Month: November 2013

Can u imagine how far BATKID goes?  I will tell you from my personal experience that I actually see this post being “retweet” hundred thousand times on Sina Weibo- The Chinese Twitter !

Just in case  u have’nt heared of “batkid”, I will provided a short summary for you

Miles, age 5, is in remission after battling leukemia, and told the Make-A-Wish Foundation that his wish was to be “Batkid” and they mobilized the city of San Francisco to make it happen. Miles’ wish got picked up on a blog and spread like wildfire. Not surprisingly, a lot of San Franciscans were eager to help make his dream a reality. On Friday, November 15^th over 11,000 people volunteered to turn San Francisco into Gotham City and cheer Batkid on as he sped around in the Batmobile, responding to countless threats and saving the city. Then they made sure to tweet and post every second of it out to the world, ensuring that Batkid is now every bit as famous as his favorite superhero.  

Batkid’s wish is almost as touching as how a city seemed to come together to make this boy’s wish come true, and without social media I’m not sure how possible it would have been. I have to thank to social media which allow this love rally continue across the entire world.

 

After reading the post on Sina weibo, I went to youtube for the video, and other new channels in North Ameirca. Not surprisingly this story blew up my every media outlet I saw this weekend.It went sooooooo viral and On Friday #batkid was #1 on Twitter and  I saw post everywhere on my facebook. The kid also got shout outs from many celebrities through various marketing channel including the President Barak Obama himself !!

Social Media not only put this story to a new level, it also also put Make-A-Wish Foundation on a whole new playing field. It may seems to be coldblood to call this a brilliant PR stunt, I really don’t mean to take away any of the pure of the batkid story. I have to admit that I went to “Make-A-Wish Foundation” several time after reading the batkid story. And I saw post saying because of the numerous amount traffic, the website even had tech difficulties

This is what I found in a blog talking about this story through a marketing aspect:

“The foundation took something it does every day – making sick kids’ dreams come true – and turned it into a global fundraising strategy. And because they accomplished the campaign through social media, mobilizing the general public and celebrities to cheer on Batkid, it comes across as entirely organic.  After hearing Miles’ story, it’s hard not to want to donate or volunteer, but I doubt that anyone has thought of it as a marketing campaign. In fact, when I tried to Google: “Make-A-Wish marketing strategy” I got next to nothing. There was one blog post from 2011 and that said Make-A-Wish was going to shift from traditional to social in their marketing efforts. Mission accomplished.”

SOURCE: http://mi621.com/2013/11/18/batkid-the-coolest-viral-marketing-campaign-youve-ever-seen/

For me, this story is too heartwarming to be seen as a marketing campaign but it became so clear how fantastic of a marketing/PR event it was. Whether it was a conscious effort by make a wish or not, the beauty of it is that it raised awareness for make a wish by promoting a child’s wish. Definitely one of the coolest wishes i have seen granted!

As a loyal wechat user, I have noticed two recent move of wechat. One being starting to offer paid stickers( emoji). Secondly, The Tencent group (Wechat’s owner) has announced that they will be charging annual fee for the wechat official account.  Wechat is know as the most popular free messaging app in china, their recent move interest me to do some research into how those free mobile message app monetize for profit. Here is the summary of the top monetization strategy from those mobile message apps.

1. Stickers

Stickers typically come in “packs” of between ten and twenty and can be downloaded and used within one-to-one or group chats. Selections of free sticker packs often produced by the app itself, are offered to drive awareness and encourage usage with the hope that once users are hooked they will become premium sticker users. Premium stickers packs are usually priced less than $2 per pack, they are a mixture of the app own-produced content, content form established producer such as Disney or Sony and from smaller providers who produce bespoke content especially for the app.

In my opinion, having paid sticker is the best monetize strategy for the app because it’s cheap; users enjoy those sticker very much while paying for that. It’s also a sustainable strategy; people who like using those stickers are likely to buy more new stickers as well. In July 2013,the hot Japanese message app is earning $10 millon per month alone from the stickers. Wechat’s strategy of modeling Line’s sticker monetization strategy is a very smart call.

2. Official Account

Official accounts give brands, celebrities and merchants the ability to connect and engage directly with users. Content could include basic marketing messages but more likely will take advantage of the closeness of the relationship to the user and include prizes, media, exclusive news, offers, coupons or discounts.!

There’s several different ways for the apps to monetise through official account!

1.  Pay to create and promote official accounts!

2.  Pay per engagement e.g. per contact added, per message exchanged, per content downloaded!

3.  Pay per message e.g. brands could buy bundles of messages to send or receive!

With messaging apps having many millions of users in specific markets its easy to see how brands would be eager and willing to pay to get access to these users, particularly if users gain something valuable in return and are incentivised to connect to the official accounts.

Line is also a pioneer on this, according to the blog on “the next web” the company have to pay a one time fee (around $6,600) just to create the account. Other than that, the company will also pay to send messages. A 15 monthly message bundle for the official account is $5,000 per month while the 30 monthly message bundle is around $6,000. Wechat should definitely leverage on the official account, but I would suggest having different price levels for different size company. In that way wechat will have a bigger market for the official account, based on the fact that a big portion of  official account user now are small entrepreneurs. Tencent should defiantly keep this portion of customers.

3. In-app Game Platform

Messaging app game platforms enable their users to discover and download games and other apps, play against each other and share results and leaderboards. Users can also buy virtual items and purchase extras like coins, levels, tips, boosts or anything that the user needs to progress in the game.! Revenues come from in-app purchase of virtual items in games (coins/levels/tips – things that users need to progress in the game.

The Korean app Kakao Talkhas 30 million users have played at least one of their 180 games. There are 400 million+downloads $311 million in revenue during the first half of 2013!

Currently wechat has started to offer free in-app games, which are very popular among users. This give wechat a huge potential market for further monetize through the in-app games.

Google launched a new service online called google-helpout, a new way to get and give help over live video on Nov.4^th. According to google, their goal with launching the helpout is to simply provide a convenient and efficient web platform to enable everyone, no matter where they are or what time it is, to easily connect with someone who can help.

“With Helpouts, you can choose who you get help from based on their qualifications, their availability, their price, their ratings and reviews. You can connect instantly or book in advance. You can get help from individuals or from brands you already know and trust, like Sephora, One Medical, Weight Watchers, Redbeacon (a Home Depot company), and Rosetta Stone. Once you’re in a Helpout, you can do more than just talk—you can share your computer screen, collaboratively edit a presentation, or record your Helpout. And if the experience doesn’t meet your expectations, we offer a full money back guarantee.”

 

How marketer can use Google helpout as a marketing tool

1. Brand Engagement

It allows different big brand to engage with their customers through providing customized service on the live video. This would allow the brand to directly interact with customers, gain in-depth knowledge from customers from all over the world. It’s a really good way for brands to strengthen their customer’s database.

 

2. Consumer Generate Content

By having customer write review and ratings of the helpout session, it help the helpers to directly develop the consumer generate content with no extra cost. If the helpers’ service is good, it’s very easy to build a positive brand image/ word of mouth on the platform, and it will potentially being conveyed to mass consumers off-line.

 

3. Improve content marketing strategy

The Helpouts improves helper’s content marketing strategy because helpers can personally and directly connect with their future clients. Even though they can’t sell the product directly, when people need help in the field, offering that help and then explain it shortly how they can find other useful information about the subject on the helper’s site, or the same problem can be solved by using their product. By doing this, helper can transfer the people needs help into potential customers.  Besides that, helpers can find first hand the problems people have and they can solve them.

 

My concerns of the google helpout

First of all, it’s paid instead of free, so why wouldn’t I just go search YouTube? There are tons of videos that help you with all aspect of life and it’s FREE. Or I will go straight to some other answer engines. It’s said customers can get help from individuals or from brands you already know and trust. Why don’t I just go to the brand’s website or the person’s blog leave a comment and wait for the answer. It’ also free! I am so confused that is that a paid customer service for the brand or what?

In my opinion the service on google helpout can be very limited. For example, I might willing to pay hundred bucks for a well-known personal trainer to give me a video training session but definitely not pay to Sephora for beauty advice since I can just go into the store and chat with their beauty specialist.

Also, it’s hard to get real time help. The individual/ brands have high rating on the helpout are the one you most likely want to get helps from.  Therefore the availability of the “helper” will become a problem.

 Interesting move of google

The percent taken out of the fees people pay is the smallest thing they get out of it. The real important part comes from the fact that in order to use Helpouts you have to have a Google plus account,use Google wallet for payment and use Google Hangout for the video conversation It’s an interesting approach of creating a useful content marketing strategy of sharing to help themselves have more active users. Plus it makes money anyway and you don’t have to bother with the content. You make sure you have reliable people and they will personalize and give answer inside a conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this post I will mainly focus on discussing how social media contribute to the rapid growth of sale record in just 2 years for the double 11 festival.

I will first share my personal experience of how social media influence my on the double 11 festival. I actually get to know double 11 as the “world’s largest online shopping festival” this year. Before that double 11 is only the single’s day to my knowledge. I saw lots of posts on sina weibo regarding the double 11 promotion form various online retailers.  At the same time, i also receive lot of “push” from several brands’ wechat official account. On the day of double 11, I saw lots of friend posts on what they have bought in this festival on weibo. There is also a banner on weibo home page counting the monetary sale volume on the day.

Alicia Yap, the head of China Internet research at Barclays, said in a report yesterday that “Weibo has become an important medium for Alibaba to promote the event and direct traffic” to its market-leading online retail portals Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com.  They believed that promoting shopping information and discussion on transactions, services and products through social media could increases the public’s interest in interacting with e-commerce and their understanding of online shopping.

Another online retail giant 51buy.com owned by tencent use its own platform wechat to carry the marketing campaign. The campaign allowed smartphone owners to view and order products available on 51buy with relative ease through WeChat’s menus, and was aimed at residents in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The result turned out to be excellent as out of  600,000 51buy orders made on Singles Day, orders via WeChat exceeded 80,000.

It’s clearly that social media plays an important role in this massive online shopping festival, and we will see this trend keep growing.

 

Every Nov.11^th is an untraditional festival among young generations in china, which we called Single’s Day.  It’s because novermber.11^th is the only day in a year that have four 1s – 11.11. The single’s day is a representative product of Chinese interesting college culture.

As the young generation gradually graduate from school and get into the society, the culture of celebrating Single’s day has been brought to the society as a whole.

And now Double 11 is not only just the Single’s day for young people but became a online shopping festival when Taobao, T-mall, and 360 buy those giant online retailer take the advantage of this Single’s day culture by having massive discount promotion.

This double 11 shopping festival officially starts in the year of 2011 and it grows rapidly every year. In 2012, the transaction hit 19 billion in one day. This year, it almost double the amount and hit 36 billion!

The rationale behind this Double 11 massive online discount promotion is for online retailer to stranger the promotion period with offline sales that happen mostly in October (National Day) December (Christmas) and February (lunar new year).

This Double 11 online shopping festival is a one-day event that purely developed the online retailers.  Not only they spent heavily on marketing efforts to promote the sale, the retailers also use 50% off promotion or even lower discount to attract customers. As the online shopping becoming incredibly popular in china, online retailers smartly seize the opportunity by integrating the Chinese college Culture of Single’s day.  One of the factors that contribute to the success of this Double 11 Festival is the online retailers have a very clear target audience of this events, which is young generations aged 18- 26 who are tech savvy, like online shopping and social media. They also leverage this customer bases through using them as a “word of mouth” marketing channel to expose this events to mass market, their peers, family members who maybe older and may even not enjoy online shopping.  But who do not like discount, especially such huge discount? In my opinion, double 11 can be serve as a trail to encourage people who don’t like online shopping or who haven’t tried the online shopping to take advantage of this sale events to actually shop online. By letting them experience the good side of online shopping, this part of market can be potentially transformed to regular online- shoppers. However, many people also said the nature of this events is the price competition, It can only raise the awareness of the online shopping industry but not actually help the industry with sustainable growth.  Since Double 11 is only event that only 3 years old, I really would like to see how it grow in the future and how can it affect the online shopping industry in china as a whole.