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Photographs as Compelling Content Marketing
With all of the image-sharing services such as Pinterest and Instagram, sometimes a basic premise of communication practice is lost. Images are important in all of your marketing content but be sure that your images do not show the value of your product. Smart marketers give their customers a lot of creative fodder and in the process, position themselves as a brand that says, “We are here to help.” A marketer should use amazing pictures and graphics to tell amazing stories. When using pictures to help tell a story, the pictures can help to catch the interest and show what story you are either talking about or writing about. Pictures are used in magazines and newspapers to help show what the writer is trying to convey as well as what the particular article is covering. Tapping into your customer’s passion and creativity will help make your marketing more effective when reaching those customers that have been targeted for a particular product or brand. Entertaining prospect customers with user-generated visual content that lets your loyal customers share their own engaging stories is an important aspect of content marketing. A great example of this is, Australian tourism, customers have submitted over nine hundred photos a day showing off the country of Australia and their love for the country through pictures. With your company using different consumers photos and it shows that your brand is still focused on helping people and what the company can do for you. A company should humanize the images of their company by displaying a variety of people in different ways interacting with the company brands. It also helps give current customers a way to newly interact with the company. It is helpful to show your company through photos, videos explaining how to use the products, and surveys. In this way it will ensure that the customers feel more like they are interacting with your company and also getting good quality help. The company wants to help out their customers in almost any way they can but when using photos or imagery, be sure as a marketer that you stay away from generic stock images! No one wants to look at these photos and they can make your customer very bored. Use bright images that capture the attention of the customers. Sometimes the best photos are ones that your consumer has submitted to your social media. Visual content is snack able, which means your information, is easy and quick to consume. This allows your customers too see your info before they get too bored with the information. The company’s visual content should be friendly and show that the company is using social media to present their products or services. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, tumbler, and twitter help show the company’s products/service and attract a large amount of attention. The company should use their customers and users content that the consumers post as a way to advertise better and show what their company is about and what products they have. The visuals that the company’s consumers post and the ones the company use for advertisement should focus on the specific conversation that you’re talking about on social media. What this means is when your company is using consumer images that have to be related or focused on the subject that is being discussed. All visual content that is posted via the Internet needs to be compelling and hold the reader’s interest, which is why it is so important to have great visual content on all of a company’s social media. Good brands continually change up their marketing to best capture new and returning customers throughout the year but especially with new products or brands. To conclude we have shown how company’s can use their consumer’s photos to help with advertisement.
References:
Linn, M. (2014, April 24). Use Visual Content to Engage Your Audience: 9 Tips and 25 Examples. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/04/visual-content-engage-audience-tips-examples/
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Harris, J. (2016, September 05). 37 Tips and Tools for Picture-Perfect Visual Content. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/09/tools-visual-content/
Cohen, H. (2013, March 12). 5 Facts Prove Visual Content Is A Guaranteed Winner! – Heidi Cohen. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://heidicohen.com/5-facts-prove-visual-content-is-a-guaranteed-winner/
How to use Facebook to market your products or services
Using a Facebook page to market your services or products is a great way to get your company engaged online with social media. A Facebook page is almost a must these days to reach your customers, from the millennial generation as well as other generations. A majority of Internet users use Facebook to connect with other people socially and connect with business to gain information of what they sell or what services they offer. One useful part of Facebook is the ability for people to like or share your Facebook page, which ultimately means they are liking or sharing your products or services, a form of word of mouth advertising but online. When using Facebook a company is not looking to sell their products/services but rather inform consumers what it is that the company sells or what the company can offer to do for them. Facebook is a great way to show consumers how a company can benefit them through their products and services. If we try and get the customers to buy products/Services from a Facebook page, then there is a possibility that a company might scare them off or the customers will not want to buy from a company. A company does not want this to happen because caring for their customers is a priority that all companies have in wanting consumers to use their products and services over other companies online. A Firm can also advertise on Facebook’s Classic Ad’s. Using the Classic Ad’s will help get a brand name out to users of the Internet and help increase traffic to their website and Facebook page. A great tactic on Facebook is to have a giveaway for an event or a free gift. By doing a giveaway you will increase views of your Facebook page and increase your customer base size. The major step is showing how to treat customers and help a company’s customers on social media and especially Facebook. One idea with the use of Facebook is to show a product or campaign for products and services on the cover photo of your Facebook page. By updating a cover photo it will convey an updating of the Facebook page regularly and advertising of the products often; which should include links to your homepage of the website to the company advertising. A deep link is necessary when posting on the Facebook page of the company. A deep link is a link that will take your customers straight to the product or service. Linking only to a website of the company will not help the customers find the products or service that they are looking for. Without a deep link it could actually cause more confusion which could lead to the consumer finding a website that is easier to follow and not searching within a company’s website any longer.
The fact is that society has begun shopping online and using the Internet to find answers to solutions that they have. If a company wishes to see continued sales rise they need to have a presence within the social media field. Facebook is an easy way to stay connected to the consumers that not only buy a product regularly but those that might want to use a product or service in the future.
References:
Karasiewicz, C. (2013, October 7). How to Use Facebook to Sell Your Products and Services: Social Media Examiner. Retrieved November 12, 2016, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-facebook-to-sell-your-products-and-services/
Marrs, M. (2016, October 24). WordStream. Retrieved November 12, 2016, from http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/04/15/facebook-marketing
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Making Your Site Mobile Friendly
As the average consumer begins using more mobile phones like IPhone, Android, and other cellular phones or tablets, we begin to see more people looking at websites through their phones. Having a website that is adaptable to web browsing on phones these days is almost always a requirement. The website needs to be not only phone friendly but tablet friendly to accommodate everyone using different cellular devices. A company’s website should have different kinds of HTML on it to recognize whether the user is on a computer or mobile device. A major feature to keep in mind when doing a website that is mobile friendly, would be that you need to keep it easy to navigate as well as fast. What is meant by fast, is that when your website loads it should load instantly and be ready to be used by your customer. Your customer is likely using data to load your website and that is costing your customer money on their data bill. So, you should make sure it comes up quickly and is easy to get around your website. Having your website easy to navigate on a phone is a major plus to have on your website. I can not tell you the amount of times it has been difficult to navigate a website because they either did not lay it out right or they did not have a mobile version of their website for the phone that I use. If you are like me, when a website does not have a mobile friendly website or I have to zoom in really close to see what is on the website it is frustrating and makes me not want to look at that website but instead move on to one that is mobile friendly. When a consumer looks at pages on the website designed for our mobile devices it is very different than the one on the actual website that we see with our computer. The pages on the site for our phones are only showing what the company feels are the most important items it wishes for us too see. But, if they were on the full website the consumer would see all of the content that the company offers. Another cool feature I have seen on some of the new mobile friendly websites is that they have phone numbers that the consumer just clicks on and it will call the number, instead of them having to dial it in. Another one of the newer features is that when the company gives their address, it will ask if you need directions, if you do it will automatically put it into your phone’s map/directions app. One other major factor with setting up a mobile friendly is having Google be able to differentiate from the main website and the mobile website. If Google knows the difference, this will ensure that the customers on the phone will go directly to the mobile friendly site and not the website for the computers. A majority of people are now using their phones to search for products and services. Many consumers often buy products online off either their phones or tablets because it has become much easier to use cellphones and tables than to go all the way over to their computers and shop there. As you can see if you do not have a mobile friendly website then you are hurting your business by not bringing in new and lifelong consumers to your mobile site as well as those that have bought before from their computers.
References:
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Effective Writing for Marketing and PR
Your Marketing and public relations departments are meant to help build relationships with your customers and the journalist/media. The first thing you want to work on is how to identify your target market and how you separate them into different buying segments or buyer personas. Successful marketers will be using real word lingo to talk to their customers. Marketers want to talk to their customers, as if they were talking to them as friends. Be careful to avoid corporate jargon. Also, you don’t want to come across as if you are trying to hard, because that will make it sound phony and will make your customers unsatisfied. A rule for writing is to always start with looking at what your customers want and focus on that need instead of focusing on the products you are marketing. Always look at how you as the marketer will define the problem and figure out how to solve the problem, to help meet our customers needs with their problems. After finding a solution to our customer’s needs and issues, make sure the posts for your product are compelling and interesting to the target audience. This will ensure that your customers want to read your post about upcoming products as well as information on those that are already in use. The messages in the posts need to be consistent, clear, cohesive and finally context. Timing is a huge factor with writing, if you are sending it to journalist, enlist the journalist to ensure the release date is on the day you would like it to go out to the consumers, otherwise it might end up being at a later date for the products intended release date. If you put an embargo on your writing, this will tend to make the journalist unhappy and may cause them to not publish your work. Research is a major tool in looking at how to talk to your customers and what needs they have that you might want to write about. Consumers would rather read short paragraphs than long paragraphs. Our main goal as marketers is to keep our customers reading and interested in our products that we are writing about. Let’s talk, would you rather read a long boring paragraph or a short paragraph that explains the products in a fun exciting way? You will most likely go with the short paragraph that is more to point but still interesting. I’m not saying the long paragraphs are not a good way to talk to our customers but you should probably start out with a short paragraph before moving to the longer paragraphs in order to capture your consumer’s interest. When writing, we as marketers, have to make sure we are writing for our target audience versus telling our consumers to buy our products. This tends to turn the average consumer off. We should never write about why you need to buy our products but how these products will help you with your problems or needs. Home Depot does this amazingly well in their blogs, showing how they can help consumer’s problems by using their products. (The Home Depot) Home Depot has shown their customers that they are not trying to force you to buy their products but they actually want to help you with problems that have come up in day-to-day living. How to write effectively for our consumers and how our marketing and public relations department can reach new consumers and loyal customers is an essential part in the marketing world that all marketers need to learn as a part of becoming successful in the marketing world.
References:
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Porter, J. (2009, March 30). Quick Tips to Improve Your PR and Marketing Writing … Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://blog.journalistics.com/2009/improve_your_pr_and_marketing_writing/
Leven, D. (n.d.). A complete guide to writing an effective press release. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/pr/writing-press-release/pr/marketing/complete-guide-writing-effective-press-release
(n.d.). 5 Top Tips to Write Effectively for PR. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://prinyourpajamas.com/write-effectively-for-pr/
The Home Depot. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://blog.homedepot.com/
How to Create Thoughtful Content
With creating thoughtful content, a marketer needs to make sure their ideas are attracting buyers and not making them run in the opposite way. When you are writing, make sure that you do not in any way talk about the company or the products that you are promoting. The job of a thought leader is to be there to help your customers answer any questions that they might have. You will be showing that the business is thoughtful and caring as well as, a company that is worth doing business with. This type of marketing and PR is not a brochure or pitch sale. Thought leadership should never be about advertising. Before ever beginning an event, the thought leader must always define the organizational goals. After your goals for your event has been decided, you as the thought leader, will need to figure out if the event will be free or will people need to pay for your event to gain access. If you decide to go with the free route many will more than likely attend however, you might not learn anything about them or what their wants and needs are. However, if the event is paid you may not have as many people attend as you did with the free event which means you might not get answers that you were looking for either. The nice feature with paid events is you can acquire more information about your customers as well as their needs and wants. When trying to create thoughtfully, you should think like you are a publisher. In thinking like a publisher you are trying to understand your target audience. As you look at this target audience, you will be looking at the troubles they are having and how to appeal to them with different solutions to their problems. Writing to the consumers should be interesting including videos/ pictures, stories that influence the consumers by standing out for the needs and wants that need to be met. All of the articles need to stand out with your target audience, boring articles without visual aids will go ignored by the majority of consumers. Making your articles interesting also helps your customers to interact with you and your company, also attracting new customers. A great title that is intriguing and interesting for your customers is essential in grabbing the consumer as well. One way to bring in people to your articles is through click bait. “I would strongly advise against this, because it could make people dislike your article.” Click bait is being use a lot on YouTube to get views. This will bring in a lot of people but unless you are doing what you said in your title, then you lead your consumers down a path with no help. “Like I said above just don’t do it!” YouTube vlogger Casey Neistat does well with putting out topics that are interesting and keeping to the title. With Mr. Neistat doing it this way, he has gained many followers and some of his vlogs have had millions of views. He is also a featured in many different ads, like Samsung. Make sure you also promote this event like as if this is the only event you will ever have. Social media, have celebrities talk about the event, as well as putting the event in the local news are just several way to promote the event that you are trying to market. Another way to get a good amount of attention is by sending downloadable links to bloggers, vloggers, and reporters that you know will put a positive spin on your event without any negativity about the product you are promoting.
References
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken, (N.J.): John Wiley & Sons.
Harris, J. (Ed.). (n.d.). Casey Neistat Official Website. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://casey.nyc/
Home. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.samsung.com/us/
YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/
Tips for Creating a Buyer-Centric Website
Each of your consumers are going to be different and will have different needs and wants. This is why every site needs to organize their sites to meet the distinct needs of different customers. One of the many ways sites do this is link to landing pages based on the problems your product or services solves. Once a buyer reaches the page of their choice, it unlocks many new ways to reach our customers and describes what we should advertise to our consumers. With each of these pages you should show different people using your different products and services. Images will help your website be more attractive and inviting to your customers, you just need to make sure its showing off your product or service in different pictures. You need to make sure that you have a clear structure intuitive. Make sure that you have a site map to help your customers find what they are looking for. Included a list of products, brands, and services your company provides on your website. If you have a website your going to most likely need a FAQ section with the most frequent questions and answers in it. Make sure you constantly update your website to keep it relevant and up to date with the current trends happing. Keep a list of contacts for your customers to reach you if they have questions, the most popular for business is either a phone call or an email. The best and easiest way to reach your consumers is know what market to focus on and keep up to date on it. Keep engaged on social media to keep up to date with the different trends and event going on around social media. Make sure to respond to your consumers on social media, whether its good or bad things. The faster you respond to someone on social media, the more they will believe that you’re trying to help them with any of their problems that they might have. If you can target your market and figure out whom you need to focus on, it will help with bring in the right customers. You need to have your contact info at bottom of all of the different pages. Your consumers do not need to look for your contact info. When your customers contact you for help or services, you need to provide timely/quick service. After you have provided service for your consumers, you need to make sure that you follow up with your consumers afterwards. The main goal of your website is to attract consumer and future buyers, you want to make sure your customers are pleased and will continue to buy your product. If you do not have a buyer website you will not be able to keep your buyers or make new customers.
References
Drummond-Dunn, D. (2015, October 15). 7 Ways to Guarantee a Customer Centric Website | MarTech. Retrieved October 08, 2016, from https://marketingtechblog.com/customer-centric-website/
Castro, J. P. (2015). How To Create Customer-Centric Landing Pages. Retrieved October 08, 2016, from https://customericare.com/how-to-create-customer-centric-landing-pages
Tomlinson, J. S. (2016, June 08). 10 ways to create a customer-centric website. Retrieved October 08, 2016, from https://blogs.partner.microsoft.com/mpn/10-ways-create-customer-centric-website/
Pfannkuch, K. (2016, April 08). 5 Tips for Creating Customer-Centric Content. Retrieved October 08, 2016, from http://marketeer.kapost.com/creating-customer-centric-content/
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken (N.J.), NJ: Wiley.
What Do You Want Your Buyers to Believe in for Your Organization?
We have been talking in class about how to persuade your buyers to believe in your organization as well as how to keep your consumers interested in your products. As the book described, during the 2004 elections, President George W. Bush was more appealing to mothers that were worried about security and keeping everyone safe. The marketing and election team wanted to promote the view that President Bush was a down home country boy and cared about core values with education and safety at the top of his election strategy. This strategy helped earn him the presidency. One of the best things to remember is that even if you have a great message it is not just about your product. For example, selling of cars, some might be very luxurious but Volvo always says, “We don’t just sell cars. We sell safety!” (Volvo.com) What this is saying is that if you buy our vehicles, we are not just selling you a car, you are getting a very safe nice car. Volvo is saying one of their highest features that they promote is safety. (Volvo.com) When I was at the American Marketing Association Regional Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, I listened to the speech by the marketing director for Volvo. He repeatedly talked about how important safety was for their many European customers that were very concerned with safety and their cars had to be developed to meet that need. Another great example is Gatorade, especially if we look at how Gatorade has shaped what we buy when we participate in sports or activities. Gatorade sponsors almost every sport. In their ads you will see many different target audiences buying Gatorade, because they want to be just like all the athletes who drink Gatorade. Gatorade’s famous slogan is, “If you want to win, you’ve got to replace what you lose.”(Gatorade.com) Some athletes might see each other differently in the sports they play vs. other sports, if so, you will have to make new ads/profiles for each of the different sports. For example, tennis and soccer are two totally different sports but both sports use Gatorade to replenish their teams. For tennis you would use a famous tennis player to spur interest in getting tennis players to buy Gatorade and the same can be said for soccer players. Gatorade does an amazing job at doing this because they have different celebrities from different sports. One of the biggest companies that understand their consumers to believe in them is Nike. (Nike.com) Nike has their famous phrase, “Just Do It” (Nike.com). Consumers that purchase Nike believe that by buying Nike’s products it will help them perform better than those who do not use Nike’s products. The Buyers persona for Nike is that this product will make me faster and help me get better during workouts. Nike has many different personae’s for all kinds of sports and activities. Another key factor as to why people’s personae about buying Nike products is it will make them cool, like the celebrities that are sponsored by Nike.
In the end, the organization/marketer that is selling a product must look at the effects of how a slogan or celebrity can influence the consumer that will be purchasing the product and to make sure that they believe in the product your are promoting.
References
Scott, D. M. (2006, October 25). Gatorade and martinis: What do you want your buyers to believe about your company? Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://www.webinknow.com/2006/10/gatorade_and_ma.html
Introducing The All-New S90. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://www.volvocars.com/us
Help rebuild muscles. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://www.gatorade.com/
Nike.com. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken (N.J.): Wiley.
Creating a World Wide Rave and the Rules of the Rave
The Internet has given rise to the form of direct marketing called the World Wide Rave. A “Rave” is when an idea takes off in an instant on the web from ordinary people telling their story about the use of a product and then that friend sends it to another friend and so on. Each person is a new contact that you never had to do a thing to get the product exposed, totally free advertisement for the product. It is a phenomenon that one person can make your company rise in fortune by contacting those that follow them until it has reached around the globe. For that reason it is important as marketers to understand and use the Internet to cause these Raves for the products that we market. There are many different Raves going on around the world many of which originate from the United States. For example, one of the Raves that are currently going on right now is GoPro (GoPro.com). GoPro has just released a long awaited action camera as well as their brand new drone called Karma (GoPro.com). The World Wide Rave is an amazing way to reach your customers and new ones by showing your products in this form. When Eppybird.com did an experiment to see what would happen with diet coke and Mentos mixed together, they created a World Wide Rave. This Rave all started from a YouTube video and was spread around to many different people around the globe. The best part is that Coke and Mentos got free advertisement out of it and they were able to reach many different people for free! The process for doing a World Wide Rave is quite simple and easy to do. As marketers, we are taught different ways of doing marketing and a Rave is the exact opposite of what is done for a World Wide Rave. There are many rules for doing a Rave. These are a few examples of rules in which to do a Rave.
- Your customers do not care about your product. They care only if it will make their lives easier and are fun for them to enjoy/play with. You cannot try and get people hyped for your products, because your customers will see this as begging for them to buy your product.
- Do not do any type of coercion for you do not need to do that or spend time and money on it. If your product is already creating a rave your can let people share it and not worry about if your coercion is working or not.
- Let go of control and let people share your contents freely and openly. Let the consumers share what you have to offer and they can spread the word around to different people. Word of mouth is invaluable.
- Make sure you’re involved in social media or responding quickly to your customer’s questions and liking the content they have shared. Follow up with them and thank them for sharing your products.
- Make it easy to share your products and make triggers for your consumers. When you have helped someone with a problem that they have been having trouble with, they will most likely share their experience with social media and their friends. To get things elevated in the World Wide Rave you need to get people to talk about it and discuses it.
- Finally you need to point everyone to your website, so they can find your products and any help they need with their issues that may have come from use of the product.
If you follow theses rules it will generally help with getting a World Wide Rave started. Once you have it going it will take off and you will not have too much more other than what is on this list to make your product a worldwide phenomenon.
References
Scott, D. M. (2009). World Wide Rave. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
GoPro Official Website – Capture share your world – Homepage. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2016, from https://gopro.com/
Coca-Cola Global: Soft Drinks & Beverage Products. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2016, from http://www.coca-cola.com/index.jsp
By 1973 new varieties were introduced. In the US, Mentos lovers got to try cinnamon and menthol, while European addicts were presented with fruit flavored mints. (n.d.). Welcome to Mentos. Retrieved September 22, 2016, from http://us.mentos.com/
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken (N.J.): Wiley.
Social Networking and Agility
Social networking has opened new ways for business owners to talk with present customers as well as to bring in future customers through social media by tweeting back to customers or by liking a post that was made about your business. If a company does not use social media it will be missing one of the quickest and best way to reply to any need for help that their customers might have. If you reply to a user’s messages in real time it makes your customers happy to know that you care about your customers and shows everyone that you and your company are plugged into social media. For example Old Spice has had a spokesperson answering tweets during some of their commercials. Companies need to get more people involved with their social media campaigns to increase their sales. (Patel, 2016) Another example is the ad that Coca-Cola was doing with the Shazam app, where you could use your Shazam app to get a free coke. Coca-Cola also has hash tags in their ads, mainly in light lettering to hide it but still visible enough to get you interested in their hash tag campaign. (Coca-Cola®) The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon does an amazingly good job using weekly hash tags that turn into worldwide topics. This has made the Tonight Show famous for doing funny hash tags and how much they post to social media. People who haven’t really heard about the show are becoming more interested in it, which is resulting in more viewers. Huge companies also have marketing departments dedicated to nothing but social media. One of those big companies that are doing this really well is GoPro. GoPro has the hash tag #beahero and they post many videos from users to their Facebook page to get the word out on how they would like to have their cameras used. (GoPro).
One of the best things you can do with social media is help people if they are having trouble with any of your products. It shows that you care about them as customers and lets them know if there is a problem with their product, that you will fix it. This talk over social media will help build relationships with you and your customers. Also, with doing social media, you need to make sure you are fast responding and everyone knows who you are. For example, in the book, the author described that Hightail did not respond to his tweet that he sent out to get help with a code for pro software. As where he sent out that tweet, JetBlue sent a response saying they could help him with his problem by offering him a deal with their services. (Scott, 2015) Another good way to get peoples attention is to use your car for advertising by painting it with the company’s color or design that reminds everyone of your product. The Mary Kay’s Salespeople have bright pink cars that they drive around that are immediately associated with their product because that pink color is associated with the company name. In fact the cars have their own twitter account, so you can find out where a car is located if you wanted to get in touch with your local Mary Kay salesperson. (Scott, 2015 page 60)
Social networking and social media are the new frontier for the marketing of products. The agility to sell products to ongoing consumers as well as to acquire new customers is a big reason social media has become the new frontier with the ability to help consumers in the use of the products that a company is selling is a strong reason that social media is here to stay.
References
Patel, S. (2016, January 12). Social-Media Marketing Is Not Dead: 10 Companies That Are Still Rocking It. Retrieved September 10, 2016, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254644
Gauthier, B. (n.d.). Who’s Behind the Brand? 15 Examples of Companies Rocking Social Media. Retrieved September 10, 2016, from http://blog.bradleygauthier.com/social-media-behind-the-brand/
GoPro | World’s most Versatile Camera | HERO4 Black Edition. (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2016, from https://gopro.com/
(2016, January 1). The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon – NBC.com. Retrieved September 10, 2016, from http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show
Coca-Cola® | Taste The Feeling! (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2016, from https://us.coca-cola.com/home/
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR how to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Advertising: A Money Pit of Wasted Resources
In the old days we would market through the radio, TV, direct mail, and magazines. In each case there was a specific target that was to be reached. For example, when a TV program about preparing food was being watched on TV, the audience would be targeted to see advertisements that were about specialty food choices available at that time. One such advertisement might be for a megabrand, like McDonalds to get you interested in buying their products but if the product to be sold is for a small mom and pop local restaurant I would do an ad either on local TV or in the town newspaper. It would not do any good to broadcast it on national TV, because only the local people are going to be interested. No one outside that area is going to care about the local mom and pop restaurant and where it is located.
Advertising today has gotten even better in targeting a product to a particular audience. If the product that you are selling only pertains to limited number of people I would research the media they pay attention to. For example if I was doing an ad for mufflers for cars and trucks, I would advertise in magazines and websites that people interested in those products are known to view. If I were to put your ad in a national newspaper or on national TV programs, the ad would be seen by millions of people but only a few would actually go and look at your product. If you are only targeting certain people you do not want to waste your money on ads during live TV shows or national papers and magazines. A better plan is to limit ads to TV shows and papers/magazines that pertain to the seller’s products.
Here is another way I think you can develop new customers especially for a small new business. Say you are opening a new Laundromat and you want to bring more people into your business. I would send out flyers/pamphlets in the direct mail to the surrounding area to get people to come in to your store. Keep it local for anything else is just throwing money away!
Some of the old ways of advertising are still good if applied correctly but I think one of the new and better ways to advertise for small businesses and make their name known is by doing it on social media. The Web and social media advertising is so much different from the old way of advertising but it has so much more to offer the seller and the buyer. Web marketing and social media marketing is centered on interacting, informing, educating, multiple choices, and most important, it is delivering helpful content at the right moment when a buyer needs it. If you use social media to advertise a product it will be ten times cheaper than regular advertising and you can get people to pass it on to their friends and that helps your name grow and hopefully become bigger. If a small restaurant like Schoepf’s Bar-B-Que were to do advertisement like the Texas Roadhouse chain, then Schoepf’s Bar-B-Que would go bankrupt or close to bankrupt due to advertising cost. My best advise to all small business is to do only local advertising. To do it on a bigger scope is a waste of money.
References:
Schoepf’s Bar-B-Que. (n.d.). Retrieved August 26, 2016, from http://www.schoepfsbbq.com/
Texas Roadhouse. (n.d.). Retrieved August 26, 2016, from https://www.texasroadhouse.com/
Wright, G. (2012, December 7). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Retrieved August 26, 2016, from https://prezi.com/ugsinyfuwcvh/the-new-rules-of-marketing-pr/
McDonald’s: Burgers, Fries & More. Quality Ingredients. (n.d.). Retrieved August 26, 2016, from https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html
Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing & PR how to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
My life in Marketing 