Internet Marketing Fall 2006

2006-12-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

Guest Lecturer - David Alpern
Thursday, December 7th, 2006

Overall the class was very interesting. David lectured mostly on Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. His outside experience brought a great deal of knowledge to the topic.

Advertising & Search
SEM is important for advertising your company or product because people use search engines for a variety of reasons including

Research
Entertainment
Business
Comparison Shop
News
Banking
+ Many others

A website should be well planned in order to be successful. David covered site strategies for success.

Site Strategies for Success

Establish your sites objectives
Set goals to measure success
Identify your target audience
Identify your competition
Creative content

SEM - Search Engine Marketing

David was very knowledgeable with SEM and the majority of the lecture was specific to SEM

Typical Search Engines

Crawler-based search engine

Mechanically constructed listings by having a spider visit the site

Directory Search Engine

Yahoo's initial business
Reviewed and constructed by humans
Only approved entries are in the directory

P4P-Pay for Performance

Also called Pay Per Click-PCP or Cost Per Click- CPC
Overture was the first to utilize PCP

Portals

A site that serves as a gateway to additional information.

There are many partnership arrangements between portals and search engines.

Horizontal Portals-General information
Interest Portals-Yahoo!
Vertical Portals-Focus on a particular interest - examples include CNET, Business.com and Shopzilla

Portal Presence-Having visibility on main search engines and general portals.
Good portal presence can and will increase traffic to a site.
Good portal presence can be purchased through ads and sponsorship.
You want to be in the top 10 in a search.
Most people do not go past the first page of a search.

How to get Noticed in a Search Engine?

You can use SEM or SEO-Search Engine Optimization
David spent most of the lecture discussing the various aspects of SEM and spent the last part of the class briefly discussing SEO.

Paid Placement
Bid for key words
Paid Inclusion-example-Yahoo!, on the right side of a search page- those listings are paid for by the company.

Keys to determining if an entry is paid inclusion
The description and title are very clean.
A paid inclusion will not have "cache" in the address line.
The entries with cache in the address line are not being paid for.

Google and AdWords
Google's branded pay per click advertising service.

Advertisers specify the keywords that they want.
The order of paid listings depends on the relative size of bids, quality score and relevancy.
Google AdWords rewards relevance-the more click a site receives, the higher up the search page the site will be listed
Game Theory-Everything is constantly changing. What worked today, may not work tomorrow.

AdSense

Advertisers may enable their ads to be place on Googles numerous partner sites.
AdWords ads are on sites that are not just search engines.

GMail

Google's email
Sponsored ads can be found on the side of the inbox

Other Search Engines

Yahoo!-Began as a directory
Ask.com-formerly Ask Jeeves - uses sponsored links
Google - page rank
MSN

David shared a slide regarding which search engines individuals use.

November 2005
% search engines were used:

Google-46%
Yahoo-23.4%
MSN-13.2%
AOL-7.6%
Ask-5.9%
Others-2.6%

Choosing Keywords

Try to think of every possible way a customer will think of you and use these as your keywords.
People are headed to using more words in their searches.

David showed an interesting bar graph showing the decrease in the one word searches and the increase of +2 words or more in their searches. David also showed a graph showing the % of the types of SEM spending.

Paid Placement-83%
Organic SEO-11.2%
Paid Inclusion-4.3%
SEM Technology-1.6%

What's Next in SEM?

Local Search-Rather than just typing in "restaurant" for a search, people are more specific with searches such as "restaurant-Long Beach"

Behavioral and Personal Search-The more a search engine knows about you, the more it can weed out irrelevant results.

Social Search

Contextual Search

"Eventually search will be used with every device in every place."

SEO-Search Engine Optimization

David briefly went over SEO. This was near the end of class, so he didn't go over SEO as in depth as SEM. These are just a few of the topics that he mentioned.

Keyword Density

Keyword Prominence

Link Component-Pages will not rank well if your site does not have a navigation scheme. Avoid dangling pages. Create a site map, but also plan how pages link to each other.

Creating Links

Popularity Component-Based on the number of pages that link to your site. The more popular pages that link to you, the higher your popularity.

Anchor Text

Meta Tags

David mentioned 404 error pages which I thought was very interesting. He showed us that CSULB uses a 404 error pages. He also showed us a few other companies that use them.

Overall, he main point at the end was to design a site that is user friendly.

2006-11-09T23:54:00.000-08:00

Useit.com
Incompetent Email Marketing=Lost Future Opportunites, October 15, 2005.

Summary: Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts.

This article discusses the importance of personalizing newsletters to your customers. The article points out that there are 165 guidelines for newsletters and 73 guidelines for confirmation emails that companies need to be aware of when pursuing a newsletter campaign.

Jakob Nielson received a newsletter from United Airlines that did meet 70% of the newletter guidelines. He points out that the real problem was that the promotions contained in the newsletter did not pertain to him. Companies have enough information that they could personalize their email campaigns to their customers.

Individuals are usually in a hurry when checking their email. If they begin reading an email that does not pertain to them, they will immediately delete the email when they do not find information that is interesting to them. Eventually, the receivers of these emails will begin to delete the email even before they open it. The newsletter/email campaign will not be effective by any means if in any way individuals are not even opening the email.

Newsletters and email campaigns can work in favor of the sender if they are personalized enough to catch the receivers attention. Email campaigns can work as great relationship builders.

The implications for companies looking to use or currently utilizing newsletters/email campaigns is that the email content needs to be personalized to their customers in order to be effective. An email campaign that is not opened by the receipents is a serious strategic mistake.

2006-11-09T13:39:00.000-08:00

Clickz.com

The article that I read from Clickz.com was "Consumers Procrastinate Online Holiday Shopping," from Stats Home-Retailing, October 11, 2006, Enid Burns. I chose this article because I have started to think about how I was going to tackle this year's Christmas shopping season. The article relates directly to e-commerce since it is about online shopping.
The article discusses the trend of online shopping for the Christmas season. It is estimated that online Holiday sales will be $32 billion in 2006. This is an 18% increase from 2005. The main reasons that online shopping has increased is due to more people buying online and overall increased spending per consumer for the holidays. There will be about 114 million shoppers online which is a 6% increase for the 2006 holiday season. The demographics that most influences online shopping is driven by income and age.
The article discusses that people will still order online even though they are past the on time delivery deadlines. The largest online shopping period is the weekend before Christmas.
I also clicked onto some of the links that were in the article. I found the Jupiter Research website very interesting. In fact, I even listened to my FIRST podcast today. The podcast discussed the information from the article but more indepth. Very Interesting. Actually I am listening to the podcast regarding the this years holiday shopping season as I am writing this...

2006-10-30T11:19:00.000-08:00

Incredibly Bad Day
Well, I had intentions of attending class on October 26th-for at least half of the lecture. I was going out of town that night, so I had all the intentions of attending class until about 5:30pm or break. Long story short, I was not able to attend class. I had to rent a car for my trip. I had apparently left my cell phone in the car that Enterprise had picked me up in. About an hour later after I rented my car, I get a phone call from a lady in South Central LA-Yvonne. She had rented the car that I had left my cellphone in. So instead of going to class, I had to retrieve my cellphone from South Central LA. There are still good people out there. I was lucky that Yvonne actually called me. SO- I will have to get notes from someone else who was able to attend class last Thursday, October 26. I'm sorry I missed the guest lecturers. From another blog that I read, they seemed to be very informative.

2006-09-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Consumer Product Reviews
Zappos.com

1. What shoe did you choose for this assignment? I have been training for the Long Beach Marathon, so I have been thinking about buying a new pair of running shoes. The shoe that I chose for this assignment was the Asics/Gel-Nimbus VII.

2. What did you find out from reading the reviews? I have been worried about buying a new pair of running shoes so close to the actual day of the Long Beach Marathon(October 15th). Overall, the running shoes rated 5 stars in the three rating categories-Overall, Comfort, and Look. The consensus among the reviews is that there is not a great need to break in the shoes. Most of the users were able to run right away in these shoes and not have to spend anytime breaking them in. Many of the reviewers rated these shoes higher than Nike and New Balance running shoes. Many of the users have switched from these brands as well as other brands to Asics. Many of the users recommended getting a half size larger than your regular shoe size(this is common for running shoes). The only negative comment was from an individual who did not buy these shoes for running. The person is a nurse and was looking for something to wear to work. All the other comments were from runners and were positive reviews.

3. Would reading the reviews make you more or less likely to buy the shoes? Why or why not? I am more likely to buy Asics after reading the reviews. I had heard that Asics had a good reputation for being a good running shoe before reading the reviews. The reviews are from runners who have actually experienced running in them. The shoes are pricey, so I would rather read some of the reviews before trying out the shoes on my own. When running long distances, there is a great chance of getting blisters and soreness in your foot, ankle and knees. Many of the reviewers noted that they did not experience any of these symptoms. I would not want to spend over a hundred dollars to find out for myself.

4. What is the advantage to consumers of reading the reviews at Zappos.com? Shoes should fit comfortably and you can't try on every pair at a shoe store. Not all stores carry every style that a company sells. The website will allow you to at least look at all of the options that are available to you rather than just the limited styles that a store chooses to carry. The reviews allow you to at least narrow your choices to selected styles. The reviews also come from people who have actually experienced wearing the shoes. They have first hand knowledge of how the shoe fits, looks and lasts.

5. What is the advantage to Zappos.com of offering reviews (after all, shoes with negative reviews are likely to be harder to sell)? Zappos has such a large variety of shoes that you can choose from a wide selection. Zappos can actually control their inventory based on the reviews that they receive. If a shoe is very popular, then Zappos can ensure that they have the popular styles in stock. A shoe store actually has to have the inventory on hand regardless of if the shoe is selling or not. Zappos can reduce the prices of shoes with negative comments faster than a shoe store to reduce their inventory. Also, people will feel confident in their purchases if they know they have chosen a pair that has positive reviews. If you purchase shoes in a shoe store, you are not going to know if you like the shoes or not until you actually wear them. Most shoe stores have strict return policies about not returning after the shoes have been worn. Therefore, you are going to be stuck with a pair of shoes that you do not like and will end up not wearing them if purchased from a store.

6. Would you recommend that a site like Kencole.com which sells only its own brand of shoes offer recommendations? Why or why not? Companies should offer recommendations to their customers even on their own sites. The recommendations can give the company valuable insights into what customers like and don't like about their current styles. The company can use this information to design their upcoming lines. If there are certain features or styles that customers do not like, they can eliminate these from their future offerings. This will allow the companies to design products that their customers have stated that they are looking for. Some people may only go online to view the products. They may actually purchase something if they read reviews from others who have purchased the product and had positive comments to report even though they did not have intentions of actually buying. Shopping on the internet can be very impulsive and some people may decide to just go ahead and buy something even though they had no intention of buying.

7. Do you ever look at recommendations from other consumers at internet sites before making a purchase? If so, why? For what products? If you don't check out online recommendations, why not? The only type of recommendations that I have used previously are reports from Consumer Reports or similar sites. Usually the products are electronics such as computers, digital cameras and television. The products that I read recommendations are usually products that are technical and high priced. I don't usually shop online, so I don't visit sites to shop and read recommendations from other consumers unless I am specifically looking for reviews of something that I am going to buy.

8. What is your general recommendation as to whether or not a site should include product reviews? If a company is going to sell merchandise on line, they should provide reviews from others to read. So many companies already provide reviews that customers may feel that a site that doesn't offer reviews is lacking. The information gathered from reviews can also assist companies in improving their product lines based on customer feedback. Having the reviews on line may actually generate sales for a company.

Assignment 1

2006-09-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

Potential Blog Uses

Consumer feedback
Idea generation for new products
Ideas for new articles to write/research about
Feedback on employee morale
Word of mouth "advertising"
Generate sales

4. Should blogs look and feel like traditional marketing and advertising? Why or why not?

Blogs should not look and feel like traditional marketing and advertising. As the article "Why There's no Escaping the Blog" mentions, Mazda was caught attempting to "fake" a blog. They were quickly found out by bloggers. This gave them negative publicity and the blog was pulled in 3 days.

Many people blog because it is an open forum for them to express their thoughts and opinions. If blogs start to look and feel commercialized, those who have turned to blogging will go elsewhere. Bloggers are early adopters and will find new ways to communicate as technology advances.

5. Are blogs a fad? or will they continue to have some impact for marketing? Why or why not?

Blogs are in the infancy stage of the marketing cycle. The format or usage of blogs may change over time, but they will have an impact on marketing. As companies begin to utilize blogs and advertise on them, the impact on marketing will change. As the younger generations become actual consumers, they will use blogs to assist them in buying decisions.

6. Would you like to see the marketing department start a blog? If so, what wuld you like to see there? If not, why not?

A blog for the CBA or the marketing department would be a good idea for students as well as professors. The blog could give professors REAL feedback on their classes-content, lectures, tests, etc. Students could also discuss the classes they enjoyed and why. Students could also use the site to locate text books from other business students. It would also be a great place for networking both socially and professionally. The blog could give students ideas on where there are job openings, interviewing tips and other career advice.