Search Engine Uses

David talked about the many reasons why Internet users worldwide use search engines. He went into details about site strategies for Success.

1. Establish your site's objectives
2. Specific goals to be used to measure success - These must be specific, measurable, realistic and attainable.
3. Identify audience and market
4. Competition
5. Offer - direct mail and marketing
6. Creative and content - example information and copywriting: type, tone, style, graphic design, usability; Visibility: search engine optimization (SEO); Marketing:sitepromotion; Site Maintenance; Guarantee

He talked about the Search engine industry. Most of the topic included SEM, which means Search Engine Marketing.

• PPC: Pay-per-Click (average costs should be about $.50) , keyword lists, creative copy, Test, ROI
• Pain Inclusion
• Contextual, which is targeted by relevant content
• E-Mail Marketing, is directly from the company to the customer's email
• Blogs which are frequently updated. He also talked about 4 specific bloggers who are popular, example Matt Cutts who blogs about google. Danny Sullivan, who's called the grandfather of search because he knows so much about search. Peter Krasilovsky follows the world of local search engines. And John Battelle, follows the search engine in general. He also wrote a book on google as well.

SEM Terminology

This includes a mechanically constructed spider-like visit sites to gather information on different sites. There is also a Directory, in which humans actually review it instead of the spider-like mechanisms. There's a P4P which is a Pay for Performance which is also used as CPC (Cost per click). Having good Portal Presence, that is, visibility on main search engines and general portals. It can increase traffic to a site. These can be purchased through ads, sponsorships, search engine submissions and search engine rankings. Sites need to be in the top 10 results in order to have the chance of being noticed, so different sites try different techniques in order to make that top ten.

He spoke about paid inclusion of sites on Yahoo search engine where they would say cached at the end of the link. Google's PPC advertising is called AdWords. These significantly monitizes the search engine results on Google. He illustrated how Google kept track of all of it's click through rate, as well as the number of times someone searched for a particular keyword.

David also talked about Quigo, which is the company he works for. They in fact utilize Google's search.

He talked about meta tags used in websites in order to keyword search appropriately.

Useability Assignment

One hundred million websites and more have been created as of November 2006. Even though there has been an decrease in the growth rate, just the fact that it has reached that point is incredible. The fact that it is still expanding, shows that even though the web is mature, it still has the ability for growth.

A web survey was done by Netcraft, and it shows 101, 435,253 websites for November 2006. The web was only founded 15 years ago, so this is a tremendous growth rate for this industry. It is projected that at 25% mature growth rate of the Web, that more than two hundred million websites would be attainable. A mature website is structured so that people expect a certain structure in order to operate.

The author is merely trying to give people numbers and projections of growth over the next few years. This is a good projection, and I agree that the speed of growth of the internet is massive. In such a short time, the internet has become a great means of communication for many people all over the world, and the growth rate, even though mature, is expected.

This article implies that the internet is more than what it set out to be initially. It has grown into a marketable industry, as well as that of a highly communicatable environment for many people. It's growth rate is marvelous, and will continue to steadily do so, even in its maturity.

CLICKZ Article Review

Mobile Web Advertising Revisited by Laura Marriott

This review was based upon mobile advertising. Seeing that the U.S. market for advertising is just about $300 billion per year for the industry, this aspect draws to the fact that other methods of advertising should be made available. This is where mobile advertising comes in. If you look at all the facts of mobile technology, you'll see exactly how mobile technology can be implemented. Mobile devices are always on, always available, and can provide ways in which a prospective marketer can interact with prospective consumers in new ways.

There is the aspect of a one-to-one relationship that can be developed between the marketer and a consumer. This is because the customer will feel as though he/she is special and unique to that one message designed and allocated to them by their individual tastes.

Mobile web can be purchased in different ways. It can be bought from publishers who maintain their own mobile Websites, or through a mobile ad network. Web banners are optimized to fit varying devices since they differ in shape and sizes. There are very critical guidelines the mobile advertising industry must practice for the mobile Web advertising experience, which are updated by the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association). By collaboration, global acceptance of the mobile advertising guidelines is better assured.

Some options marketers can deploy include:

• click to call
• landing page information
• email capture
• ability to send: text, picture, audio, or video directly from the device

In fact, according to this article, the options are limitless when it comes to mobile technology. This article encourages marketers to utilize mobile technology in their marketing ploys, and in my opinion, I think that they can only go so far. Although many people are dependent on their mobile devices to accomplish many tasks, I still think that there is a hesistancy in the public's acceptance of being 'bothered' by marketing ploys on those devices. Even though some of the marketing techniques used can be of assistance to the public, most of the public would prefer to see the advertising through the so-called 'normal' means of billboards, television and internet. This is mainly because they have to hold a subscription, which means that they must pay dollars in order to have the possibility of receiving those ads, and most people would rather not pay to receive annoyances to their personal devices.

Assignment #3 Guest Speakers 10/26/06

Two speakers Alon and David, did a presentation on Marketing. One of them, Alon, made mention of the fact that for good Internet Marketing, a prospective buyer shouldn't have to "think" when they go onto your site. That means that if a person goes to a site, they must be able to navigate through it without any problems in trying to figure out the website. I thought that this was very interesting, because it's so simple, yet true! If I go to a website, and I have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to operate it, then that would then deviate me from the intent of the site, which is to buy the product!

They also spoke about the four P's of Marketing.

1. Price
2. Place
3. Product
4. Promotion

They spoke about each of these in a little bit more detail so that we could understand the way these factors are implemented into Marketing. Some categories of Promotion for example include Sales, Advertising, Public Relations, Sales Promotion, and Direct Marketing.

The Product Life Cycle was talked about. There are different steps in this:

• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity
• Decline

Personal Selling was also talked about:

• Prospecting - using personal information to solicit select products to people online
• Pre-approach
• Approach
• Making the Presentaion
• Overcoming Objections
• Closing the Sale
• Follow-up - such as emails sent out at certain points as reminders to the customer, so as to keep them informed, and aware of the product that they paid for, as well as to keep the customer, and not lose them.

Direct Marketing was also talked about. It is getting your message through to people in a direct way. Some ways were direct mailers, self mailers, snap mailers, dimensional mailers and coupons. They talked about the advantages and disadvantages of Direct Mail. Some include:

• Targeting
• Personalization
• Optimization - best timing, testing...
• Accumulation - responses and non-responsive
• Cost

Assignment # 2 (An experimental assignment)


I chose an Asics GT-2110TM (White/Peri Blue/Quicksilver) running shoe.

The reviews were outstanding for this shoe. It is made especially for people who require arch support in order to have comfortable wear-period (or while they are wearing the shoe). There were 118 reviews, and most of them have agreed that arch support was a definate plus for them in testing out this shoe.

The reviews would encourage/discourage me from actually purchasing this shoe, mainly because I am shopping online for this product, and wouldn't have had the chance to test it out myself. If others have tested it out, then I have more confidence as to the quality of the product through these people. Then I also get to have more options, and weigh them out. Read the good reviews as well as the bad and then decide if that product is something that I would take a chance with for myself.

The advantage to consumers of reading the reviews at Zappos.com is that they don't necessarily have to drive to a physical store to "feel" out the product. Other people have already tested out the product and are able to give their thoughts about it; how it feels, how it looks, and if it's long-lasting vs short. It is also an advantage because this is something that can be dome during their own leisure time, such as the middle of the night, as opposed to waiting for a store to open at a particular time of the day.

The advantage to Zappos.com of offering reviews, regardless of whether they are good or poor reviews, is honesty. If people only see good reviews about their product, it will seem almost "too good to be true", or even written by "computer-generated bots"; and most people wouldn't trust the site if that is suspected, however, if some reviews are negative towards the product, then it makes the consumer ponder and do some research on the product being offered - read more of the reviews, see how many good vs bad reviews there are. It is also an advantage to the company because not only are they getting a lot of hits on their site, but they are also getting feedback on their company and their products. If the reviews are bad, then the company can work on that particular area/product and thereby make their company better for future customers.

For a company such as Kencole.com, it wouldn't be necessary for recommendations because then that would be saying that this particular popular brand name company doesn't have confidence in its shoes, or for that matter, the quality of their products. Kenneth Cole sells its products at a high price because their "image" portrays high quality. It basically implies that for the price that you're paying for their products, they guarantee that you would get a good quality product, and therefore there would be no negative reviews, hence defying the whole purpose of writing reviews. Reviews are mostly written and taken into consideration because of the fact that the company selling it, or the brand-name of the product is less popular to the public.

I have recently been looking a lot at recommendations at apartmentratings.com mainly because I am looking to re-locate to another State and am not currently able to take frequent trips over there to physically look at the properties. At first, I searched some websites for the apartments, and they all list some very appealing qualities that they each offer at a very affordable price, and would have just randomly chosen any one of those apartments to live in while I re-located. Needless to say that when I stumbled upon the apartmentratings.com website and saw what people had to say about the quality of the apartments that I was looking at, I literally did a double-take and re-evaluated my options based upon that discovery. As a matter of fact, I am sure that if I hadn't stumbled upon that website, I probably would have made a very big mistake in my choice of apartments for that area. I have also looked at recommendations on movies to rent on different websites before heading out to the video store. I do that to get a "feel" for what I should expect out of the movie before I watch it. After I watch the movie, I re-evaluate those reviews in my head, and end up creating my own review of the movie, which may or may not be different from the first reviews that I read before I watched it.

Generally, if a site is well-known for their quality, or if a product has already matured in its market to the point where it becomes a natural option for someone to purchase without a second thought, because they are used to that product, or because they are comfortable with that product, such as the Kencole.com website, then there would be no real need for a recommendations section. However, if a site offers a variety of merchandise, or is not too well-known, or a brand is not known at all, then recommendations are a definate plus in the company as well as the consumers' favor.

Assignment #1 - Why Blog?

A list of the potential business uses of blogs for organizations, marketers and/or content sites (such as newspapers):

• Speed of Delivery of real revenue streams from real advertisers
• Cheap and easy to create
• Low maintainance for a vast audience i.e. can be done by only one person or a small team
• Can generate levels of profit on a per-employee basis that was once a fantasy, and now a reality
• Blogging recommendations are highly valued by readers

Blogs should not look and feel like traditional marketing and advertising, because people are literally being bombarded by marketing every single day. What draws a person to a blog is the fact that it's a more personalized approach. People feel more at ease with this approach, because they can choose whether they want to read it, or not.

Blogging is somewhat of a craze; but this craze has had a great impact on society. Seeing that blogging has been opinionated and people tend to want to know other people's opinions, regardless of whether they are opposed to or agree with those particular opinions. The fact that you can also make your own comments in regards to the topic being posted is something that people are drawn to, because instantaneous feedback is almost always available. Blogs will continue to have some impact for marketing because of the human-like quality to it. By this I mean that the internet has become something that many people spend a lot of time on, and they have less and less human interaction because of that. Marketing has taken on a great strategy in using Blogging. It will continue to have impact on Marketing, because of more human interaction.

I would like to see the Busines Department start a blog, mainly because it would keep me updated on the many things that are changing in the Business world around me. It's a constant change that would be very important for me to keep an eye on because it's a world that would consume my life as I age to maturity. Also, a business person must always be aware of his/her business surroundings.