Comments to “12 Reasons Why Digital Marketing Can Help You Grow Your Business?”  http://digitalmarketingphilippines.com/12-reasons-why-digital-marketing-can-help-you-grow-your-business/

We have always been told that it is the time of technology. Internet, as a virtual platform, plays the most important role in real life. This article summaries some key advantages of digital marketing which also what I learned while doing the final project.

The first reason it states is that digital marketing provide small and medium business resource to perform sales and marketing processes. internet connects a terminal almost everywhere. Certain resources are not the privileges for large enterprises.

Another important reason is that digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing. In traditional way, companies uses flyers, newspaper or television ads to promote and these methods are very costly. In contrast, owning a twitter account is free, sharing and retweeting are free, Facebook advertising charges based on the conversion rate. Internet is really a more efficient and attractable  tool for marketing.

After doing the social media audit, I realized that social medias are now the most cost-efficient and interactive tools for marketing. Social medias are the most active platforms that people use everyday. Millions messages are being shared and received in this minute. The quick information spreading speed make these social networks a good place to do promotions. However, the same trait also make it challenging to make people really remember any posts. From a normal social media user’s perspective, I think there are some little things companies should pay attentions.

Some companies’ official accounts are too commercial and ads overloaded. Even though the final purpose is to promote, an obvious advertising post is less likely to be accepted. People on Facebook are there to check out recent news of or interest contents shared by pages they follow. Promotion flyers are not in their expectations to see, as a result may been resisted psychologically

Some companies update posts several time a day. They may want to constantly appear and catch as much attentions as possible. But, it could result in opposite affects. People may get tired or even annoyed of the companies’ frequent posts.

Even though social medias are now the most popular place to share values and communicate with customers. There are many things companies have to consider if they what to utilize these medias.

The first time I heard about the word, Multi-Channel Network, was two weeks ago when we decided to choose Broadband TV as our client for the final project. This is a brand new field that I never really got a chance to learn about. A Multi-Channel Network (MCN) is, by the definition,  an organization that works wit video platforms such as YouTube, to offer assistance in area such as “product, programming, funding, promotion, partner management…”. I didn’t read the whole thing as it was still too abstract. After checking some recent news about our client BBTV and its main competitors, I kind of get a sense of it. It is kind of  a marketing company that help creators such as Youtubers to promote and built brand awarenesses.

Doing a digital marketing project for a digital marketing company will be a really challenging job, especially our client, BBTV, is the second largest MCN  in the world, which means it is experienced in dealing with internet and marketing. On the other hand, this is a precious chance for us  to learn about this new industry with one of its best.

Last week we discussed about the designs of websites, wether to be functional or elegant. We found from the discussion that it really depends on the properties of companies. Luxury brands’ websites are usually very beautiful but less functional. Retail companies with online shopping service usually have very clean and functional designed websites. However, the property is not the only factor.

Here are two screenshots of different websites:

These two websites both have online shopping service, however, the first one is really artistic and the IKEA one is just clean and concise. How do we determine which one is better? Normally, being functional and oriented is easier for customers to find everything and go through the process. However, young and edgy brands usually use  stylish and unique websites to impress people. It is actually very easy to find stuffs but you just have to get used to it first. As a result, these two websites are all very good for their targeting customers.

It is the company’s choice wether to be unique or to be clean. As long as a company designs its website based on its targeting customers’ preferences, the website is success.

I never heard about Hootsuite before taking this course, so I spend some time searching. The idea of managing multiple social networks from one dashboard is really in need. Even as a normal person, I find it useful for me to check my different social accounts from one site.

We are surrounded by many different social networks, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Companies may want to built relationships with and make itself accessible for users of all these different apps to maximize its influence. Then Hootsuite is a really good way for companies to unify the information, tracking users’ mentions and send out posts. At the same time, I find that the Hootsuite is really helpful on comparing users’ preferences from different medias horizontally . As a result, companies can post different types of messages on different medias to better communicate with the users.

This interview made by CBC news was about the CEO of the Hootsuite, Ryan Holmes. He is a smart and target-oriented person. He grown from a farm with no digital tech but now is a successful CEO in the tech industry. He said that the idea behind the Hootsuite is trying to keep things simple and this is still the goal. I really agree upon this idea. The social media is becoming more and more hard to control as there are too many of them. By simplify the using, companies can better incorporate different social medias with marketing.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ryan-holmes-hootsuite-ceo-tries-to-keep-things-simple-1.2793387

Internet is and will always be an important element of our society as we are living in the global information age. Traditional marketing strategies are not sufficient enough to catch young generation’s attention and the costs of physical advertisements are relatively high. E-marketing is now necessary to learn. This is a elective course for me and I chose this because I see that internet’s economic and social importance has grown.

online-marketing is not restricted by timing and regions. the potential customers for a Vancouver based company are not only people who live nearby, they can be people who live in France or China. Also, online-marketing is more efficient than physical advertisements. companies can track how many people really look at their ads, click into their website and therefore make adjustments to their marketing strategy.

Thinking about myself as a customer, I use cell phone more than computers and I barely texting or calling. Facebook and instagram are where I spend most of my spare time. A popular instagram account is way more attractive than a pice of ads. Social network is a good place for companies to build relationships with millions followers.

E-marketing is a wild range of activities. I find it interesting and familiar because it is already part of my daily life and I would like to turn it into a skill.

(Comment to external comm296 blog–How GoPro Made a Billionaire   https://blogs.ubc.ca/sukichan/2013/03/23/how-gopro-made-a-billionaire/)

After reading Chan’s blog about GoPro, I think he really get the point about why this new company can be such successful in just a decade. In Wikipedia, the first sentence said about this company is that ” GoPro is a brand of high-definition personal cameras, often used in extreme action video photography.” This brief summary gives how GoPro positioned itself and how they started their succeed. Target Market and target consumer are two prior important things to start. GoPro is really smart, like what Chan said, It didn’t position itself to compete in wide camera marketing with many famous brand such as Canon and Sony. it found a more specific and untouched area within the big camera marketing. The following is the ads that Chan talked about. You can see GoPro’s self position everywhere from this ads

In this ads, all views are from the small Hero3 Camera. This kind of image capturing can not be done by expensive digital camera or single-lens reflex camera. This will definitely attract people that don’t want to miss these beautiful moments. This ads is really a good one to show an accurate marketing and customer targeting. Because GoPro’s camera can capture clips and images from bicycle, parachute, surfboard and so on. Many extreme sports enthusiasts have felt in love with GoPro. GoPro focus not only on the accuracy of the shooting, but also working for make people to live better.

It is almost the end of the marketing course, we are still working on the last part of our marketing group project, I do learned a lot from this project. This is not the first time working as a group for a particular topic, but this is the first project that required to make a vedio at the end. I am very appreciate about all our group members’ hardworking. Even though we started our first assignment with only four members, we are very organized and we did a very good one. The brand that we chose was lululemon, this is a very “Vancouver” brand and people are all very familiar about it. This is a good thing, as data searching can be a bit easier. However, this can also be very challenge, as this brand is too familiar to be special. We did a lot of research and had many discussions. By doing the brand and product analyze part, I learned how to think from varies aspects.

The vedio part is the most challenge one, because none of us is really good at vedio editing. I actually have no idea about this. However, Everyone tried to learn and tried to do. We had an excellent shooting last week about the main parts of our video and everyone contributed their best.

(Comment to Burke Tim’s blog “No Such Thing as bad as publicity ” from my section  https://blogs.ubc.ca/timburke/2013/10/23/no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity/)

Tim’s this blog really captured my attention, I can not agree more about his opinion. Instead of saying genius stars, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus are very successful packed out stars. I still can remember when I first saw his youtube video, I was surprised by his gorgeous  voice and such a young age. However these years, he kept running into problems, and those troubles are likely used as news speculation for Justin Bieber, even though it is not a positive way. “Some may say that it is just a phase they are going through, young adults with loads of disposable income of, but I believe that it was a marketing scheme.” I really agree to Tim’s state.

Honestly, I did not really knew Miley before I read Tim’s blog. When I google her name, there were many extremely different pictures showed her before and now. I can not really judge right or wrong, because what kind of path she selected was just about choice. Obviously, she chose a more distinct image.

I think we can roughly call these two successful personal marketing cases, Both of them pander to that young people like pursuing simulation. The rebellious images they build, without adjudging right or wrong, are good marketing to young people.

It is really obvious that McDonald’s is the most popular fast food brand in Vancouver, you can always see the big yellow “M” signs by the road. However, in China, the fact is that the KFC is far more popular than McDonald’s. When I first came to Vancouver, I was surprised by the condition of the KFC：few stores, small space, and limited foods. In China, KFC has a totally different image. It has  almost 3-times as many stores as McDonald’s.( from my own observation). Most of the stores in cities are beauty decorated and grand. They offer a hundred of different kinds of foods from breakfast to night snack. In recent year, KFC are not only limited to the traditional North American style, they have diversity menu such as soup, porridge, and rice meal for the Chinese market.

Why KFC is much more successful than McDonald’s in China, this is an interest topic that many people have already studied. From my perspective, KFC’s successful is largely owe to its business philosophy of innovative spirit. Using the word that we learned in marketing is ” customerization”. KFC is the first one that merge the North American and Chinese styles together and created a “New Fast food” for Chinese. Even though KFC is a fast food brand, the “new fast food” it promoted says that KFC is much more healthier than other kind fast food abroad and in China. You can always see the healthy fast food idea on the tray every time you eat in KFC. Regardless whether it is really healthier. This idea is really fit to Chinese parents’ concern and foster itself a good and healthy image. From both the taste and healthy concern, the KFC did a good job in customize itself in Chinese market. This is one reason that I think KFC can be such popular in China.