Hello!

I’d like you to have a quick look to this article:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008933

To sum up, it states…

“Canada ranked first globally in social media penetration as a percentage of population”.

What are the consequences of this fact? Well, it is obvious that consumers are changing their way of consuming: they are no more using the conventional channels and they are, everyday more, looking for other opinions before purchasing an item. So that, companies must adaptate their marketing strategies to this new way of consumption. And even if this is happening in Canada, since we live in a globalised world, it is necessary that those companies that operate worldwide listen carefully to the consumer’s demands. They must be openminded and willing to explore the use of new technologies, if necessary.

Nowadays it is clear that anyone in business unfamiliar with the issues of Social Media will be placing themselves and their firms at a serious competitive disadvantage.

Ju.

According to an article published in 2008 in the eMarketer website…

Nearly one-half of all Chinese broadband users had posted a comment to a blog, forum or chatroom, compared with only 28% of US broadband users. In China, 58% of all purchase decisions were influenced by user-generated content such as consumer reviews and rating sites, forums and discussion boards, blogs and other UGC. However, in the US, only 19% of purchase decisions were influenced by user-generated content. Search engines were still more influential, according to the study. Among Chinese broadband users, 46% used a search engine to make purchase decisions, compared with 25% of US broadband users.

This article made me think of many things. The first of all was why was there such a difference between chinese population and Americans in terms of consumer behaviour. Is it because the US population don’t trust other’s comments or because Chinese society is more developed in terms of using oline platforms?

The second thing I thought about when I read the article was of the huge impact that Internet and, even more, its usage may have on people and on businesses. According to the report announced by National Bureau of Statistics of China in February 26th 2009, the total population of China at the end of 2008 was 1.32802 billion. If 58% of the purchase decisions of the Chinese population in that year were in influenced by user-generated content this means that… nearly 77 bilion people bought something because they heard of somebody on a online platform.

Isn’t it crazy?

Ju.

Hello again!

Today I would like to encourage you to have a look at this site:

http://www.emarketer.com/

Maybe some of you already know it… They describe themselves as “the go-to authority on digital marketing, media and commerce, offering insights essential to navigating the changing, competitive and complex digital environment.”

What do they do? Well they weigh and analyze information from different sources, so that they can provide businesspeople, marketers and advertisers with the business intelligence to evaluate emerging trends, validate decisions, develop new ways to reach consumers and stay ahead of the competition.

As it could not be different, they also use the tools they explain to do their own marketing strategy… they have their own site, as you have seen but they also have a blog where they post some interesting information for their current users. At the same time, they are using Social Media strategy by using the Facebook and Twitter platforms as a way of engaging consumer’s relationship. Finally, they also use Email Marketing thanks of its Daily Newsletter that allow them not only to inform their customers with the latest news but also to measure conversion rates.

So, it you have never used this website I really think now is the moment! And if you are really interested on market research and trend analysis on Internet, e-business, online marketing, media and emerging technologies you should also sign up for their newsletter! I am sure you won’t regret it!

Ju.

Humans have always had the need to communicate ones to the others. The history of communication dates back to prehistory. Human communication was revolutionized with speech perhaps 200,000 years ago. Symbols were developed about 30,000 years ago and writing about 7,000.

On a much shorter scale, there have been major developments in the field of telecommunication in the past few centuries and, nowadays, many others ways of communicating have been developed. In fact, Internet is one of them; it has allowed people to talk ones to the others on a worldwide scale.

However, Internet is, at the same time, a really useful tool for companies to develop their Communication Strategy. So that, they use this online platform to develop a strategy that will help them engage and foster a relationship with their customers.

In fact, a good communications strategy allows the company to exercise better control over its work and to frame the issues
in a perspective other than research. A communications strategy removes doubt, emphasizes planning, and involves all the project participants in raising the visibility of the research.

When having a more concrete look at this subject, we find two main communication strategies that companies may implement. The first of them is email marketing. According to The Essential Guide to Digital Marketing (by Rob Strokes) email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic means to deliver commercial messages to an audience. There are many ways that a company can make contact with its customers, for example, newsletters, a way of contacting with the customer and, at the same time, measuring conversion rates. The second of them is social media strategy. The same source states that this strategy is about communities sharing content so, by using this strategy, the company is able to create a two-ways relationship with the customer.

So that, we realize the importance of communication. It was important billions of years ago and, nowadays, on the 21st Century, is still important.

Ju.

When using Google…

• When you are in Vancouver, some advertisements of Vancouver businesses show at the right side.

• When you are in Tokyo, some advertisements of Tokyo businesses show at the right side.

• When you are in Barcelona, some advertisements of Barcelona businesses show at the right side.

What is going on? Is our computer intelligent? Ok, don’t panic. What is happening is that local businesses are using Google AdWords’ Geo Targeting tool to advertise their business.

Google AdWords is a really easy tool that allows local business to advertise their businesses, promos and deals in a really easy way. What permits focusing in specific areas is the setting Geo Targeting. This setting enables your business to choose a language and a specific location. But, it goes even further! You can also select a specific area in the map. This is not all; you can point where is your business in the map and select how many kilometers from your business you want to display the ad.

As you can see, you can make a very accurate selection of the area where you want your advertisement to be displayed. I encourage you, to check the other settings of the Google AdWords, I am sure they will be very helpful.

Please, check out the Google AdWords site:

www.google.com/AdWords

This is how typical Google AdWords look like typing “tourism Vancouver”:

Ju.

“People don’t say what they think and doesn’t do what they say”

This is the main reason why the qualitative research exists. We sometimes tend to forget that the “consumer” itself, as a being, doesn’t exist: we consume as we are so there are no barriers between the person and the consumer. For this reason, there is not a single marketing campaign that will work if it is not strictly linked with a human motivation since most of our decisions in life are based on wishes, feelings and non-conscious emotions. So it is not only that the companies don’t really know what their consumers are looking for but also that the same costumer may not be really conscious of his needs.

So the qualitative research tries to listen the market in order to understand it and gets to know the deepest desires of the consumers in order to be able to apply what it found out at the business context. Thus, it is nowadays essential for a company to have enough sensibility to know and maintain the consumer’s motivations that sustain the basis of its business.

To sum up, we can say that qualitative research contributes to connect the consumer’s motivation with the business strategy and objectives. This is then, one of the most important parts of any marketing campaign. Without an exhaustive qualitative research that really goes into the client’s emotions there is no way a company can be successful in its business.

Ju.

Hello once again!

Before starting a new post I’d like you to see this video:

 http://vimeo.com/16638983

It talks about the generation Y… So to make it clearer, let’s start defining this terminology. According to Sullivan (2003) the Generation Y (also known as the Millenials) is the Internet generation. It is considered as an emerging market of potential customers with incredible buying power. The generation Y, as you have been able to see in the video, are the followers of the Generation X.

In fact, this terminology first appeared in an editorial in “Ad Age” in august 1993 used to define the population born between 1984 and 1994. However, according to later studies and depending on the demographics of various global regions, the time frame in which this people was born, changes. Nowadays, it seems to be more or less agreement in that it includes people born between the 80s and the ones born in 2000.

This generation seem to be the one that is really immersed on the Internet and, particularly in social networks. For this reason, and related to my past two posts, they are also more susceptible to viral (stealth) marketing since they are the ones really able to multitasking in terms of their media use.

This is probably the main reason which demonstrates that with this generation Y ruling the world of the electronic medium, companies must find new forms and new alternatives to the traditional forms of marketing and advertising if they want to succeed in targeting this population.

Ju.

Hello once again!

On my last post I was talking about viral marketing and how it could affect both positively and negatively a company’s marketing campaign. However, today I want to add a new shade of meaning to the term “Viral Marketing” by talking about “Viral Stealth Marketing” (VSM). Maybe you have already heard about this terminology but when I first heard of it I thought it could actually be a really good subject to talk about in my new post.

VSM is a marketing strategy that, just like viral marketing, is based on electronic word of mouth communication using electronic medium. However, it differs from viral marketing in that the people spreading these marketing messages are required not to disclose the fact that they are being paid to promote the product for an organisation. There are many famous companies that have been caught using this “unethical” marketing campaigns. An example that now comes to my mind and that describes exactly what stealth marketing is about is when in 2002 Sony Ericsson hired some actors to accost strangers and ask them: “Would you mind taking my picture?” when handing a brand new picture phone and talking about how cool it was. Another example, this time including viral stealth marketing would be when a company pays people to create blogs and boast about the launching of its new product.

So that, we can obviously see that there is a huge “ethical” component behind all this actions since there is an increasingly difficulty of regulating any of this electronically distributed messages due to the nature of Internet and electronic media in general. And if we think of the possibility of minors being involved in these types of campaigns, the frontier between that is correct or incorrect is even clearer because, according to Kunkel et al., 2004, they haven’t yet developed the “cognitive defences” against persuasion found in adults.

No matter how, it is clear that in our new Internet era, where information and data flows from one person to the other in such a rapid way, the need of an organism that regulates all this traffic is both needed but complicated to implement in a successful way.

Ju.

Have you ever seen any of the “Will it blend?” videos? For those who are unfamiliar with it, it is a viral marketing campaign consisting of a series of infomercials made by Blendtec demonstrating its line of blenders. Tom Dickson, the founder, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender. You may want to have a look at the following link, one of the most famous videos of its whole campaign:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI

The first time I saw these videos, I didn’t see the point on the whole campaign. Honestly, I thought they were grouse and nonsense. However, after doing some research on it I realised the huge success of the campaign: on November 29, 2011, the Blendtec series of videos had collected a total of 181,358,333 views on YouTube and Dickson reported: “We have definitely felt an impact in sales. Will it Blend has had an amazing impact to our commercial and our retail products”.

Where does its success come from? I think by defining the term “viral marketing” the main reason of its success will also be explained. According to the Australasian Marketing Journal 2009, we can fin the origins of this term in the 1996’s when Steve Jurvetsone and Tim Draper from the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson developed a marketing strategy for their free e-mail Hotmail, where each e-mail originating from a hotmail account was appended with the tag line “Get your private, free e-mail from Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ”. Thus, the analogy of a virus was used to describe the exponential diffusion of information in an electronic environment.

Another popular term for viral marketing is “word of mouse” marketing, which refers to the strength of “word of mouth communication” but using electronic medium. It is a fact that nowadays Internet has become one of the most powerful tools of communicating to consumers, not only allowing the companies and marketers to realise their conventional marketing campaigns online but also to have the consumer himself talking about the company or the brand.

However, even though this new way of carrying out marketing campaigns can definitely rocket the sales of your product it can also “destroy” your company.

In my point of view, the fact that everyone is allowed to express an opinion gives the consumer much more power and puts the marketer at a disadvantaged position. This is one of the reasons why, now more than ever, marketers should be aware not only of the huge benefits that online campaigns can  bring to them but also of the threats they will be facing when choosing this type of advertising.

Ju.

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