Case Study 1 - The New Rules of Marketing Week 1 Slide 36

What did Cindy Gordon, vice president of new media and marketing partnerships at Universal Orlando Resort, did for advertising The Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

Cindy Gordon told just seven people about the new attraction and those seven people told ten of thousands. Then mainstream media listened to those tens of thousands and wrote about the news in their newspaper and magazine articles, in TV and radio reports, and in blog posts.

Gordon and her counterpart at Warner Bros. chose to launch The Wizarding World of Harry Potter by first telling the exciting news to a very small group of rabid fans. Seven people at the top Harry Potter fan sites, such as Mugglenet , were hand-selected by Gordon’s team, with Warner Bros. and Rowling herself providing input about the choices. These seven (affectionately referred to by Gordon’s team as “the AP of the HP world”) were invited to participate in a top-secret Webcast held at midnight on May 31, 2007.

Explain the term “Word-of-mouse”.

Word-of-mouse is the single most empowering tool available to marketers today which will help you create your own viral marketing strategies and campaigns.

What are the other cases of viral marketing examples mentioned in the paper? (Name the company, and state what marketing strategies that they deployed)

Steve Chazin did not follow the traditional path of seeking a job but he started a blog and wrote an e-book, Marketing Apple: 5 Secrets of the World’s Best Marketing Machine, which he offered for free. Chazin propelled himself into the world as a recognized expert on the kind of marketing used by Apple, Inc. And he instantly set himself far apart from the rest of the pack of job seekers looking for consulting work or a VP of marketing job.

Chris Greendale, a general partner at Kodiak Venture Partners gotten involved with Facebook and his Facebook friends share his ideas with their friends and colleagues to help him meet new people online.

Tim Washer, a manager of new media web video at IBM Communications did an internal self-deprecating humorous video for their sales meeting to make sense for broad sales and coporate audiences. They also included it in one of the IBM newsletters to the sales team, and that helped it to go viral. Then some bloggers picked it up and pushed it along some more. The self-deprecation softens the image of IBM with many people—it puts a human face on IBM which shows that they can laugh at themselves.

Best Practices of DigiMarketing [Discussion & Sharing Session] Week 1 Slide 35

Give an example a company using Microsite as their marketing strategy.

Uniqlo (http://uniqlooks.uniqlo.com/ut/)
This company uses microsite for the contest that they are running as their marketing strategy.

What are the benefits of developing Microsite for the company?

A microsite is designed to meet separate objectives and has a separate Web address (URL) as a home page. Typically, a microsite resides on the same Web server and reflects the branding and overall visual design of the larger site with which it is associated.

Benefits of developing microsite for the company

• Can be developed with highly specific optimization, which will drive Search Engine traffic more quickly than a traditionally optimized site.

Since your Microsite will feature content more focused on a particular functionality or subject than your more broadly focused main site, Search Engines will find it much more attractive, and easier to index. Search spiders and bots thrive on focused, targeted content that shows common relevance – the kind that makes delivery of relevant results to searchers that much easier. Target your Microsite, and your results should skyrocket relatively quickly.

• Keep your visitors focused on the item or service at hand

Positioning content to attract and service a specific marketing segment gives Microsites the power to focus on a single core concept, product category or service. Since the Microsite is so focused, there’s usually no navigation or information that’s not directly relevant to its purpose that would serve to distract visitors from converting.

• The perfect way to appeal to a new and different audience

If you’re widening your prospects by introducing a new or different product category or service than the one on which your main site is focused, you can use a Microsite to target and attract the right demographic segment very effectively – one that may not even visit your main site now.

• Supercharged lead generators

With highly targeted, clean SEO and focused content, visitors that are likely to find your Microsite are genuinely interested in exactly what it has to offer. Since they’re already searching for it, your Microsite is much more likely to encourage them to convert to a strong lead – or even a paying customer. These kinds of vetted leads usually don’t come cheap any other way – but offer more than most!

• Domain names can be keyword rich

Since your Microsite is so focused, you can easily assign it with keyword rich domain names that directly relate to positioning (such as eCommerce, Fulfillment, Warehousing Solutions or Logistics). Search engines heavily favor URL keywords  in results for specific queries, which will push your Microsite to the top of SERPs.

• Give an aspect of your business some website real estate it deserves

Building a Microsite for a particular aspect of your business such as a new service offering or new targeted demographic  shows that you’re serious about devoting resources to that particular facet. Showing this level of commitment improves conversions and builds customer confidence in a big way.

• Present exceptional design opportunities

Microsite designs can be completely customized to appeal directly to its target audience. By contrast, most websites are designed to appeal to many possible visitors, with much more general interests. This focus gives your design team an opportunity to impress a specific audience segment, or show off a new association or product offering. In this way, Micorsites are perfect for preserving another partner’s branding within yours if your efforts are being combined for a single purpose.

• Help your business promote global vs local

Microsites lend themselves to be used for particular geographic audiences, which makes extremely local targeting possible. Content can easily be hyper-localized to allow for cultural differences like colors and imagery, colloquial language, currency, specific spelling and alternate pricing.

Microsites are a perfect way to add more tightly focused targeting to your overall digital strategy. And, considering the benefits that rigid, focused targeting can offer, Microsites are among the stronger tools you can work with to get significant results quickly.

Resources:

http://www.mcintoshmarketing.com/microsite/what-is-a-microsite-examples

http://blog.bridgelinedigital.com/seo-sem/8-benefits-of-building-a-microsite/

Behaviour of Digital Consumers [Discussion & Sharing Session] Week 1 Slide 16

What is Web 2.0 & Web 3.0?

Figure 1. Graph on the different version of web.

A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.
Some characteristics of Web 2.0 includes providing users with more user-interface, software and storage facilities, all through browers. In addition, it also provides rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, metadata, web standards and scalability. Further characteristics, such as openness, freedom and collective intelligence by way of user participation, can also be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.

A Web 3.0 site is defined as people and machines publishing to and interacting with each other to inform and augment each other's work. In learning, this could be a learner who is recommended courses or solutions by the system for work or browsing he may have conducted. The content presented to the learner could be augmented with multiple layers of content, i.e., mobile application with location-based information augmenting a map.

Imagine that you are purchasing a laptop for your schoolwork. As a digital consumers, how do you know which laptop is more suitable for you, and what are the different media to assist your decision for purchasing the laptop. 

To find out which laptop is more suitable for me, I will use traditional media digitizing, which is to find out more information from brochure then deciding which specifications is more appropriate for schoolwork. Next, I will use social media from micropublishing platform to read up on the reviews regarding the laptop and ask questions about the laptop on forums too.

Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
http://cmswire.com/cms/social-business/what-is-web-30-and-why-do-you-care-013072.php