Zach Hester

For our social media insight project we chose to look at the brands Bud Light and CoorsLight and to compare the two. We felt these two products were both pretty similar, and they were easy to compare with the tools that we were given. For our group we thought this would be two prettytwo brands because we are college students, and it would be interesting to see what people had to say. We divided the work up in our group by giving each member two social media monitoring tools to study and then we combine our results.

The first social mediamonitoring tool I used is called Samepoint social media. Samepoint social media is a website that basically looks like google. Basically you type a brand name
into the search box and it gives you results. For Bud Light there was over 3.5
million social mentions, and it shows specific mentions with the social media
website associated with it. The overall sentiment for Bud Light on this website
was very favorable and there wasn’t a lot of negative buzz surrounding this
brand name. For Coors Light they had just over 1 million social mentions on
Samepoint. It seemed like the brand sentiment for Coors Light was generally
positive as the meters showed positive words that it picked up. With the
information I gained from using this social media monitoring tool I came to the
conclusion that Bud Light was the brand that came out on top. This is because
it had over 2.5 more million mentions than Bud Light, and the mentions just
generally seemed to be a little bit more positive.

Thesecond social media monitoring tool that I used was called How Sociable? How
sociable is like a search engine as well, you type the brand name you are
looking for in the search box and it gives you a visibility score for the
brand. Once you hit the measure button it gives you a score (the higher the
better) and shows all the social media websites and specific mentions that you
can check out to see the buzz on the brand. For Bud Light, How Sociable gave it
a visibility score of 1251, which is very good. When I clicked on the Twitter
and Facebook images it seemed that a lot of people were talking about how
Budweiser is releasing a new beer called Bud Platinum which contains 1 % more
alcohol. I found some negative posts how Bud Light is a watery beer and a
couple comments how it is weak. I guess Bud Platinum will be the answer to
these Bud Light Critics. When I searched for Coors Light on How Sociable it
gave me a visibility score of 831, which is good but not as good as Bud Light.
When I looked at some recent mentions on Facebook and Twitter they were
generally positive however most of the criticism was directed towards their advertisement
and the cold, supercold labeling. The clear winner on both these sites was Bud
Light.

The brand that I chose to investigate their marketing strategy is Buffalo Wild
Wings. I chose investigate Buffalo Wild Wings because it is one of my favorite
restaurants I enjoy their commercials, and like their Facebook page. Basically
before you “like” the page on Facebook there is an ad for a promotion that is
on Thanksgiving, November 23^rd called Footballica. It is basically
trying to get customers in the restaurants on Thanksgiving to watch the football
games. There is four links that link to different landing pages on the website
for gift cards, menu, Facebook link and a link to find the nearest Bdubs
location. Since Buffalo Wild Wings is a sports based pub food restaurant where
you want to go to watch a game a lot of their content is sports based. A ton of
their Facebook updates and statuses have to do with sports trivia and things
like asking fans that their favorite player is. They also have pages for
promotions from sponsors like Coca-Cola and links to their website.

The first thing that pops out at me when I view Buffalo Wild Wing’s Facebook page
is that they are using is word of mouth. They are using word of mouth on Facebook
because when someone on your friends list likes Bdub’s page then you will see
it on your news feed, and they are hoping you will like it too. The second
thing I see that Bdub’s is doing with their social media marketing strategy is
creating awareness. They are creating awareness because they know their target market
is male sports fans 18-30. Because they are targeting young males having a Facebook
page is a smart idea because a great percentage of young adult males have a Facebook
and it makes it easy to interact with their target market. The third thing I definitely
saw on their page was consumer engagement. They had interesting consumer
engagement strategies which included a Coke-Zero Promotion for 13 weeks and
also “Footballica” which is a 30 day holiday of watching football starting
Thanksgiving.

The first metrics that you can measure with the word of mouth is how many likes the
Facebook page gets and also how many people are talking about the brand. In Bdub’s
case they have almost 6 million likes and about 75,000 people talking about
them. For the create awareness strategy metrics you can use to measure the
brand are number of visits, and also when they make statuses they are creating
awareness. When they make a status update it is almost like a free commercial
for them, and they can see how many consumers it engaged through likes and
comments. For consumer engagement the company can measure how their fans are
engaged through likes, comments on statuses, subscribers and also user
generated content. You can definitely tell by looking at their page that they
have a ton of consumer engagement and they are doing a great job with their social
media marketing.

As I saidbefore, Buffalo Wild Wings is doing a great job with their social media
marketing strategies on Facebook. They are creating brand awareness, consumer
engagement and word of mouth advertising. The webpage is very interactive and
it is very easy to navigate and find a link to the company’s website as well. The
one change I propose to Bdub’s marketing team is that they offer coupons and
deals through their page. Since the customers give them the time of day to add
them, and deal with their updates I believe it would be really beneficial if
they offered consumers deals which could also generate business for the
company. I believe this would also help the company because their target market
is male college students, like me who don’t have a ton of money and I believe
it could get more of us in their restaurants if they offered deals.

Based upon the last two weeks ofwhat I have been learning regarding internet privacy it is in my opinion that there is no such thing as “privacy” anymore on the internet. With social media websites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Google + etc, the amount of
information people are giving away on the internet is completely astonishing.
People post their name, age, city they live in, favorite movies and other
personal information that can easily be misused on the internet without even
thinking twice. The technology being developed for tracking cookies is getting
better and this can only mean that the potential for misuse is even greater.
According to the Wall Street Journal some of the new software has the
capability to “scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then
instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical
conditions.” These tools can also respawn the information even after they have
been deleted which is extremely scary. (Angwin, 2) It’s because of how advanced
and smart technology is getting that I believe there is no such thing as
privacy on the internet anymore.

With the advance of the clever tracking technology I believe that there should be
regulations or laws that protect the consumers. The passing out of personal
information from third party companies to advertise needs to stop. This
practice should be illegal because I personally don’t want other companies
keeping my information so they can spam me with advertisements. They may say
this information is being used innocently but there is always someone who can
use this information against you. For example, one time a friend referred to me
a website to purchase cheap protein and creatine supplements, and anyone who
works out knows these are not by any means cheap. I purchased the supplements
online, which is one of the only things I have bought online in my entire life
because I don’t trust giving my credit card number out, and the supplements
online. Three weeks late I got a call from my bank concerning some unusual account
activity and I found out that someone had bought 3,000 worth of stuff from
various websites online. I called up my buddy and told him about the incident
and he told me the exact same thing had happened to him, and I read some
reviews on the website and the same thing had happened to others as well.

After this incident happened to me I firmly believe the government and the Federal
Trade Commission should start to enact laws that protect consumers from
tracking software. Pretty soon tracking software will get so technologically
advanced that no one will be able to escape it, and people will be flooded with
online advertisements. This is why I would be for a “Do Not Track” type of law
that protects consumers from online advertisements. It would be similar to the “Do
Not Call” List and I believe that it will make us feel safer about giving away
our information on the internet. This will affect marketers because like the “Do
Not Call” lists they now have to monitor the amount of consumers that they can
actually market too. Also it will affect because they will be having a smaller
base of people that they can actually advertise towards. However it could be a
good thing for marketers as well because the people who actually want to be
tracked for advertisements will probably have more interest in what they are
trying to advertise.

Works Cited

Angwin, Julia. “The Webs
New Goldmine: Your Secrets.” Wall Street Journal 30th July 2010:
1-7. Print.

After bringing up the Google Analytics report I have found since installing the program my website has gotten 28 views.  Another piece of information I found was I have 62 page views. This is really not a substantial amount of visits to my website especially since half probably came from the graduate students grading my blog, or by me checking my website to make sure everything I’ve published went through correctly. This basically means other than a couple random hits of maybe people strolling through the interactive marketing students website I have probably under five random visits through my websites. Other stats that I’ve found through the Google Analytics program are that I have a 50 % bounce rate, the average time on my website is 3 minutes, and I have 2.21 pages per visit. I have also found through information on Google Analytics that my visitors are from 2 regions Illinois and Virginia. Almost all my visits are from Dekalb County, with 2 being from Naperville and 1 from Somonauk, which is nearby. I’m making a highly educated guess that all of these visits have to do with my blog posts being graded and me checking my website. The one visit from Virginia was most likely a bot or someone who clicked accidentally because they immediately bounced from the website.

The majority of my websites traffic comes from direct traffic, to be exact 71.4 %. The next biggest traffic source seems to be referring websites. I am pretty sure people are referred to my website through looking at the list of all the interactive marketing students websites because it says from laurenlabrecque.com on the analytics report. The last source of website traffic is one view from a search engine, which I’m making a guess it was the bot from Virginia that immediately bounced from my site. The search engine used was Google and the keyword that was searched on it was itsupplies.com coupon code. This means most likely someone or a bot googled that and stumbled upon my website. Looking at the content overview portion of the report I found that I have 42 page views on my opening page, which is not at all surprising because all of my content that I write is on that page. The next most page views is my about page which makes sense because since I am writing a blog people would probably want to know the author. The next three are tied with my a-b advertisement testing, contact and resume page.  Google Analytics is an extremely tool but I feel like I can’t really harness the full potential of this tool because I don’t have a website that generates enough traffic for it to be completely utilized. This is because I am writing this blog for a school assignment, and not for purposes of generating traffic or commercial use. With this being said if I’m looking into a career of Internet marketing I can show a company I know how to use this tool to my advantage.

Flavored Fortune Cookies

Gourmet Fortune Cookies Since 1988

Order Online Or Call (888)-776-6611

fancyfortunecookies.com

The ad for fancyfortunecookies.com that I chose to do was for flavored fortune cookies. I
figured if I was a consumer, and I was looking for a special type of fortune
cookie the first thing that popped in my head would be flavored fortune
cookies. This also was a portion of the website so I used that as the title for
the advertisement. For the first description line I chose Gourmet Fortune
Cookies Since 1988. I chose this because it shows that this show that it is a
reputable business that has been making gourmet fortune cookies for over twenty
years. For the second description line I wrote order online and call today and
gave Fancy Fortune Cookies phone number. I wrote this because it gives the
customer two options for ordering their product, and makes them more legitimate
as well because it gives out the company phone number. For the last line the
display URL I put fancyfortunecookies.com because this is an a lot easier URL
then the landing page which I put up for the link. The link for the landing
page I put up was the Flavored Fortune Cookies portion of the website. Since my
heading for the ad was flavored fortune cookies the landing page I chose was
the flavored fortune cookies portion of the website. My target demographic of
the ad would be pretty much anyone in the 18-60 age range who is looking for a legitimate
website that sells fortune cookies. The three keywords I would choose are
flavored, fortune and cookies. I would choose these for obviously reason the
word fortune cookies shows up three times in the ad. The reason why I would
choose flavored because that is what I thought the target market would be
putting into the search engine.

            The word I picked to put into the keyword tool was flavored. The competition seems says it is low and there are 1,830,000 global searches per month for the word flavored. The local search volume is 1,220,000. Three Keywords that were suggested were flavored fortune cookies, custom fortune cookies and gourmet fortune cookies. When I typed in the keyword flavored into the keyword tool it showed up with an average CPC of $.64-$.95.
The keyword tool also showed that there would be an average of about 1-2 clicks
per day. The cost per day of the marketing campaign would be between $1.29 and
$1.57. Your max CPC affects your average number of clicks by when you add more
money to your CPC campaign your average number of clicks will go up. I really liked
using the Google Ad words tool for marketing and this has probably been my
favorite assignment to do thus far. Google Ad words are a very fun tool to use
and I really wish I had a product or company to advertise to see how successful
of a campaign I can run using this.

SEM is defined by the internet marketing book as “The entire set of techniques
and strategies used to direct more visitors from search engines to marketing
websites.”(Roberts, 177) This includes search engine optimization (SEO) which
is described as “The process of editing a web site’s content and code in order to improve
visibility within one or more search engines.” The other technique used is paid
placement which is basically when you type a keyword into a search engine and a
company pays to have its name up as one of the first responses. There are two types of search results there are organic or natural search results and paid search or CPC. The difference between the two is obviously the monetary factor that is involved with cost per click. You pay to get your website to be advertising a product or service to the top of the search engine so you can get more clients. Organic Search results are basically the results of a search engine in which are not highlighted under the the top or side of the search engine but are just below. These are based upon an algorithm that calculates how relevant the page is and other factors.

The top five word results after I put my websites URL into the googlerankings tool was restaurant, posted, market, marketing and 2011. I was not at all surprised by the top five word results because we did have a speaker from restaurant.com which is probably why is is number one. Also with market and marketing it isnt a big surprise either since I’m a marketing student and this class is relevant to marketing. 2011 isn’t a big surprise either since it is 2011 and im discussing current events. The one that did surprise me was posted i really didnt realize that I was saying posted that much.

After navigating through the McDonalds corporate website to find a job in information technology it took me three clicks to get
me to a relevant job description. It has a scroll button on the second page
that allows you to find a relevant job in any field of the corporation that you
want. Then once you click that you choose a specific job and it will take you
to the description. In the upper left corner you can find career benefits quite
simply and the site is extremely easy to use. The website is extremely clear,
precise, straight-forward and professional. I don’t know how a person could
really have any trouble navigating through this website. I believe the website
is very compelling and would want to make someone work there because it is so
professional and clear. I really like the use of content on the website,
especially the top navigation bar because once you put your mouse button under
a specific location you want to go to the word bubbles up and gets larger. Also
the use of color is very good because it is not overly red and yellow and
flashy like the mcdonalds.com website. They keep the logo and colors
professional but it still is fun and lets you know it is McDonalds. The one
complaint I do have about the website has to do with the spacing. There is a
sidebar and a top navigation bar, which I believe should just be combined into
one because it’s a bit confusing. Also, I think there is some unnecessary
content such as the parents section that can probably be put on the regular
McDonalds website because usually parents won’t really be going to the
corporate website.

The next website we were told to navigate through was the corporate website for
Walgreens. I was looking for Information Technology job opportunities and found
a specific job in three clicks as well, just like the McDonalds website. As
soon as I entered the website my eye caught exactly what I was looking for with
a center navigation bar with IT jobs and I clicked on it. I also noticed the
same thing was on a sidebar of the website which I thought was kind of nonsense
because it looks sloppy and the information was already right there right in
front of us. Once I clicked on that I was a bit confused because it shows a
search bar, but once I scrolled down I saw the specific jobs and clicked on one
that interested me. I feel like this is a pretty dumb format and instead maybe
they should put the job search bar at the highest part of the page and show the
specific jobs before the crease of the page. I wouldn’t have known specific
jobs were on the page unless I scrolled down. This is something I believe the
web developers at Walgreens should definitely look into.  Once I clicked into a specific job a very detailed job description showed up on the page. This was very clear and
professional and I believe the web developers did a really good job with this
portion of the website. Compared to McDonalds I believe they have a better
webpage but Walgreens isn’t that far off. If it weren’t for the second click
and having to scroll down past the crease I believe it would have been just as
good. Also if the developers can fix the unnecessary information that is there
twice then it will be extremely easy.

The reason why I designed the ad the way I did was because I was trying to catch the emotional appeal of a person looking to adopt an animal from Tails Humane Society. My objective was to get people to adopt animals from Tails, so I started by finding one of the free pictures of the saddest, most adorable puppies I could find and went to work on the image. I also picked up the logo for tails resized the images and followed all the directions that we were taught in class about merging images together. Once I merged the images together I faded the logo to make it look more professional, and added pink text to the top of the ad copy with a call to action. My thinking behind the ad copy was to create an emotional appeal, the call to action and pink writing with the sad, adorable puppy do this pretty effectively.

 A/B Testing is basically testing two similar advertisements with minor changes against each other in order to see which ad is more effective. In my case for the two ad copies I made I simply switched the call to action and capitalized one. You could perform this technique by posting the advertisement to the same website for each one week, and the purpose of it would be to see which ad performs better.

The landing page I picked for both ads was the link for the adopt page on the Tails Humane Society website. The link for the adopt page can be found here. http://www.tailshumanesociety.org/Adopt. I picked this because both of my calls to action involved adopting an animal in some way, and the adopt page was a no brainer since that is what I was telling the prospective adopter to do. You could test the effectiveness of these ads by putting one ad on a website for a week then the following week test the other ad for a week. You can use a tool like google analytics to test the traffic of the websites and the click through rate of the advertisement. You can also look at something like how many animals were adopted that week and survey people to see if they had seen the ads after they adopt the animal. Once you find out which has a better click through rate, you pick the better ad.