Week 12 Assignment Part II - Coupon

I designed a coupon to attact new customers. It offers one free ride from LAX airport to a destination within 20 miles radius. I am thinking that by bringing on board the people who just arrive my business will be able to convert them into long term full services customers.

Week 12 Assignment Using Other Social Media Tools

My first consideration in using additional social media tools would be Google+. Although it is not ranked as high as the leading social media such as Facebook or Twitter, Google+ seems to have an advantage in growing potential of its users as a result of Google's dominance in its search engine/advertising business. Its Circle function is very much aligned with my type of personal services business that usually grows out of referral among circles of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, past and potential clients who is interested in my type of business. The Hangout function could be utilized neatly as a conferencing tool with my clients and colleagues.

I am kind of hesitant to spread out  my online marketing effort among too many social media platforms, fearing that I would lack the manpower to manage all of them. Just for the sake of discussion, if I have to choose three additional ones, they would be Groupon, Yelp and Google Map with the degree of importance in the same order.

Even though coupon marketing seems to generate only short term interest which tapers off sharply after the campaign, it is still an effective way of attracting new business with precision target and alacrity. Once my Groupon offer brings the customers into the door, it will up to my ability to retain the customers, which I am quite confident about based on my excellent services.

I have a very unfavorable perception of Yelp out of several bad experiences with the vendors that had rave review on the Yelp but turned out to be crooks. The credibility of the reviews on Yelp is in serious doubt on my mind. I suspect a business can hire people to write good reviews about itself and also bad reviews about its competitors. However, it seems that when people coming to a new town or new place, they do go to Yelp for reference at least for finding things such as restaurants, etc. Yelp has developed a name recognition that I simply should not write off summarily. Therefore, if I decide to enlist the fifth or sixth social media platform to advertising my business, Yelp would be it.

The last one I might consider is Google Map. As a start up company, I do not envision my business renting a high end office space initially due to the budget constraint. My car and laptop would probably serve as my office and the office furniture at the beginning. However, having a physical location always help adding credibility and respect to a business, especially the type of business like mine that depends on building trust with customers. Therefore, eventually I will have an office and Google Map will be a nice tool to direct the customers to my business.

Week 11 Assignment Part III Advertising on Social Media for Free

Social media such as Facebook is a good place to attract audience with paid advertisement, but even a better place to establish a clientele with fresh and engaging contents without spending a dime. By staying current on contents and providing valuable information for viewers and followers on one's business page, a more solid and willing client base can be achieved than through the traditional paid marketing campaign.

To promote my fictitious relocation services business website www.SoCalRelocate.com without resorting to the paid advertisement offers by Facebook, I designed three Facebook posts that contain Call to Action.

The first one is offering a tip about pollen allergy that usually confronts new immigrants from China.
It explains the problem at the timing of the spring season and prompt the viewers to visit the business website for further details.

 

 

The second post is an event posting for a Chinese Art Competition Award Ceremony that directs viewers to obtain tickets to the event from the business website.

 

 

The third post is offering free stuff for referring a friend to my services. It again contains the business website for viewers to check out the offer details.

 

 

All three posts are designed to drive traffic to my business website but with different angles. 





Week 11 Assignment Part II - blog posts that I commented on

These are the three posts I commented on.

http://briantbenham.blogspot.com/2013/04/csit-155-week-11-part-1-online.html?showComment=1366303560472#c4514827585089894523

http://anne-ec-dotes.blogspot.com/

http://myrtlecreeknursery.blogspot.com/2013/04/advertising-on-facebook.html#comment-form

Week 11 Assignment Part I Ads

After reading the lecture and evaluating the options of advertising among the social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitters, I came to the conclusion to run my future ads on Facebook which seems to be more established and sophisticated and offer more flexibilities than its peers.

Since my business page on Facebook is a brand new one with a meager 3 Likes, it is a natural decision to begin with advertising my business page rather than promoting a post on it. After initial advertising campaign and hopefully a successful one that produces a respectable number of Likes, I would emphasis more on promoting a post on my business page than advertising the page itself. The rationale behind it is that I feel the right-column page advertising resembles the transitional push mode advertisements that just plaster themselves across the spectrum with high level messages. A promoted post with relevant content and attractive image tailored to the targeted audience's interest would generate more focused response and yield a higher return rate.

For my business page advertising, I came up with the following ad:

The image closely resembles that of my business page logo to serve as the link between the ad and the page. The text, with the limited numbers of characters imposed by Facebook, briefly explain what the business is about while delivering an ad-like punch line. As I said, this is a high level message to just push the page name out there.

For my post promoting ad, the design is simply the top part of the post that is being promoted, for which I inserted a photo of  coastline along Torrey Pines States Preserve that is befitting the content of the blog text. The content of the blog text is a comment about SoCal area as an ideal place for foreign students and scholars because of the prominence of its Chinese culture. I believe insightful posts would be very effective in amassing audience.

 



The audience of the ads are as follows:

targeted: 311,820 people

• who live in the United States
• who live within 50 miles of Irvine, CA
• between the ages of 18 and 40 inclusive
• who like #University of California, Los Angeles, #University of California, San Diego, #University of California, Irvine, #University of Southern California or #University of California, Riverside or #speak Chinese

Since my business specializes in relocation services in Southern California for foreign students and scholars, the above mentioned criteria should be self-explanatory. I was trying to further isolate the Chinese Facebook users from the above audience, but was very disappointed when I found out there isn't a parameter as "Chinese" under the "Ethnic" from the "Broad Categories". The only available selection underneath is "Hispanic". As a second choice, I used #speak Chinese for "Precise Interests". However, final collection of all the attributes sets and the set under #speak Chinese is a union not an intersection which is what I preferred.

I would have limited budget for the ad campaign on Facebook. Initially, I will cap the daily budget to $5.00 and the length of the ad to be a week to just test the water to see how effective the ad would be and to further tweak it into more cost effective.

Week 10 list of blog posts that I comment on

For this week's email marketing blog posts, I commented on the folowing three:

http://mattsmindcsit.blogspot.com/2013/04/w10-email-marketing.html?showComment=1365639137278#c653462119565654379


http://seekerofawesome.blogspot.com/2013/04/newsletter-ideas-list.html?showComment=1365638239451#c875287279964061028


http://briantbenham.blogspot.com/2013/04/csit-155-week-11-part-1.html?showComment=1365637379857#c3855570371642728819

Week 10 Assignment I Email Marketing

For my relocation services business, I would like to utilize the email newsletter on a periodical basis with varying intervals including welcome email, monthly information updates, quarterly market analysis articles and occasional special event announcements.

When a potential client signs up for email newsletter either from my business website or manually via events and contacts, a welcome email will be automatically sent to the client that introduces our services and highlights the benefits of using our services.

Information updates on topics such as local community events, neighborhoods statistics, school information, local news and ethnic and cultural events would be sent to email users on the contact lists on a monthly basis to keep them in the loop and remind them of our presence.

Quarterly articles about real estate and mortgage trends would be valuable tools for engaging with email users on my contact lists. By providing such value added information to my potential clients, my business would be able to distinguish itself among the competitors.

Lastly, my business will host and/or participate in an annual cultural event around the time of Chinese New Year to celebrate the Chinese cultural and heritage as well as establish itself as a business leader in the SoCal Chinese community. The email newsletter would be used in conjunction with website, Facebook and other social media in getting the words out and attracting new visitors.

Week 9 Assignment Part II Blog Categories

My proposed business is a relocation services that is tailored to the niche market for helping foreign students and visiting scholars from China to settle down in southern California. The components of the relocation services such as finding a place to stay, financial advising, translation services and local guides will be naturally translated into the categories of corresponding topics on my business blog.

For the category of finding a place to stay, my business blog will post detailed information about the housing and rental markets in various geographic areas in southern California, as well as update on current mortgage market information. Financial advising category would be used to inform the various type of financial institution, types of accounts, the ways of investing and the international banking options. Translation services category will showcase our expertise in document procurement in both English and Chinese. Local guides will update the viewers about what are happening and the fun activities around the town.

I believe organizing my blog posts into the above categories will assist me in staying in charge of my blog activities and staying current and fresh with my blog content and as a result attracting potential customers.

Week 9 Assignment I Being Personal on My Blogs

Being a shy person, I have always had an aversion towards being revealing about myself and my personality in the public domain. It has been my individual preference not to share my background, belief, affiliation and proclivity publicly, especially on the web which has the capacity to permanently hold on to such information and to virally disseminate the same.

However, I realize that the nature and the purpose of blogging calls for the author's expression of certain opinions and perspectives about the blog's topics with varying degree depending upon the type of blogging, i.e. casual vs. business.

For this blog that I maintain for the class I am taking, assuming that  not a whole lot of web users will pay a visit here and I should be able to remain fairly unnoticed, I feel comfortable to share my personality with my fellow classmates to build rapport with.

For a business blog, presenting too much about myself seems to be distracting and unprofessional to the viewers who usually are seeking business related information and expert advice from reading a blog. Even for personal services type of business that I proposed to be engaged in, I find it unnecessary and too intrusive by injecting myself into the potential clients' perusal of my business. My feeling is that  always let the strength and merit of the business impress the audience Rather than I myself stand on the show floor.