I’m a foodie at heart. There is little else that makes me happier than pictures of rich, delicious food with step-by-step direction of how I can make it appear in front of me.

Naturally, my favourite online sites are food blogs and I am often searching for new recipes and inspiration. One day I made an amazing discover: Food blogs of compiled food blogs. It was life-changing! There is row upon row of food in seemingly never-ending pages.

My favourites are foodgawker.com

punchfork.com

and tastespotting.com

Food bloggers form quite a tight-knit community and often reference each other in their own blogs (with the majority never ever meeting each other face to face!). For instance, a well-known food blogger’s husband died last fall and she dedicated a peanut butter chocolate pie, his favourite dessert, blog to him. Before I knew it, the majority of food blogs I viewed that week were chocolate peanut butter pies or variations of it all dedicated to this food blogger to offer their condolences and support.

So how is this related to eMarketing?

Some companies have started to advertise on these food blogging sites. By putting up ads on sites that a particular niche consumer visits, businesses are able to target an individual that would be interested in their product. Perhaps your company sells a particular knife set whose sales would benefit from putting your product in front of those eyes. Or perhaps you could endorse an influential food blogger by giving her a set.

Here is the point: targeting sites your consumers visit is the most effective use of advertising dollars. Whether you sell premium whisky or energy conserving light bulbs, do not just throw ads up everywhere, but dig deep and discover where your niche customer goes. It may not be enough to place that light bulb ad in a general hardware site, but go a step further to place it on a site that provides environmentally friendly, cost-saving tips around the home. Be focused!

Back in the day, there was only one relevant letter in the marketing mix: P. To be more specific, there were four Ps – price, promotion, place, and product. With the uprising of the web age, however, there is another letter we marketing professionals now need to acknowledge: C. And guess what? There are 4 of them to match the original Ps.

The Product P it is now swapped with this C – Customer’s needs and wants. Similarly, Price is now replaced with Cost, Place with Customer Convenience, and Promotion with Communications with company.

Let me explain this in a little more detail.

The Four C’s present a consumer-focused model through the help of the web. The internet enables the shift from mass marketing to niche marketing. The first C focuses on Customer’s needs. When creating your Product, focus on satisfying your targeted consumer’s wants. Cost includes not only your customer’s cost, but the cost to change to a new product and the cost for not selecting a competitor’s product or service. The internet allows consumers to buy an online product from almost anywhere in the world, making Customer Convenience an important factor. This C should take into account how easily a consumer finds the product, finds information on the product, and buys the product (among other factors).  Finally, the Communication C presents a broader focus than promotion and includes any form of communication between the organization and customer. With online reviews and the anonymity of the web, businesses and product reviews are easily shared and often heavily relied on.

By focusing on a very specific group, your business will be able to tailor a product to meet each and every need of that niche consumer. Remember, it’s all about the consumer!

This week has been all about learning ways to improve a website from essential features to usability to facts on how people view sites. Let me share some of my newfound knowledge (in no particular order):

• People start viewing on the top left corner of the page and work their way across and down
• Clean, easy navigation is key
• Ads that are placed on the left or top part of the site receive the most views
• Keep advertisements prominently placed but far enough out of the way that visitors can use the site without being swarmed
• Make your site layout compatible with all types of screens such as mobile, tablet, or desktop
• By the time people hit the lower parts of your site, they are only scanning
• Headlines draw attention, but fancy fonts do not
• Pictures that are bigger catch viewers’ eye more than small ones
• Ads inside or below a great piece of content get more views
• Navigation bars and menus should be placed on the top part of the site
• Use contrast to make your site more readable and accessible to visitors and to direct reader’s attention to where you want it to go
• Lists are better than large chunks of text and paragraphs
• Avoid confusion by having a clear message. The site’s objective should be obvious
• Avoid drop-down menus because they are inaccessible to touch devices
• Banners are ignored
• Take away distractions – animation, audio ads, pop up ads – or at least keep them to a minimum

Have fun making your website the best it can be!

Over the past week, our class has been focused on many of the tools we can use for online research. Sifting through many sites such as www.MarketingCharts.com for research trends to www.Alexa.com for traffic rank estimates to www.CheckPageRank.net to check your site’s Page Rank by Google, I have found one of my favourites for new ideas and trend, Trend Hunter (www.trendhunter.com). With over 37,000,000 monthly views, there is no doubt that this is an immensely popular site.

Here there is a large source of inspiration for almost everything. Separated by category, Trend Hunter has a section for every trend from culture to tech to lifestyle. Here the team at Trend Hunter seeks out content of new trends discovered by their global network and posts the best insights, ideas and findings throughout the day.

This great space is one of the only I can think of where there are galleries of underwater dog photography, social goods like these Fair Trade Peruvian Handcrafts,

and Eco-friendly Killer Whale Vessels,

all just one click away!

What does this mean for you or your business?

This site makes seeking out the hottest trends effortless.This makes staying ahead of the crowd  easy, and perhaps you will be inspired by the newest innovations on the way. Maybe your company is similar to one featured on the site and their discoveries can help you cut costs or make your product stand out. Or even better, perhaps you are featured on the site and it draws huge amounts of traffic to your site!

Happy Chocolate/Flowers/Gifts/Love Day from one of the greatest influences of the web in our time!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkWNlfadXSM]

When talking about the new Web 2.0 in class (consumer-generated online media), it got me thinking about all the power that we, the average internet users, have and how easy it is to share our interests.

The exploding popularity of sites that enable us to easily share pages and ideas are proof that we have a big voice in the online world. Sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Digg and StumbleUpon let us pin, like, digg, or share a page with others. There are many times when I have Stumbled Upon a fun video like Walk off the Earth’s music video that went viral with over 50 million views:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9NF2edxy-M]

or a delicious recipe:

Mmm...sometimes my waistline isn't too happy with my new recipe finds

when I have been bored. I have also discovered some amazing sites through friends’ Facebook posts or likes.

Even more than sharing fun and interesting sites, this new Web has enabled people to share their stories. Videos of outrageous acts – such as the infamous pepper spraying policeman – have gone viral and have shown the world that no heinous act will go unnoticed (as long as there are quick-thinking, camera phone-owning spectators out there).

So keep on sharing world! Keep the people connected and let all clever ideas be displayed and wrong acts be punished!