爱你，离开你……

换个方式爱你

沒有驚天動地　沒有掌聲讚美
前路遙遠沒空氣　仍期望到最後會一起
直到冰天絕地　亦會開遍薔薇
無望完美　回頭或有驚喜

傳說愛會成就勇氣　飛出去世界更旖旎
行李載滿懷念幾重　總相信我會拿得起
曾抱過你然後兩臂　將一世記掛這滋味
請愛惜　愛惜你自己

若隔開天共地　換個方式愛你
停住時間或空氣　原來合上眼就會一起
做最好的夢寐　預最傷的結尾

長夜流過　從頭在記憶中　碰上你

若隔開天共地　換個方式愛你
停住時間或空氣　原來合上眼就會一起
做最好的夢寐　預最傷的結尾

從未忘記　從前在記憶中　吻過你

Affiliate Marketing

According to Magnum (2005), Affiliate marketing is a cooperative effort between merchant and an affiliate’s website. When customers want to buy a product, they can use searching engine like Google and simply typing in the key words. Then they will find the direct links of those online stores which use affiliate marketing with Google. Affiliate marketing is a popular online business idea. It creates great opportunities for business earning income online. The great advantages for the affiliate marketer are that they do not need to create their own product; they do not need to worry about purchasing, warehousing and shipping to customers. Affiliate marketers need to recommend other people’s products in order to gain commission. They also need to create attractive website to generate more traffic, and then send the traffic to the merchant’s site.

On the other side, affiliate marketing creates many benefits for merchant. For example, using affiliate marketing can increase the numbers of target markets and it has low risk. According to Magnum (2005), more sites will naturally create more sales, if the sites merchant have chosen to use are in their niche marketing. Affiliate marketing provides merchant a bigger market to sell their product. For example, when customers search “dining table” at Keycode.com, Keycode.com will show them many direct links to the stores which sell things related to dining table. By using affiliate marketing, it will give the store a chance to reach people who are not in their target market. Therefore, it leads an increase of total target markets and sales revenue. Furthermore, the paying system of Keycode.com is based on Pay Per Sale. There are no any up-front fees, clients pay nothing until a Keycode.com offer is actually used by a shopper. Pay Per Sale has relative lower risk because marketers only need to pay when customers exactly purchase products through the affiliates’ websites. Moreover, marketers do not need to worry about if they get fraud from affiliates’ websites due to no joining fee for most affiliate websites.

As Digital Web Marketing (2008) indicated there are three ways to make money with affiliate marketing. It includes Pay Per Click (PPC), Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Lead. Pay Per Click heavily depends on the keyword in the ad link. When customers click the ad on affiliate website and the link lead them to the merchant’s website. Affiliate earns certain amount commission. Pay Per Lead does not involve selling. It collects information when website visitors fill out a survey or give out their email address. It generates a lead for an affiliate. If the lead makes a sale, then there will be a commission.

In order to become a good affiliate and maximize the profits from the website, the Internet Marketing Center (2009) explained that affiliate marketers should focus on areas as follows:

• Define a niche market and target the affiliate products to that market.
• Build the good relationship and trust with website visitors. For example, sending regular emails, building blog comments and providing opinions from expertise.
• Constantly finding new ways to market the products such as create attractive web design to engage more visitors.
• Create “sticky” website. Affiliate marketers should create rich and useful content such as product comparisons, newsletters, helpful tips and contests etc.
• Constantly test marketing strategies in order to convert visitors to actual buyers.

Overall, affiliate marketing has many benefits for both affiliate marketers and merchant. It has great power to generate income online.

Reference

Magnum, T. (2005) What are the Benefits of Affiliate Marketing? [Internet]. Available from: <http://ezinearticles.com/?What-are-the-Benefits-of-Affiliate-Marketing?&id=41437> [Accessed 25 November 2009].

What is Affiliate Marketing & MoreNiche ? [Internet], MoreNiche LTD. Available from: <http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.moreniche.com/img/mn-graphic-affiliate-how-works.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.moreniche.com/affiliates-how-it-works.php&usg=__adDdApNH59kHKRoAgq16fNUzrNo=&h=297&w=572&sz=29&hl=en&start=32&tbnid=wp91RUHGlI5jkM:&tbnh=70&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3Daffiliate%2Bmarketing%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D18> [Accessed 25 November 2009].

Online Interactive Advertising

In the traditional advertising channels, marketers use many different ways to promote their product and services. For example, they use TV, radio, direct mail, print and trade shows. However, now more than ever, online marketing becomes a very competitive environment. Online interactive advertising provide marketers more advantages than traditional advertising. As Seth Godin explained about opportunities for ad agencies, marketers should take advantage to use clever and new technique such as internet to help organizations since internet can build a reliable media platform.

Interactive advertising is the online advertising that can engage the customer in the brand to build brand equity. Compare to traditional advertising, online interactive advertising is inexpensive. Marketers can innovate on the web such as using Facebook to create their product pages. It is free. In addition, by using online advertising, marketer can target more audience than other media advertising. For example, marketers put interactive advertising on the social networking such as My Space and Facebook. These social networking have huge customer base. It will create good word of mouth affect rapidly. Moreover, online interactive advertising is a good tool to increase brand awareness and purchase intent. According to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) (2002), higher online frequency boosts effective branding. For example, during the advertising campaign, the Personal Care’s Dove Nutrium Bar’s online impressions increased from six impressions to twelve impressions in six weeks. Overall it increased the effective branding by 45% (IAB, 2002). Online interactive advertising helps the company continue to build good relationships with their customers through very creative way. For example, the online interactive advertising of Nokia SMS racer created a buzz and interests among Nokia cell phone users; and people kept talking about it online which was great word of mouth effect.

Online interactive advertising also shows brand names and benefits. Customers can view the products in more positive way. For example, mobile advertising is a good example for online interactive advertising. Nowadays there are huge amount of people heavily rely on their mobile phones. They often use it for browsing online, playing games and chatting with their friends and business partners. As now mobile phones get into hand-held multimedia computers, people can make the world around them clickable. With people carry their favourite websites in their pockets, marketers are able to connect them wherever they go. Marketers can send new product information and updated services such as new product ads and special product offers directly to customers.

Overall, online interactive advertising is a brilliant advertising channel for brand building and value adding. It has many advantages for the business. Marketers can no longer afford to ignore it. In addition, by using the enhanced interactive online media platform, companies will be able to create new revenue opportunities. 

 

Paid Search vs. Organic Search

Paid search such as Pay Per Click (PPC) is classic search engine pricing model. It is paying the search engines to get the results that businesses want. Organic search describes natural search engine results on any particular engine.

Compare to the paid advertising that appears in sponsored links search engine results, organic search engine results has no money influence the rankings of any individual sites. Organic search is more visible and people trust it more compare to paid advertising. Paid search are usually located on the right side of the web page. It is less visible and people are likely to ignore them. Paid advertising have quick feedback of the results. However, organic search takes longer to get results back. According to Dr. Wilson, sometimes it takes several months (Wilson, 2006). In addition, it is difficult for organic search to get top positions. Moreover, Paid search have better control of the keywords which related to the company, brand, products and services. It leads high volume traffic. Organic search have very low-cost compare to paid search.

Organic search engine results are very important. It is a method used for achieving a better search engine ranking through high quality and relevant content. Organic search engine optimization can draw more viewers to the business’s website. According to The Internet Digest, when people understand the difference between paid search and organic search, they will more likely to choose the natural search engine results (The Internet Digest, 2004). It has more positive influence about a particular company compare to a paid advertisement from the company. According to Seth Godin, in order to be the first in Google rankings, organic search results should provide people really useful information with a series of pages about a particular company’s site and their social sites (Godin, 2007). It should include the content that people really want to read.

Paid search advertising such as PPC relies on purchased keywords or search phrases to send visitors to a website. If the business struggle to get some traffic, paid search advertising is a better solution. However, paid search can be very costly. If the business wants a higher ranking without spending money, the organic search engine optimization is best solution. It makes online marketing more successful. Organic search engine optimization can significantly increase profits. The higher ranking placement will open profitable streams of revenue for every business. Moreover, most searchers believe that sites with the highest search listings are the top companies in their field. Organic search engine optimization helps the business increase their market wild presence. It helps increase customer’s awareness. It also increase brand visibility. Last but not least, organic search engine optimization brings in business any time, not just 9 to 5.

Bibliography

The Internet Digest (2004) Natural Search Engine Results – The Great Equalizer [Internet]. Available from: <http://www.theinternetdigest.net/articles/organic-search-results.html> [Accessed 11 November 2009]

Wilson, R.F. (2006) Organic Search vs. Paid Search (PPC advertising) [Internet], Web Marketing Today. Available from: <http://www.wilsonweb.com/paid-search/organic-paid.htm> [Accessed 11 November 2009].

Viral Marketing

According to Seth Godin, viral marketing is an idea that spreads and while it is spreading, it helps market business or cause. There are two types of viral marketing. First, the marketing is the product and there is a self-amplifying cycle such as YouTube and Hotmail. Second, it is a marketing campaign that spreads (Godin, 2008).

Viral marketing is very effective and powerful form of online marketing. In viral marketing, people pass on a piece of marketing message around, from one person to the others. It spreads the message around very fast. It is an online word-of-mouth advertising. Viral marketing helps business advertise and promote their products and services without spending large amount of money. Marketers just need to update their video or image advertisements on the free websites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. Viral marketing can generate more traffic, attract more customers and increase their interest about the products and services. For instance, according to O’Neill, referral is one popular form of viral marketing on Facebook (O’Neill, 2007). The referrals tactic is an effective way to encourage applications users to market application for the company. The application users market the application on their blogs, websites, forums and Facebook walls. They pass the message to their friends. The application users are highly involved in the marketing but not the company.

When using viral marketing, it should be well planned and organized. The product or service should be interesting and attractive for people spread around. When the message spreads, it should create benefits for the business such as enhance their brand image, reputation and profits. Moreover, when using viral marketing, creating good first impression is very important. It will lead people spend more time to do further investigation. For example, Honda-the Accord “Cogs” advertising is one of the best viral marketing campaigns. The advertising is very detailed and sophisticated. It grabs people’s attention from the first moment when the small cog starts the first move. People concentrated on the next moves. The advertising implied the high quality product with lots of details. People spread the message around the world on the internet. The viral marketing created big buzz for Honda Accord. It helped the company to enhance their reputation and continue to build the brand loyalty as well.

To sum up, viral marketing is very important for marketers to promote their business with less expense but higher profit. It also builds brand awareness and enriches the brand reputation.

Bibliography

Godin, S. (2008) What is Viral Marketing? [Internet], Seth Godin’s Blog. Available from: <http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/what-is-viral-m.html > [Accessed 26 October 2009].

O’Neill, N. (2007) The Top 5 Viral Facebook Techniques [Internet]. Available from: <http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/07/the-top-5-viral-facebook-techniques/>[Accessed 28 October 2009].

Business Blogs

Business Blogs

 Many business managers and owners like to use blog. A blog is very easy to set up compare to set up a business web site. In addition, setting up a business blog is inexpensive. Many blogging services are free nowadays. According to Seth Godin and Tom Peters, blog is one of the best free marketing tool.

A business blog can be written in different styles. The biggest benefit is business blog has the ability to inform their customers of any changes, new products, promotions, events, and latest offers etc. The business blog helps generate more direct sales. People like spend amount of time to read specific blogs on a regular basis. Individual blog readers usually prefer a personal style. However, business blog style may vary according to different businesses. For example, many firms have used newsletter or e-newsletters to have regular contact with their current customers or potential customers. Using a business blog is much easier and quickly. It can be updated more frequently than when offering a weekly or monthly newsletter.

Blog helps business build brand awareness. According to Seth Godin, if a business is good at writing blog and respond people’s comments, people will keep reading it. It automatically builds the brand awareness. With each post, it gives the company an opportunity to mention their company’s name and it makes readers to think about the company when next time they are looking for a particular product and service. Moreover, a blog allows business to speak more freely and in a more informal and personal style than business website does. It builds more trust between the readers and the company. When people are more interest in the business, they like to visit the main site, click the links and purchase the product.

A business blog enables the company to gain insight into their customers and help to promote their business. For example, the food industry companies use blog to generate online buzz about their services and enhance their business. The Club Med will host a conference in 2010 in Mexico. The conference will gather together popular food bloggers and writers to share their expertise, hands on workshops and discussion about food blog. A business blog allows readers to post their comments. This gives the company a sense of how customers react to what they say. In addition, the company can also track which posts are being read more frequently and which generate a greater number of clicks. This is very important information when company doing market research.

According to Skellie, a great business blog should be

1. Use the professional voice.
2. Edit each post, maintain good grammar, spelling and fluid expression.
3. Present information clearly and concisely.
4. Be personal but not too personal and use interesting stories which related to the topic.
5. Keep the opinions and beliefs to yourself. For example, keep politics, morality and controversy out of the business blogging.
6. Be objective and treat the readers like your customers. Respond their comments and emails and answer their questions with best abilities.
7. Take time to develop well thought-out posts which can offer more values to readers.

Overall, a successful business blog can add more value to the business, create more loyal customers and build trust in potential customers.

Starbucks and Social Network

Social network is very important for business marketing profits. Social network helps business build a real relationship and connection with their current and potential customers. Companies use social network share and exchange worthwhile ideas and common business information. Social network helps business promote brand and its website. Through the social network, customers can directly engage with the business. From visiting the social network, it helps generate more traffic to business’s website. It creates opportunity to create buzz around the product, services and brand. Social network also help business create loyalty and trust. There are many popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. According to Siegler, Facebook have crossed 300 million users worldwide now and it is the biggest social network (Siegler, 2009).

Top social networking websites

Starbucks is a good example for using social network for marketing purposes. Starbucks have a unique human approach. They always put people before product. Starbucks use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Channel. There are 4,534,076 fans joined Starbucks on Facebook. Through the Facebook, Starbucks built a community which creates a loyal following. From this social network and communication channel, Starbucks are fully engaged and connected with their customers and partners. It is a place that people can meet friends. Starbucks added a tab called “Around the World” on Facebook, which connects people to Starbucks pages in other countries. It is activated in US, Canada, UK, Ireland and Singapore currently. The Facebook of Starbucks provides an opportunity for people finding more friends worldwide and shares the same or different interests. People also share their experience about Starbucks. It is a good way to interact each other. For example, people post their favorite beverages. People can post message on the wall and the discussion section. The messages will help Starbucks improve their quality of products and services. For instance, people suggested opening Starbucks in Italy and Brunei. Moreover, people posted pictures on the Facebook. As an innovative and important marketing strategy, Starbucks posted company events and notes on the Facebook. It created buzz around its product and services. For example, “Starbucks Free Pastry Day” was wildly successful.

 Last but not least, the videos that Starbucks posted on Facebook give people more opportunities to view the world and gain better understanding of Starbucks’s philosophy. For example, the CEO Howard Schultz talked about his trip to Rwanda and the impact of fair trade coffee. The story showed that Starbucks not only care about people, but also the community.

By using social networking website, Starbucks truly provided a valuable and meaningful brand experience and built great customer relationships.

 Bibliography

Siegler, MG. (2009) Facebook Crosses 300 Million Users. Oh Yeah, and They Just Went Cash Flow Positive [Internet], TechCrunch. Available from: <http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/15/facebook-crosses-300-million-users-oh-yeah-and-their-cash-flow-just-went-positive.htm > [Accessed 12 October 2009].

Starbucks Corporation (2009) [Internet]. Available from: <http://www.starbucks.com> [Accessed 8 October 2009].

Develop an Effective Web Presence – Set SMART Goals

A business or an organization use online marketing to promote their product and services in order to generate more profit. They want to add more value to the customers through their website. Therefore, an effective website planning and development are very important for online marketing. Marketers should identify their target consumers; find out consumers’ common interests, needs and expectations; and develop SMART goals when they develop an effective web presence.

Creating SMART goals are very powerful. It provides short term motivation and long term vision. It also helps business or organization to measure their achievement. A SMART goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. For example, a local food store can develop SMART organizational goals such as creating an ecommerce portion of the website to facilitate secure online transactions for certain goods offered through the retailer i.e. shelf-groceries, body care and vitamins within one year; and creating a community online for customers and visitors to communicate with other like-minded individuals who are interested in a healthy lifestyle. For example, online forums, online article base and user generated content. Marketers also need to develop SMART goals that focus on website user’s common concerns. For instance, the website is very convenient, secure, reliable and easy to use. The website should be attractive, informative, interactive and credible. For example, it includes return policy, delivery options, recipes and articles related to product and services. It also can include product comparison and recommendations.

Creating SMART goals is crucial. However, there are more important parts of developing an effective website such as identification of the core audiences and understanding the main competitors. Moreover, the website should deliver rational and emotional value to the customers, create excellent customer experience and make them feel good and are attached with the company. Finally customers like to come back again. For example, EB Games develop very attractive and effective website. It includes games, game consoles information and newsletters. Customers can easily shop by different age groups. There are products recommendations such as best sellers and coming soon games. Moreover, EB Games has a verified and secured online payment system. Last but not least, when customers visit or shop online, they can play games. It is very fun!

Mass Customization of Online Marketing

As internet has become an indispensable part to our daily life, online marketing is very prevalent nowadays. It is crucial for business success. Marketers can get large amounts of information about users from the web. Through the web analytical programs, marketers track everything that happens on a website. They keep record of user’s online activities such as how potential customers find the website, what consumer’s behaviour is, and why or why not they purchase product. The web analytical programs collect data automatically without biases. Online marketing provides company the great opportunities to develop and promote business, analyze problems and measure marketing success.

Mass customization is one of important strategies for online marketing. Customer becomes prosumer. It is value added strategy between customers and suppliers. Mass customization allows customers add more personal tastes and preferences to an individual product. The process to create the product is very attractive and interesting. It also helps customer make better purchase decision. The product becomes very unique. For example, Chocri chocolate bars, a German mass customization company will move to the US in 2010. Chocri is a customized chocolate company from Berlin. Customers can choose their own chocolate base (white, dark or milk); select personal toppings such as dry fruits, nuts, gummy bears and even spice (chives) and jalapenos. Customer can also add personalize name for their chocolate bars and wrapping paper upon checkout. From each order, Chocri can easily track not only customer’s preferences but also different nutrition requirements. Now when we give someone a piece of chocolate bar, it is more memorable and even sweeter. Chocri also creates a community on Facebook. It allows customers sharing their experience. It is a good way to build strong customer relationship.

Mass customization helps marketers finding customer’s needs, get customer involve more with product design and research. H&M creates fashion studio on its website. When customer browsing the website, they can choose their favourite model and background, by dragging the graphics (cloth and accessories) onto the model, they can create their own look. The website allow customer to save the look and share them with other people. It also provides price information and has different views of the outfit. It is very convenient and time saving for customer. They don’t need to go to the real store to try it on. They do not need to go to different store to find matching shoes or pants. It is easy to find perfect outfit just in one store. It helps customer to make best purchase decision. Meanwhile by using fashion studio, it helps marketers to analyze customer’s shopping behaviour and fashion trends. Therefore, marketers can make quick response in promotions, new product development and pricing etc.   

Ikea designs its website with room ideas and style sectors. When customer shops online, they can get free advice on how to decorate their own rooms and purchase stylish furniture with affordable price. Also by browsing the room ideas and style sectors, it stimulates more purchase.

Mass customization helps business attract more people to visit the company’s website, increase the business level, build product royalty and also help business to enhance branding of company and its products.