CSIT 155: Week12B - Analyzing Online Marketing

Hi again Friends and Fellow Bloggers,

Again, a quick reminder of my STUFF:

www.sharonscozypets.com

www.facebook.com/sharonscozypets

https://twitter.com/SharonsCozyPets  

www.instagram.com/SharonsCozyPets

www.pinterest.com/SharonsCozyPets
www.tumblr.com/SharonsCozyPets
www.LinkedIn.com/in/SharonsCozyPets  
www.yelp.com/sharonscozypets

 

So, this is a very interesting topic for me, because I truly feel that Facebook Ads can be hit-or-miss, depending on how they are handled. You could have the most wonderful product or service in the world, but simply tossing up an ad (anywhere, really) is not what is going to attract customers, or sales. There are many ways to go about advertising on all social media platforms, and Facebook is no stranger to the millions of online yard sale pages, local business reviews, and the shameless promotion of a product or service through an acquaintance, friend or family member (which, I admit, I am totally guilty of) – not to mention all the GoFundMe, Kickstarter, and other crowd-funding campaigns, and wrapped in icing with groups about… well, everything. There’s potentially a gazillion contacts to be made, and just as many to advertise to – so, do we pay Facebook to do the deed? 

 

Well, I think there’s conditions: the first being: a good, active social network. Let’s take my father’s business, for example: he’s a pet lover, who attracts other pet lovers, to sell his pet product. Simple, right? Sure. But, what of all the other interests my father, as a person, has? He loves guitar, he loves surfing, he loves Donald Trump, he loves politics – most of this stuff has no place in his business, and therefore he required a persona to be the “face of the product” – granted, it is still his face, but it’s just one perspective of it. 

Okay, with that said, now we have a person that can direct others to a page with the product – but how will this one person (or persona) keep their friends if all they do is advertise? Ahh, now it gets a little more complex. Well, this persona needs friends, and the friends will need a healthy relationship with this person to continue to be friends and the requires a level of dedication and attentiveness. This person joins all the clubs, likes all the pages, comments on your wedding, wishes you a happy birthday, hearts pictures of your kids, sending prayers through your difficult times and of course – shares tons and tons of animal related stuff! So, now we’re friends with a pet lover, that has a product – and after he liked that picture of my kid’s graduation, I’ll remember him when my neighbor says: “I wish there was something I could put outside with my dog to keep him warm.” BAM!

 Now, with this information, what one can do is engage with their social outlets and advertise when the opportunity presents itself – mentions here or there, an attractive photo with the product or displaying the service, a comment by a friend or family member, or a flat-out, hand-crafted-add. There’s yard sale sites to no end, and new and interesting ways to reach unlimited numbers of audience members – and not counting the time and energy all this takes – it’s technically free. Organic interest, as Facebook likes to call it.

Then there’s paid interest, which is taking that same product, creating an advertisement, and having Facebook place it randomly in people’s newsfeeds to reach large numbers of (specific) audience types. Each click on the ad doesn’t guarantee a like to your page, a visit to your website or a sale of your product or service, but it’s a level of branding that reaches a ton of people and no one can point the finger at you (or your persona) to call you annoying.

 

The problem with combining these things is: if you are running an ad, and doing your own advertising, Facebook will still count the organic views, clicks and sales you have achieved through your own time an energy – so, in this case you’re also paying for your hard work. So, be weary, and pick one or the other at a time.

 Okay, I could literally go on for days about this, so I'll just leave it at that.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

Cheers!

JennL.

CSIT 155: Week12A - Analyzing Online Marketing

Hi again Friends and Fellow Bloggers!

Again, a quick reminder of my STUFF:

www.sharonscozypets.com

www.facebook.com/sharonscozypets

https://twitter.com/SharonsCozyPets  

www.instagram.com/SharonsCozyPets

www.pinterest.com/SharonsCozyPets
www.tumblr.com/SharonsCozyPets
www.LinkedIn.com/in/SharonsCozyPets 
www.yelp.com/sharonscozypets 

So, this has been a very interesting week for me. An eye-opener, if you will… 

As it is difficult to find five businesses like mine, it is equally difficult to find a collection of platforms these competitors might utilize for sales. For this assignment, I have elected a number of animal advocate businesses that provide a type of warmth for their customer’s pets, like clothing, heating blankets/mats, or insulated pet houses. When it comes to pet warmers, there are few on the market, which gives our primary competitor “The Akoma Hound Heater” a chance to monopolize the market.

  

Which brings me to the Hound Heater folks: through the research I have performed for this class, I recently discovered that this company, which sells their product for roughly $30 more than my father’s product, outsources their manufacturing to China. Sure, this is cheaper, and in the event a company chooses to even use a single part from an overseas producer, the company can no longer state it is made in the USA (California restrictions on this are even more strict than most places in the U.S.) which I believe gives my father and his company the upper hand (and changes my opinion of our primary competitor). 

 

The primary marketing tactic I utilized when competing with the “other guys” was the fact our pet warmer cannot be manually adjusted by the customer, risking injury, burn or death to their pets – unfortunately, some folks feel their pets would prefer a 95-degree dog house in the winter, which is truly none of my business. Then, what I focused on, was the fact our warmer was portable – allowing the customer to place it anywhere they felt necessary, and changing that location as they see fit. The opposing company fixates their device to the inside of an animal house, and would require tools to remove and relocate.

So, anyway, with that said, I did my research on the Akoma Hound Heater, and discovered that, outside of a facebook page, there is little advertising. Even the facebook account has had little activity since October, which is understandable (due to high volume orders) but also disappointing, as they should certainly invest in a Social Media manager to handle this department of their business.

https://www.facebook.com/Houndheater

 

Other pet warmth services can easily be found all over a variety of social media platforms, and more than likely started there as a little facebook page featuring their tiny, pet-sized, knitted/sewn clothing line. 

Here’s a few:

This company warms your animals’ food:
https://www.facebook.com/petfoodwarmer/

 

This company provides a collection of products that offer warmth to animals (including, but not limited to, heated animal houses, mats, and food warmers):
https://www.facebook.com/khpet/

This company makes clothing and beds to keep small animals warm – and I’m fascinated by the name:
https://www.facebook.com/WeenieWarmers/

 

All of them are pretty active socially, and seem to engage with their customers when prompted. Of course, they all feature the "Shop Now" call to action button, as our company also does.

When it comes to social media marketing, photos and videos create the most attention grabbing content for me, personally, and I believe it is the same for most. To post a single comment, or a link to a web page without a thumbnail is a marketing style sure to flop. People would scroll past that information before they ever knew what they were missing. I truly believe the auto play on videos is probably the best audience-attention-getter, but pictures are fantastic as well. It all matters on the artistic perspective, and content. 

Personally, I think all these methods work for me, and I utilize them all (including pay-per-click advertising on AdWords and Facebook, and personal, organic advertising on all platforms I am connected on), but there must be something I am overlooking, as I am still not receiving the response I hope for.

Well, every good journey is an unknown distance, I can only be patient and keep learning where to go from here. 

Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

JennL.

CSIT 155: Week11B - Using Other Social Media Tools

Hello again Friends and Fellow Bloggers!

Again, a quick reminder of my STUFF:

www.sharonscozypets.com

www.facebook.com/sharonscozypets

https://twitter.com/SharonsCozyPets  

www.instagram.com/SharonsCozyPets

www.pinterest.com/SharonsCozyPets
www.tumblr.com/SharonsCozyPets
www.LinkedIn.com/in/SharonsCozyPets 
www.yelp.com/sharonscozypets 

This week has certainly added on to the enormous list of responsibilities that have come with this course, and little did I know I would feel as overwhelmed as I do when signing up! Wow! So, atop the scheduling, planning and maintenance of the other social media platforms for Kelso Stockwood and Sharon’s Cozy Pets, we have now added a business account to the infamous Yelp! and, of course, the respectable LinkedIn (which, to be honest, I never considered before). 

Also, interestingly enough, Kelso Stockwood has an enormous collection of contacts (through either questions or sales on platforms like Amazon and Etsy, and through his website) and I realized, when I uploaded his contacts from his email, that I could be using these same folks to send a Constant Contact annual email out, to keep customers and potential customers up-to-date with the social media platforms we use. Amazing!  

(ANOTHER win for this class – SO glad I took it!!) (Also, on a side note, I think I need to change our company logo, because after all this time of using it everywhere – I’m really starting to hate it. Plus, with feedback I received from Professor Faulk, I realized many people cannot recognize it for what it is, and can misinterpret it completely. This is bad for business, the problem is, it's hard to change a logo after all these years.)

So, anyway, with these two platforms created, I have now introduced them to the world. The only current reviews are the ones I, my husband, my father and immediate family have submitted, but we hope to increase that over time. Perhaps I could mention it on one of the developed social media platforms – if that doesn’t sound too tacky.

Anyway, thank you for reading!

Cheers!

JennL.