Social Media Helping Small Businesses

Social Media is now part of every Marketing strategy and it has become a major part of it because of its cost-effective use. To actually take benefits out of the use of Social Media, small businesses have to know how to do it right. It’s not only having a fan page with a certain number of fans. It takes time to manage a Social Media Web Page. For example, a restaurant can send messages to its Facebook’s page fans around 11 a.m. describing the lunch specials. It would be a good way to connect with customers and promote the business at the same time. There is also one very important thing about using Social Media for business promotion: Know when it’s too much. Some businesses send too many messages or too many event invitations through Facebook or Twitter. These ones are crossing the line from being pleasant to being annoying.

John Jantsch, sponsored by Microsoft Office Live Small Business, created a guide to be used by small business on how to use social media.  When explaining what is social media in the context of the marketing strategy, the guide’s author compared the 4 Ps of Marketing where “you simply created a product, figured out how to price it, got it placed in the market, and promoted the heck out it” to the new approach to marketing, done by social media, which are the 4 Cs of Marketing : “Tons of relevant, education-based, and perhaps user generated content that is filtered, aggregated, and delivered in a context that makes it useful for people who are starving to make connections with people, products, and brands they can build a community around. Content + Context + Connection + Community = Social Media Marketing. “

Knowing how to use it well, Social Media can and already is helping small businesses with little or no budget for Marketing to promote its services and/or products. 

Measuring the effectiveness of Ads with the help of Neuromarketing

After reading professor’s Miyazaki’s blog post of the week I realized how many studies are out there about Neuromarketing.

The best thing about Neuromarketing is the possibility to measure the effectiveness of the advertisement proposed by a company. Marketers have been dreaming about the day when they would be able to measure  the ROI (Return on Investment) accurately when it comes to money spent on advertising. This day might have come or might be not too far from coming at this point. Before Neuromarketing, marketers had to rely on reports wrote by consumers about how they felt in relation to advertisements and what was their actions after observing the ads as well. When there is too much money involved, marketers cannot rely on these reports anymore. Now, there is a way to measure those actions in a much more accurate way: Studying and analyzing what happens inside of the consumers’ brains when they are being exposed to the ads. 

Is Social Media keeping teenagers from buying cars? I don't think so...

I have to disagree with Prof. Miyazaki’s blog post this week. I do not believe that the reason for the decrease of teenagers buying cars is Internet and social media use. Even thought teenagers spend a lot of time in front of the computer meeting new people and chatting with their friends, they still drive a car to go to school and go shopping for example. They might meet a lot of people online but they still meet with them in person to hang out. Just pay attention to the number of teenagers groups at the shopping malls, fast food restaurants and public parks during the weekends.

I did some research on car ownership by teenagers and I found out that some of the reasons for the decrease in the number of teenagers buying cars are lack of money for gas and insurance and the tougher restrictions on teen drivers. Due to the high unemployment rate, some teenagers who used to work before cannot find a job, and that is the reason why they don’t have access to the money to buy a car. 

Teenagers can spend a lot of time in front of their computers but they still need a car to get to the places they want and need to go such as work, school, shopping mall and friend's house.

Online governing is already changing the world

In response to Prof. Miyazaki's blog entry for this week, I would say that online governing is already changing the world. Many years ago, it would've been impossible to even consider the possibility of filling taxes online, for example. Something that most people look for professional help in order to do, can be done online, without an expert's help, simply by clicking on the right bottoms once at a time. 
In regards to the privacy of the constituent information, I did some research and also, from all I've read about the subject, I can say that up to this point, the government hasn't done much because laws concerning online privacy are still being developed. When providing personal information on the Internet, one has to be careful on how to disclose that information and also on where to provide that information to. Be aware that if a U.S. law is broken in another country, there is not much to be done since there is no international regulations for online users.
In regards to the efficient processing of the vast amount of information collected, stored, and disseminated online, I should say that I believe the government has absolute total control over all the information around its activities. There are many softwares being developed to help the government control and store information.
I don't think that the lack of face-to-face interaction between government agencies and the people they serve will affect the results of government actions because not everything can be done online. The most important and delicate situations will still be taken care of through on-site locations. 
Even with all the development of online government services, the main characteristic that government agencies share with its tax-payers will still be respect, and that was not built through online services.  

Nothing is free

After reading professor Miyazaki's blog post for this week, I did some research on e-Commerce, its business models and how to increase profitability for websites.

Well.. first I'm going to explain what is e-Commerce because I know that not only Marketing students are reading this... so.. Basically e-Commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet. It used to be called e-business, although some people still call it that way. 

Internet users don't usually think that there is a cost related to every Web Page they access. Even if it's a free service that is being provided, someone is paying for that. There are costs with the computers, softwares and also the maintenance of the Web Page (that takes a lot of time and expertise).

The growth of e-Commerce is just a reflection of the changes that are happening with communications and society’s lifestyle. Most people do everything online now: shopping, research, networking, even entertainment, just to name a few. With the fast-pass of today’s lifestyle, a lot of people don’t have the time to spend shopping at brick-and-mortar stores so; they do it all through the Internet.

Who doesn’t have an email account these days? And the majority of them are subscription-free. But, what most of these people don’t realize is that those companies are actually making a lot of money out of these ‘free’ services. All of us, as consumers, are paying for this in one way or the other.

Every website has a business model, just like any other type of business. And, after my research, I found what these models are. There are five main types of business models for e-Commerce, and they are:

Vanity: The simple, basic website, just like this blog. Usually used to express an individual’s ideas and thoughts. For example, a family website where they all post pictures and comments. There is no intention of revenue.

Billboard:  Where a marketer ‘promotes’ goods and services but they are being sold online. Just like a billboard on the street, where a lot of people get exposed to the product/service and become a potential buyer, for example. The website doesn’t bring revenue directly, but it’s purpose is to promote and create awareness in order to either increase or create revenue for a product or service.

Advertising: Websites where all programming is funded by advertising dollars. Very common these days, although the viewership is still hard to measure. Once a model is established to measure the exposure of the ads, this e-Commerce business model will be even more profitable.

Subscription: Where the user pays a certain fee to access the website.

Storefront: A website where a product is being sold to its users. It’s basically a ‘virtual store’ or an online version of a catalog. This is causing the supply chain to collapse because the consumers are getting the product straight from the manufacturer instead of passing it through the distributors and retailers, for example.  

Some websites combine more than one business model to achieve their goals. There are many ways to improve a website’s profit but I believe that this type of business still has a lot to develop and grow. 

Promoting a brand/product with the help of Google

Marketing a brand or a product can be very expensive. During this tough economy times, many companies are focusing on promoting their products online through search engines. Google provides a very efficient tool to promote a website/product/brand that is easy to manage and can have great results if done the right way.

The name of this 'tool' that I'm taking about is 'Google Adwords' and I decided to talk about it here on my blog because this week I found out that there are still many people in the marketing field who either do not know about it yet or do not know how to get results from it.

Google Adwords can be a great way to position a brand/product effectively, capture new and returning customers and promote on a limited budget. But, you are probably asking yourself now... How do I do this?

First of all, you need to establish your goals. You need to define what is the reason for the campaign because, as I mention earlier, Google Adwords can be a great way to position a brand/product, bring new customers or returning ones. So, establishing what do you want from the campaign should be the first step.

After you have established your goals, you need to decide how you want to do this: Whether is cost per click, monthly spend, sales or onsite time, for example. You can click here for more information on what exactly these tools are.

Then, the following step should be to create a Keyword List. The keywords should be those related to your brand/product in many different ways. For example, if what you are promoting is a steakhouse, some of your keywords can be fine dining, steakhouse, dinner in Miami, steak, just to name a few. A great tip is to include your competitors' name on your keyword list because potential customers who are looking for the same product or service will be exposed to your product. Google also helps you find some keyword ideas.

After all that is done, it will be time to get to work! Have some fun creating your campaign with Google Adwords and take the most out of it!

Advertising and the privacy of Internet users

In my opinion, most Internet users would click the icon to protect their privacy because the majority of people are becoming very concerned with privacy issues. Most Social Networks websites have been changing their privacy settings to make easier for the user to protect and choose who will be able to access his/her social network web page.

Will consumers have any clue of what this icon means? The answer relies on how this is going to be marketed to Internet users. Will advertisers create an awareness campaign to inform Internet users about this new informative ‘tool’ that will help them in regards to their privacy? If the advertisers are truly willing to make Internet users aware of their tactics to market their products, they will come up with a campaign.

Considering the crazy amount of information we are all exposed to these days, I do not believe that Internet users will spend much time reading to learn more about their privacy options. Not to mention that most people try to avoid clicking on ‘different/unknown’ websites with the fear of downloading a virus into their computers.