Jenny Yam

I was  responsible to investigate what consumers are saying about the deodorant brand Axe and Old Spice using Social Mention,

I found that although Axe has a higher % in reach and passion, Old spice has a higher sentiment, higher % of strength and generates more buzz than Axe, and the higher these numbers are the better. Moreover, there is one mention of Old Spice per 12 minutes while there is one mention of Axe per 45 minutes, this is a huge difference.  A lot of people talk about Old Spice because of its nice smell and funny commercial ( I also looked up the two brands on tweetfeel) , while nobody talks about Axe commerical, we can see Old Spice does a better job in gaining consumers’ attention and interest.

One thing I also learned is we can’t just rely on the numbers, we also have to look at the what the keywords are and what exactly the consumer’s comment is because the social media tools are not 100% accurate .For example, in Social mention, when i typed in “Old Spice”, the mentions of the basketball event Old Spice Classic also came up, but that’s not the Old Spice i was looking for. Therefore, we have to remember to look at the accuracy while using these social media tools.

This project taught me how to use different social media tools to investigate what consumers say and think about different brands,it is fun as a consumer to check out what other people are talking about the brand, and it is definitely useful for marketers to evaluate their products. I am amazed by all these social media tools, and how they can show consumers’ mentions so quickly and immediately.

I was reviewing the the facebook page of Pepsi and investigating their social media strategy.  They have a ” feeding America” session, Pepsi corporate with 7-eleven, when we buy a 20 oz Pepsi at any 7-eleven, Pepsi will donate 5 cents to feeding America to help the community, by involving in charity, Pepsi can build their reputation. Moreover, if we use our smartphone to check in any 7-eleven , they will donate another 5 cents to feeding america. This not only encourage people to donate more, but they can also take advantage of the location-based marketing to better target the audience . Another strategy Pepsi used was when consumers “like” Pepsi on facebook, they can enter into a sweepstakes to win one of 100 official X Factor cup, and that would also link to a session where customers can voice their opinions on the next Pepsi music icon. By doing this, Pepsi can promote their brand, and also effectively engage customers. Pepsi also has a lot of interactions with customers, they always have new status or post updates (at least two updates in a day) . The only thing that I think Pepsi could do better is to respond to customers’ comments more often, from what I have observed, Pepsi always updates the facebook page, but it just leaves it to customers to discuss and comment on the wall without giving any reply, I think if Pepsi actually responds to customers’ comments, it would be more interactive and customers would feel more engaged. By doing that, Pepsi can also ensure they address any customer’s concern promptly to prevent forming bad impression.

After Dr. labrecque’s lecture and reading the Wall Street Journel, I knew more about customer privacy on the internet. The article assigned addresses some of the tactics used to track internet users’ history by using “cookies”,”flash cookies” and “beacons”.  I was really surprised on how marketers can get access of our information easier without  us knowing that, and I am even more surprised on how cheap our information is sold to marketers.

While we always thought we could delete our cookies, there is a new tracking technology that it can scan in real time what people are doing on a webpage, and instantly assess location, income , shopping interests and so on. The most intrusive monitoring is called ” third party” tracking files. A tracking file will be installed on the site that you visit for the first time, when you visit another site affliated with the same tracking company, it can take note of where you were before and where you are now. This shows that marketers nowadays can get the information and consumers’ buying pattern more easily and accurate.  

While some people think privacy is dead and dislike the fact that marketers know all our buying patterns and can predict our age, income etc. I personally don’t mind it that much, and in fact, I think it’s pretty cool and convenient that they save my shopping pattern and what kinds of products I am more interested in, then show me relevant ads. I think it’s beneficial to both consumers and businesses.Companies can target the right audiences and customers can also get relevant information that fits their needs. This is especially beneficial to people like me -love shopping and a huge fan of online shopping. As a internet user , irrelavent ads kind of annoy me as well. Moreover, when we are getting so many free programs and social networks, we can’t expect to have all our information hidden from companies.

However, although I don’t disagree with marketers getting our information , I do think that marketers should be very careful while using consumers’ information, they have to make sure that they are using it ethically, since there are no legal limits on how the data can be used, I think there should be more clear and strict regulations regarding that. As internet users, we also have to be careful when giving out our information online  to prevent information being used unethically, we should also always read the terms before signing up something for free.

There are 42 visits, , 14 unique visitors, 119 page views, average time on site is 05:14, bounce rate is 47.62%. All my visitors are located in United States. My top pages that people visited are my homepage ,my resume, my assignment #8. Among the visits, 40.48% is direct traffic, 40.48% is from referring sites, and 19.05% is from search engine. Top keywords are “resume of jenny yam” and ” contact jenny yam”

Last week, Will Johnson who is an Advertising Specialist, Thorne Washington, a Search Specialist and Kevin M. Cunningham, a Marketing Solutions Consultant came to our school to talk about their jobs. All of them are recent graduates, which increased my interest in knowing how they got their jobs and what their jobs are about.

Originally there were 40 people going, but ended up only 5 people went there not including the E-board members, however, that also created a good opportunity for a more intimate conversation with them. Overall, it was a good opportunity to hear their stories but there were a few points that I want to talk about.

First, all of them started their job hunting since their junior year; they were all very active in participating in all networking events, for example, meet-the-firm night, job fair etc. When Will were having his interview in his company, the interviewer actually told him she remembered he talked to her at the meet-the-firm night. Before I always thought going to networking events might not help me a lot because the employers probably wouldn’t remember me , but Will’s case showed that if you are well prepared and confident, that could be a really good opportunity to network and leave good impression.

They also mentioned about being aware of news on social media, technology and any other things related to interactive marketing, like subscribing to some useful blogs and following companies on twitter. I agreed with them because I think it very important to be up-to-date especially in the field of interactive marketing.

After the event, we were enjoying the food and talking to the speakers in the atrium, Will told us a “secret”. He said we all know we have to do research about the company before we get the job, but it is also very important to do research of the company after you get the job, and we should continue doing that. Because there is so much to learn about a company, and there is always something new happens in the company, continue doing the research does not only help us understand more about the industry& the competition, but also help us with promotion. I was very glad to know about his ” secret” , I never thought about that  because I thought if I work for a company, I should know about the company naturally through daily tasks, why would I need to spend extra time to do research about the company,  but now I know if I want to be outstanding , extra effort is needed.

Overall, the career panel was a great success, everybody got a chance to talk to the speakers, and everybody enjoyed that, I also learned quite a lot.

Personalized Fortune Cookies

Order now and get free shipping!

My target market will be mothers or grandmothers who have more disposable income. It is because mothers and grandmothers tend to be gift givers in holidays or for their children/ grandchildren’s birthdays and so on. My call to action is  “Order Now and get free shipping” because the words ” Now” and ” Free shipping” could drive more customers to the site. My landing page would be the custome fortune cookies page beacuse it matches the Ad I created which focused on making your own fortune cookies  http://www.fancyfortunecookies.com/Custom_Fortune_Cookies_s/50.htm

The three key words I chose are personalized fortune cookies, custom fortune cookies and fortune cookies.

The competition for ” personalized fortune cookies” is high, the global monthly searches is 9900 and the local monthly searches is 8100. The other two alternative keywords that look like good suggestions are “custom fortune cookies”, high competition but with higher monthly searches ;or just “fortune cookie”, medium competition but with 246,000 global monthly searches and 165,000 local monthly searches.

I started with $1 max CPC, the estimated average CPC was $0.73 , estimated Ad position was 3.4,  estimated clicks was 16.8 and the estimated daily cost was $12.23. I then raised the max CPC to $1.5, the estimated avg. CPC was increased to $0.88, estimated Ad position was increased to 2.39, estimated clicks to 20.6 and estimated daily cost  to $ 18.04. It showed that a higher max CPC would incease the avg. CPC and also the Ad position.

SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a webpage in search engines via the natural search result. The search terms typed into search engines are very important in SEO and we can optimize our sties by editing the titles and descriptions with relevent and specific keywords. SEO is important because it is important for potential customers to locate your website if your site show up first or on the first page when people search relevant words to your website, the traffic will be increased, and so as the business. There are millions of websites, and it’s important to make your site more visible.

the top keywords of my website are rate, response, customer, jenny, company. I am not surprised at all, because I am a marketing student and the posts I put on the blogs are always related to customers, company , click through rate and  response rate.

Yesterday the CEO and president of AT&T Ralph de la Vega came to NIU to give a speech about his life and his career. I am really glad that I went to the speaker event, not only for the extra credit, but this is also a great opportunity to learn lessons in life.

I am not going to repeat his whole speech and all his stories because some of you may have heard about his inspiring stories already and there is no point for me to repeat it. Instead, I am going to talk about three parts that inspired me the most and my thoughts on those.

Ralph started his first story which is taken place in the 1950s. He was born in Cuba, and because of the Cuban Revolution, his father’s business was taken away by the government. His family decided to move to the United States but they were told that only the boy could go when they were at the airport.  Ralph’s parents wanted him to have a better future, and so they sent him away to a family in the U.S. and that was 4 years until Ralph met his family again. Ralph was at the age of 10 when he was sent away to the U.S. and that 4 years was the toughest time in his life, this made him become very strong and everything else he did in his later life became relatively easy. I had a lot of thoughts after listening to this story, I truly admired him, could you imagine a 10 years old boy being apart from his parents in a totally new place where he didn’t know anyone AND he didn’t speak the language? Especially in the 1950s where technology is not as advanced as nowadays, there was no way to contact his family by just sending an e-mail or leaving a message on facebook…My sister came to the states 15 years ago, laptop wasn’t popular and was very expensive back then. There was no facebook, twitter or other social media that she could contact us, not to mention having a smart phone, and long distance long was super expensive, all she could do was to write a letter which took us more than 2 weeks to receive it ;  I was blessed that I was in the generation that technology was everywhere, I could always skype with my friends and family and facebook them when I came to the states and that made my life much easier.  Now I can even “hang out” with them on google+, use the “Whatsapp” on iphone to text them for free etc….this can perfectly prove how powerful and useful technology is and how it can change one’s life.  Nevertheless, the feeling of being separated from your family and having your own life in a new place was never good, therefore, I really truly admire Ralph for being so tough at such a young age. I don’t think I could handle that when I was only 10.

Ralph also talked about his dream. He always wanted to be an engineer, but his school consular told him he couldn’t be an engineer but he should be a mechanic instead. He then learned how to be a mechanic until when he finally met his grandmother and she told Ralph “don’t let anybody limit what you think you can do”, because the moment we believe that, we succumb. Again, i find this really inspiring. It is true that every one of us has a dream, but very often, we become uncertain and don’t know whether we should keep pursuing our dreams or not especially when we hear others say something about us or give us THEIR opinions. It doesn’t mean we should never listen to others, but we should not let them limit what we think we can do, and we should not let others to tell us what we can what we can’t do.

During the speech, he showed us the electronic pill bottle when he was talking about his innovative ideas, the electronic pill bottle will remind you when you forget to take the pill, and it can even connect to your Smartphone and send a message to you.When you need to refill the bottle, you can just push a button and let the pharmacist know. This is so AWESOME and again, technology is unbelievable and it makes our lives easier IF we use it for good intentions.

Finally, he ended the speech by telling us the most important principle is Integrity and I totally agree with him. I am always honest because I don’t like lies and I always believe that if you’re being honest to others, others will do the same to you.  Integrity is especially more important when it comes to the business world, no one wants to do business or work with you if one doesn’t have integrity.

Overall, this is a great speech and I learned a lot of lessons

McDonald’s:

It is rather easy for me to search for an IT job. First, I clicked “Corporate Opportunities”, then I chose IT under category and clicked “Search” again, then I can see a list of relevant jobs. If I wanted a detail description of the job, I had to click the job title, and the total number of clicks is 4.

It is very easy to find information about employee benefits. It is displayed on the side navigation bar, it includes “Health and Protection” like medical plan, “Pay and Rewards” ,” Investing in your future” like profit sharing  and “ Balance work and life” like paid vocation. When I clicked on those, details of all those benefits are provided too and it’s quite clear to me.

After exploring the website, I found that everything is very clear and easy to use and navigate around. They have the information about the company so I can know more about McDonald’s corporate, employee benefit is clearly stated, job opportunity is easy to search for, and they also have a social media page that we can get social with McDonald’s Corporate including facebook, twitter, youtube and flickr. This creates a better connection between me and the company. Overall, the website is not very attractive, but I am still interested in working there because it’s very organized.

Design and usability Analysis: Navigation is easy; there is not a lot of passive spacing. Also, there are breadcrumbs which allow me to go back to the previous page easily.  The navigation bar on the left hand side of each page is located above the fold except for the”students” page, it would be better if they can move everything up a little bit so the “McDonald’s History” will also be above the fold. The colors used in the website are Red, Yellow and White. Although three are only three colors, I don’t find it really boring, because Yellow and Red are McDonald’s signature colors, and I think it’s better to keep it that way, and with a white background, the colors Yellow and Red even pop out more. There are a few music videos on the website, and there is a video under “social responsibility” which makes the website more fun. Overall, I think the McDonald’s website has a high usability and neat design.

To improve the experience, I think they should put more pictures on the website , especially under ” Careers”, so people can have an idea of how the corporate environment is. Also, it would be better if they can include videos of  a few employees telling their stories and experience in McDonald’s corporate instead of just writing their stories in words, that would be much more attractive and convincing to applicants and would definitely increase my interest in working in McDonald’s Corporate.

 Walgreen:

It is pretty easy to navigate too, it took me 3 clicks to find relevant jobs and the job description is in details too.I could also search jobs within a certain number of miles away from where I live. I found the employee benefit under” Life at Walgreens”. However, the benefits are not categorized into different category on the side, which makes it look less organized than the McDonald’s website. Information about career is pretty easy to find too, because there are visual cues for navigation on the top, i can find the career information under “Career Areas”. After exploring the website, i found it less compelling than the McDonald’s website. First of all, McDonald’s has more information on every single page, and McDonald’s has more engaging content like colored pictures and videos on the website which make it less boring. I couldn’t find any videos on Walgreen website which made it less interactive and interesting. Overall, McDonald’s website is more organized to me and includes more details that I want, also, the design is more appealing to me compare to Walgreen,  so I will choose to work in McDonald’s corporate out of the two options

My objective is to encourage people to give donation to my client “the Lake shore animal shelter”. The design is very simple but effective, I put my client’s name on the right corner and a puppy picture in the Ad so that people know where and what they are donating to, then I created a copy” you generosity will save their lives” , this gives them a valid reason for their donation. Finally, there is a call to action “Donate Now “on the right bottom corner, it clearly reflects my objective and it encourages people to take actions.

The purpose of A/B split test to change one element in the Ad to study the effectiveness of an Ad and see which one generates more responses. To perform this test, I kept everything same but the picture of the puppy. In Ad A, I used a happy puppy with a grass background; this will evoke the happy emotion of those who see the Ad. On the contrary,   I used a sad puppy with a rainy background in the Ad B which evokes pity. This is to study whether people will donate more when they see a cute and happy puppy or a sad puppy.

The landing page I choose is the “make a donation” page of Lakeshore Animal Shelter, since the objective is very clear on the Ad, people who click the Ad should be interested in donating money instead of adopting or volunteering. By taking to a specific and appropriate landing page, people who are interested can make the donation easily and quickly.

To test the effectiveness of my Ads, I will check and see which Ad generates more click through rate and which one generates a larger sum of donation.

my cat

Last Wednesday, Ryan Eugene from itsupplies.com came to our class to talk about the online marketing strategies of the firm. I had never heard of this company before and I was glad that I got a chance to know one more company. Ryan Eugene is a former interactive student in NIU which made me more interested in knowing what he was doing in the company.

ITsupplies.com was found in 1988 by Greg Lahart. It was a small business and it held min. inventory focusing on consumers. The company focused on direct marketing and catalog was started as the primary sales channel and customers could order by phone. Ryan said a website and an online catalog was needed later on because of the increased demand and expanded product offers.They added thousands of products to the catalog, as a result, the importance of the website functionality also increased. Ryan showed us the company’s website and he said the website was a little bit outdated and said they were working on it and trying to update and make the website look more modern. This is a good example on how internet has become more and more important nowadays and how companies need to keep up with the technology growth and social media trend in order to survive and compete in the market. The business model thatITsupplies is using is the merchant model because they are directly offering and selling their products to the customers through their own website. In class, we learned that direct marketing is the foundation of internet marketing and I think itsupplies is definitely a good example. They started from selling through catalog to selling online and interacting with customers through their website and other social media like blog and twitter.

Ryan also explained some advantages of online advertising. One of the advantages is the decrease in cost. Using the web also allows new customers acquisition in a global scale which is a huge advantage. Moreover, the web allows more information and interactivity provided to the customers. Website is an extensive online catalog and is more user-friendly; customers can secure transactions and receive items as early as 6 hours after placing an order via EDI. Ryan also mentioned about the Analytics, it allows for easy assessment of conversion rates and let them know how well their marketing money is being spent; it also allows the company to check where the traffic comes from and to measure the effectiveness of the marketing strategy.We just learned how to use Google Analytics in the lab and it’s interesting to know how it is applied to a real company.

As a frequent online shopper, it is really interesting to know how people out there are doing online advertising. Overall, this is another great and informative speaker event.

The two plugins that I added are

1.Google XML Sitemaps byArne Brachhold 

This plugin is helpful for an online business because it allows search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog, also, they will be notified if you make a change on your blog,this can definitely generate more traffic to your site and possibly increase the sales of the business.

and

2. Twitter Facebook Social Share  by Kunal Chichkar 

The Twitter Facebook Social Share is helpful to an online business because it allows customers to share blog posts, news etc. that are related to the company’s business. It helps spread information to reach other new audiences.

Last Wednesday,Chris Krohn, the President &Chief Marketing Ocer for Restaurant.com came to our class as a guest speaker. He is a nice and funny guy and I learnt a lot from his speech.

Before he came in to speak to our class, I had no idea what restaurant.com is, I had heard about the name before but never really got to know what exactly it is and how it operates. It is very interesting to hear the story of an online company. Restaurant.com didn’t succeed at the very beginning when they first started up, it failed a couple times before becoming a successful online company. It shows that it takes time, perseverance, and most importantly, a good marketing strategy to sustain a business and make it grow.

Recently we are learning different business models in class, and restaurant.com is a good example of brokerage model as they bring buyers and sellers together.  They offer discount gift certificates to the customers online and help restaurant owners to fill empty tables, this is definitely a win-win solution. Restaurant.com also ensures restaurant owners to earn profits or at least break-even by setting limit amount spent each time when the customers use the gift certificates. A good business model and marketing strategy can generate revenue , restaurant.com is definitely doing it very well now.

Besides talking about what restaurant.com is, its histoty and how it operates, Chris also talked about how they use search engine optimization (SEO) to improve visibility of their website, cost per click (CPC) to direct traffic to the website and the use of Social Media marketing to create user-generated content. I am really impressed by all these methods, the internet is getting more and more important and it’s really impressive what internet can do for us in our daily life and even generate revenue for businesses.

Moreover, Chris mentioned a couple times how restaurant.com’s goal differ from other online company like groupon. Restaurant.com aims at creating repeated customers but not one-time customers. The probability of selling to an existing customer is always higher than to a new prospect. By using customer retention marketing, they listen to the customers and create lifetime customers. I agree with this strategy a lot because loyal and repeated customers is a key factor to a successful company which aims to generate long-term revenue. Chris also mentioned that unique content creation is the key to a successful SEO strategy. One of the example of generating unique content is through blogging. Not only it is a low cost marketing channel,  but the brand can also expose across general search terms.

Overall, Chris’s presentation is very useful to me and it’s very informative.I am really glad I had a chance to hear the story and strategy of an online company, and this further increase my interest in interactive marketing.

This is my first post ever in my entire life, I have never created blog before and this my first web site and I am really glad that I have a chance to learn how to do it. Making this web site is not difficult at all when I follow all the intrustuctions given by Dr. Labrecque. Everything is clear and Dr.Labrecque is being very helpful too. The lab session is fun and I am very excited to learn more on it. I just bought my domain name on hostable.com and I can’t wait to set it up and have a website of my own name! I chose this theme because I like simple things and I love the nature. This theme makes me feel relaxed.