Hi Guys!
Thank you so much for sticking with me and reading throughout the semester! This subject has been extremely fun and I have learnt a lot!
We are also required to post a credential showing that we are truly ready for the future of technology so I just waned to use this opportunity to thank my readers as well as the teachers behind this subject!
Sorry to disappoint you but we are not talking about the chocolate chip biscuit but rather internet cookies. Internet cookies are files created by a given websites about the user. They are used to identify the user and customise their web pages accordingly depending on how you last used the site, what you looked at previously on that site and other features that a website would want about you. Currently, many people view cookies in a negative light due to privacy issues and websites collecting data for illegal activity but they do have many benefits that will be covered in this post.
Cookies make browsing much easier for users of the internet. By allowing a website to have access to your cookies, it allows them to customise and tailor the web pages for you and make it much easier to find the items you might be looking for including information, products, articles, videos and so on. In fact, by blocking all cookies, you are making surfing the web much more difficult for yourself. For example, say you urgently need your car repaired, by allowing websites such as google to have your location, they will suggest a business they know is close by therefore making it easier for you to get in contact with them and fix your car. Another example could be online stores such as Amazon and eBay. Online stores use your cookies for a wide range of personalisation for the user including, keeping items they had in their cart, previewing items they may have looked at last time or related items to this, calling the user by name and other features. Cookies allow users to browse with ease and more people should be taking advantage of this.
Cookies allow you to only get advertisements that are relevant and needed by you. Instead of getting ads like banner ads and videos that are not related to your preferences or demographic, cookies allow you to see products and services they know you would interested in. For example, if you are male, getting advertisements for feminine products would probably disinterest you and may become annoying as you have absolutely no interest in this product. Cookies allow websites to understand who you as a person are and personalise these ads to you. As well as benefiting you, it also benefits the company themselves by only showing the ads to the target market they are attempting to appeal to.
Although, it may not seem like it, cookies are actually very easily controlled by users. Many websites will ask you if you want them to save cookies from that site and do not just take your information by force as it is illegal. This granting you with control of what exactly you want to share on the internet. It is also extremely easy to manage and delete your cookies if you don’t want a specific site to have them anymore. For example, when using Google Chrome as your browser, to delete the cookies, you just access your site settings and view cookie data where it allows you to access and delete these with ease.
Even though cookies are useful and often not harmful, there are many dangers when using the internet and some websites may not use your personal information to benefit you. When on the web, ensure you only give cookies to websites you trust and know are safe. This way you know that you are both using cookies to their advantages as well as keeping your personal information safe.
Integrated marketing communications is when businesses’ promotional tools use multiple forms of communication collectively and work together to give consumers the correct perception of the business . Many of these marketing campaigns are now choosing to include social media. Social media marketing has become extremely popular with businesses of all sizes, with statistics saying that 73% of marketers saying that it is at least somewhat to extremely effective . This is due to its ease of access and the amount of consumers it has a the possibility to reach. However, these factors alone does not mean that all businesses should be using it. There are select products and target markets that should be using social media for marketing purposes.
Social media and websites will be more effective in our integrated marketing communications campaign when the target market for our product or brand is parents with younger children. Taking care of children is an extremely difficult task and parents are always looking for ways to improve their child’s development and happiness without putting them in danger or distress. This causing them to often do tons of research on products such as bottles, cots, toys and other essential items for babies to see what is the best in terms of quality and cost and utilising the internet do to it as shown by over 90% of parents using the internet to do this research. For example, there are a large amount of Facebook groups dedicated to the best products for their kids like Kmart Mums. It involves mainly mothers sharing the best products (in their opinions) available at Kmart, which is usually children’s products but also involves Kmart’s cleaning products and home wares. If businesses are aiming to target these groups of people, they should post information and uses of their products so this target market is able to read about them when researching what they should buy for their children or homes.
Millennials are also an appropriate target market to advertise using social media as well as other forms of marketing communications. Millennials use the internet far more than any other generation with 90% of them use the internet daily. They are also more likely to respond to online ads such as social media posts or clicking banner ads in comparison to other generations, especially if they are about travelling like flights, hotels and getaway packages. With being around 21 to 37 years old as of last year, products such as banking services, insurance and furniture would be most appropriate and marketers of these products should use social media to gain their attentions as it is something they desire considering the points they are at in their lives
Social media marketing should be used in an IMC campaign when the product involves electronics such as phones, laptops and other innovative technology. Many consumers before purchasing products choose to research their products before going into stores to get an idea of what they are looking for in a product which is referred to as research online, purchase offline or ROPO . Statistics show that over 35% of consumers stated that they research their products online before they go in store to purchase it with and majority of these consumers researching electronic products. This is due to many consumers not knowing much about electronic products at all, for example, what qualities to look for that make a good quality laptop such as weight or ram. Businesses, similar to the baby products, should post as much information about their products online to ensure consumers come across their products when trying to find out more information about a certain electronic products.
Overall, social media marketing can be extremely effective but it must be used correctly or with the right products or target markets.
Big data refers to data that is extremely large and complex so traditional methods for data analysis impossible to use. It can be extremely useful for businesses’ if you have the resources to analyse it. It could be used to properly segment customers, tailor your brand or product for specific individuals and increase relevance of a product or brand to customers, in the event of a ‘I-want-to-buy moment’ . However, it is really worth it for some businesses to go through and analyse all this data? Sure, it may help some but there are a lot of negatives to using big data meaning it may not be beneficial to all businesses.
By exclusively using big data to base marketing campaigns on, we may be missing a large section of our target markets depending on what the product is. Only 30% of Australians use social media more than 5 times a day and around 73% of consumers not trusting what they see online in terms of information, we can assume that many customers do not use social media regularly or not at all. By exclusively using the information we have gained from big data, it may lead to some people within our target markets being excluded. Depending on their target market, big data analysis may not be critical for businesses, for example, take products for older consumers such as hearing aids. If a company sold this product, it may not be useful to use big data to build marketing campaigns as many older Australians do not know how to use how to use most of social media with only 47% knowing and actively using it meaning, you are only gaining data on half of your target market.
There is a ridiculous amount of data on the internet with over with 149,000 emails being sent, 3.3 million Facebook posts being created and 3.8 million google searches being made each minute, there is a lot for marketers to analyse. Due to the massive amount of data available on the internet, big data takes a large amount of effort to sort and structure in order to make it useful for the business. Although, there are ways to sort big data, businesses’ must either hire a service causing extra costs for a business or do it yourself which may be cheaper but is extremely time consuming and confusing. For smaller businesses, it may not actually be worth the effort and time to sort through all this data as they may only have a limited number of regular customers that know about their business and can just communicate with them face-to-face or through their social media pages. For larger businesses, however, who have the money and time to be sorting the data, it may be beneficial as they do not have the same interacts that smaller businesses do but still need customer feedback in order to improve their business.
Bots are automated accounts that pretend to be normal users. They can be programmed to preform certain tasks such as posting at a certain time, comment on certain posts with keywords, follow users and other tasks that people associate with human interaction. They can be used for simple accounts for entertainment purposes such as the twitter account Big Ben which sends out a programmed message every single hour like a clock. However, they can also be used to manipulate users and create fake news leading to businesses still including this in the data even though, the information may not be real. This may lead to marketing campaigns being build around big data being inaccurate or flawed compared to just analysing data obtained in stores.
Big data can be extremely useful to businesses, but not in all cases and many of them must remember this when constructing marketing campaigns and producing products. We must consider our target markets, the capabilities of the business itself and issues such as fake users and false information.
‘Discord’ is one of the most downloaded iPhone applications in Australia, ranking 18th over all other apps on the Australian App store. It is a messaging platform that enables users to communicate through text, voice, video and screen-sharing that is mainly advertised to people who enjoy video games and live video streams. It has over 10 million users that are active each day and between those users 900 million messages are sent every single day but why exactly is this app so popular? Especially considering, there are so many other messaging apps out there that seem to have the exact same function.
Discord, due to it being promoted to ‘gamers’, has many unique features that apps like Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp do not have. One of these features is servers. Servers are similar to giant group chats where there can be hundreds of different voice and text chats running at the same time. Servers can be public, with some of the most popular servers have over 250,000 members, or private meaning a URL would be needed to access and join the group chat. People love this feature as it allows for them to meet many new people that have similar interests as them as most servers are interest based. The servers are also extremely customisable, colours, messages voice and text chats names can be whatever the server owner desires. This allowing the users to be able to express themselves using these features as not all users want the same thing for their servers. People can also have tags which allows them to be pinged or given a message notification even though they have not been sent a message. Say, for example, only some people in the server enjoy a certain TV show, they could be given a tag and whenever someone in the server wanted to tell everyone who enjoyed the TV show they could use this feature to send everyone a message about it.
Another unique feature that discord has is bots. Bots are programs within the group chat that have certain functions. They allow users to be able to have features that would not be accessible in other messaging apps. Although many have different functions, there are mainly two types of bots, bots that allow users to listen to music and bots that enable games to be played through text chat. An example of a music bot is ‘Octave’ which allows users to input YouTube links and play them within a voice chat so all users can listen to music. While a game bot would be ‘Mudae’. This bot is similar to a ‘gacha’ mechanic or where users are randomly given characters from TV shows or video games. Users are able to choose if they want to claim a character and add it to their collection or continue rolling to try and get a character that they like. Unique features such as these keep users entertained while also providing them a way to talk to other users, giving the app a purpose.
Discord has their app on many different platforms including windows, macs, smartphones and tablets and is constantly updating these applications to suit their user’s needs. These updates are preformed at least once every two weeks in order for the app to remain up to date and without bugs. They even keep a blog of what exactly is being changed in every single update so users can be completely informed of what changes have occurred. Their Twitter also allows for feedback on these updates and they are extremely responsive to their followers while also being a humour blog to keep these followers. By having these updates, it keeps customers engaged with the app rather than using something like Facebook to communicate with their friends.
The app is free to use but like many applications, users are encouraged to pay a monthly subscription fee that would allow them to obtain features that would not be accessible by other users. This is called the Freemium Model where users get basic features at no cost but in order to access the full app, they must pay a fee. ‘Nitro’ or Discord’s paid version allows users to have GIFs or moving images as their profile pictures, access unique emoticons that users can make themselves and upload bigger files than discord usually permits.
In conclusion, Discord is an extremely successful smartphone and desktop application that deserves its success. It has main different features that are quite foreign to users but are still easy to use while still updating frequently to improve and extent these features according to user demands. It also has a subscription service so the app can continue to function the way users would like.
Currently, many businesses use social media to promote their products or brands. Studies show that 73% of marketers believe that social media marketing is at least somewhat effective when trying to advertise to consumers and why wouldn’t they? 3.5 billion people or 45% of the population use social media at least one a day and 50% of these consumers use social media to research products. However, it is not that simple to make a marketing campaign. They need something to make their brand stand out to people in order for it to go viral and therefore be useful to the business.
According to Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, there are six different principles that are necessary for a successful marketing campaign through the use of social media; these being referred to as the Principles of Contagiousness. In this article, we will focus on why the principle of social currency is so important to getting your product or brand viral.
It is a basic human need to be liked and have social approval from others. People desire to appear attractive, knowledgeable, important or just appealing to their followers, who are often their peers in real life. Social media allows us to gain this approval through liking systems, commenting and sharing as it shows that others agree with or like their perspective. Marketers can either add remarkability to their product or make people feel like they are in an exclusive group in order to advertise themselves.
Another necessity for humans is to be apart of something. Many people want to be included in exclusive groups, whether that be friendship circles, employment from a well respected organisation, parties, they are all groups where only some people can have access to making them more appealing to consumers. Marketers can use this need to ‘feel like insiders’ to promote their product and brand. If they make products seem exclusive or limited in number, consumers will be more likely to share posts involving it and make an effort to tell their friends about it as they want to be included in this group that the brand has made for them. For example, take Elon Musk’s store, The Boring Company. By only selling a small number of weird products, when people purchase them, they feel as though they are apart of a group of people who are better than others. It seems to be an effective strategy too, with all 20,000 of its flame throwers selling out within five days.
As well as being liked, some aim to be unique and remarkable due to wanting to stand out and be better than others. Social media gives them a platform to show how different they are. People are always posting about exclusive parties or clubs, items that show off wealth like watches or perhaps, charity events that may support a necessary cause. Each one of these is an effort to be perceived in a positive light by their followers. Marketers can abuse this want by making their product assist the consumer into being different by sharing it or going out and buying the product and posting with it on social media. For example, take a business like Tommy Hilfiger. A plain men’s hoodie from Kmart costs $15 but a Tommy Hilfiger hoodie with the logo on it is at least $150(). This is because people are willing to pay this extra $135 as they are paying for the social currency. By posting pictures of themselves online, they look like they are wealthy as they have the money to afford these types of clothing, therefore showing off a positive quality and giving them the social currency, they desire.
In conclusion, the principle of social currency in the principles of contagiousness is extremely important to marketers when using social media to promote their organisation.
Business models are ways in which a business sustains itself or to generate revenue. Many businesses now use the internet to benefit them, either by making a profit or to build relationships with their customers. This leading to the creation of e-business models or ways that businesses can sustain themselves using the internet.
Shopping via online is expanding more and more each year. In Australia, 8 of 10 Australians use online shopping and it is predicted that 1 of every 10 items will be purchased online instead of at a physical store.
It’s not just been used by the millennial who don’t understand ‘the risks of the internet’ but by people of all ages, with 28% of online shoppers over the age of 50 shopping online at least once a week. The expansion of retail online is undeniable but why? Why are so many consumers around the world opting for sitting at their computers rather than entering a physical store?
Consumer’s lifestyles have been increasingly busy over the last couple of years due to changes in how households’ function with 25% of families with children having both parents working full time and many people working beyond the 37.5 hour work week as given by awards and agreements. This leading to many of these consumers not having enough time to drive to a physical store, look around for the thing they want, waiting in lines, etc. making online shopping looking far more appealing. It allows consumers to just search what they want and have it delivered within a couple of days. One business that is making use of this busyness is Coles. Coles online allows consumers to search and pick what groceries they want online and have them delivered to their house the next day, saving them so much time not having to stop at the supermarket every. single. day.
Compared to physical stores, online stores have a much larger range of products. Consumers have very specific needs that need to be met by products with specific characteristics that other products in the same category may not have. For example, when purchasing headphones to listen to music, there are so many different options with ear fit, colours, sound quality, etc. Instead of entering a store and talking to employees who don’t know anything about you, they can look online for the specific qualities that they want by looking at reviews of certain products.
So, why should businesses use e-business models as well as have a physical store? It gives consumers a convenience they wouldn’t normally be able to get if they just went shopping at a physical store. It also allows consumers to meet their particular needs that brick and mortar stores, may be not able to meet. We need these online stores to function be able to effectively and efficiently sell products and promote our brands.
All businesses should be using social media. Literally ALL of them. It is an undeniable fact that businesses can obtain large amounts of information about their target markets by using social media. Over 60% of consumers use social media sites daily, with a third of that using the sites more than five times a day, as mentioned ‘Yellow Social Media Reports’. And this year, also in the ‘Yellow Social Media Report’, businesses with a social media presence has hit an all time high. Which is great and all but are they doing it correctly? Are they using the correct type of social media to effectively promote their products, services, brands or whatever it may be?
According to Tuten & Solomon in the book ‘Social Media Marketing’, social media sites can be categorised into four different ‘zones’. It is of my opinion that all businesses, no matter what size or type, should be using social media sites in the social community section. These sites (such as Facebook and Instagram) allow businesses to communicate and socialise with their consumers and other businesses which is EXTREMELY important when attempting to develop relationships with them. Don’t get me wrong, the other sites that do not fall into this category are important but just less so.
Using the social community sites allows for consumers to voice their opinions to the business. As these social media platforms involve commenting and instant messaging, it allows people that have interest in the business to directly contact the business about things they are doing wrong or positives in the way they are running their business. For example, if someone has a negative experience at a restaurant, they can tell the business exactly WHY it was negative and therefore the business is able to receive this criticism and make changes therefore improving their services for other customers that they may eat there next time.
By being active on social media, customers are more likely to form relationships with the brand and may become a loyal customer. Communicating well with customers, will entertain them and allow them to form an attachment to the brand causing them to follow the accounts to keep updated on what the company is doing. Take the meme titled ‘brad’s wife’ according to know your meme.com (pictured below). The customer, Brad, openly complained about the unfair treatment of his wife to a restaurant called the ‘Cracker Barrel’. The meme allowed the company to gain a lot of attention due to the randomness of the comment and made a lot more people pay attention to their social media accounts so they could continue the meme itself. It developed a relationship with the customers and therefore gain customer loyalty due to the meme.
In conclusion, businesses should be using social media that falls under the zone of ‘social community’ or social media sites that are made for communicating and socialising. This is because it allows them to form strong customer relationships and receive feedback on how to improve their business.
Assignment 1 - Digital Marketing - Hannah Day