Shawn Wang's Blog

For internet marketing course, we presented the “Internet Marketing Recommendation for Sauder School of Business” project to Sauder Marketing staff members consisting of Ms. Niamh Redmond and Mr. Andrew Riley on Nov 26^th, Friday. This project lasted for 4weeks, and it is my first time to learn how to analyze and provide recommendations for a real website and to real clients. It is very different to just present in front of class and to the students same as us, because it is real, we must treat it very seriously, and work out some real issues which our clients would concern.

In the first week, our team, JJ, Kapil, Nesli and me had a very efficient meeting, in the meeting JJ and Kapil took the lead and decided the topic that give recommendation to Sauder School of Business. In the following week, we discussed and determined the structure and content, and allocated for each person. Because after graduate I will work as an operation manager of interactive products in an online media company in China, so I chose the social media, and Kapil selected 7 Cs, JJ chose analytics, Nesli selected web comparison. Following I will show what I have learnt about the social media and the presentation itself.

Social media and social networking become more and more important in recent years, especially, as the leaders in this area, Facebook, Twitter have achieved quite a bit of traction among young people. Today’s generation relies on these tools heavily for information search and exchange of ideas via internet, thus social networking is very important for Sauder’s internet strategy. However, according to a recent survey conducted by Sauder students, the feedback for Sauder website’s Interactive Tools is not good, only 54% of respondents rated it as excellent or good, compared with other attributes such as Visually Pleasing – 85% (excellent/good), Easy to Read/Understand – 85%, there must be something wrong in this area and we can make improvement for it.

First I chose Wharton as our benchmark because it has very good reputation in social networking, and I compared the two schools for

1. Interactive links on homepage

–  Sauder should show the interactive icons not only in homepages but also in subpages to increase the chance that visitor would see and click

–  Sauder should create connection list of all the official Facebook pages/groups, Twitter groups, LinkedIn groups, YouTube channels, and so on.

2. Difference in Facebook page

–  Sauder should create connection list in info page.

3. Difference in LinkedIn

–  Sauder should have its own official alumni group, which would benefit Sauder’s reputation and brand

4. Difference in YouTube

–  Should update more frequently.

–  Should increase academic oriented video.

In the comparison for Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube between Sauder and Wharton, I found Sauder’s update speed for the topics in pages and groups is quite good (except for YouTube), the major problem I found is that because the icons of these interactive tools are only shown in few homepages, new visitors may find difficult to find them when they are viewing detail information in the subpages, they may not know why the icons disappear and where they can find them back, so the basic idea of the improvement Sauder could make is to increase the icons in the subpages, and create overall connection list for visitors, make new comers easy to find and use them.

Besides, maintaining and updating social media by staff is not cost efficient, so Sauder should not only rely on their staff to maintain the interactive tools and social networking, but also encourage students to join in. They can offer instruction for students about how to create and maintain groups in Facebook and LinkedIn, and they can also promote well operated groups created by students.

Our clients agreed with my logic and suggestions, especially they fully agree to add icons in subpages and create connection list for visitors. They said they have already started to work on most of my suggestions, however for the video on YouTube, they have problem. Creating video cost a lot of money and effort, so it is difficult to create tens of videos just as Wharton did, but anyway they will try to update more videos.

It’s a very impressive experience of presenting project to real clients in business school. We have presented a lot in the class, so it is very good to practice it in the real business world. It not only gives me more motivation to work on the project, but also forces me to think from the clients’ point of view. Although it was tough to work on it in such a short period, it is very helpful and valuable experience for me.



Two features of the new Local Search tab of Google mobile search.

Via the google account, you can search and mark local restaurants, flowers, decorations on your computers, and then you can use mobile phone to log in google account via internet, and you will find your marked places.

Also, if you forget to mark some places on your computer, no need to panic, you can use google’s new catagory browse feature to search nearby restaurants, entertainments, and so on.

The features are easy to use, and are very useful function for people to search and visit local business.

At PubCon Las Vegas 2009 search and social media conference in November, WebmasterWorld video content producer Vanessa Zamora interviewed Brian Combs, founder and principal of Austin, Texas-based local search engine and social media optimization firm ionadas local. Combs offered his insights on trends and techniques relating to local search and social media optimization. Combs shared with Zamora some of his thoughts on the importance of businesses creating and claiming their local search presence on Google Maps and then optimizing those listings for local search success. Combs also spoke about how businesses can go about building local search trust with Google Maps using a process similar to traditional link building that he calls citation building. The interview also featured Combs talking about some of the ideas he spoke about during his PubCon session on blended and universal search, including Google Maps optimization. During their interview Combs told Zamora about advantages local firms can have over national or international businesses when competing in the Google Maps local search space.

According to an unnamed insider who spoke with VatorNews, Google has just purchased Groupon for $2.5 billion.  Neither Google nor Groupon comment to confirm the report, but if it is true, it will be the largest deal in google’s history and the 2nd largest acquisition in this year.

Groupon, via its local service strategy, has become the fastest growing company in mankind history, and create a legendary in internet market. Acquiring Groupon, will helps google much to focus on local with its own product such as google local search, and may make big impact to social media such like facebook.

Daily deals site Groupon might soon become the property of another company whose name starts with “G” and contains a couple “o”s, according to a new report. Supposedly Google (the company in question, if you couldn’t guess) is willing to write a pretty big check, too.

Kara Swisher reported earlier this morning, “According to multiple sources close to the situation, Google is in discussions with local deals powerhouse Groupon about buying it. . . . [S]ources said the price being considered is certainly no discount – well above the $2 billion to $3 billion that Yahoo offered Groupon in acquisition talks that took place earlier this year.”

The idea of an increased bid seems reasonable, since the Yahoo discussions obviously didn’t work out. Also, Google had $33.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities just sitting around as of September 30th, so the company can afford to pay a little more.

As for the deal itself, it makes a degree of sense, as well. Saving money has become a popular activity, and Groupon is among the top players in the field. Its ties to Facebook and Twitter, along with its mobile presence, then add additional value.

Still, Swisher noted, “But there is one major issue in a possible Google purchase of Groupon: Even more regulatory scrutiny by the federal government over its power online.”

From: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/11/19/acquisition-rumors-link-google-groupon

Groupon use Facebook and Twitter as one of its powerful marketing method, as its advertising video, once a consumer use Facebook, Twitter or email to invite one friend to join the deal, the consumer will be rewarded, and as the number of people he/she could invite to join the group purchase, his/her reward will be multiplied, this create an incentive for consumer to help Groupon to spread or say, advertise deals it provided. Specifically, Groupon will give you $10 in “Groupon Bucks” for each friend you refer when they make their first purchase – when you sign in Groupon website, for each deal you can get a personalized referral link using the tools on the website, so when your friends clicks that link, Groupon will know you sent them. If someone joins that deal within 72 hours after clicking your link, Groupon will add C$10 Groupon Bucks to your account and these Groupon Bucks can be used toward any Groupon purchase, and they never expire.

From consumers’ view, it is very attractive to sharing the information, and with the power of Facebook and Twitter, it is also very convenient to share the information with friends; from Groupon’s view, this rewarding mechanism means that the cost of get a new customers is only $10.

What an excellent deal!

What is Group Purchase?
Group purchase or say “tuangou” in Chinese is an idea that integrates purchase power from a group of individual, and then bargains with shops or restaurants for better deal, for example, a big discount. The difficulty of this idea is how to attract and gather a group of people with same purchasing interest, so before the internet era it is almost impossible to make it as a business model, and even before 2007, over twenty years after internet was introduced, group purchase didn’t appear to be a good business model, until Groupon – a small America startup set up in 2008.

What is Groupon?
Adopted the group purchase idea, Andrew Mason, the CEO of Groupon started the his startup company – Groupon.com in November 2008. As its name which combined by “Group” and “Coupon” indicates, Groupon works as an assurance contract using The Point’s platform: if a certain number of people sign up for the offer, then the deal becomes available to all; if the predetermined minimum is not met, no one gets the deal that day. This reduces risk for retailers, who can treat the coupons as quantity discounts as well as sales promotion tools. And as the key of this business model, Groupon makes money by getting a cut of the deal from the retailers.
Furthermore, Groupon is localized to major cities, provide deal of the day service, and mainly focus on intangible service such as dinner, SPA or bar, in this way Groupon not only avoid delivery cost for tangible merchandise but also utilize the idle capacity of the service providers. The first market for Groupon was Chicago, soon thereafter by Boston and New York City and Toronto, Groupon business model gained huge success very quickly and therefore it attract much risk investment, which make its quick expansion possible – by October 2010, Groupon serves more than 150 cities in North America and global wide, with expected $500 million revenue and $1.3billion company value in 2010.

What is Groupon’s advantages?
One of its advantage is that, Groupon only provided one deal (product or service), a model that update every day with great discount, attract many people to join. Thus people can only know what is on sales by enter Groupon website every day, foods, SPA, etc. and share this information with friends via SNS, email, twitter. And another advantage is Groupon only sales intangible product (or service), so it can saves a lot money, resource, and people from inventory management and logistics which are need to delivery tangible products, and leverage small investment to grow very quickly.

Whom Groupon service for?
Groupon serves for two groups of customers, one is web users, and the other is shops or service providers.
For web users, Groupon get the interest point of users, who are attracted and pay for the services with large discount, and via the limit of success group deal and information share and invitation among users, to make users interact via the internet. With the increase of the people who join the group purchase, a message was promote among users that this deal was more and more trusted. Thus this kind of 2nd tier spontaneous promotion among web users made Groupon model very success, and more people join Groupon, more active the Groupon is, plus media promotion, the No. of Groupon registered user increases for 200million every month.
For shops and service providers, who are usually small or media size, they usually can’t afford for ad in traditional media, and also find difficult to promote themselves in the infinite internet world. However, Groupon provide an excellent platform for these small service providers, who can make promotion which not only utilize the idle service capacity, but also attracted potential customers who may have second purchase in future, just as a free ad

What is Groupon product?
Groupon doesn’t provide any tangible product to both web user and service providers, what it provides is just information. It is easy to understand that Groupon provides web surfers information of great deal they can purchase immediately.
Groupon provides information of customers to service providers. Most of these customers’ average age is between 29~33 in Groupon, and they have both purchasing power and intention, service providers are exposed to customers via Groupon, and generate great revenue from the huge No. of customers, then through their good service or products attract these customer to make second purchase. So for shops, Groupon is a platform who provides precise customers information with very low cost, and is the best place to advertise and promote themselves.

What’s the matter about e-marketing?
As described in previous paragraphs, Groupon model could be a media platform for small shops and service providers to “post” ad via discounted products and services. Actually, in China, the origin of group purchase idea, Groupon model was so hot that was intimated by thousands of companies over night, and after almost one year crazy competition, the business model starts evolving in China. For example, Groupon.com makes money via sharing the profit of group sales from the shops, however in China, some big web portals who have their own “Groupon” business, use this model as a pure media platform, that is – they even don’t expect revenue for short term, the platform was are completely free (no fee for ad and no share for the sales profit) for shops and service providers, what these web portals want is just the same of the shops – to accumulate customers and promote their brand; once they become the largest one in this group purchase market in China, that means tens of millions registered web surfers and tens of thousands shops, they can make huge revenue easily, and there are plenty of this kind of examples in internet history.
Group purchase model will impact current e-commerce and e-marketing method profoundly, and of course, there will be huge opportunities worth to pursue in it.

This is a test, to check my first blog here.