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Monday, November 30, 2009

What is Viral Marketing?

One of my favorite viral marketing campaigns is the "Will it Blend" series by Blentec a division of K-Tec. Had you ever heard of Blendtec blenders before they started blending everything from crowbars, golf balls, marbles and glow sticks? This is a brilliant example of how viral marketing works, generating millions of views by word of mouth promotion and accessing an individual's clusters, networks, friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances.

Brand recognition and recall is an integral part of Internet Marketing. Attention and awareness is gained by the off-beat, unusual or something different. Viewers flock to YouTube and views jump up to two million or more within a day or two. The cleverness of the Blendtec campaign comes from the hidden message that if Blendec blenders can blend all of these items, then surely it will blend our icy drinks or food. The "Will it Blend" series of videos have created strong and favorable associations to the brand. Through identification and differentiation, consumers can perceive that the product will meet their expectations.

A brand image is a subjective mental picture of a brand, shared by a group of consumers. The components of a brand include content, strength and favourability. Viral marketing and guerilla marketing are two excellent  techniques to use for new companies or, when marketing budgets cannot compete with well-established 50+ year brands such as, Coca-Cola or Proctor and Gamble. Generally the size of marketing budgets are set relative to competition in an industry or product category. Options for lower budget marketing are less expensive than the standard consumer advertising methods of print, broadcast, or outdoor. Below the line promotions have the following benefits for both online and off-line marketers:
  • Creates store presence
  • Use trade push promotions
  • Create inducement for trial and purchase
  • Used as a form of trade advertising
  • Enhances the brand name and packaging
  • Develops familiarity and awareness
  • Creates image transfer
I'm an " iPhone" user and fan so we'll watch this video.



Getting Rich Quick on the Internet?

Getting rich quickly from the Internet is less probable, yet not impossible, than during the tech boom of the late 1990's. I wanted to share some amusing videos about Zoobie and his experiences.



 

Make Money Online

Have you ever Googled "make money online"? This search generates 156,000,000 (million) web pages!!! As the Internet has grown exponentially, it has gone through the early adopter and rapid growth stages of the product life cycle. It has now entered the beginning of the maturity stage for industrialized countries, as market penetration has exceeded over 60%. However, the Internet is dynamic and many opportunities exist and new ways of "making money online" will arise as only approximately 15% of the total world population of 6.8 billion is online.



In 2004, John Reese released his "Traffic Secrets" course and sold an astounding 1 million copies for $1,000 each within 24 hours of its' release. Traffic Secrets 2.0 was released in July, 2009 but the platform of the website is still in the process of being changed to a new, free Internet Marketing Resource. I did notice that he will be selling courses. In order to shorten the learning curve for a new Internet Marketer courses such as this are a valuable tool. For most of us though we won't generate $10 million in sales overnight by becoming an Internet Marketer. We have to have due diligence, put in time and effort, like any business requires to gain customers or listeners.

Tips for Information Search




Internet Marketing Information Overload!!

Have you ever Googled "Internet Marketing" or "Online Marketing"? For Internet Marketing 114,000,000 (million) results appear. For "Online Marketing  its worse, 138,000,000 (million) results appear. How do you get to the information you want, quickly? Most of the information is re-generated and re-worded in all these millions of web pages which can be rather overwhelming I might add. When conducting your search look for the following:
  • Know specifically what you are looking for..
  • Look for industry leaders
  • Avoid sites that try to sell you information
  • Search in industry related association websites. Industry associations have the latest news and trends related to a specific industry.
  • Use information portals such as, Science Daily or Business Week.
  • Use top rated blogging sites. Portals such as Technorati will lead you to top blogs including The Huffington Post (news) or Mashable (social media
  • Industry related journals and e-magazines.
  • Use only trusted sources.
Good luck in your search!

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Internet Marketing Business Models

Before you open up your "online business" you must choose an appropriate business model in order to determine and incorporate the business activities that you will undertake on a daily basis. People are so busy focusing on Internet Marketing buzzwords such as, SEO, pay per click, keywords, meta tags, paid inclusion and social networking that you must back up one step and choose a business model. Choosing the right business model for your product or service is essential for success. From there, your business and marketing plan will then evolve.

The following is a list of Internet business models :
  • Merchant Model - Wholesalers, distributors and retailers that sell products or services.
  • Direct Sales by a Manufacturer – A manufacturer that sells directly to the consumer. The manufacturer can track buying habits and determine customer tastes and preferences.
  • Manufacturer Service Model – A manufacturer who uses the Internet to provide customer service in order to reduce costs and support sales growth.
  • Subscriptions – Customers must subscribe to a site and pay a fee in order to gain access to the website’s content or services. The advantage is that subscribers will be highly involved customers. The disadvantage is getting users to pay a fee when substitutes are available at no cost.
  • Utility Model – Where a customer pays as they go or when demanded for a fee. The advantage for the user is that they have to pay for the content requested.
  • Infomediary – An Internet site that generates revenue by gathering information about people’s buying habits and then rates online merchants. The online merchants then pay for that information.
  • Licensing – Where a customer pays a fee to download or use a software package.
  • Advertising – Where an advertiser pays a fee to place an advertisement on a website. These include banner ads, preferred listings, pop up and text ads that generate revenue by clicking through. To be effective high volumes of website traffic is needed. Banner advertising is the least effective method. Google Adwords are very effective.
  • Affiliate Marketing – Where two websites collaborate in order to drive sales by banner and other advertisements. The affiliate is the middle-person between the retailer and the customer. The retailer is able to reach new, potential customers through the affiliate’s networks, friends, and family. The retailer pays the affiliate for promoting their products and services when a customer clicks through an affiliate’s advertisement or complete a purchase a product or service. A common practice of affiliate marketing is to publish personal reviews about products and services.
  • Community – Where people with similar likes, interests and hobbies create a community site in order to share information and create a sense of belonging. Or it could be a site featuring information about a town, city or municipality.
  • Brokerage Sites – A site that brings buyers and sellers together to facilitate business exchange and transactions by either a virtual mall, classified advertising, market exchanges, auctions, reverse auctions, order fulfillment or search sites.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The History of the Internet

The origin of the Internet dates back to July, 1968 where a request for quotation was sent out to build components for a new computerized network by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). On October 29, 1969, the first host to host connection was made between two network nodes, one at the University of California (UCLA) and Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

A network of computers was developed by the U.S Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Each computer was given an exclusive address and could communicate with another computer, by its identifying address. The purpose of the new network called the “ARPANET” was for researchers, academics and military personnel to communicate and share research with each other. Commercial use was entirely restricted until 1994.

The data was transmitted across the network by packet switching where data is broken into smaller segments called “packets” and the packets are disassembled, transmitted individually in a stream and then reassembled when they reach the destination. Packet switching was being developed in 1964. As the computers during the late 1960's and early 1970's had no common platform and used different technologies, a standard set of protocols called Transmission Control Protocol was developed. A protocol is a set of special rules that telecommunication connections use in order to communicate from a sending to a receiving point. Each end point that had the set of protocols installed, as they exist at different levels including both hardware and software, was able to understand the contents of a data transmission. Although different types of computers existed, any computer that contained the protocols could transmit data to another. In 1978, TCP was split into two protocols, TCP and Internet Protocol, which are commonly known as TCP/IP. This was declared in 1983 to become the standard used for network communications.

As of December 1969, The University in California (UCLA), Stanford Research Institute (SRI), University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Utah were the first four hosts connected to the ARPANET by an Interface Message Processor (IMP), which was a Honeywell DDP-516 mini computer with 12K of memory. Provided by AT&T, the line speed was 50 Kbps.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) was developed in 1963, in which 128, 7- bit strings made up of different combinations of zeros and ones that represent each letter of the alphabet, punctuation marks, symbols etc. Email and the “@” symbol (user@host), in addresses were introduced in 1971. Remote access using “Telenet” (a public packet switching service) was developed in 1974. Multiple person chat sessions were introduced in 1973 and that same year users could download files through a file transfer protocol (FTP). Ethernet for connecting local area networks (LAN's) was being developed by Xerox. Email became the preferred method of communicating in which email comprised of 75% of all ARPANET traffic. By 1975, average daily traffic exceeded three million packets per day with sixty-one computers connected.

In 1977, new computers were announced including the Tandy TRS-80, Commodore Pet and the Apple II computer. Microsoft developed DOS, a disk operating system which was selected by IBM in 1980, to operate the IBM PC that was launched for sale in August, 1981. Japan started to mass produce inexpensive 64kb micro-computer chips creating a highly competitive environment for North American chip manufacturers. The backbone software for Novell networking was created in 1982 from a computer software game. Coaxial cabling used for connecting micro-computers to mainframes was introduced for sale the same year.

The Domain Name System (DNS) was introduced in 1984 as the ARPANET was split into two parts the previous year. The ARPANET remained for public users and the MILNET for military and defence users. Some of the first domain names registered was bbn.com, mit.edu, css.gov, .uk. Hosts registered using either .gov, .edu, .org, .net, .com or two letters to indicate a country. Ethernet was commercialized and Sun Microsystems introduced a workstation with built in networking capability and the Unix operating system that included TCP/IP. In January 1984, Apple Inc. announced the Apple Macintosh computer with a unique, user friendly interface. Compaq Computers introduced its' first personal computer in 1985.

By 1985, there were two thousand users on all networks. By the end of 1987 there were nearly thirty thousand users as the NSFNET was created to replace the ARPANET with a backbone speed of 56Kbps. Five supercomputer centres hosted the network and by 1988 the backbone speed was upgraded to T1 (1.544Mbps) and again to T3 (44.736Mbps) in 1991. The first worm infected six thousand out of sixty thousand hosts (The Morris WORM) on the network in 1988.

CA*net was formed in Canada in 1990 by linking twenty regional networks as a national Internet backbone in order to connect directly with the NSFNET. The internet backbone is a communications system in which the foundation is a fibre optic cable system that centrally connects a section of the Internet network. Tim Berners Lee a developer for The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), wrote the Hypertext Transfer Protocol language (HTTP) system that is able run on different operating systems. It is a set of rules that enables the exchange of hypertext files including text, graphics, sound and video. CERN launched the first web server in November, 1990. The world wide webwww” was released in 1991 and the number of hosts rose to 1.1 million within one year.

As of 2010, the global Internet population online is 1.83 billion and is expected to grow to 2.10 billion by 2012. These figures were gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency’s WorldFactbook.

Monday, November 23, 2009

The Evolution of Marketing


The Production Era

Set in motion from the Industrial Revolution during the 1800's, until the mid - 1920's, manufacturing of goods was standardized. As automation and production capacity increased, products were mass produced for as little cost as possible. Consumers accepted the goods as a limited variety was offered. Production workers were paid by piecework and management focused on production and operations processes. Coca-Cola a major advertiser at the time hired their first celebrity to endorse the product in their national advertisements that appeared in 1904. By 1911, the advertising budget was up to $1 million dollars per year.

The Sales Era

Lasting until the 1950's and, for some firms the 1960's, this era has been called “the age of the hard sell.” Companies could produce higher volumes of products than consumers could buy. They accepted products as is. Competition grew in many industry sectors. Unions were formed in order to improve workplace conditions. Management was focused on hiring salespeople and selling products. Products were priced to cover manufacturing and distribution costs. There was limited advertising and promotion, other than creating awareness.

The Marketing Concept Era

A shift began during the early 1950's and 1960's, through to the 1980's, where consumers' wants and needs became the focus, rather than pushing sales, as well as achieving organizational goals. Marketing managers became top executives. Marketing strategies were directed towards customer satisfaction, developing close working relationships with customers and profitable sales volume. Marketing concepts were implemented before the production cycle as opposed to after. Many firms were slow to adopt these new principles.

The Marketing Orientation/Relationship Era

During the mid 1980's new terms emerged as regular corporate vocabulary, total quality management (TQM), customer relationship management (CRM), consultative selling and customer lifetime value. Market oriented firms continued to gather and collect information about customers and competitors and to use this information in order increase their value proposition to the customer. Relationship marketing and CRM were the buzzwords for the 1990's. As computer and technology were becoming mainstream and with the emergence of the Internet, communication and collaboration increased. Buyers and sellers committed to doing business over a long period of time. These long-term relationships were built by increasing the customer's revenues and profitability.

The Global Economy Era

As a professional marketer I’m calling this the global economy. After getting past the terminology introduced in 1995, bricks and mortar to clicks, the new economy and understanding hyper text markup language (HTML), e-business models have transformed business and marketing. Economic development and trade were expanded by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in December of 1992, and The Treaty on European Union (TEU), otherwise known as the Maastricht Treaty, signed in February, 1992. The Euro began circulating and trading on financial markets on January 1, 1992. Combined, the Internet and the free flow of goods and services from trade agreements created a global economy that increased market reach, reduced costs and brought buyers and sellers together despite their geographic location. Customer's instantaneous access to information and enormous increase in the selection for products and services intensified competition. The tech boom-bust in the late 1990's educated business owners and marketers that traditional models must be incorporated along with Internet marketing models in order to generate revenue. Consumption and demand patterns shifted as the Internet and e-commerce were available twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. Email instant messaging and text messaging became the new platforms to communicate with others. Marketers focused their efforts on developing corporate websites from static, one way communication and, brochure like pages to providing dynamic content full of rich media, and enabled users to retrieve information in response to a request. From corporate corruption, environmental damage and an increased awareness of ethics by the general population, social corporate responsibility emerged.

The Customization and Personalization Era

I'm calling this the customization and personalization era. Customization uses all three general purpose technologies of digitization, networking and personalization. Computer storage, memory and power have increased approximately seventy-five billion times over the past fifty years while costs have dramatically decreased, during that same time period. The life cycle and miniaturization of electronic chips has been approximately eighteen months, while doubling the computing power. Companies gained a competitive advantage by digitizing processes and information. Customers have been increasingly demanding customized products and services that fit their specific wants and needs. Consumer' demands for involvement in the design and delivery of products and services has resulted in many companies radically re-designing their business and operations processes.

Internet users have become more sophisticated. They conduct less broad based search and often use the same requests on frequently visited sites. The share of time spent online for individuals in order is communications, e-commerce, content and search. Widespread use of broadband in developed and developing countries have brought increased demand for interactive content including streaming media, music and gaming. Innovative companies have matched this demand by developing new, portable connection devices. The speed of delivery for photos, videos, music, weather or news has increased digital media consumption. Mobile users are demanding experiences on their portable devices similar to what they have on their home computer.

Social networking sites and clustering provides an enormous opportunity for marketers to reach pockets of like minded consumers' who share similar tastes, interests, habits, values and beliefs. Consumers are now relying more on third party feedback about a product or service, before their initial purchase, rather than just company information or a salesperson. Thousands of bloggers post information which has become a sought after resource.

One of the key factors in the personalization of the web is the ability of individuals to choose their own content on their computer's home page through content feeds, updates, links and bookmarks. Expectations include a welcome message to the site by their name appearing after login, recognition of past purchase history or previous customer services issues resolved. Consumers have more control than ever over their shopping behaviour and, product and service selections through information seeking and comparison shopping. Brand awareness, brand equity, the perception of quality, value and all price have all become critical components to a brand becoming part of a consumer's evoked set. Customers seek individual rewards for completed calls to action by the way of deals, special offers and discounts.

Marketers are matching web page content, products and services to users in order to maintain their interest level, increase involvement and number of page views. Users abandon sites quickly, generally after two to three page views and an average time of two to three minutes. Marketers must contend with content fatigue, which can be avoided by adding new, relevant and believable information weekly. Users expect to have found the right information quickly and easily. Internet usage for the individual has evolved to be either a task oriented visit or an experiential visit. Task oriented users seek to find information, solve a problem and to save time where experiential web surfers are seeking entertainment and spending time on a site.

The Internet ties together branding, advertising, sponsorships, email, public relations and promotions. Marketers have become more focused on the user as customers' attention has become more fragmented between traditional broadcast and print mediums and, the Internet. Marketers today focus their efforts on high quality content, personal interaction and engaging the individual, as well as, receiving feedback from the user.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

"What is Marketing?"

"Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives." On a macro level, many business components contribute to a marketer's overall knowledge, essential to succeed. These include the following:

Advertising
• Business to Business Marketing
Business Law
• Consumer Behaviour
• Direct and Database Marketing
Financial GAAP Accounting
Finance and Management Accounting
Human Resources
International Marketing and Business Management
• Internet and Web Marketing
• Marketing Analysis and Statistics
• Marketing Concepts and Fundamentals
Marketing Management and Planning
• Marketing Mathematics
Marketing Research
Macroeconomics
• Microeconomics
Sales Management
Sales Promotion
• Services Marketing
• Small Business Planning
• Operations Management
• Oral Presentations and Public Speaking
• Organizational Behaviour
• Personal Selling
Supply Chain Management and Logistics
• Writing Marketing and Business Plans

Each of these components warrants an in-depth discussion. However, for the purpose of an assignment I’m going to focus on Internet and web marketing for now. Please visit again as this is a new blog. I'll be continuously developing, writing and adding content.

 
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