Internet Tools for Marketing Campaign

Marketing campaigns are valuable within the business sector for many reasons. Many companies use these campaigns for promoting new products or services, but they are also extremely useful in introducing a new business name, and helping to create a brand that is well known to many. Within this post I am going to introduce several internet tools that can be utilized in introducing a new business, and for my example I am going to use Sweetie Pete Treats, a home bakery business that specializes in custom decorated cookies.  As Sweetie Pete Treats is unknown to the general populace, it is necessary that the scope of the first marketing campaign to be to introduce this amazing new company.

As an up and coming business, Sweetie Pete Treats may find Software as a Service programs very useful, as they are a convenient and lower cost alternative to software that has to be downloaded directly to the computer. This will save on storage, as well as upfront costs associated with many types of software. Three very useful SaaS programs that can be used within a marketing campaign for planning as well as implementation are “Marketing Mo”, Constant Contact, and Blogger. To read more about their applications within marketing campaigns CLICK HERE

During the creation of the company website, Sweetie Pete Treats can make use of ”EasyPrototype”, a rapid prototype tool that will make it easier for each department to have input into the design, as well as the requirements for creating a website that is functional and user friendly, while maintaining the capability to make continuous changes. After the completion of the website, it is important that the web design team utilize a website emulator, such as Adobe Browser Lab, to test the website to make sure that the formatting and layout will be compatible with the various browser and operating system combinations that users may have.

Another excellent group of internet tools are firefox add-ons.  There is a wide range to choose from, but with a custom cookie business, a picture can tell a thousand words, therefore, my favorite is Pixlr Photo Editor.  This add-on can be used to edit, crop, and create more professional pictures for blog posts, brochures, websites, and price lists.  After creating these beautiful pictures, it will be necessary for Sweetie Pete Treats to create a  gallery of their work, and send these examples out to their potential clients. I recommend using Animoto, a program used to pair photos, text and video to music, thus helping to capture prospective clients’ attention, as well as presenting these photos in a more creative way. Below is a short example of an Animoto video used to review Pixlr Photo Editor.

During the marketing campaign, the use of a blog, as well as social networking sites, is a good way to publicize the company in an efficient way.  By using a Mash-up, such as #tweet-a-lot, Sweetie Pete Treats can hold Twitter competitions to boost the volume of internet chatter about their company, sending more visitors to their website, and blog, as well as increasing their list of contacts.

   

As the list of contacts grows, it will become necessary for Sweetie Pete Treats to have a way to organize and store the information. This is where choosing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software will be beneficial.  MXContact is a good choice for a small business, as it runs within Outlook, so there is no need for expensive training, and there are several editions available to meet the needs of any size business. While utilizing the standard functionality of Outlook, there are many features added that will make Outlook a powerful tool as a CRM.

This list of contacts can then be uploaded into an email marketing program such as “Constant Contact”. This program will allow Sweetie Pete Treats to send out a newsletter to their contacts, offering news about the company, links to their social networking pages, and will even allow coupons to be added to the newsletter. Constant Contact allows newsletters to be delivered at a time of your choice, as well as supplying reports of who has opened, read, or clicked through on one of your links, making it an extremely valuable tool for understanding your clients’ interests, and needs. As an added bonus, if Sweetie Pete Treats included a link to their Animoto Video within their newsletter, it would create an efficient way to distribute examples of their cookie designs.

This is just a short list of the internet tools available to Sweetie Pete Treats, as they begin their marketing campaign, but each of these tools will prove a valuable asset in creating a marketing campaign that is both successful and efficient.

Facial Recognition Software Raises Large Privacy Concerns

An article by James Temple called “Facial recognition software’s privacy concerns” raises some very interesting questions regarding privacy and facial recognition software.  This article focuses on several concerns regarding how facial recognition is used currently, and how it will be used in the future. According to Mr. Temple, although facial recognition makes it easier to tag your friends in photos on Facebook, it also allows for more disturbing applications. Among identifying students using the most basic Facebook profile information and this type of software, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University were able to, in some cases, use this information to accurately guess the first five numbers of students Social Security Numbers.  Many companies, as well as the government are investing in the technology to match faces to identities.  The more photos of an individual that are tagged, the more accurate the results of facial recognition. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo also use facial recognition in photo, video, and gaming products, so facial recognition software consistently gains additional data to be used for more accurate recognition. Privacy settings often allow for this feature to be turned off, but as many users do not change their settings, making information more readily accessible to companies and marketers.

While we cannot slow the growth or usage of this software, and we cannot assume this it is only going to be used for not malicious applications, we can control how it will apply to us. Many privacy settings allow us to control the information that we put out. The largest part of this is knowledge. If we are more aware of the settings used with our social media sites, we can be more vigilant in keeping our “Faceprint” safe. By controlling settings on Facebook we can keep people that are not a part of our social circle from having access to our pictures, we can also keep our friends from tagging us in photos.  Many of the platforms that we use have a feature that we can use to opt out of these services. However, it should be required that a company or a software have a disclaimer that they use this type or software, or that the information could be used by this software. There is no way to eradicate our footprint if we are involved on the internet, but we can maintain control over how many data points we allow to the public.

Along with actively educating the public that this is a threat, we also need to make solutions readily available to the public. Having easy to understand tutorials available for public usage on how to keep their images safer, as well as better “help” guides to deal with privacy settings on our favorite websites, would go far to lessen the potential threats to our privacy. One other option for consumers, to find their images online, in order to remove them or adjust the privacy settings, is to use facial recognition software to find their own image. This would give users an opportunity to adjust settings or delete images wherever they may be.

Link to original article :
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Facial-recognition-software-s-privacy-concerns-3645779.php#page-1

Mash-Ups....Marketing with Twitter Competitions?

There are many examples of mash-ups that can be used for marketing. #tweet-a-lot is a mash-up that would be extremely useful for marketing just about any business. The application programming interfaces (APIs) sourced for this mash-up are Embedly, Twitter, and Twitter Streaming. This Mash-up can be used by your business to promote contests, as well as new products, or just to increase publicity. This mash-up will encourage competitive behavior, as customers join the competition for points, and post more tweets about the company, thus producing a consistent stream of word of mouth advertising about the company, or its products. As a business, you will receive full reports on your competition, including how many players, retweets, and total coverage. Without the need to register in order to play, your customers will be more likely to join the competition, while being entertained and engaged by this mash-up, making your promotions more memorable. Being memorable in a positive way is a first step toward making a new business marketing campaign a success.