Interactive Marketing Portfolio

I chose Target to investigate a company’s social media marketing strategy and I mainly focused on its Facebook page. The first thing I saw when I went to the Targets Facebook page was a holiday welcome page. It asks the viewer to like the page and doing so gives the viewer the ability to enter a chance to win something through 11/22, which has already past then I went to the page. Below that is a note saying it is too late to enter but visit the store for a 2 day sale they are having. It is good that they have a welcome page that tells the viewer to like the page, it motivates the viewer to connect with them if they offer a sweepstakes, but I think the sweepstakes shouldn’t be mentioned if it is already over. Facebook also allows Target to motivate the consumer to create. On the Facebook wall people can comment on things that Target posts, the consumer is creating a conversation with other people and adding feedback to what Target and other people have to say. Also people can post photos on the Facebook page. People that post photos on the page are also creating content and buzz about Target. The wall also gives consumers control over Target in a way. If consumers don’t like a product or service they have the ability to write about it on the Facebook page, same thing goes if a consumer loves a product. On the wall a consumer’s opinion matters because it has the ability to sway another consumer opinion. I didn’t really notice Target taking advantage of motivating the consumer to compete, maybe Target could do some sort of contest.

There are a number of different metrics that Target can use to measure success on its Facebook page. The most obvious is how many Likes the page gets in a given time period. Other metrics include how many comments a Likes a post gets, also the number of times a post if shared. Target can also look at how many times people talk and post something about Target on their personal page. Click through rates can also be measured. For example the number of times a consumer clicks to see the weekly ad or how many people lick on the links to Targets other web pages. Metrics are everywhere its just important to know how to use them.

Overall Target has a good Facebook page. The only thing I advise is to put something that motivates the consumer to compete. If a company gives back to the consumer by offer free products to a winner it shows that a company is proud of its products and is willing to have consumers compete for them. It will also create word of mouth about the brand and create brand engagement.

Privacy has been dead for a long, long time especially online. Many people haven’t noticed it or haven’t thought about it, but people will do whatever they can to find out or get more information about another person, especially if there are no laws in place to regulate privacy. A marketers goal and or company’s goal is to be your friends, and friends know things about their friends that others don’t. Since your friends know who you are and what you like, they listen to you; and a company’s goal is to have their customers listen to them. Company’s installing cookies to peoples computers is just another way to find out information about a friend and the  only reason people have beef with this is because company’s asking what you like from a computer is like a person you have never talked too asking your friend what you like, which is pretty much stalking.

On the other hand it is important for marketers to gather information about what people like. How can we promote or sell something to someone we don’t know. Personally I would rather have Ads targeted towards me exclusively, instead of getting a bunch of stuff that I don’t care about, I don’t think that the government should step in and set up regulations, but I think that some regulations should be made on what kind of data a company should be allowed to collect from a consumer’s computer. A consumer should not be paranoid of someone taking their information when going online, would letting the consumer have the ability to opt-in to a company allowing to take data mess up marketing that much? I am not sure, but there has to be some compromise between what consumers want and what marketers/company’s want.

When examining the Google Analytics for my site overall I have had 92 visits, 48 unique visitors, 272 page views and 2.96 pages views per visit. The average time a user spends on the site is 5.25 minutes and a bounce rate 48.91%. When looking at the location most of the visitors, 86 out of 92 are from the United States. Russia and Canada both have one visit and have an average time spent on the site of 0, which means that those visits are probably bots. It is interesting to see that there are actual visits to the site from people in Jordan, Malaysia and Switzerland.

The top page on the site with 75.37% of the views is the main page with all of the blog posts. Most of the content on the site is on this page, so it would only make sense that the majority of the views are there. Most of t he traffic to the site is coming from direct traffic at 57.61%. The top keyword used to find the site is the website url.

I am a bit surprised on the amount of unique visitors that came to the site in the short amount of time that it has been up and the amount of time those visitors spend on the site. Also it was interesting to see that I have real views to the site form people in other countries. It makes me somewhat curious what their reasons were to going on the site.

Giant Fortune Cookies- Great Gifts!
www.fancyfortunecookies.com
Buy Custom Fortune Cookies Now. 2 Week Shipping!

My target demographic for this ad is people that are looking to buy a gift. Also this is for people that are not sure what to buy for their friend or their loved one and are looking to get something relatively quickly. My call to action is to buy the custom fortune cookies now; also there is 2 week shipping. The landing page that I used is the fancy fortune cookies home page, this is due to character restrictions when using Google AdWords and any other landing page would have been over 35 characters long. The 3 relevant keywords that I used for this ad are cookies, fortune, and gift.

When using the word fortune in Google AdWords the results show that the completion is low. Also the number of monthly global searches was 7,480,000 and local searches were 2,240,000. Two keyword ideas that I have chosen is Fortune Cookie which have medium competition with 246,000 global and 165,000 local searches; the second keyword idea is Fortune Cookie Sayings which has low competition with 27,100 global and 18,100 local searches. For both of these keyword ideas are relevant to the product and don’t have strong competition, also even though both of these keyword ideas do not have very high global searches most of the searches seem to come from the local area.

To generate a number 1 estimated ad position, I inputted a max CPC of $7.51. This gave me a summary of $1.70-$2.08 average estimated CPC, 1.76-2.15 total estimated clicks, and $3.33-$4.08 total estimated cost. The results also show that I have an estimated avg. CPC of $1.89, estimated daily clicks of 1.96, and estimated daily cost of $3.71.

The book Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies by Mary Lou Roberts defines SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as, “all the techniques used to cause a web page to be highly ranked on one or more search engines”. Those techniques include, HTML code, site navigation, linking campaigns, among others. The easiest way to describe SEO is organizing a site in a way as to get more visibility/traffic from internet users using search engines like Google or Yahoo. The reason SEO is important is because a site is meant to be viewed, that’s why they are made, using it makes it easier for people to find the most relevant sites that pertain to the information or subject that the search engine user wants to find.

When using a keyword density tool on my site some of my top words were business, marketing, assignment, wordpress, company, and speaker. These keywords make sense in terms of what my site is about since most of my blog posts have been about assignments that I have done in my internet marketing class, which is a business class where we have had a few guests come in. This keyword density tool is pretty useful; it would be interesting to see what my site is about at the end of the semester and what it will be like sometime after I have finished the internet marketing class.

I was looking for marketing jobs on the McDonald’s Corporate site and it didn’t take long to find career opportunities it was around three clicks, before I got to the information that I was looking for. It was also easy to find out information about the benefits that McDonald’s provides. I wouldn’t say that the website is compelling it seems a little bland mostly comprised of text. The navigation is pretty easy to use and I like how it leaves to trail/breadcrumbs so the users know where they have been. The spacing feels very open and there isn’t a lot of color. They could have probably worked in a bit of yellow a bit. There are a few pictures here and there, but practically no videos. But the site is overall easy to use and very simple. I suggest that McDonald’s adds more about what makes McDonald’s what it is and not just info about the number of employees and where offices are located. It is important for people that are seeking a job to know about a company’s corporate culture. The site could also use more color, images, and videos. Also the trail//breadcrumbs seem to change to things that I haven’t been to yet.

For the Kraft Foods Career site it took about six clicks to get from the home page to a job description about a marketing position. In comparison to the McDonald’s site the Kraft Foods site is a lot more visually appealing. It had a lot more color, images, and it shows a glimpse of what the corporate culture is like at Kraft Foods. The site is pretty easy to use, but until the McDonald’s site Kraft Foods doesn’t leave a trail of where the user has been. Based on the two sites I would rather work at Kraft Foods. Kraft Foods site tells the viewer what they are all about and says what Kraft is looking for in people there are interested in applying for a job.

I chose a very simple design that communicates the one message effectively. There isn’t a lot in the Ad, but it shows who the message is from, what the Ad wants the viewer to do, where/how to do it and why to do it. I decided to use images of dogs that are staring straight ahead, making it seem as though they are looking at the viewer. These images make it seem like the dog is begging for the viewer of the Ad to help.

A/B testing is used to see what Ad would be more effective in getting a message across to the viewer or increase response rates. There would be a minor difference between the Ads, like the color scheme, layout; In this case I changed the image. In one Ad I used an older dog that looks sad and tired. In the other Ad I used a much younger dog which appears to be begging for something.

Since this Ads goal is to have the viewer donate, the landing page I linked the Ads to was the donate page for Dekalb County Animal Shelter. This is better than sending the viewer to the Dekalb County Animal Shelter home page because the viewer already know what he or she wants to do and we don’t want to get them lost trying to figure out where to donate. The viewer may get frustrated and forget their objective.

The metrics that would be used to test the effectiveness of the Ads would be click-through rate (CTR). Whichever Ad gets the most CTR would be the most effective at getting the message across.

In my internet marketing class we had another guest speaker come in. This time it was Ryan Eugene from IT Supplies. He first talked about the history of the business and how it was founded by Greg Lahart in 1998. At first it was a very small business that just sold HP products out of the founders’ garage. Back then only direct marketing techniques where used. A catalog would be sent out to prospects and then buyers would have to mail back a form with the products that they were going to buy. As the amount of products began to increase and the amount of business the company was getting, it began to shift to e-commerce. On the site an online catalog was created where customers would be able to browse through a range of products from Epson, Canon, and HP.

The speaker talked about some of the advantages of having an online business like global scale, they could now get business from overseas. Having a website was also less costly; the company no longer had to send out hundreds of expensive catalogs to customers, everyone could just go on the site and see what IT Supplies had to offer. Having a website also makes it a lot easier to measure sales and how well a business is doing. With a click of a button a business can find out how many units a customer bought, how much revenue was made, among other things. In general the internet allows for faster business.

Two WordPress plugins that would be helpful for an online business would be Wazala Ecommerce Store & Shopping Cart and MailChimp List Subscribe Form.

The Wazala Ecommerce Store & Shopping Cart is creasted by Wazala. The plugin allows the user to intergrate there Wazala account and WordPress. This allows the site owner to be able to set up an e-commerce store on their personal site. Customers would be able to buy products online with ease. This allows the use of discounts and coupons. With this plugin the site owner can create a store online with creative design, price, and products he or she wants it to be.

The Mailchimp List Subscribe Form, which is created by mc_jesse and crowdfavorite, allows the site owner to ass a signup form for your MailChimp list. This makes it possible to capture e-mails of the people that come to your site. Then using MailChimp Newsletter or any other information could be easily sent out to everyone on the list. On a weekly, monthly, or any other preferred schedule your prospects can continue to be informed about your business and hopefully retained due to this.