"Never Assume"

I want to share with you this wonderful post on palmerwebmarketing.com. The author advices "Never assume" the 10 points below, which help companies to improve their websites optimization and make them aware of some errors in the design that can affect them negatively and loose sales. The author has described each one of them, but here I would like to stress on three of them.

Assumption #1: People will know how to find your website
I think this is the most important point for businesses, to make sure to use the right techniques that help their customers to get to their websites. Then, attract them to provide their contact information like signing up for free membership or buy what they want easily.

Assumption #2: People know what you sell
Assumption #3 : Everything will go as planned
Assumption #4: People know where to click
Assumption #5: People know how to get home
Assumption #6: People know where they are

Assumption #7: People know how to buy
This assumption is related to the information design, and if it wasn't good enough, this will affect a business negatively. One of the ways that helps a customer to place an order effectively: Having a Cart button associated with Checkout button in all pages, so a customer can complete the order whenever s/he is ready, rather than searching for the checkout page and not completing the buying process.

Assumption #8: People will volunteer loads of personal information
Assumption #9: People will contact customer service if they have a question or problem

Assumption #10: People will come back
Here comes the important role of building customer forever and make sure that they will buy again products/services. Here are some ways to help in building brand loyalty:

• • Having efficient advertising and PR campaigns. For example, offering earning points that can be exchanged with a future order by a customer or offering "free shipping."
• • Creating two way communication channels, such as blogs and reviews, this will lead a company to interact with its customers and understand their needs. Also, will help to know the competitors and how are they fulfilling the customers' needs.

Honda Accord Advertisement

This wonderful advertisement for Honda Accord was introduced in UK in April 2003. It is two minutes long and was shot in real time with no CGI “Computer-generated imagery” involved in the sequence. It was split into two takes because there is no enough space to film the whole ad. It costs $6 million to shoot and took 3 months to complete. I think one of the most shocking things about this ad is that there are only six hand-made Accords in the world and the filmmakers dissembled two cars to film this ad. So, everything they used even walls, floor, ramp and complete Accord was from those two cars.

This ad is one of the best ones I’ve ever seen. However, there are lot of questions in my mind and trying to look for answers…
Why would they rip apart two Accords to use them in filming this ad? They could have used similar pieces and tools and no one will recognize it. Why did they film it in real time, and the latest graphical programs and machines are available and affordable to them? Why did they spend all this time “3 months,” money “$ 6 million,” and massive effort while they could have spent less and have the same results?
Have they done all this as part of the advertising thing, so customers will appreciate the ad, Honda and Accord when they know those facts about filming the ad? Or they are targeting non-technical customers who appreciate more work and effort in real time and not using any digital tricks.
I know all what they’ve done in this ad is very eye opening, but is it really worth it? Especially that they could have done the same results or even better by making a good use of technology in filming, and spending less time and effort.

Brand Strategy

I read a book that is called Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands by Alina Wheeler and the book states that brand strategy should be build on a vision that is associated with business strategy and it should reflect an understanding of the customer’s needs and perceptions. Also, Brand strategy should show a unique value of a business and its products and services and it is a road map that makes marketing and sales easier.
I believe a Brand used to be just an image that represents a business in the minds of its customers, but in this book the fundamentals of brand strategy are: Vision, Actions, Expression and Experience.

As many companies are launching their products and services online these days, I believe they should create strong and recognized brands so each business can differentiate itself from others. And making use of Web 2.0 will help in building and spreading out the brands to the customers, especially that many marketers consider Web 2.0 as word of mouth on the internet. I feel that Web 2.0 is becoming a direct marketing way between businesses and their customers, do you think so?

Stages of Internet Marketing

I found this power point slides while browsing in Google and I thought it’s brief and informative, so I wanted to share it with you and I want to emphasize two points. First, this file describes the seven stages of internet marketing and I believe stages 3, 5 and 7 are the most important ones. Stage 3: Designing the customer experience, through this phase marketers are going to understand the customers and discover their needs. Stage 5: Designing the marketing program, this step will help in deciding the best ways in reaching the target market and educate them about the products and services offered by a business. Stage 7: Evaluating the marketing program, marketers are going to know weather they used the best tools to attract and reach their customers or not, and it will help in learning from any mistakes were done.

Second, slide 8 show major decisions in a marketing strategy and they are the same as the 4 P’s, but they added here one more which is positioning and target market selection and I believe it’s the main point that any marketer should start with in able to achieve the other 4 decisions properly. And I just want to add a funny point here; I had a professor who said before: there are 5 P’s, the fifth one is PLEASE Buy My Product!!!

Lastly, I think this file is very helpful and we can use it as a guide or check list in our project for büji products. Do you think would it help?