http://econsultancy.com/ca/blog/63850-how-small-businesses-can-make-the-most-of-twitter

“If there’s one thing you have if you run a small business, it’s time. If there’s one thing you probably don’t have, it is money.” written by Christopher Ratcliff.

After reading this article, I do agree the author’s point of view that using social media to open small business is low-cost and low- risk. Running a small business by using social platform, the owner plays different roles such as owner, manager, customer service assistant and marketer.

(Picture: from Google image)

Nowadays, more and more people actively use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get found online. Social media has become an important tool for small businesses. By using this approach, it allows small businesses to have direct communication with owners’ customers. When recommending products and services to new customers, it seems that people tend to trust their friends or families far more than any sophisticated marketing advertisements. When advertising the products of your small businesses online, don’t just pose the posters and products’ introductions online as few people will pay attention to it. The author gives three recommendations to maximize engagement when doing promotions. Firstly, owners should tease the sale in advance to raise interest. Secondly, owners should respond to followers to keep the conversation going. Last but not the least, owner should keep in tweeting during promotions. The more people start following you, the more opportunities you get for your small businesses. When implementing a small business social media strategy, organizing your content effectively is a difficult and important skill since social media is about sharing, not just about advertising.

Referring to“Nu Skin Enterprises (Continued) – Marketing Techniques” written by Paula Luo, social valuation and authority principle are the main tools that the company used to sell its products.

We are always aware that word of mouth existed, but had no idea how powerful it was. Nu Skin gained large market share by training its direct customers who brought products directly from the company and sold the products to other people. Direct customers mainly sold the products on the owned media, such as Facebook pages and Wechat, by promoting and posting information on it. I am also aware that publishing has become an increasingly important marketing sill since you cannot just randomly post the brand’s news on the owned media; instead, you have to organize information effectively and attractively to your customers. These owned media have more advantages of allowing for deep product news and personal customer service.

By using social valuation principle, people even did not come to the Nu Skin stores, whereas they brought the products from their friends’ house. How strange it was when you heard your friend brought a brand product from your friend’s house. You might share your “Nu Skin experience” to your friends saying that many people around you were using about this brand recently, and your friends might also curious about this products thinking that “Should I have one as most of my friends were using this product?”. When most of your peers doing this, it eventually becomes a social effect.

It is no longer sufficient for brand to simply build awareness, creating involvement is also crucial for marketers. Engagement is a two-way and more personal area that consumers can come in contact with brands through different ways. I think Nu Skin has created involvement for consumers to react to communications in a way.

When I opened Wechat, which is a social platforms supporting group chat, voice, photo, video and text messages, I could see that many of my friends frequently updated their moments about how NuSkin has changed their beauties and  how NuSkin has been better off their lives. They lauded the products to the skies and tried to brainwash their friends and families for buying NuSkin’s products. After seeing those moments several days, I just blocked those people without seeing their updated moments anymore. For my perspective, I would think that I have low involvement of this brand because of little interest in the products; therefore, I paid less attention to its products although many of my friends have introduced so many times of those products to me.

I was curious that “Has NuSkin done something for those people?”. Later on, I found that the company has many interesting and critical marketing news. NuSkin, using Multi-level marketing (MLM) models for compensation, has been a frequent subject of criticism and lawsuits. The Multi-level marketing is a marketing technique which involves people buying a product, then earning a commission by selling it to their friends and families. This model is profitable once it operates successfully as the first individual will receive compensation from the sales of the down line members and the company captures most benefits from the MLM binary tree structure. If you open YouTube and search for NuSkin marketing, a great deal of information such as “NuSkin how to make money” will come forth in your screen. I feel like that network marketing is a powerful and modern form that everyone can open their businesses, especially for personal selling, through this way as it is low cost and effective.

Before the official announcement of the iphone 5c, many Apple’s fans expected that Apple would offer iphone 5c at a relative low price to compete with cheap devices running Android. The lower cost smartphone would be priced at around 400 dollars in order to address developing markets such as China. However, everyone got very wrong since the “c” in iPhone 5c did not stand for “cheap” in any way. In reality, the iPhone 5c is completely different, with Apple offering a phone with a 172 dollars BOM and manufacturing cost, and a 549 dollars market price. Previously, Apple’s strategy was to position one new version for the high-end of the market and discount older version for the price-conscious segment. But the company just stopped offering iphone 5(one of the old versions) by offering two new versions which are iphone 5c and iphone 5s to different types of customers. Basically, iphone 5c is really similar to iphone 5 except the different colors of plastic cases. The company chose a new market strategy believing that the appearance of new means something is new, no matter what came before. By lowering its cost, Apple is optimizing its iPhone hardware gross margins to attain maximum profitability.

The target audiences of iphone 5c will be kids or teenagers and the 5s is for higher income people. From customers’ point of views, the price of the iphone 5c was supposed to be cheap but they were shocked by the truth. Those customers who have middle income might feel disappointed after they knew the price of the iphone 5c; instead, they might prefer iphone 5s to iphone 5c. For those higher income people, it would not bother too much for their decisions of buying iphone 5s as they have already valued 5s as their identities.

Recently, China Central Television reports that Dumex Baby Food Co bribes doctors and nurses “sponsorship fees” to promote its baby formula products. Doctors and nurses give the first milk product of Dumex to neonates without telling babies’ parents.

From the marketing strategy of the Dumex Baby Food Co, the goal of this action is to set up a long-run relationship with its new customers who just sleep in incubators. After babies drink a first milk product of Dumex, they might reject other brands of milk, such as Nestle, even breast milk, therefore, babies have to rely on the baby formula products of Dumex.

China is one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world thanks to the misunderstanding of health as well as “brainwashes” mothers from marketing. The baby formula companies try to target developing countries claiming their baby formula products to women who will be better off breastfeeding.

Many health organisations have recommended that mothers should breastfeed their babies who are under six months; after six months, babies can eat nutritious complementary foods till two years. However, the Dumex Co conspires to the hospitals monopolizing the milk supply on their own responsibilities. It is unethical for the company and hospital deciding to choose which milk formula products to babies regardless of babies and their parent’s choices. It is unfair and not respect to these babies and their parents since they even do not have chances to choose between breast milk and other brands of milk.