Course Summary

Why I took the course:

Looking to fill the last of my entrepreneurship concentration requirements, I ran into this course and was immediately drawn to it. It seemed very interesting not only because of the material that would covered, but also seemed one of the most relevant courses in today’s marketplace. Very few courses go in-depth of the digital world that the current consumer faces.

I have also recently been applying my traditional marketing training into the digital atmosphere in various roles – including my dad’s business back home, and a summer internship for an online startup here in Montreal. I figured it would be nice to get some formal training for such a specific field.


What I learned:

Though much of the material overlapped what I already learned in other entrepreneurship classes (business plans, start-up essentials, etc), I was introduced to a great realm of technologies and processes I never knew existed. I knew very little about Internet and online security and it is nice to now have a better understanding of how it works. I find this very applicable because not only is it important for businesses, but also for personal issues.

I also think it’s important to understand the different business models for e-commerce. It’s such a basic thing, but is at the core of all e-business transactions. Having dabbled in the online industry, I’ve been presented with various methods of making money online, and it always boils down to one of these models (not really realizing it until after the fact). These models (media site, collaboration, etc) are a great stepping stone to help any entrepreneur build their e-business.

Context-Sensitive Marketing

In today's fast growing market place consumers are demanding immediate service, customized products, and easily accessible information. As quick response (QR) bar codes continue to grow, businesses can more easily connect online with consumers via offline channels. QR is a technology that enables someone to quickly connect to a designated webpage by taking a picture of a special bar code.




So what does this mean for consumers?

• Easily accessible product information. Say that you’re struggling with how to work your TV. On the back there is a QR – simply scan it with your smartphone and boom – a manual pops up.

• Quick ordering. If you see something in the window of a shop, but it’s closed, you can scan the bar code on the product and be directed to an easy order screen.

What does this mean for e-business?

• This allows for a time to please and surprise customers on "virtual impulse buying". If they like something, and can scan a QR on their phone, they could be presented with a special promotion only offered for QR users. Since they already showed interest in the product, there is a better chance they will continue with an order.

In 2011, Nielson predicts that 51% of all Americans will own smartphones. Thhis is a huge market to tap into for context-sensitive marketing. The challenge lies in whether or not consumers will feel comfortable taking pictures of these QRs. It will require a mutual understanding between businesses (offering meaningful information and distributing the QRs) and consumers (willing to take a picture of them). Time will tell if consumers will change their behavior to “virtual impulse buying”.


source: http://mashable.com/2010/11/11/online-offline-marketing/

Can Verizon Handle the iPhone?

Recently there has been a lot of talk about the iPhone being introduced on the Verizon network in the States. This has interested me the past few months; as an American obsessed with Apple, but locked into a Verizon account, I’ve had to deal with using crappy phones the past few years just waiting for this godly phone to enter the Verizon network. However there is some speculation as to whether or not Verizon’s capacity is up for the influx of new smartphone customers according to this article.

Analysts say that service providers have learned since 2007 how their customers use smartphones and the proper infrastructure required to meet these needs. Verizon learned from AT&T’s struggles to keep a reliable service when they introduced the iPhone, and many believe Verizon will be able to handle the new iPhone enthusiasts.

Verizon must prepare for the incoming needs of new smartphone users when they introduce the iPhone (hopefully in January). By having a proactive disaster recovery plan, they should be able to approach any service failure or downtime with confidence. Their customer’s must also be assured that Verizon’s main concern is reliability which is “… [Their] DNA, it is [their] brand — anything [they] do, or don’t do, in the future, will ensure a good customer experience.”

Lost in the Clouds

As cloud computing seems to get more popular (especially on a personal scope – at least for me and my peers), more and more companies are beginning to enter the market with bigger and better offerings. Box.net has recently introduced some major upgrades to its cloud service that may raise the bar of expectations across the field.

Box.net has started offering 5GB for their free accounts and even more impressive they offer an unlimited amount of space for their enterprise customers. As hard drives in personal computers continue to increase (at the same price), data centers seem to be following the trend. In an article written in Mashable, the CEO of Box.net Aaron Levie states, “It’s now possible for data centers to offer more storage for the same price.”

So what does this mean?

1. Demand – the demand seems to be present – and increasing. The needs of the consumers continue to become more reliant on online storage via cloud computing and companies like Box.net and Dropbox need to deliver.

2. Competition – now that Box.net is offering a higher storage limit, how will the competitors react? I looked at Dropbox and ZumoDrive – both offer only 2GB (seems to be the standard). As more people use cloud computing as a means of transferring and sharing data, companies may need to match each other on limits while positioning themselves elsewhere.

3. Future – I’m interested in how much bigger and better this cloud computing will get. Does this mean that everything I would ever do on a computer be ‘out there’ somewhere – and all I would need is a screen, mouse, and connection to that cloud high in the sky?

Collaborate with Social Media Tools

As discussed in class on Wednesday, online communities and collaboration have evolved over the years into now very powerful tools and resources. Mashable has posted the nominations of the “Best Social Media Management Tool” – each of which help manage social media, but also seem to further expand collaboration. Of the five tools, two stick out as important players in bridging the gap between communities and collaboration (and the measuring of its effectiveness).

CoTweet is a tool that organizes all a company’s social media accounts into one dashboard. Furthermore it allows for managers to collaborate on specific campaigns or even consumers. Coworkers can see all activity on social media and “…Can make responses more relevant as team members with certain knowledge bases can handle appropriate questions and comments from followers.” This collaboration allows for the best possible answer an interested consumer can receive with now a better potential of translating them into a sale.

HootSuite is another tool that brings together social media with collaboration. A little different than CoTweet, it focuses more on the market the company is reaching out to – providing bios, a ‘Klout’ score and links to their homepage. Upon further analysis and sharing this information among coworkers, Hootsuite is a good tool to better understand your customers, thus making better decisions of segmentation and targeting.

Although not making a whole new category in the community and collaboration timeline, these tools help understand who is talking about you, why, and how to better fit their needs.

E-Government

In Tuesday’s Montreal Gazette, an interesting article discusses the topic of e-government; they termed it as ‘e-democracy’ and go on to explain how the Internet can play a large part in a citizen’s participation in government. Integrated service delivery (ISD) is an interface through which citizens can conduct transactions on the Internet. BizPal is a Canadian ISD developed to help small and medium businesses complete forms and submit documents via the Internet.

So what does this mean to citizens and businesses? Three key benefits can clearly be identified: time, money, and accuracy. If the service time of completing a process for the government can be greatly reduced, it translates into a happier customer (or in this case – citizen). Secondly it is shown that costs incurred by the government are greatly reduced – face-to-face transactions are about $44, mail/fax are $38, telephone are $8, and online just over $1! Finally it is also shown that human errors are greatly reduced when submitting online. A vital element that wasn’t discussed is the user friendliness of these services. ISDs must offer an incredibly easy interface; if not, time, costs, and errors could once again increase causing an unhappy citizen.

The important issue of security was overlooked by the article – and should not be taken lightly. As traffic increases with these services, there will be millions of documents being transmitted electronically. This poses a huge opportunity for hackers. Sensitive material such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, social insurance numbers, and more are at risk of being stolen. Before governments get ahead of themselves with offering services to better facilitate processes, they must have a firm grip on security issues.

Web presence - worth the cost?

In this article written in The Globe and Mail on October 7, 2010, web presence – more specifically, e-commerce – among brick and mortar retailers is discussed. The major point is whether the costs (setup, staffing, maintaining, stocking inventory, copy, etc) outweigh the benefits. Some good points were covered: young shoppers expect to be able to buy online, e-commerce sparks brick and mortar sales since customers are likely to research purchases online first.

Although the costs of e-commerce can be overwhelming (and according to the article even exceed sales), I believe it is an imperative tool to compete in today’s marketplace – especially for consumer products. If the costs can be appropriately managed, and benefits measured a ROI can be planned and realized over time. However, this gets more difficult if the company doesn’t offer e-commerce, and rather just has web presence. Having experience in managing a non e-commerce website, I’ve seen the challenges of measuring ROI. It first starts with an objective of the website – if we’re not selling anything, why spend money? In many cases it’s mainly to provide contact information, hours, etc – as well as building a brand image. In our case, since the core business is selling high-end luxury jewelry, our objective is to display the products in such a fashion that it supports the brand image. Measurement is in the form of SEO tracking, web analytics, and customer (including new customers!) feedback.

Web presence – be it e-commerce or just useful information – is very important and one must understand benefits may not be seen until the mid or long-term.

Start-ups and PR

Good PR matched with good operations can send a start-up sky high. But it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into before searching for the perfect PR plug.

The start-up venture Chocomize experienced first hand what it was like to have an incredible PR story that almost sent them beyond their capabilities. Featured in the New York Times yesterday, they explained what it was like trying to keep up with the orders resulting from a short blip about their company in Oprah’s magazine O (full article here).

One of the most crucial parts of their business (based solely online) – their server – crashed because of traffic. They were also short of employees and equipment. After a short week of panic to fill the orders, they were able to once again be in control of their operations.

Although it’s hard to predict when or if a story will be successful, start-ups must realize their full capabilities and max capacities. A similar occurrence happened with Mr. Wong’s start-up BlankLabel.com; after dealing with the situation he stated, “We should have invested more time in learning about our suppliers and their capabilities.” So it could be as simple as learning the full potential of suppliers and equipment. It’s unfortunate that Chocomize’s server crashed, but it could have been avoided through preparing it (or upgrading) for more traffic. Start-ups must be careful not to spread themselves too thin – especially when gearing up for a possible PR success story.

Interning at an Online Startup

After listening to Mr. Hall’s great presentation about the key tools to funding a start-up, I would like to share my wonderful experience in the Summer of ’09 as an online marketing intern at a local start-up, right here Montreal. More specifically, the type of environment I was surrounded with while working there. Known then as Openplaces, we were working towards revolutionizing travel planning.

By my 3^rd interview, I came to realize that their human resources were very important to them. With limited funds, and only a handful of brilliant minds, they wanted to be surrounded with hard workers to accomplish a common goal. I also quickly realized that not only was this going to be a challenge to learn their core model, but to learn it fast – in a constantly changing atmosphere.

By the end of my first week, I had seen so many flow charts and different strategies that I was dreaming them. By the 2^nd week, we revisited them and once again made some adaptations. Just when you thought for sure something would work, you would need to go in and tweak it. Needless to say, there were lots of things going on at once and almost everything was being changed (for the better).

One of the things I liked most about working there was not only the quickly changing environment, but also the way we went about finding out what worked. My boss would present a challenge, without necessarily having an answer, and let us figure it out (he had far more important things on his hands). Some tactics would work; others would be canned within a few days.

I remember one day on my way out the door, my boss looked at me and said, “When you’re biking home everyday, don’t think about what you want for dinner. Think about ideas of how this business will succeed.”

Samsung Goes Viral

In class not too long ago, we mentioned that there are not too many benefits to social media unless you can successfully launch a viral campaign (which social media is key for distribution). Easier said than done. Having worked in social media for two different companies, I know how difficult it is to get people talking (on social media). Of the few very successful campaigns, how many have failed? Hundreds? Thousands? More importantly, what is the ROI on a viral campaign? In a blog post by Augie Ray he states, "Many marketers can draw a straight line between investments in social media marketing and financial results, but many more cannot" - showing that there are more failures than successes (full article).

In this new viral ad released by Samsung, the simplest concept of a little girl dancing around with adults joining in has become huge! Only posted on September 7, 2010, it already has over 2.5 million views! What I like about the video is how simple it is. As Patrick Holtkamp, CEO of Wax Agency, explains in an article by New Media Age, “The key is to entertain your audience and give them something for their time. That doesn't need to be branded or littered with logos and product shots.” It gets you hooked, keeps you entertained for the whole minute and 44 seconds (fairly long for a viral video), and only at the end does Samsung promote its new product. I close my browser window feeling happier, with a slight reminder of Samsung (I remembered who posted it after only one viewing), and a little urge to start dancing.

References:

Howell, Nic. 2010. "Social spread." New Media Age 29-30. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 16, 2010).