Guest lecturer David Alpern- Advertising and Search

Advertising and Search

Guest lecturer David Alpern returned to speak about advertising and search along with SEM terminology. When it comes to search a key tool in searching on the internet are search engines.

Search engines can be used for :
-research
-entertainment
-comparison shopping
-purchasing ( shopping online)
-news
-banking

We learned that there are many keys to being recognized by search engines but before one can even think about being listed on specific search engines the website they are dealing with needs to have certain characteristics which help measure its success.

Key website characteristics are as follows:
-Establish site objective
-Establish goals, to be used to measure success
-Identify audience and market

Where characteristics are important goals are even more important in making sure that the site is accomplishing what the company or owner had originally set out for it to accomplish. David Alpern delved into some website goals that he deemed very important in the creation of a website and are listed below:

Goals for your site:
-specific
-measurable
-attainable
-realistic in relation to a specific time frame you set out for yourself

David also lectured on how the search engine industry works. They can employ pay-per call or vertical search. As far as search engine marketing goes search engines use pay per click (PPC), keywords lists, and creative copy. He spent a fair amount of time talking about paid inclusion, a tactic used by search engines to decide in what order websites will be listed. Other ways to get your website out there for people to see include email marketing and blogs.

The other major topic that we talked about was SEM terminology. SEM is based on paid placement and the main method used is a bid for keywords. It was also mentioned that paid inclusion was used by Yahoo as a way for companies to purchase the top page postions on yahoo. Some SEM terminology that we went over included:

Crawler based search engine
-Directory
-Pay for performance
-Partnership arrangements
-Portal
-Portal presence
-SEM- search engine marketing
-SEO search engine optimization

Overall it was an informative lecture that helped me look at how search engines function as a whole and how I play into their scheme.

Clickz.com

Burger King, MasterCard, Sponsor Specialized Mobile Web Content

In this article the author, Matthew G. Nelson, talks about how major companies are starting to create special programming for mediums like mobile phone devices, despite the fact that the technology of bringing video to cell phones is still a relatively new concept. Two emphasize the presence of such developments in the virtual world he talks about two giant companies, Burger King, MasterCard, and Maxim are taking their hand at providing sponsorship in mobile content properties. The article goes on to provide examples of how these companies are taking their hand at bringing bringing videos to handheld devices. MasterCard has done so by partnering with FOX to create a miniseries of short films based on a popular tv show. This is not the first time MasterCard has partnered with an entertainment company, in the past it was linked with ABC and one of their popular new shows. Perviously Maxim has offered ways to view their models via your phone by browsing through their top models and now they have partnered with Burger King. In the past Burger King allowed you to use your phones to find the location of a Burger King nearest to you, but now with their partnership with Maxim they have developed a way to have a virtual lunc h with a Maxim hottie which brings the best of both worlds to people that enjoy boy Burger King and Maxim. By linking together they have also found ways to promote each others companies by running advertisement banners on each others website.
I chose this article because it’s something we discussed about in class that got me thinking. In class we discussed how can marketers find their way to your cell phones because they’ve already found ways to penetrate the internet in many ways. We discussed how one of the areas unexplored by marketers is the handheld devices almost everyone carries around so I thought it would be interesting to see how some companies have found ways to reach consumers through their cell phones. I was also concerned about what difficulties marketers would run into in trying to reach people on their cell phones. Although the article didn’t talk about it I was thinking about my own cell phone and how it doesn’t support watching videos. Marketers will have a hard time reaching their potential scope of consumers because not all of them have the capability to use the services they are offering and also not a lot of people know about what is out there so they may not go and seek these new marketing tactics out.
The importance to ecommerce is that this is just one more channel by which to reach consumers. Although this doesn’t seem like a great way to sell services or products it does seem like a great way to get word of mouth going about a service or product. Since bringing videos to cell phones is a new technology in itself this way of reaching the consumer will only gain more momentum and get more advances. Soon everyone, not just a few, will be using their cell phones like their computers to do online shopping.

Useit.com

Usability Assignment-

I chose the article “Productivity and Screen Size” written by Jacob Neilson and posted to the site Useit.com. The article ponders whether having a bigger screen size at people’s computers makes them more or less productive. Neilson began to ponder this question after reading a study that Apple had published where it claimed that bigger screen sizes led to a more productive employee. Neilson refutes this idea in his article on grounds that the original Apple study was faulty. The Apple study measured the time it took for one repetitive task, copy and pasting Excel cells into a spreadsheet, to be completed and found that on a bigger screen it took 20.7 seconds whereas on a smaller screen it took 40.6 seconds. Based upon that they drew the conclusion that having a bigger monitor increased the productivity of workers.
What Neilson found as flawed in this study was that it was drawing a conclusion based on one repetitive task which he believes is not indicative of the overall workplace environment. He notes that in a workplace environment it is rarely the case that all the employee needs to do is a set of predetermined mindless tasks. Instead they are involved in making decision after decision and correcting wrong decisions they had made previously. Neilson argues that the study didn’t measure the how long it took to complete a series of tasks to get to an outcome which is what typically happens in the workplace. Based upon that idea Neilson conducted his own smaller study where he found out how long it took for people to use their companies intranet to find a specific piece of information like determining who the head of the company was. He completely refuted the idea of screen size and instead focused on the efficiency of the design of the intranet and found that the more manageable the website was the easier it was for an employee to find the requested information. Therefore he concluded that screen size has no bearing on completing a task in most cases, instead what really impacts an employee is the design of the site they are navigating when it comes to completing tasks on the Internet.
I agree with the author in that the study Apple conducted was not accurate for the wide spectrum of claims it hoped to make. In instances where the employee performs a repetitive task screen size will matter because it would facilitate ease of things like copy pasting repetitively, but in cases where an end outcome of a task is to be measured it doesn’t make sense that a bigger screen size would help. Instead it seems that making the program they are dealing with, whether it be the internet or not, as easily to navigate as possible would be the best way to increase their efficiency.
The implications of the article with respect to internet marketing seem to be that the easier a company’s site is to navigate the greater ease a customer will have making a purchase there. The overall tasks for all marketers is to get the sale from the consumer and if the company’s own site is a hindrance then it becomes a case of the company tying themselves up before the race can even begins. This means that more companies should spend time making sure their sites are manageable instead of worrying about how nice the site looks. It is the same thing if you were comparing company sites to their actual stores. When you go into a store if you find a complete mess you are less likely to want to spend the time to find what you need to because you know it will be a challenge to do so. If a site looks hard to manage from the start customers will be less likely to try to use it to buy something. This means that marketers should look at their sites as a reflection of their companies and do the best they can to make it easy for the customer to use.

Guest lecturers- Alon Hartuv and David Alpern

Three take away points from the lecture:

1. At the start of the lecture the instructors went over some basic marketing concepts which actually proved useful in reminding me about some of the things I had learned in the past. By doing this they laid the groundwork for how something relatively new, like the world of internet marketing, is derived from the same key concepts that traditional marketing was drawn from. One area where I learned something new and interesting was in the 4P’s. The 4P’s, as presented in Marketing 300, consist of product, place, promotion and price. These 4P’s were practically engraved in our minds as vital components in the marketing mix. The instructors noted that there are actually 7P’s, the first four being the traditional 4P’s and the last three being people, process and physical evidence.

2. The core of what the instructors spoke about was direct marketing. They told us that direct marketing was part of the marketing mix and it worked by taking available media and creating a quantifiable and trackable response that moves the customer closer to the initial or additional sale without the use of a face-to-face sales person. They brought into class some examples of direct mail and also spoke about the various types which include; Addressable vs mass media, or the type that does not place its messages on a third party media. The advantage to direct mail is that it is easy to track, but the major question that arises is whether by passing out direct media you are creating junk mail or email spam. Some different types of direct media that they presented in class included; catalogs, self mailers, postcards, envelope mailers, shared mail, snap mailers, and dimensional mailers.

3. Another aspect of direct marketing that was discussed, which was very interesting, was “the list”. The list refers to the names of all the target people that the direct mail piece will be sent to. Before the class I had no idea such extensive measure had to be taken in order to assure getting a comprehensive list. I also had no idea how much money could be wasted if not enough effort was put into the list. One example Alon gave was for a company he used to work for. The list they had had a lot of duplicates on it because it was generated from multiple sources that weren’t cross checked. As a result they had some people that were receiving up to ten catalogs on something they were never even interested in to begin with. This meant the company was wasting money on multiple levels because first off they were mailing to people that weren’t interested in their products so they were losing money by mailing things they didn’t need to mail. Secondly, they were losing future money because all those catalogs that were going to people that didn’t care about the product could have been going to a potential buyer, and because that potential buyer wasn’t receiving them there would never be even a potential chance they would buy the product.

Assignment #2-Consumer Product Reviews ( a form of "community" at e-commerce sites)

1. What shoe did you choose for your assignment?
Doing this assignment was harder than I thought because I found myself wanting tons of shoes and not being able to decide on which one to do for the assignment. After having about ten browser windows open, each with a different shoe I picked the Bandolino Aveline.

2. What did you find out from reading the reviews?
One of the reasons why I picked this shoe was because it had many reviews, eleven total, with widely varying opinions on how the shoe fit, looked and felt when you were wearing it. Overall the reviews were very conflicting with on person saying “Very comfortable heel! Comfortable heel that is affordable and looks great” and another contradicting her by saying “Ouch! I wore these shoes for a few hours last night and my feet are still hurting, 20 hours later”. Others offered first hand information on how the shoe fit and whether or not I should by my true shoe size, a half size bigger or smaller. People were also very descriptive in what the chose to comment on with one woman saying that the shoe only rubbed on “top of my foot”, but besides that it was fine

3. Would reading the reviews make you more or less likely to buy the shoes? Why or why not?
By reading the reviews you get a vast array of knowledge regarding the shoe, but one steps away a little confused from all the conflicting information. It seems like no matter how many good comments there are, if there are any bad comments to negate a good comment I automatically sided with the bad comment. This seems to be the case because I have no concrete way of knowing if the good is right or the bad is right so I side with the worst case scenario and believe the bad comment. At the same time one starts to wonder whether the people leaving comments might not be used to this type of shoe so they were irritated by the fit easier than others. In my case I’m used to wearing dressy shoes and feel like I could tell one that would hurt my feet from one that wouldn’t just by looking at the picture if I had to. Overall, by reading the comments doubt was instilled in my mind. If there were all good comments I would probably believe the users and buy the shoes online, but if there were bad comments mixed in with the good comments I would write down the shoe brand and make and try to find it in a department store where I could actually try it on.

4. What is the advantage to consumers of reading the reviews at Zappos.com?
The advantage of consumers would be that they get a first hand testimonial of whether or not the shoe is something that people similar to them like. After all if a person doesn’t like heels they are typically not going to buy them, but a person that does like heels will buy and comment. This way a shopper gets first hand information from people with similar tastes. Also by reading the reviews the shopper can see any negative comments which would help them come to a decision about the shoes. By reading the reviews the shopper doesn’t feel like the website is trying to scam them by selling them shoes that would hurt their feet or not look good in person because they can get that kind of information from real people that bought the product.

5. What is the advantage to Zappos.com of offering reviews?
There are advantages and disadvantages of having reviews but its seems like Zappos.com has assessed both these advantages and disadvantages and decided that having good reviews reaffirms in the shoppers mind that the shoes are worthy of buying and gets them more sales than the negative comments that discourage shoppers. It seems like a positive comment would encourage a shopper to buy whereas a negative comment would just cause the shopper to move on to the next shoe. In this way Zappos.com isn’t exactly losing a sale completely because there is still a chance of that shopper coming across a shoe with all good comments, or a shoe that the shopper likes a lot and will buy no matter what the comments are. Either way it seems like Zappos.com can makes the best of both positive and negative comments.

6. Would you recommend that a site like Kencole.com offer recommendations?

I would not recommend that a site like Kencole.com offer recommendations for their products. Kenneth Cole is an established company that is known for selling high end clothing and shoes at a high price. People that go to Kenneth Cole to shop fall into two categories; they either know what they are going there for or frequent the site or store so much because they absolutely love their merchandise no matter what anyone else says. In the latter no recommendation from anyone else could steer them away because they already know everything to know about what Kenneth Cole has to offer. Those types of consumers are very loyal. I’ve seen this first hand with a co worker that loved Frankie B. jeans. She would seek them out and owned every single pair they made. If anyone ever said they didn’t like Frankie B. she would defend the jeans and always decided that they had just had one bad experience and should go back because it was the best jean company ever. To all those that didn’t know about the company she was the first one to market the jeans to them and even went so far as setting up dates where they could go to the stores together.

7. Do you ever look at recommendations from other consumers at internet sites before making a purchase? If so why and for what products?

I tend to look at consumer recommendations when shopping online if it’s at a site I’ve never been to before, or if it’s for a product that I’ve never bought before. In those cases I’m exceptionally worried that I might be buying into a scam and would like to know how other people’s buying experiences at that website went.

8. What is your general recommendation as to whether or not a site should include product reviews?

I think a site that isn’t well known or sells a wide variety of brand or products should have product reviews. If a company is specialized and only sells one type of product then the consumer feels safe buying from there because they know that’s all the company does and therefore should be good at it. When a company expands and sells many types of products they consumer becomes skeptical that they may not have the best quality products because they are trying to sell such a wide scope.
Also companies that don’t have catalogs should have product reviews. At work I have to order parts online sometimes but I feel confident doing so if I’ve referenced the product catalog because that is something concrete that someone had to review and intentionally send to our company. I don’t mind if there are no product reviews because the product came from a concrete source. If there are no catalogs it seems like anyone could have put the product up for sale without proper merit. In that case I would like to reference a recommendation from other buyers to see if real people were satisfied with that product.

Assignment 1

Blogging Lab- Experiential Assignment-

(3) Based on your browse through some of these blogs and the Fortune article on blogs, make a concise but thoughtful list of the potential business uses of blogs for organizations, marketers and/or content sites (such as newspapers) .

1. Get consumer feedback for new marketing and business strategies a firm has implemented1
2. Get a feel for consumer reaction to a new product or marketing strategy
3. Most of the time dissatisfaction with a company is not shown in the actual place of business. Instead consumers stop frequenting that establishment, but with the new age of the internet some consumers show their dissatisfaction through blogs or postings. This means all companies should use blogs and search for negative comments against their firm so they can find ways to remedy those issues.
4. Blogs for businesses can be a source of ad revenue.
5. Blogs can be a source of technical support to ease customer’s transition into a new technology without making the consumer feel they have work to hard to adopt the change.

(4) Should blogs look and feel like traditional marketing and advertising? Why or why not?

Blogs are literally defined as “web logs” whereby the internet is used as a medium to keep track of logs. The internet itself is an ever changing place where new technologies are introduced and tested; therefore the audience that uses the internet is interested in these new types of technologies. To use a traditional means of marketing and advertising would not make sense in a medium where everyone using it is waiting for the most up to date and intriguing things. The people that use the internet have made the choice to be there instead of reading a news paper, magazine or watching television; all of which are places where they would have been exposed to a traditional marketing and advertising approach. This means that the marketers who are trying to get their products noticed on the web need to move past traditional methods of marketing in order to appeal to the people that have chosen not to be looking at the traditional mode of marketing and instead have opted for the internet.


(5) Are blogs a fad? Or will they continue to have some impact for marketing? Why or why not?

When you think of the word fad typically fashion comes to mind and you think of fads for the upcoming season. It seems to be common knowledge that it doesn’t make sense to buy into all the fads for a season because as the next season approaches they will no longer be in fashion and if you are fashion conscious you cannot wear them. If blogs were a fad then just like fashion fads that come and go they would have been gone by now. Blogs are not a new means to express ideas and thoughts on the internet. I was first exposed to blogs back in high school which was about five years ago. It seems like since then people besides high school students, that want a medium to express themselves through, have picked up blogging. Everyone from musicians to politicians to the average person on the street has a blog. As you watch the news journalists are more and more using what is written in blogs as justification for their stories.
Blogs will continue to have an impact for marketing because in order to market anything you need to get it seen by as many people in your target market as possible. Since many different types of people, who are participants in multiple types of target markets, have blogs there is no better place for a product to be marketed. Once you put your product out there and it is seen by someone who likes it they too may have a link to that product or talk about it. People with like interests will visit those blogs and be exposed to the product and as a result the product will be seen by many people in your target market. A good example of this was seen in the assigned reading article out of Fortune titled “ There’s no Escaping Blogs”, where Shayne McQuade invented a backpack with built in solar panels that he wanted to expose on the internet to get the word out about it. In a matter of hours instead of laying the groundwork for the product as he had hoped he had multiple orders in for the product all of which he had no means of filling. This real life example shows how fast a product can be marketed through blogging and how useful of medium it is for those that want to market.

(6) Would you like to see the marketing department (or whatever your major department is) start a blog? If so, what would you like to see there? If not, why not?

Every department could make good use out of a blog to communicate directly to the students. The department blog could be used for upcoming department changes. In the case of the civil engineering department our faculty advisor retired over the summer, he was really liked by all and it would have been good to know that before I went on vacation so I could have stopped and said good bye. Also over the summer major construction work was started in front of our department office and as the semester began all the students were wondering what the construction was about. A blog for the department would have been a good place to post what was going on. Lastly, I get emails constantly about internship opportunity in my field through my department. I’m lucky I’m on the email list to get these job postings but not everyone is so a blog would be a good place to post such opportunities for everyone equally to see them. Although all departments have a website it seems like not everyone religiously updates them so something as simple as a blog for a department would be a good place to keep students up to speed with the happenings of the department.