Annoying Online Advertisement? NAY!!

Spam, scams, unsolicited advertising?

These words might be a bit unfamiliar to those of us who consider ourselves to be daily users of the Internet. What is the most common example of unsolicited advertising?

We found these annoying advertisements in areas such as pop-up ads that appear when we open Facebook or even an online newspaper.

Source: businessinsider.com.au

Sometimes the advertisement does not look suspicious, but when we click on the link, it only asks for money or shows us inappropriate content.

Some websites also send us inappropriate and annoying emails if we subscribe, causing us to unsubscribe to future emails after we have received numerous emails containing spam. People will also share experiences about the annoying ads of specific companies with others.

Based on this research, 90% of Internet users have experienced annoying advertisements online. Sources of annoying advertisement include emails or sidebar ads featured on several websites. In addition, everyone thinks irrelevant ads are annoying.

According to eMarketer, marketers should ensure their advertisements reach the correct target audience and do not discourage a potential customer from buying our products.

Some advertisements even take up almost half of the webpage and distract customers during their online surfing.

How do we ensure our advertisement meet legal and ethical standards?

1. Evaluations of products are important because not all products and services are suitable for all customers.

Source: dreamstime.com

2. There is nothing wrong with wanting to earn money as a seller, but we should use integrity when creating online advertising.

Source: dreamstime.com

3. Social media is helpful in building enduring relationships with customers and promoting our brands. A natural result based on the searches of real people will yield better traffic compared to using software that follows people automatically and sends direct messages with “spammy content”. No one will end up buying your products if you use that tactic.

Source: sweettoothrewards.com

4. Real testimonials are important. They show that we have satisfied our customers and that our products have value when compared to our competitors. Testimonials also increase our credibility. However, some websites use “fake testimonials”. Wait until your products have real testimonials instead of creating fake testimonials.

Source: honestaffiliateincome.com

These are my views on legal and ethical issues with regards to advertising on the Internet. Share your experiences regarding legal and ethical issues in the comment section below!

Reference List:

Comm, Joel. ‘Standards For Ethical Internet Marketing’. Joel Comm – Keynote Speaker. N.p., 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

#StraightOutta Viral Marketing Campaign

Have you seen the “Straight Outta” memes that are being posted all over Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Even some top celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Lil Kim, and Oprah Winfrey have posted them!

Source: instagram.com

Source: instagram.com

Source: twitter.com

The key feature of this type of viral marketing is the use of customization and personalized engagement of the audience. Personalization: to suit target audience well because it is specifically made for your interests, needs, and wants.

According to Kaplan & Heinlein, 2011, there are three basic criteria that can help the success of Viral Marketing: Messengers, message, and environment.

1. Messengers

This movie was created by a collaboration from Universal Pictures, Interscope, Beats by Dr. Dre, and North Kingdom agency came up with the idea for the meme generator.

2. Message

They promote the latest movie called “Straight Outta Compton.” The way they promote the movie is by accessing their website, and you can change the settings to your hometown and use your picture. From the website, people usually post the picture in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to create a viral meme that can be used as a promotional tool and word of mouth. Also, Interscope also makes an integrated promotion, by promoting the music album using an album teaser in front of Straight Outta Compton screenings.

The site was launched by featuring several Beats partners such as Dr. Dre himself, Serena Williams (tennis star), and Richard Sherman (NFL player).

Source: hollywoodreporter.com

3. Effects in Social Media after the campaign (Environment):

–   Humorous posts in social media also generated people’s attention to the movie campaign

Source: tor.com

Source: tor.com

–   After seeing the movie campaign, people head to the YouTube trailer for “Straight Outta Compton” that has millions of views on YouTube

–   By 13 August (site launched on 5 August), the site has had 7 Million Worldwide Visitors and 6 Million Downloads of the “Meme”. After the launch, there are approximately 15,000 #StraightOutta tweets and re-tweets per minute.

–   A few weeks after the viral meme, the #StraightOutta hashtag accounted almost 10,000 tweets in Twitter and around 150,000 pictures with the #StraightOutta hashtag on Instagram.

–   The movie generated $13 million over the weekend launch, bringing its current box office gross to $134 million (as August 30, 2015)

One thing that’s made this campaign so successful is the viral marketing that called for marketers to work together to build the campaign.

Based on a Hollywood Reporter interview:

“You very rarely see companies like this in a room together,” Beats by Dre CMO Omar Johnson tells The Hollywood Reporter. “But we were all super-aligned with Dre’s goals and he’s been a great maestro to conduct all of these brands working together.”

“It’s a very effective tool in certain markets, especially the way social network can create a buzz,” says Berman. “We definitely caught that wave in this campaign.”

As we can see, the #StraightOutta campaign has been able to integrate basic criteria for a successful viral marketing campaign. What do you think about #StraightOutta? Let me know!

See you all next week 🙂

Cheers.

-NWS-

SEO for Business

Why do we want to use SEO for our business?

Well, we want people to see our website first when they search for a particular product, or when they type in our brand name. We want to appear in the highest listing as possible.

But actually, there are other ways SEO can help our business, such as:

Business Credibility

A higher rank means they will trust your business. People will use a business that is in the very first listings compared to the 10th listings. Also, many businesses now are using social media marketing and launch business websites. By using SEO, we can see who our competitors are and ensure we give better offerings than our competitors. A person doesn’t just search once, but they will search several queries and expect your business always to appear in every search results they type.

Source: adeogroup.co.uk

Business Traffic

Even if your actual store location is not in the middle of a crowded place with many passers-by, people will consider your store their destination store.

Source: buildabusinessonabudget.com

Major impact on ROI for Advertising Strategy

SEO allows us not to interrupt while people are watching TV, reading, or while they watch YouTube videos. We will show up for our customers when they look for products we offer. Additionally, it can show your online presence.

Source: business2community.com

Provide information about customers

Now, back to my post about “Google Analytics.” Google Analytics helps SEO to provide information about how they access your website, most viewed pages, which social media is the most effective, and their location.

Source: bluesheep.bluegroupinc.com

Brings higher market share

Nowadays, customers are technologically-aware, and they will search a product online before making a purchase, and your customer will find you more easily this way.

Source: outsourcing-pharma.com

There are two types of Search Engine Optimization we can consider: SEO and PPC.

Source: reliablesoft.net

PPC and SEO, basically the same thing. While PPC is a paid service and SEO is a free service. As we can see from the picture above, with SEO, we can get first page listings when our website has been set up for search engines. With PPC, we need to pay when people click on our advertisement.

The cost to consider when using SEO is the time we spent to develop SEO or when we decide to hire an SEO expert.

SEO is “organic search,” using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Most buyers are more likely to trust a website that appears in top listings naturally rather than top listings from paying. It shows that your business is credible and a top player in the particular industry, therefore SEO is better for a long run strategy.

See you all next week 🙂

Cheers.

-NWS-

Chris, A. (2013). What is the difference between SEO and PPC?. reliablesoft.net. Retrieved 14 September 2015, from https://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-the-difference-between-seo-and-ppc/

Dholakiya, P. (2014). How to do SEO for Local Business, WITHOUT Content Marketing. Search Engine Watch. Retrieved 14 September 2015, from http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2335517/how-to-do-seo-for-local-business-without-content-marketing

Olenski, S. (2015). 7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Invest In SEO. Forbes. Retrieved 14 September 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/03/26/7-reasons-why-your-business-should-invest-in-seo/

eBay and their Big Data

Hi future marketers! Have you heard about the terms of “BIG DATA”?

Source: smartdatacollective.com

Big Data is very useful for online companies that use enormous amounts of data, like eBay. As an online company, eBay tracks everything, and it also has thousands of categories.

First of all, what differentiates between big data and other types of data?

1. Volume

Source: Statista.com

Source: Statista.com

2. Velocity

Real time: when users type a “query” and press enter, the result will appear within seconds.

Source: eBay.com

3. Variety

As shown in the graph above, eBay has millions of active users and it is able to generate billions of dollars of revenue. The numbers of active users can explain why millions of queries are accessed within a day.

Source: support.volusion.com

Why do consumer-centric businesses need to use big data??

Source: Whitehall Media YouTube channel

• Able to offer suitable products and services to customer.

Based on eBay’s search engine, the site is tailored to what customer need through gathered data.

• Increase operational efficiency processes.

Big Data can help eBay increase their IT infrastructure, to identify under-utilised servers, and reveal misconfigured networks and fix these issues. By fixing these issues, eBay is able to save millions of dollars in their capital expenditures within one year.

• Enhance more accurate results that have proven to increase eBay sales.

Example: pilzlampe, a collectible German mushroom lamp that some lamp collectors search in eBay. eBay will be able to obtain more results through customer search of “pilz lampe”.

• Modifies and revises customer search queries through the search engine by adding synonyms and alternative terms that can yield more results

Predictions on the chance the listed item will be sold and the approximate price influence how high the item will be ranked in the eBay search engine results, which increases the user possibility of making a purchase. It can also help naive users (users who lack information about queries) to provide suggestions when they type particular words.

However, Big Data also has several risks:

• Sometimes it may be not helpful for customer to find their items

Source: silkstream.net

How eBay can solve this: conduct tests on the website to seek responses from customers to ensure their way of using big data is effective

• Unmatched results

When customer search “Geelong Cats,” eBay just derived the “cat” and linked the user to the pet category instead of to sports team merchandise

Source: memegenerator.net

How eBay can solve this: data scientists will investigate related issues

As we can see, eBay can use Big Data effectively and can cope with the possible risks. What do you think about Big Data, guys? Yay or Nay?

See you all next week 🙂

Cheers.

-NWS-

Reference:

Digital Innovation,. (2014). eBay uses big data to drive operational efficiencies. Retrieved 4 September 2015, from http://www.digitalinnovation.pwc.com.au/ebay-uses-big-data-to-drive-operational-efficiencies/

Lui, S. (2012). How Ebay uses big data to make you buy more | ZDNet. ZDNet. Retrieved 4 September 2015, from http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-ebay-uses-big-data-to-make-you-buy-more/

Mashable,. (2013). 8 Marketers Doing Big Data Right. Retrieved 4 September 2015, from http://mashable.com/2013/05/06/cmo-data/

McAfee, A., & Brynjolfsson, E. (2012). Big Data: The Management Revolution. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 8 September 2015, from https://hbr.org/2012/10/big-data-the-management-revolution/ar

Grocery Shopping, at your fingertips!

Do you ever feel too lazy to go grocery shopping, but you have nothing left in your fridge? (That’s what happens to me most of the time!)

Well, WOOLWORTHS, the biggest Supermarket in Australia has the solution for your laziness!

Source: woolworths.com

Woolworths is proud to present you with their smartphone app! It’s available in the App Store for iPhone and iPad users, and in Google Play for Android users.

There are lots of things the Woolworths app can do in your phone/tablet, such as:

Scan your everyday rewards card to earn points and specials information

Woolworths wants to create a relationship with their shoppers! After you scan your everyday rewards card barcode, it will automatically sign you in and give you your reward information to thank you for your loyalty.

Source: woolworths iPhone app

Shop Online: Delivery, or click and collect

Woolworths can track your location based on the nearest location for delivery or click and collect. Usually, delivery and click and collect is applicable on orders over $30.

Source: woolworths iPhone app

Source: woolworths iPhone app

Barcode Scanners 

In my opinion, this is the most interesting thing in this app (feels like playing supermarket games 15 years ago 😛). When I first discovered this function, I kept scanning goods I bought from Woolworths ! 😀 😀

Barcode scanning process, Source: woolworths iPhone app

Barcode result shows product name and product location in my nearest Woolworths location, Source: woolworths iPhone app

No more forgetting your shopping list

This Woolworths app shopping list will ease your work because you can make the list whenever and wherever you are on your smartphone or tablet. After you have made your list, you can choose online delivery, click and collect, or go to the nearest Woolworths supermarket. If you choose to go to the supermarket, you can tick items off your list after you put them in your trolley.

Source: woolworths iPhone app

In my opinion, the Woolworths app is a smart choice for minimising our time spent grocery shopping. Moving into the smartphone/tablet app is a good decision for Woolworths because by 26 August 2015, 68.9% Australian own iOs and 29.32% own Android, while only 1.78% own other type of mobile operation.

Source: gs.statcounter.com

Reference:

Gs.statcounter.com,. (2015). StatCounter Global Stats – Browser, OS, Search Engine including Mobile Usage Share. Retrieved 24 August 2015, from http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile+tablet-os-AU-monthly-201507-201508-bar

Woolworths.com.au,. (2015). Woolworths App – Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved 24 August 2015, from http://www.woolworths.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/webSite/Woolworths/about+us/our-services/faqs

See you all next week 🙂

Cheers.

-NWS-

Analyse your website, with Google Analytics!

Google Analytics is a web analytic tool that helps us, as future marketers, to track our website traffic.

Unfortunately, some people ignore the importance of website traffic when it’s a very helpful tool to help you determine what you need to improve on your website.

Based on my readings I have summarised a few things that benefit from Google Analytics.

Provide information about whether your website is uninteresting or boring

Google Analytics provides you with the tools to see whether those who visit your site open a few tabs to other sites, or if they stay on your site. It also shows if there are high number of people keep jumping off your site, then it analyses what you need to improve (design, content, music).

Source: weknowmemes.com

Bounce Rate Information

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who immediately leave your website after they open a particular page. Google Analytics provides bounce rate information in the range between 0% – 100%. The lower your bounce rate is, the better because it means fewer people left your website after they opened it. Here is a website for further learning about the bounce rate.

Source: iamjustinwilson.com

Monitor visitors that access our website with a mobile phone

These days, it’s essential for a website to have a mobile version. A survey done by Smart Insights showed growth on website access through mobile use rather than via desktop. Additionally, we can also assess the effectiveness of our mobile marketing.

Source: mebsites.com

Information regarding what are the most viewed pages

It will help us to understand customer trends and ease our work to create satisfying products for our customers.

Source: shapeways.com

Which social media platform brings the most traffic to your website

Google Analytics gives you information on which social media platform (Google+, Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin) brings the most traffic onto the website. The most effective platform is the one that should get most of your attention.

Source: technmarketing.com

Reference:

Martin, J. (2015). 6 Google Analytics Tips for Online Marketers and Small Business Owners. CIO. Retrieved 15 August 2015, from http://www.cio.com/article/2383830/web-analytics/6-google-analytics-tips-for-online-marketers-and-small-business-owners.html

Weinman, K. (2011). 7 Things You Didn’t Know Google Analytics Could Tell You. OPEN Forum. Retrieved 15 August 2015, from https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/7-things-you-didnt-know-google-analytics-could-tell-you/

See you all next week 🙂

Cheers.

-NWS-

Social Media for Business

According to a Sensis report, 79% of Australians access the Internet daily within a day. 52% of them access the Internet more than 5 times a day. In addition, more than half of the Australian population has easy access to social media through laptops, tablets, and smart phone.

The total number of Facebook users might be the same within the populations of big countries such as Brazil, India, or Indonesia (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The effectiveness of social media marketing is undeniable, and it is something that can be accessed across generations.

At this stage, the biggest proportion of business that use social media consist of large businesses; only a few small businesses have started using social media.

Why should businesses use social media for their marketing?

1. Instant Feedback – show whether or not customers are satisfied with your products. Some customers may leave negative feedback, which can help you to improve your products.

Source: Facebook.com

New product: customers can comment on whether or not they like the ideas. You can also receive feedback on whether or not you should launch a particular product or service.

Source: Facebook.com

2. Geo-Targeting

You can target your customers based on location. For example, in Facebook, Ben and Jerry Australia often holds events for product giveaway, events that take place in several cities: Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney. These types of events will also increase customer awareness of the brands.

Source: Facebook.com

3. Allow small business to expand audience

Melbourne has many good family businesses such as coffee and breakfast places. These businesses are now starting to do their marketing in Instagram to encourage people to come to their places. Because of Instagram posts, some of their food has become famous on social media sites, and people are interested in visiting their place of business.

Source: Instagram.com

Source: Instagram.com

4. Increase Online Presence

People will spread the word about businesses very quickly and efficiently. With the use of @…., they will mention your business to their friends and ask them to visit your business/buy your products.

Source: Instagram.com

5. Lower Cost

It is free to register on most social media sites, and they are easy to use. This will save money that might otherwise be spent on printing brochures or designing an advertising billboard.

Source: socialmediaexaminer.com

6. Allow loyal customers to discuss your products

Having a Facebook fan page or an official Instagram account will allow your loyal customers to receive instant updates about your products. Exclusive brands, in particularly are starting to use social media to promote their newest collections, and loyal customers will be inspired to buy the products. Using these accounts will also help develop long-lasting relationships with customers

Source: Instagram.com

Social media marketing leads to review via word of mouth; businesses should be aware of this practice because individuals will recommend whether or not others should a particular product (I personally will buy goods that have high ratings). Nowadays, we can find reviews of products on YouTube or blogs, People will share if a product is safe for children, for example, and information will be exchanged amongst the users.

So, what do you think about Social Media Marketing – do it or forget it? Let me know!

Kaplan, A.M. & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68

Sensis.com.au. (2015). Social Media Report. Retrieved 4 August 2015, from https://www.sensis.com.au/content/dam/sas/PDFdirectory/Sensis_Social_Media_Report_2015.pdf

See you all next week 🙂

Cheers.

-NWS-