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"The Ultimate Marketing Machine"

In the reading "The Ultimate Marketing Machine" by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, and Keith Weed, the authors had a complete marketing leadership study to understand what makes the the most effective marketing organizations stand out from the rest. It is no doubt that, marketing is not a merely marketing department now. Marketing is a department that require to communicate and work with many other departments in the company. Marketing is integrated. I remember when I was applying for New York University master, I wonder why the marketing program is called Master in Integrated Marketing. And now, I realized it is because “Marketing’ is no longer a discrete entity…but now extends throughout the firm, tapping virtually every function.”

To me, I deeply believe that marketing department holds the company in a same big picture among other entities. Marketing department knows the company’s mission and vision by heart in order to plan and execute all the campaign and activity to generate revenue for the company. Other departments might not need to know the company vision and mission as clear as marketing team. For example- IT department(Help desk), it might be more important for them to focus on how to solve the technical issues for the company. Of course, as the article mentioned, “all employees in the company…must share a common vision.”It is absolutely vital that every employee in the company should know the company mission and goal very well in order to really carry the message of the company to consumers. However, some departments might focus more on the technical skill of the job itself.

The article also very interestingly points out what marketers do to engage customers and the change that has evolved beyond recognition. We all know that marketing is going digital, and the marketing tools and strategies that were cutting-edge and innovative just a few years ago are quickly becoming obsolete.

I think it is important for marketers to know the digital world better than other people in order to be successful. Same wise, it seems like technological innovative company like Apple and Google are more successful than other companies.

Marketing leaders are effectively connecting marketing to other functions and business strategy, inspiring the whole organizations and other department by engaging everyone in the branding the company based on company’s mission and goal- both physically and digitally. In my own opinion, for a organization to be successful, marketing needs to be at the very front of other departments and constantly communicate to the firm internally and digitally about company’s brand, mission and goal. If the first step is right and other entities receive the right message from marketing, the company will go far.

Digital marketing and social media: why bother

In the reading digital marketing and social media: why bother by Maria Teresa Pinheiro Melo Borges Tiago and Jose Manuel Cristovao Verissim, I learned a lot about the importance and the impact of digital marketing and social media to a company. In addition, I see the side of how corporate or a company views digital marketing and social media internally.

As a consumer, I know how much is social media and online platform affecting my everyday life. I am on social network and spend more than 50% of my time on digital world. The article mentions that “Rapid growth of Web-based platforms that facilitate online social behaviors has significantly modified the nature of human activities, habitats , and interactions.”(p.1) and I can’t agree more with this description. Online platforms allow me to do many things conveniently and effortlessly. Because social media and ditigal marketing are so huge to consumers, companies have to keep up with consumers and make sure both sides are on the same page. And this is exactly what the article points out in the beginning. I understand that social media requires many efforts and resources in a company, one reason is simply because the company needs to invest many real people to manage the social media aspect. Real people communication is important , as a consumer, I don’t expect or appreciate speaking to a robot or some automatic systems when I interact with the company online. Real people carry and express emotion which increase the engagement level between a customer and the company.

One of the biggest uses of social media is handling customer service. Because social media management is handle by real people, many consumers reflect their satification or dissatifsicaiton online on the social networks. Customers post their opinion online because it is a large platform and it is a platform that is composed of real people. It is essentially or almost the same as speaking to the person face to face. Demanding consumers require company to handle social media seriously with minimal mistakes. Company needs to be very careful about their behaviors online. Online is a big public platforms and words spread quicker than anyone can imagine. Especially if there is a negative incident online, people would share it on their social media page and the effect will be multiplied. If any company decides to have a social media platforms to enhance the communication with their customers, they should make sure it is a healthy and positive communication that they are building online. As the article mentions, “one manger said, it is better not to use social media at all (P.4) –if you don’t have clear strategy definition and objective” This is correct because if you decide to enter to interact with your consumer in another new world, it is either you do it right or don’t do it at all. it is right.

I had a personally experience to share on this matter. A friend of mine on Facebook shared an extremely unpleasant experience with one of the airlines on the facebook page. After an afternoon, a representative from the airlines replied her status and sent her a personal message via facebook to solve her problem and listen to her concern. Company online is being pressured by the eyes of many people on the social networks. Although the and effort needed from a company to take care of the online platform is huge, the benefits are countless. Though there are numerous measurements to measure the success of a social media and digital marketing campaign, such as conversion rate and click through rate… But I personally think brand awareness is really important to me. We are all human and emotions are something that really touch us. I won’t buy something from a comaopny because the company shows that their product/webpages have a high click through rate. I have to feel a personal connection to the product then I will consider of buying it.

The article is extremely interesting that, if a company is still hesisting whether they should open a digital marketing/ social media department, they should really take this into consideration. It is quite an investment in the beginning, but if the company notices the trend and care for a company in the long run, online platforms will get bigger and bigger. Company should really invest as early as possible to “secure” a spot for itself online in the mind of consumers.

#socialmedia

“The Role of the Corporate Website in the Critical Customer Conversion Journey”

“The Role of the Corporate Website in the Critical Customer Conversion Journey” by Accenture points out that the corporate website plays an important role in the consumer purchase journey.

I completely agree with the article, in fact, I am a big fan of ROPO(research online purchase offline). If I do have a pleasant experience with initial research online, especially on the corporation website, it would certainly stop me from purchasing in store or proceed to the next step of my research/consideration.

I believe most of the people share the similar journey when they make major purchase decision nowadays. We do our homework digitally because it is the most conveniently way for us. I believe most of the company realize this point, but they haven’t realize how impactful is their own asset- corporate website , and the influence of the website can change digital savvy consumers’ purchase descion. I have to admit that, corporate website is not the only source when we research about the product/service we are interested in. However, it is definitely one of the sources we will look at and often, we trust the corporate website a lot more than other website when we want to get product information because it is a credible resource. Personally, corporate website is the first place I go when I wan to get the complete information/details about the product I am going to purchase. I treat the corporate website as credible source with the most accurate information. And then, if my interest remains, I will go on to read reviews on other websites but I will still refer back to the corporate website for accurate product information/differentiation.

AS the artible mentioned, more than 60% of respondents expect that investments in website content and development will increase. Very often, companies don’t list complete content of the products on their website. Most of the information seems to be too general and consumer can’t obtain a great one stop research between the product and the similar products from different competitors. It is curial for company to do a good “Pros and Cons” of their products on the website- it prevents the consumers to visit other competitor’s website and reduce the risk of purchasing from the competitor.

It surprises me sometimes when a big company has a very bad performance on their website. Companies should take advantage of the high degree of transparency online and the effortless access to appreciate competitor’s website design. A company should know their products by heart and they should invest some times to display all the detail contents of their products online.

The article also talks about direct purchase from the company website. It is very important for corporate website to have this function. I would like to use Samsung and Apple as an example. Although Samsung is a great phone and Android takes a really big market share, Apple is selling a lot better than Samsung. One reason might be Samsung’s corporate website. Though Samsung’s website contains a lot of useful information about the mobile phone, you can’t directly purchase from the website- the website will directly you to other distributors. However, apple website not only allow you to directly purchase from there, you can even split the payment between multiple cards and payment options. I personally went to both website and was very upset that I can’t even directly purchase from the Samsung corporate website.

I think this article is very interesting because as a consumer, I can’t agree more with the article.

"Don't Confused Engagement with User Experience" and "Personas Make Users Memorable for Product Team Members"

From the article, “Don’t Confuse Engagement with User Experience” by Michael Schrage, I am strongly agreed with the writer that engagement and user experience are easily confused with each other but they are very different thing. They are not positively related to each other. A good user experience doesn’t guarantee high engagement. “Engagement is how people choose to get value from the user experiences their devices enable. Engagement represents the purposeful choices users make to get what they want.” (P.2) For me, user experience is something more on the surface perspective, when you like something, then you immediately have a great user experience. It requires very little thinking and consideration; it is a very natural and smooth process. However, engagement is the opposite- you create engagement with apps, products or services after you try it more than one time and very often you think or evaluate your initial experience afterward. And then you decide if you want to engage or not. It takes time but it is very high quality result if your customer has high engagement with your company. I really like the example that the author used in the article- LinkedIn and Facebook. Although Facebook has a greater user experience, LinkedIn generates much higher engagement. It is not hard to understand this phenomenon. Facebook is very entertaining, user friendly and popular. However, Facebook doesn’t add much value in daily life because besides the entertaining part, Facebook doesn’t “help” you anything in term of networking or getting a job. As for LinkedIn, people are more engaged because they care about their account; they want to utilize their account to build a good profile thus land a great job. We see the extreme example of Facebook or LinkedIn- Facebook has really good user experience but low engagement; and LinkedIn has low user experience but high engagement. I believe, for a really good company with smart designers, product manages and marketers, they should aim to deliver extraordinary user experience with high engagement. This would allow the company to outperform other competitors in the market.

Persona is important because if u can do well in this step, you develop a really clear understanding of whom (customers) you are targeting.“The main benefit of using persona is that they create a common, more precise vocabulary for describing a certain type of user and thus focus design efforts on a common goal.”(P.5) Once you get your whole marketing team on a clear common goal, from design to product development to sales and marketing, it will be a smooth progress with minimum confusion. It is not good when a team gets lost and can’t find their direction. Last semester, I worked on a project where we have to come up with a marketing campaign to reduce the death rate of Amtrak. At first, our group thought that persona is just an extra bonus for our PowerPoint slide so we didn’t really spend time on it. We were very excited about coming up with creative marketing strategy and tactic. We discussed about using different Medias and resources to deliver our message to our target audiences. However, we often get lost as a group because some strategies we come up with were actually hard to reach target customer. We were having disconnection between the target audiences and the strategies we proposed. Don’t get me wrong; if I were to look at our target audience and our strategies for the campaign separately, they are both very good and feasible. But once I put them together, many strategies we proposed and the media to reach them will not be used by our target audiences. For example, one of our target audiences is senior who are above 65; our strategy is to spread the word on social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It doesn’t make much sense because elders don’t really use social media that often.

And at that point, we took a step back and redid our personas. After having a good foundation of our marketing campaign, we were able to plan the rest of our campaign nicely. During the project, I couldn’t remember how many times we had to refer back to the personas because it was super helpful.

Furthermore, there is a point I was strongly agree with the article- “don’t list to many features, has to be precise and related to the product…you can’t please everyone.” (P.5) Trying to list too many feature but not related to the product will create confusion during the design and production stage, and the problem will continue on to sales and marketing phrase.

#marketing

Branding in the Digital Day

Let’s admit it, we live in a digital life. We are online at anytime, at everywhere. Internet has been impacting our daily life in many ways, and one of them is our purchase behavior and decision. The article, “Branding in the Digital age” by David C. Edelman talks about how Internet significantly changes the traditional marketing advertising and strategies, and how it has been used as a tool to build relationship with brands.

The age-old "sales funnel" metaphor—consumers begin their decision-making with a large number of options in mind and narrow their choices to a final sale—fails to capture the shifting nature of consumer engagement in the digital age. “Companies have traditionally used paid-media push marketing at a few well-defined points along the funnel to build awareness, drive consideration, and ultimately inspire purchase”(Paragraph 3) However, researches revealed that consumers nowadays show a different “customers decision journey (CDJ)” – “consider, evaluate, buy, enjoy, advocate and bond.” Consumer’s journey doesn’t stop after the “buy” stage. In fact, the stages after the purchase are very important because it influences many other potential customers in the market.

The ways consumers behave before he digital age and after the digital age are completely different; therefore, the way marketers advertise their product and service should change accordingly in order to spend their money smart. As the article mentioned, marketing relation with the consumers ends with sale in the traditional age. But in the Internet age, the relation with the consumer sustains and it remains engage. Despite the traditional touch points such as banner, printed material and etc… marketers need to cover more touch points on the digital aspect in order to have two way communication with consumers in different platform- Internet. Again, it is essential because the consumer decision journey is very different from the old days - those days with little or no Internet.

The one point that I strongly agree with the writer is consumers like to conduct many researches before they make a purchase in today’s society. And these researches are mainly conduct on the Internet. As article reveals, consumers are most open to influence at the “Evaluate” stage and not the “Consider” phase. Therefore, company should invest more resources on managing their brand reputation online. At the evaluate stage, consumers actively reach out to peers, reviewers, retailers—and the brand and its competitors. Marketers should take this stage very seriously. Consumers love to read reviews before they make a purchase. They trust the reviews because the words are coming from the people, not from the marketers who try to sell the services and products. I would use myself as an example. I am a loyal customer on Sephora.com. The biggest reason that drives me to shop at Sephora.com instead of many other retailers is their convenient reviews right below the products. I love to go over the reviews to support my purchase and I feel much more confident and excited about my purchase when the reviews of the product are more than 4 stars (5 stars is the highest).

The article is extremely interesting and helpful because it warns the companies and reminds them to should put their money on interactions between the consumers on the Internet. One-way communication worked great in the old days but to best serve today's consumers, companies need to be smart on their Internet presence and encourage more consumer feedback (chats, testimonials, reviews, brand pages)—before and after a purchase. Lastly, we can’t forget how powerful is social media. Company should not only focus on paid-media, owned and earned media are really powerful on the Internet and companies should allocate resource to build these value assets online.

#marketing Branding

Why am I interested in Marketing?

“Today only, we are taking 30% off of your entire purchase!” a text message reads from my favorite clothing store on my smartphone. I was not planning on buying any clothes - at least not today. Shortly after work you find me in the store, paying for the clothes with the loyalty reward card. “If you buy over $150, you will receive a surprise gift and additional 10% off on your next purchase.” The cashier smiled and I continued to add another tee to my shopping bag. At the end of the day, I ended up spending more than $150 that I had no intention of spending. Marketing truly is the seductive language of business that can, if communicated properly, lure any unsuspecting victim into the life of poverty.

My interest in the marketing field traces back to my childhood. Growing up in Hong Kong, I was surrounded by some of the world’s premier retail outlets and businesses. The prevalence of these businesses has instilled a desire in me to work with them - a desire that remains to this day. Because the business opportunities were so attractive, my mother opened a boutique store amongst the plethora of others in the mall. Business went well within the first month but sales soon dropped dramatically. While my mother was trying to figure out the root of the declining sales, she hypothesized that pricing was to blame. We later ruled this out because of the similar price points with the other stores and realized that the lack of marketing was at fault. Proper marketing strategies brought the other stores success. Although competition deemed too stiff, I learned at a young age how crucial marketing and developing a unique strategy is for a business, especially in such a saturated market.

The field of marketing is never stagnant. It is an ever-changing field that must transform itself to reflect the emergence of new technologies and educated consumers. My interest in marketing has been influenced by my upbringing and my personality. I am a very curious and creative person who like to think outside the box. I am interested in marketing because there is no rules to follow in this industry. We can use our creativity and available resources to solve different problems in many ways. Marketing might not be the heart of the business to many people, but a great marketing team will certainly impact the business in a positively way. Nowadays, the role of marketing for corporations is getting larger and more important, and I want to participate in this important field.

#marketingfun

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