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The reason why analytics are so great for marketing endeavors.

June 10, 2012 General Business, Marketing, Selling No comments

Hello everyone!

This past week at work I was looking at our eBay auctions, trying to break down what all I have left to discover for the store format and… I came across Omniture analytics.

They. Are. Wonderful.

Not only are they REALLY wonderful, but now, I can figure out how I would like to steer the direction of eBay and marketing our products.

It was interesting pulling results from 90 days, 30 days and the previous day – not to mention – what we’ve done since the beginning of our year.

I’m really glad I found this analytics program because analytics are important. Not only do you see what the most popular pages are, but you also get to see the most popular searches, the referring domain and how many people looked at your items or eBay per day/week/month/year.

So, this got me to thinking… how can I use this information to help me market our products?

I had all week to study the paper, so looking closely enough at the top 50 searches and top 50 pages. This was interesting. If the item was sold, I’d mark ‘sold’ – if the item didn’t have a name but a number, I would mark it with a name. I did this for both the since the beginning of the year to the last 30 days.

What I found was that a good portion (probably 1/3) items being searched in the top 50 and top 50 pages were items that we sold. Some items we only had a few of, others were on-going popular items that we’ve sold tons of.

The other items that were searched for in the top 50 either came back disappointing results (like, a broken printer or damaged jewelry box we’re selling) or some expensive addition to the jetski….something that someone would need some time to think about considering the price.

Perhaps we can lower the prices on the printers, jewelry box and other items like that but we aren’t allowed to lower the jetski parts, as we are in with another company on that.

It’s so interesting looking at the analytics. Other than try to fix why everything in the top 50 wasn’t selling, I have tossed around so many other ideas that I could think of to figure out how to fix this and make more sales. It’s just going to take some time to incorporate this into the business marketing plan.

I also looked at days and time of days for our most-visited. Honestly, that couldn’t really be measured because it was all over the place for the last 30 days.

I also figured out that a lot of our unique items show up in Google search higher than a lot of people. This is good. All of this is good news for us. I just need to figure out how I can use this information for good measure.

With this knowledge, it’s time that I figure out where to go from here on analytics and properly marketing our eBay.

What do you guys think?

Pointers on how to make your product successful and marketing your idea.

December 5, 2011 General Business, Inventions, Marketing One comment
While helping a friend out about a business issue, I came up with some pointers that I thought would be important to make mention in my blog this week. These are the pointers that everyone SHOULD know – but sometimes forget – while caught up in the moment of their business / product.
If you have a product prototype (or even an idea that you haven’t *yet* developed), here are some key thoughts you should really pay attention to before submitting your product to companies:
  1. Stop. Think about your product. Come back. Ask yourself this, ‘What problem does my product solve?’ 
  2. Then ask yourself ‘What purpose does my product serve to the consumer?’ 
  3. Next, if your product serves a much needed purpose, does it pass the ‘is there something out there like it or is it totally unique’ test?
  4. If it’s NOT unique, then ask yourself ‘Will it be a better product than what’s out there? Better enough for the consumer to throw out their old product and replace it with yours?’ 
  5. Also, please please please – if your item isn’t unique – do your homework and find out how they differ from others that are out there. Use that as the key to point out, and hook the viewer. (Also check for trademarks and names to see if your name hasn’t been taken.) —- This stuff should be the number one thing, but I’ve seen a few people forget about this, as they were really happy about their product.
  6. If you plan on submitting your product to the direct response industry where they use commercials to sell, you MUST remember that your product has to be TV friendly.
  7. How do you know if your product is TV friendly? They have to properly prove on TV (and have people believe it works). They have to come up with a few different ways on proving that it works.
While being a part of a business from ground up, I am the marketer of this company. Here are some thoughts about marketing….
  1. I’ve heard it said to me a couple of times, by my boss, that ‘don’t get too caught up into doing work that you forget about your job.’ My “job” is to be vice president, the marketer and administration. The “work” is taking photos of items to put up on eBay and the entire business that deals with that, as well as some other stuff.
  2. Marketing – from day one, YOU MUST START MARKETING. If you *only* market when your product comes out, you’re actually way behind and you’ve lost “x” amount of time. It’s not very professional.
  3. Graphics – make sure you make a graphic (logo) that you like and stick with it! If you change the graphics and any other stuff that your customers are more liable to not continue following you.
  4. ^ That above: If you have to change your logo or your name or something significant of your company, you LOSE customer trust. This being said because they wonder WHY you’ve changed.
  5. If you make it right the first time, you save yourself a lot of trouble. Minor changes can come later and it’s not so significant.
There’s lots more thoughts but tonight is the night for a few pointers.

ASU iTunes Discovery – Advertising & Marketing Class – “Assignment 1″

August 21, 2011 Advertising, Assignments, Marketing One comment

To note: I’m still working on writing out pointers from the previously discussed Bettger book. I read part 2 & 3 and need to make a great summary because a LOT of things were covered in those chapters. Since then, I have also bought a couple more books from the thrift store about marketing/advertising that’ll I’ll be writing about as well.

Today’s discovery brought my “thirst for knowledge” to a whole other level (can you scream nerrrrrrrrrd!?). Dear ole iTunes sent me an email about ‘HEY GO CHECK OUT THE NEWEST COLLEGE CLASSES ON ITUNES UNIVERSITY!” Fine, I will. I went through a few places discovered that there are lectures/lessons/discussions about Mozart’s opera, Streetcar Named Desire, anything Oxford = love, a bunch of literature and then… I discovered this gem:

Essentials of Advertising & Marketing from W.P. Carey School of Business Arizona State University. 

The professor is amazing!! No matter what anyone says, we all know the professor will always make or break the lesson and so will the listener (student). I listened to the first and second lecture back to back and he still kept my attention (even though this was generally about class things that took place there and not anywhere else). This reminds me of a few wonderful professors I had when I was at KCTCS. I grew very fond of them due to their passion of teaching and the excellence they displayed in the classroom.

Of course, like in real life, the first few day and half of class is get to know you, stories, finding out how the class will go, asking any questions that need to be asked before class really starts, stories about OR of the professor, and so on. The second lecture I listened to, the professor gave out an assignment and even though this was from 2009 – I still think I’m going to do it.

Second portion (after the first day portion) discussed the value of a customer. He shared stories of customer service in service positions, he had others to discuss it, he talked about previous students actions {reactions} to their service jobs and so on.

So the assignment was something as follows – come up with a story of where you were on either side of the service (giving/receiving end) and share how the problem happened and how it was taken care of in the end.

 

ASSIGNMENT 1:

I worked at three different retailers for four years from July 2005 – March 2009 and then at a coin shop for two years after that. Even though we had plenty of angry customers, odd customers, moments of our own that we should definitely own (bad days), and so on… I can’t exactly pick a certain “subject” because I don’t really remember details too much. I do still have funny moments written down from those years, but it’s nothing of importance to show a before and after ripple effect.

My husband and I just recently moved to Florida in March 2011 and that ended my two years at the coin shop. Well, I continued doing one main thing on my own that I did at the coin shop and that would be working on eBay.

I took on eBay high strung by myself. I had to supply my own items to sell, instead of having someone supply them for me. Any mistake or cost came out of my pocket, so I made sure that I had enough pictures to show the customer what the object looked like, packed my items very well, placed a well-written paragraph in each description asking customers to message me if they wanted to toggle with price or had any questions and I even answered their questions as fully as I could to support their main objection (I guess you would say).

One day I was at the park enjoying my evening and I had my iPhone out taking pictures when an alert came across my email and eBay app. This customer had opened a case against me, and THEN emailed me this nasty message and threatened me saying that if I did not answer her, she would turn me into eBay. Well, she had already accomplished that by opening a case instead of contacting me first like the rules state to do.

The problem was that her item arrived broken. I knew that I had packed it well enough, even having put ‘FRAGILE’ on the outside — and the item STILL arrived broken. So, she offered to let me see pictures via email and I saw them. That was a great move to show the evidential proof. We talked a little bit more back and fourth and came to the conclusion that she’d send it back and I’d give her the money back.

After a moment’s thought, I ended up sending her a message back saying I’ll refund the money and she can just keep the item. With it being broken, she could toss it in the trash and not have to send it back to me – which makes an extra charge that I couldn’t really afford, anyway. Plus, I wouldn’t have been able to re-sell it.

She agreed to do that and the situation was solved. However, also included in that last message she offered to give me lessons on how to properly pack an item so I can avoid this situation again. I believe that I said ‘I’m extremely sorry that this happened and I hope you have a great day.’ I did not touch on her comment because it really offended me, even though that I had packed it to the best of my ability regardless of it arriving broken.

I continued eBay for a few months more, having to toughen my skin over a few more angry customers. I have to say after that, I took each person individually, found out what they wanted to do and took care of it their way. They gave me great feedback, especially for the customer service side. I only quit eBay due to how much it was to keep up a store and I couldn’t afford that, unfortunately.

Mad Men – From the business prospect. (No spoilers!)

August 19, 2011 Ad Life, Marketing, Pitchmen, Shark Tank, TV Reviews One comment

Dan and I just finished watching all four seasons of Mad Men on Netflix. This series is as much of an addiction as watching, well, a comedy such as Arrested Development (for some moments & comparisons this blog gives) — and also, the serious & other side of advertising/marketing/etc shows such as Pitchmen, Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den.

In Pitchmen, you got to see the scenes of direct response industry. The inventors, inventions and pieces of how it’s produced, pitched and put on TV to sell.

With Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den you see inventors and/or businessmen asking for the help to continue with their business. This only works out if the product is successful and if the sharks/dragons and businessmen/women come to an agreement.

Even though Mad Men is “fiction” – it’s still highly based on what it was like being in advertisement in the 1960s.

Having said that, the reason I fell so “in love” with this show is of the same reasons I did the other three shows mentioned above.

For one, Mad Men really delivers the 1960s and it was extremely interesting to see the lifestyle from back then. What’s even more interesting is what went on in the work place, that is DEFINITELY much, much different than today. There are so many more rules per every lenient back then.

On the business side, we got to see so much into how sales were made – or, I guess I should say – each ad’s ideas were created and client was brought on. It even shows what happens when there is a loss of a client. This just gives another insight to the industry that I eventually want to work in. I know it’s much different now than then, but still, having seen each end of all of these shows… it still shines to me.

I know that this is pretty short and without details – but I just don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t watched. It’s definitely a great show, for sure!

Pitchmen Enthusiast #1: Informative summaries, opinions and great links from Inc.com’s daily emails/blog entries

July 21, 2011 Economy, Entrepreneurship, Inc [dot] com, Marketing, Retail No comments

I don’t remember how I came about finding Inc.com but it must’ve been through Twitter, through someone’s RT. Last night, as I was up late and couldn’t sleep, I started going through all of the entries that were still in my RSS feed in my email.  Amazing, amazing, amazing writing and very informative and it doesn’t waste your time. They are spot-on. This is definitely the best information source if you own your own business or are an entrepreneurs, follow retail, follow news stories that have to do with tech, social networking and all kinds of marketing.

So, this will begin my FIRST edition of summarizing and noting the great links from INC.com. Now, some of these you might’ve already heard about because they are older by a few days, but I have some things to discuss. 

From July 11th:

Time productivity. As a writer, going by a time schedule is definitely needed for me, as I like to get lost in details and certain parts where I’m very interested. I have to pay attention to deadlines, planning is a definite for me. When I did NaNoWriMo, I HAD TO have a schedule. You have 30 days to write, you have to write certain amount of words per page in order to be done by the 30 days with 50,000 words. I over estimated myself, threw my whole life into this book and finished a few days early. As an entrepreneur or business owner, you are more likely to have the freedom of having the whole day to do things. Get up early, write a list of things to do, get them done and then you will feel so much better in the afternoon. You’ll have time to rest and probably get caught up wherever else you are needed.

We run into this problem: A woman was fired for refusing to dye her gray hair. We come to this one problem: image is everything. If you don’t look a certain way, are a certain size or have what the company’s ‘eye image’ is — you won’t be looked at twice. Unfortunately, this is a terrible, terrible way to play especially while the economy is the way that it is. I completely understand that if you are on TV for commercials, direct response, fitness, news or whatnot — you have to be a certain size. That’s known. But to fire someone over a certain hair color or because they dress their age? Terrible. By doing this, companies are really missing out on excellent workers — ones that are potentially NOT robots.

In the July 11th, Inc.com daily email, they write about  Employees Losing Their Identity. Have you ever been in this situation? I think that anyone who doesn’t love what they’re doing, their identity gets lost a little bit each day. This makes me think about my mistakes from the past. I was in college, getting ready to head into my third year, having had almost all of my classes behind me and a few away from my two year degree. I had an excellent two semesters then, I got a job working retail. I threw myself into my job and lost the focus of what I really wanted to do. I left college because I thought I wanted to do retail. Wrong. Four years later, I pull out of retail and become an administrative assistant / eBayer then… now, currently, I’ve been unemployed long enough and will take pretty much any job. But, with that, I’m not losing focus again. I want to be a writer, I want to find my way to an English degree so I can professionally write and better yet, do social media along with it. Then, I can finally join the wonderful direct response industry that I love so much… and WRITE COMMERCIALS FOR THEM.

Here are some other articles to read for good measure: 

Did you hear about the new patent laws?

This is just depressing. A chart about employment… and the downfall of.

Are your current business plans falling through? Take a look at this, five steps on why you need a new business plan.

The Downside of Traditions - While traditions are nice in a business, they are also holding your company back from staying in the times.

Has it really come down to this? Firing someone for eating leftovers? Are we desperate, ignorant or what?

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