Beckley Blog

Marketing & Entrepreneurship Major At The University of Cincinnati

[beckleyblog]

Digital Ad Deliverable

For my digital ad deliverable, I decided to do a LinkedIn sponsored message. I wanted to advertise this blog to future jobs and business professionals. I think that the blog would be a great example of some work that would be applicable to a future marketing job. I chose LinkedIn to reach that target audience, and hopefully start a conversation with people that could lead to future connections or even a job. 

Below I have attached some screenshots of my digital ad and the performance of it. I structured my ad as a sponsored message ad to help reach people in the specific demographic more directly, in hopes of them visiting my blog website. This would also appear in direct messages, which opens up the possibility for a conversation to be started. The options of a spotlight ad, carousel ad, or other types, just didn't make sense for what I was trying to do. I wanted a direct route to the audience that could leaded to higher engagement, rather than a passive ad on their homepage. 

As mentioned before, I want to target a business focused audience. Anyone who would be interested in business topics such as management and marketing, would be more inquired into my blog. I crafted my demographic by finding the best audience that would be in line with the topics of the blog. I figure that would be people here in the USA and aged anywhere from 18 to 54. Specifically with fields of study in management, entrepreneurship, and marketing. As well as skills ranging from digital marketing, the music industry, music education, and even blogging in general. 

My overall call to action was to visit my Tumblr blog. At the very least, that was the goal for this digital advertisement. In hopes that people would visit the blog and find some sort of connection to it, which could possibly lead to a more in depth conversation. Overall, I had plenty of impressions on the advertisement but ended up with no website clicks. On future advertisements, I would do some things differently. While learning what works for these ads come with time, I would try out different approaches to see what works best. Maybe try out different advertisement types and demographic targets. Even with the lack of website engagements, I learned a lot through this digital advertisement assignment. With this being my first of hopefully many digital ads, it was a fun enlightening experience. 

[beckleyblog]

Week 7 Blog Post

As a kid I always had an Idea of where I wanted to get to in my life, but as I’ve gotten older my goals and dreams have honed in. Growing up I was always obsessed with the entertainment industry. From music to movies/tv, I wanted to somehow be involved in that. That’s when I decided business was my way in, as I don’t have any actual artist talent. I have a lot of big goals I want to accomplish professionally throughout the next years of my career.

In the next 10 years, I would like to be financially stable in a marketing management job. Ideally, would love to have my foot in the door in the entertainment industry. Whether that is in my main marketing job, or doing work on the side where I am able to be on sets, be at events, or in a music environment. This would require me to live in Los Angeles which is known as a hard place to live, due to high prices. This is where being financially stable would be great, so I don’t have to struggle but can live comfortably. 

In the next 20 years, I would want to be fully involved in a music marketing position at a record label or management company. I would love to experience the more hands on approach, like dealing with artists themselves and developing a relationship with them where we can trust each other. This would help me grow in my skills and in my career. Getting my name out there on the business side of the music industry would be amazing, whether that is in a business publication or just being mentioned in regards to a specific artist. 

In 30 years, I want to feel comfortable enough in my career but still being challenged to learn new things. I never want to stop learning and growing as a person or professionally. By this time, being more settled in my home life would allow me to put my focus on doing big things in my career. Possibly branching out and doing more than just marketing for the industry. Attending the Grammy’s and being apart of a team of people that helped an artist get nominated/win a Grammy, would be the ultimate fulfillment. 

I have a lot to achieve in the next 30 years if I want to reach my goals. In 30 years, I just want to feel a sense of great accomplishment and be able to look back on my career and feel proud. I know my goals are pretty high, but I choose to aim bigger than to not. I won’t be upset if I don’t achieve all of this, all that matters is that I feel fulfilled and happy at the end of it all. 

[beckleyblog]

Week 5 Blog Post

I do not necessarily want to start a business. Truthfully, It just seems like too much for me. I have anxiety and the thought of jumping into my own business seems overwhelming at this point. On the other hand I wouldn't rule it out completely, who knows how my career will go in the future. I also wouldn’t mind investing in other entrepreneurs or helping them with their business. Truly I don't mind working for others, and enjoy the structure of an established organization. Entrepreneurship was just something that unexpectedly happened for me in the past year. 

I was originally just a marketing major and that was my planning going into and after graduation. I had been fighting for an internship since my freshman year but never got close to an opportunity. The beginning of my Fall 2021 semester, I decided I didn’t want to graduate without having at least an opportunity at an internship somewhere. I really wanted to have that experience before graduating and going into the real world full time. 

At that time, I began looking to add another major to my track. That would leave me with only two more semesters of course work, which would create opportunity to find an internship in the summer of 2022. When looking at other majors, I stumbled upon entrepreneurship but didn’t really think much of it. I made an appointment to discuss majors with my advisor, where I promoted a few options to become part of my plan. My advisor explained that marketing and entrepreneurship was a popular pairing for double majors at the business college. Not only is it for people who want to start business, it helps people understand how they are run especially on a smaller scale. I understood that this could benefit me if I was to work in a small business environment in the future. Even though I didn’t want to start a business, I found value in what I could learn as Entrepreneurship major. 

I was applying everywhere looking for internships for the summer of 2022. Until one day my aunt had sent me a Facebook post from our neighborhood group page in Cleveland. A guy was asking for an intern for the summer at his small local marketing agency. This was the perfect fit for me, so after sending him my resume we met up a month later. The interview I had with him went really well, and I got the internship. We discussed an orientation week at the beginning of June and I went back to Cincinnati to finish up my semester. Unfortunately after a month of miscommunication on his end, he let me know last minute that things had changed at their company and they could no longer take me on.   I was pretty upset at the situation but mostly just how it was handled. I was then screwed and unable to find another internship. 

With all of that happening prior to starting my entrepreneurship classes, I think it pushed me harder to get a good understanding of the subject so I could possibly avoid that situation again. So while my ultimate goal isn’t to start a business, I wouldn’t rule it out completely. I don’t think I’m a natural born entrepreneur but have acquired a lot of skills throughout these past two semesters. These skills will serve me in the future when looking for jobs in marketing, because I know what to look out for in a business. If down the line I’m not happy at the companies I’ve worked for, I believe I’ll have a decent understanding of how I could be my own boss with my own business. 

[beckleyblog]

Business Model Deliverable

If I had a hypothetical $1 million to invest in either GoPuff or Peloton, I would choose to invest in Peloton. Prior to this assignment, I had heard of both these companies. I knew more about Peloton than GoPuff. I knew of Peloton through multiple of my marketing classes. We were always taught to learn from their sexist marketing mistake, which occurred in November of 2019. So knowing this information, I already had a bad taste of this company. As far as GoPuff, I knew the bare minimum about this company. I knew they were a delivery service that took off in the pandemic, but nothing past that. After doing my research into both of these companies, I had a deeper understanding of them as businesses. I will now go into greater detail about my research and why I chose to invest in Peloton over GoPuff.

Peloton as a company started out rocky, and continued to have their ups and downs throughout the years. Similar to GoPuff, they found their business booming during the pandemic. With being stuck at home for a year and a half, people were looking for at home work outs to maintain their fitness and health. Peloton’s holds value in empowering the lives of people with world-class fitness equipment and experts. This is something Peloton was able to provide, but at a hefty price. Peloton used a combination of bundling and subscription, with both their machines and access to their online service experts. They are mostly scalable as this is a service and product that is manufactured to meet their demand, although it is quite expensive. Their customer segment is active adults who may be too busy to go to the gym and wants a convenient workout. Their machine is a product that needs outsourced by delivery services to get to their customer, while the online service is a an easy access product. 

With their business booming during the pandemic, Peloton scaled their operations rapidly to try and meet the current demand and future demand. This was a large mistake for their company. When the pandemic died down and people were able to go back to “normal life”  per se, their demand died down. This left Peloton with excess inventory which ended up costing them in the long run. This plus a few other mistakes along the way, caused a huge loss for Peloton. This resulted in higher ups in the company stepping down and leaving, to having to lay off close to 5,200 employees over the years. Recently, the new owners of the company seem to have been making changes to turn Peloton in the right direction. The potential for this company is big, if they continue to be smart in their market and make the right decisions. 

GoPuff is a company that also started to take off during the height of the pandemic. They sought door to door delivery of services such as, food, cleaning supplies and alcohol. As you can imagine in a pandemic where you can’t of anywhere, this would become quite popular. They valued quick and hassle-free delivery at all hours of the night.  They developed a revenue stream mainly through delivery fee’s. This is a very scaleable business as it is an online platform that contracts employees through the app. Depending on the demand, they can scale their business pretty easily. GoPuff is a really low margin business. The ideal customer was mostly everyone during the pandemic, but specifically young adults who have money and tend to eat out but don’t want to leave their own environment. Their product/service is delivered through outsourcing contract drivers to provide their service effectively. 

GoPuff had a strong start in the beginning of the pandemic, but quickly started to loose money at a fast rate. With the low margin business model and plenty of competition in their market (DoorDash, UberEats, GrubHub, etc.), it made it hard for them to profit and stay ahead of competition. One thing that is impossible to do in business is to be all things at once, for example cheap and convenient. This is an unhealthy business model that doesn’t help margins. With their lack of revenues, GoPuff found themselves doing multiple rounds of layoffs and loosing many of their key executives. Not to mention the irresponsible spending of money by higher ups which lead people to question the rapport of the company. Another issue with their business model is their reliance on inventory and leasing warehouses. The majority of their revenue is not coming from customers, but from their partnerships. This can lead to an unbalanced business and could potentially be detrimental to the company. Currently, GoPuff is trying new ventures to keep the business alive. We will see in the next year where GoPuff ends up. 

In conclusion, I learned a lot about both these companies through my research. While both companies have had their ups and downs in the recent years, I truly have faith in Peloton as a company. I believe their business model is smarter, and there is more of a space in the market for them. With continued innovation and progression in the company, I think they could bring themselves back up to the level they once were in the pandemic. GoPuff’s business model is too concerning to me, and I believe there are too many similar business out there in the market. Overall that is why if I had $1 million to invest into a company, I would choose to invest in Peloton. 

[beckleyblog]

Week 3 Blog Post

My name is Jacob Beckley, I am a senior at the University of Cincinnati. I am double majoring in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, with a minor in communications. I grew up an hour east of Cincinnati but moved to Cleveland (near my family) my senior year of high school. I like to say both Cincinnati and Cleveland are my home. I have interests in traveling, music, the entertainment industry, technology, and hanging out with my friends and family. I have worked many jobs including retail, food service, and at my uncle’s granite company. I think all of my work experiences have shaped me to become an efficient, organized, hard worker. 

I am taking this class to help develop a greater understanding of digital technologies and how to use them in a greater business sense. I love the idea of digital businesses so when I saw this as an elective I could take, I jumped right on it. Not only is this a class that helps me complete my degree, but I am incredibly interested in the concept, and believe it will add value to my skill set. I want to utilize the skills I learn by implementing them into my future marketing jobs. 

I hope to learn what digital tools are used in the workspace, and how to work with them. I also want to dive deep into past and future digital technology, and analyze how they have become today. The idea of innovation really fascinates me. I believe companies must choose to innovate to stay on top of their industry. This is especially true with how ever-changing our technology is. I hope to dive more into that concept, and learn from the past mistakes companies have made. Overall, I hope to gain experience in the history of the digital landscape, and learn how to leverage digital tools to strengthen my skills.