Visitors should be able to find the information they are looking for quickly that is concise and effective. Conversely, an ineffective site will likely lead to diminished sales and low customer satisfaction. It is not easy to develop an effective web presence, a lot of research and understanding is needed of your target audience.

This week in lecture we discussed web analytics and learned different methods of measuring websites success. Selling online is a more difficult business than selling at a physical store because of the all factors that you have no control over. It is harder than ever to market online because the playing field is saturated with competitors. Marketers now have to go beyond what the customers want and take it one step further into understanding their needs and expectations. This problem can be accomplished using web analytics as a solution provider.

The web provides marketers with huge amounts of information at virtually no cost at all. They can then use this information to understand what their target consumer’s needs are and hopefully optimize their own sites towards this. Web analytics is the study of consumers’ online behaviour in order to improve the sites. It measures the journey of the visitor once on your website. Marketers can see where on the website the visitor came from, how long they spent on each page, where they left the site, and where the shopping carts were abandon. This data can then be used to improve the website or marketing campaign’s audience response. Marketers can also use this valuable information to help improve their search engine optimization.

There are two types of analytic solutions; server based and browser based. Server based automatically generates first party server log files. While the browser based uses JavaScript code embedded on each html page to let each third party server know each time the web page it loaded on a web browser.There are many web analytics solution providers such as WebTrends, Google Analytics, and ClickTracks. All three of these analytics except Google Analytics offer both server and browser based solutions.

Although the information is collected from users unknowingly there is a sense of privacy that is broken. Though the information collected provides marketers with unbiased opinion. The fact remains that users can no longer visit a website and feel as if their every move is being tracked and recorded. It is still convenient when you log in to your everyday site and all your favorite products appear.

Over the past decade internet and computer usage have become embedded as part of our everyday lives. We’ve become dependant upon them for our work, school, and personal use. The convenience of internet access has exponentially skyrocketed to the point where you no longer need to sit in front of your computer to check your email. Blackberrys, cell phones, and laptops are just a click away from revealing your lunch date has been pushed back an hour. 

The increase of internet usage leads me to write about our online privacy. When you stop for a second and think just how much of your personal information is out there it’s shocking. We provide it so freely and nonchalantly  to sources that we don’t even know. This personal information is collected and sold to other companies who then can use it for whatever purpose they wish. Think those loyalty cards store give away for free are actually for your own benefit? Companies now know everything about your consumer habits, right down to the number of people in your household to the brands you purchase. Once the information is made public it is hard to erase. So next time you go shopping think again if it’s actually a reward or threat? 

This video called “Online Privacy Threatened” explains very well that online privacy is a thing of the past and as long as money is on the line, collection and use of data will continue, it’s up to the consumer to protect their privacy. Companies are finding solutions to build trust and confidence with consumers to prevent security threats and abandon transactions. This recent press release shows the new solutions of Verisign and RatePoint to help gain that confidence needed by consumers that their site is ‘trusted.’

Sites such as Google and Amazon use cookies when visiting their site and remember what you searched for in the past. They then use that information and the next time visiting the site advertisements appear on your screen for similar item you have searched for in the past that might spark your interest. Google makes billions of dollars off of your information just from these advertisers.

The Canadian government also stepped in, creating PIPEDA (Personal Information and Protection Electronic Documents Act) in 2004. This required all businesses and organizations to identify the purpose of the information about to be collected and have the consent of the individuals. In addition, the personal information has to be secure and cannot be made public. This doesn’t mean all businesses are going to abide by this legislation especially in the online world, so it’s up to the consumers to protect their information and privacy.