Wakkaoaka's Marketing Utopia

The Incentive Triple Threat

2010-02-17T01:35:00.000-08:00

Incentive Marketing, i'm sure that most of you reading this have an understanding of what it is. For those who don't understand what incentive marketing is here's my explanation: Incentive marketing is when you give someone cash or some other sort of bonus material for buying something through you, filling out a survey, or filling in an email submit.

CPA offers that allow incentive traffic like that will obviously have a lower payout than the non-incentive version of said CPA offers because incentive traffic always has a lower retention rate (less money for the advertiser in the long run).

These incentive cpa offers are based on what we call "economic incentives", money or a gift that has an economic value to the consumer. This is one of three types of incentives that can be used in marketing, and may not actually be the most powerful. So, instead of using incentive cpa offers that have a drastically lower payout than the other non-incentive cpa offers, why not use non-incentive cpa offers but market them with the two other types of incentives?

These two other types of incentives I mention are "social incentives" and "moral incentives". A social incentive is like the incentive you may have to not talk to yourself whilst walking down the street because people a.k.a society will think that you are weird. A moral incentive is where you help a drunken lady cross the street because you feel it is your moral obligation to look out for another human being.

Social and moral incentives can and should be embedded in your sales copy and/or any site content as they can often be much more powerful than economic rewards such as bonuses and discounts. So, how do I use social and moral incentives in my sales copy you ask. Its simple really, you just need to know a few things about your customers (this is why niche research is so crucial).

Let's say you run a blog about making money online. Now ask yourself "Why are these people trying to find out how to make money online?". At first the answer is obvious, they want to make money so they have more money and are rich!. Everyone knows that, the trick is to move beyond the obvious and find out other reasons for people to want money.

Heres a quick list of reasons behind people wanting to make money online:

1. Girls! (or guys, depending on sex and/or sexual orientation). Lots of people want money so they can get a lot of girls (gold diggers!).

2. Impress their parents. Now i believe this is the main incentive behind most gurus and fame-whores. People usually have a desire to impress their parents since birth (look at what i can do mummy!).

3. Big Toys. Lots of people looking to make money online want the ferrari, helicopter, mansion, boat, jet ski, etc...

4. Financial Security. Everyone who is looking to make money online wants to be financially secure, obviously. Financial security is about not having to worry about money issues such as employment, debts, and bills. This is a brilliant topic to talk about in sales pages especially in todays economic climate.

5. Freedom. Like financial security brings monetary freedom, this monetary freedom brings other freedoms. Like the freedom to buy whatever you want! Also the freedom to DO whatever you want, you can speed a lil bit, get a $100 fine and be on your way and not care about the measly $100 fine for having a joy ride. Freedom to spend time with the kids is a good topic to dwell on, family time.

6. Power. Money = Power. People who want money may also want to use this money to have power of people and situations. People who want this power are usually unhappy and/or weak, although some may just be greedy and dont believe in enough power/money. Power/Greed are great topics to mention in your sales page because as we all know, the more greedy/power hungry someone gets, the more irrational their thought processes become. And when they throw away their rational thoughts they through caution to the wind and buy your stupid ebook! :)

7. Family/Friends. They may not just want to impress their parents or girls, because they might want to impress a special lady or other family members, maybe an uncle that they look up to.

Im sure there are many more reasons behind people searching google for how to make money online, but right now im tired from a full day of organising my shit and a hardcore weights/power boxing class. So i'll leave the rest of the reason brainstorming up to you. Remember to use that same question "why are people searching for this?" for any niche. Use that question both for sales copy and keyword research.

The 7 reasons above are incentives. The context you put them in determines whether they are economic, social or moral incentives. Before I go watch some TV heres one example of how one of these incentives can be put in a make money online sales copy:

Economic Incentive:

" usually sells for $50. But today you can get for just $5!! That's right. FIVE BUCKS!."

Social Incentive:

"When you start getting more cool friends and hot chicks you will realise that YOU ripped ME off by getting for only FIFTY BUCKS!" - Ya see right there, you dont have to discount to increase conversions. You can also use reverse psychology here, maybe on an exit-pop or at the bottom of your sales copy ;) "Oh, so you dont want to live the high life with plenty of cool friends and hot chicks that simply adore you and think you are the man? More for me then! Cya!" <-- they wont expect that.

Moral Incentive:

"Are your children getting all that life has to offer? Are you REALLY providing them with all their needs? You may not realise, but with the techniques i teach in this course you can help earn enough money to get your precious children through private school and college. Not to mention that you could also pass the skills and techniques you learn from this course onto your kids so that you can make sure that they are financially secure for the rest of their lives".

Of course these incentives should be tweaked tested, and tweaked again until conversions are where you want them, theres trillions of incentives out their that can be applied to any niche for killer sales pages and niche keywords.

Expect far more quality material like this post in posts to come.

Work Smarter, Not Harder.

Question Everything.

Wakkaoaka.

Circumnavigation Complete

2010-01-23T21:00:00.000-08:00

Just finished going completely around the world in 1 month. We went to hong kong from new zealand, then london via munich, then amsterdam, then madrid via munich Then we took a 15 day tour from madrid through the south of spain, morocco, then back up to portugal. From portugal we flew to new york via frankfurt, then from new york we went to honolulu via los angeles, then across the dateline to new zealand. We left honolulu at quarter to 10 on friday night, and arrived in new zealand at quarter to 6 sunday morning... how trippy is that? Totally lost saturday due to the 23 hour time difference between hawaii and new zealand.

Now that that wonderful and exciting holiday is complete, it's time for me to get back to work (if you can call it that lol). So expect some more quality posts from tomorrow onwards when my brain is actually functioning.

Thanks for reading :)

Goodbye

2009-12-23T17:29:00.000-08:00

Im going to hong kong tonight, then to europe, america and then hawaii. I will be gone for a month, so if anyone triest to contact me just point them to this post :)

The trip will be completely computer free so im not tempted to work. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year all :)

Evidence of my Research Methods Working.

2009-12-17T14:44:00.000-08:00

Hi all, figured you would like to see an example of one of my sites to see if my research methods do actually work. I've always wanted to show off my results but dont because i dont want any more competitors of course. However, I decided today to give an exception to my one week old site: www.TranceMix.org. As you may know i only buy domains with the exact match keyword i am trying to target in them, so theres one of my niches "trance mix". If you have a look at google's external keyword tool you will notice that the exact keyphrase gets about 60,500 searches a month, so finding the .org was very lucky. I bought the domain last friday and built it up whilst hosting it on blogger (i dont see the point in paying for hosting niche sites).

If you do a google search for the broad term: trance mix, you will see that i am on the bottom of the first page. Google put trancemix.org on the first page on thursday, so in under a week i got on the 1st page of google for a term that gets 60,500 exact searches a month, cool huh?

The only SEO i have done with this site is what you see on the site, the domain, the post titles, and the use of the keyword "trance mix" in my posts. Clearly on-page seo is THE most important part of seo, google wants sites with content related to certain search terms. Oh yeah, you know how those gurus say you should search for your keyword in speech marks to find the competition? Well clearly by my results this is complete bullshit, i did a search with speech marks for trance mix and got 1.1million results, 1.1million competitors. The gurus would tell you that this keyphrase is too hard to rank for because of the buttload of competitors, haha what a joke.

The real competitors are the sites on the first page, and if you can have more content related to your keyword(s) and more relevant backlinks then you will be number one. Simple, dont let the gurus confuse you so you buy more of their shit products.

How To Use The Google External Keyword Properly

2009-12-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I'm sure when most people start out in the SEO game they don't know what tool to use to find good keywords to rank for, and how to use said tools. The best keyword research tool is Google's External Keyword Tool. Before I get into the different match types, please make sure you know which countries you want your visitors to come from.

When you are on Google's External Keyword Tool page, the first option you will see is to tailor search results to specific countries or territories. Select which countries you want your visitors to come from (i choose All countries and territories unless im geotargetting). Once you've set your countries and/or territories, Google's External Keyword Tool will only show the monthly search numbers for those countries and/ord territories you have set.

Ok, now that the country tailoring is sorted let's move on to match types.

When you enter a keyword or keyphrase into Google's External Keyword Tool there will be a drop down menu above and to the right of your keyword results titled "Match Types:". Click on the drop down menu and you will see that there are four different match types: Broad, Phrase, Exact, Negative.

When you select the Broad match type google will show you how many times per month your keyphrase has been searched. However, google will also include into it's search traffic calculations different combinations of your keyphrase. For example, if your keyphrase is 'spongebob squarepants movie', then google will also include different combinations such as 'spongebob movie squarepants', 'movie spongebob squarepants'. On top of this, google will also include search results for all the words in your keyphrase plus other keywords. For example: 'where can i find the spongebob squarepants movie' will be included in google's external keyword's results. This is why the broad match search volume will be larger than any other match type. Don't use broad match for your keyword research.

When you select the Phrase match type google will only show search volume results for your keyphrase without the different combinations. However google will still show you search volume results for your keyphrase plus any other keywords. So, even though phrase match type is more accurate than broad, dont use it.

When you select the exact match type google will only show the search volume for your exact keyphrase without different combinations and additional keywords (modifiers). This means that if you rank number one for this keyphrase, your site listing in google for that keyphrase should get x number of views depending on what the search volume is for your phrase. This is what you want to use for accurate search volume results.

The negative keyword option just shows you the additional keywords i have mentioned above. These are known as keyphrase modifiers. You won't need to worry about negative keywords if you are focussing on exact match keywords as they are irrelevant.

If you have any questions please feel free to shoot me a pm on bhw or comment here.

Peace.

List of 16 Killer Niche Domains

2009-11-30T16:58:00.000-08:00

As most of you may know, exact match domains (yourkeyphrase.com/.net/.org) can give you a very heavy weighting in google. I challenged myself to find some exact match domains for keywords in competitive markets that receive a fair amount of organic google traffic. I'm giving them away because I just get too many damn keywords I want to dominate... and i just dont want to have that kind of distraction at the moment. And of course I love giving back to everyone who reads my little blog.

1. armhairremoval.net, .org - 880 exact match searches a month
2. armpithairremoval.com, .net, .org - 720 exact match searches a month
3. underarmhairremoval.net, .org - 1,300 exact match searches a month
4. howtoearnextracash.org, - 1,900 exact match searches a month
5. earnmoneyonlinefree.net, .org - 3,600 exact match searches a month
6. earnquickcash.net - 1,000 exact match searches a month
7. earncashmoneyonline.net, .org - 480 exact match searches a month
8. earningcash.org - 590 exact match searches a month
9. howtoearncash.net, .org - 480 exact match searches a month
10. howtoearnmoneyfromhome.org - 2,900 exact match searches a month
11. earnfreemoney.org - 2,400 exact match searches a month
12. earnmoneyquickly.org - 1,900 exact match searches a month
13. earnmoneytyping.org - 1,900 exact match searches a month
14. howtoearneasymoney.net, .org, 880 exact match searches a month
15. earnrealmoney.org - 720 exact match searches a month
16. workfromhomeearn.org, .net - 720 exact match searches a month

That's enough for now, maybe I will post some more niche domains in the future ;)

Understanding your competition and market - 4 crucial elements.

2009-11-11T21:10:00.000-08:00

Hi all, here is all you need to know when researching your competition.

There are four crucial elements to understanding your competition and market, they are as follows: Quantity of competitors, backlinks, demographics, and authority sites.

1. Quantity of competitors - This is the most widely known technique used for finding how competitive a niche is, however, on it's own it can be quite misleading (you will find out later on in this post). To find out how many competitors there are in your market you should do it keyword by keyword.

Find a keyword that you are competing for (we will use "killzone 2 cheats" as an example keyphrase). Go to google.com and type in "killzone 2 cheats" and you will get this page. You will notice that there are about 1.5million results for that phrase. This means that there are 1.5million pages that google has found that have the exact phrase "killzone 2 cheats" somewhere.

Now, if you were to use this method to find how competitive your niche keyword is then you would run away... 1.5million competitors is a heck of a lot! One problem is, that most of these "killzone 2 cheats" results could come from people simply asking for killzone 2 cheats, not competitors.

Another problem is that one site may have several, if not hundreds of pages indexed in google for the keyword "killzone 2 cheats".

Anyways, using this method will only show you how many pages indexed in google with the keyphrase you enter. Nothing more, nothing less.

2. Backlinks - Now this is the most important part of understanding your competition and market. For each of the 10 sites ranked on page 1 of the results for "killzone 2 cheats", check for their backlinks with Yahoo Site Explorer. Click on the "inlinks" button and you will see that the number one site for this keyword has nearly 25,000 backlinks (inlinks are backlinks, links that pointing from a site to yours).

It does, of course, depend on where those 25,000 backlinks come from. A backlink from a .edu, .gov and any academic site like .ac.nz will be worth than any .com, .net, or org, and .info or .biz links will be worth even less. I would advise you not to look at every single backlink a site has if they have a ridiculous amount like 25,000... although it would be wise to have a quick look to see if there are any patterns.

The number one site for "killzone 2 cheats" has nearly 25000 links from n4g.com, which is news for gamers. This is good news, because .com backlinks are easy to get, unlike those stingy .edu, .gov, or academic sites. Even though they are just .com links, it would still be hard to beat this site because you will need around 25,000 links of equivalent value.

If you check the second result for "killzone 2 cheats" you will see that it only has one backlink, that is because this is a site with a high amount of authority (i will discuss this later on in the post). The third result has nearly 8000 links (less than the number one ranked site), and the fourth has 13 backlinks. This shows us that the number of backlinks a site has strongly correlates with it's ranking in google, although there is site authority to take into consideration.

The fifth page ranked for "killzone 2 cheats" has just shy of 500 backlinks; 6th has nearly 3,000 backlinks; 7th has 97 backlinks; 8th has a whopping 27,000 (most if not all of their backlinks are coming from their own domain name, so these links are penalized heavily) backlinks; 9th has just over 1100 links; and finally the site that is ranked number 10 has a tiny 16 backlinks. I must admit, this is not the best keyphrase to show how the number of backlinks you have is important. These results go to show that backlinks from one page on your site to another page gives you a negligible amount of benefit when it comes to seo. One good thing i can see about the backlinks these 10 sites has is that they are all related to cheats, or gaming (you want backlinks from sites related to your keyword, preferably your exact match keyword "killzone 2 cheats").

Finding out how many backlinks each of the top 10 pages have, where they come from, and what type of domain (i.e, .com, .edu, or .info) they come from shows you what you need to do to rank in the top 10 for the keyword. What i discussed above shows that you dont need many backlinks to rank from 2nd to 10th, but you will need a lot to rank number one.

3. Demographics - This is just like what market researchers do offline, but simpler, quicker and online. I use a site called quantcast.com. Quantcast shows how much traffic that site gets; what country, state, designated marketing area (DMA), or city that sites' visitors come from. Quantcast also shows the gender, age, race, no. of kids, salaries, and education level of the visitors to the site - these are called demographics. Quantcast can also show how many businesses that go to the site and how big the businesses are. Last but not least, Quantcast.com shows the lifestyles of the visitors of the site. Quantcast will show what topics the visitors to the site like, what other sites the visitors go to, and what else they search for. Quantcast also shows visitor loyalty through "traffic frequency".

Why are these measurements important? Well as a marketing major at university I can safely tell you that understanding all of these stats about your niche visitors is extremely important, you need to understand your customers if you want to have a high converting website.

Geographic location is important to know because certain offers you maybe promoting may be country specific (i.e. USA only). If the only visitors to your niche are Malaysian, and there are only USA only offers to promote then you wont make any money. The more specific data like what city the visitors come from is also important as you can relate your sites content to the visitors that visit sites in your niche.

Demographics are also very important because if the visitors to your niche are mainly male, then you wont want a frilly pink theme will you? The same goes with age and race. No. of kids in household is important if you are in any niche related to kids (e.g. Toys). Affluence is very important as well, it shows you how much money the visitors have got to spend. Level of education doesnt seem to important to me, as you dont need to go to college to be intelligent, but for some niches knowing this may be important.

Lifestyles are also important because once you dominate your niche, you may want to expand your site, or use your site to promote other niches that these visitors are interested in.

I hope that covers quantcast in enough detail lol. Anyways, what i do with quantcast is I use the top ten results for "killzone 2 cheats", and enter each of the top ten sites into quantcast search engine. Just remember to do a quantcast for the main domain of a site (e.g. www.killzone2cheats.net), instead of doing a quantcast for a subpage of the site (e.g. www.killzone2cheats.net/pageid=12/topic=cheats/refid=googlesearch.html). This should give you a good understanding of what your potential customers will like.

4. Site Authority - Authority Sites are sites that rank well for keywords, without needing many backlinks. Authority sites are sites such as amazon.com, wikipedia.org. These sites have high authority because they have a heck of a lot of quality backlinks that just keep on growing at a rapid pace, they also have a high page rank. It is hard to keep up with these sites because of the amount of their backlinks, and the growth of their backlinks. Even if you are just competing with a page of amazon.com or wikipedia or any other authority site, you will also be competing with their main site.

This doesnt mean that to compete with a page from an authority site that you need as many backlinks as their main domain has, although it does mean that you need a certain percantage of the number of backlinks that their main domain has. This is because an authority site like amazon.com provides a page on amazon.com with something called link juice. Link juice is where google gives a page extra recognition (moves up its rank) because the main domain it is attached to has x number of high quality backlinks.

If you reread and implement the techniques and information I have provided in this post you should have the ability to fully understand your market and competition.

Thanks for reading,

Wakkaoaka

Forum/Guestbook .EDU link list - 441 Epic backlinks

2009-10-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know, .EDU sites are one of the best sites you can gain backlinks from. Why? Because to get a .EDU domain you need to own a tertiary education facility. This shows google that the site is legit, because the person who owns must have a good education, and would only link to legit/useful sites.

Heres a list of 100's of .EDU forums where you can place your link:

http://vr.me.ncku.edu.tw/courses/cgi-bin/phorum/cg/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.ucsp.edu.pe/centros/familia/foro/index.php

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/%7Efaye/340s/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi

http://www.fz.shtu.edu.cn/shwbsite/sjpc/messboard/addnew.asp

?messagetype=n

http://ec.hs.yzu.edu.tw/jiachi/board98/addnew.asp?messagetype=n

http://inafocam.edu.do/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.skidmore.edu/resources/phorum/

http://clinton.cs.depaul.edu/csa/THEMES/community/gb/

guestbook/default.asp

http://www.cs.hartford.edu/%7Eguild/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi

http://forumfrancais.mmu.edu.my/discussion.php?scr=4&

operation=reply&thread=

da512519d8f2e7320471e274110e7ce0

http://www.guss.edu.ge/forum/index.php

http://rpgclub.truman.edu/forum/index.php

http://ccts.sinica.edu.tw/forum/reply.php ?mid=44&&

PHPSESSID=a6db6fd5b58b437bedad750aa330f6b6

http://tqe.siu.edu/forums/fadde/482sp06/index.php

http://rjk.edu.mk/forum/index.php

http://fs.mis.kuas.edu.tw/%7Efred/phpBB2/index.php

http://english.tyc.edu.tw/modules/newbb/index.php

http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/infoserv/forums/pef/pefentry.php

http://cm.kmu.edu.tw/phpBB2/index.php

http://perlie.mc.edu/%7Ebrown/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.pl

http://designer.mech.yzu.edu.tw/cgi-bin/thread-it/addnew.asp?messagetype=y&messageid=516&%2509replyid=516%

2509&subject=Project4

http://cc.dfps.tp.edu.tw/cch//index.php

http://lavaca.edu.mx/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.ag.ncat.edu/forums/index.php

http://ivihsm.cua.edu/ubbcgi/postings.pl?action=newtopic&

number=4&forum=Leading%2B

Research&DaysPrune=365&LastLogin=

http://www.tnajh.ylc.edu.tw/%7Eyst/phpBB2/index.php

http://cheminfo.tongji.edu.cn/accs/forum/index.php

http://www2.semo.edu/lambdachi/guestbook_post.htm

http://bbs.geo.ncu.edu.tw/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.cb.thu.edu.tw/modules.php?name=Forums

http://as.wwc.edu/tiki/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?forumId=

4&comments_parentId=235&PHPSESSID

=a95d32c53745183c955475dec58dcbeb

http://edu.stps.ntct.edu.tw/sfs3/modules/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.media.wayne.edu/release.php?id=2361

http://pc031.r3308.scu.edu.tw/phpbb2/index.php

http://ms9.cjnes.ylc.edu.tw/phpbb2/index.php

http://teach.lanecc.edu/nursing/2007/discussion.php?setMode=View&action=viewTopic&topic=pinning_ceremony

&PHPSESSID=00922d897eb830396dda8342023d0604

http://www.aquinas.edu/ccs/form/position_posting.html

http://vita.fju.edu.tw/bbs2/index.php

http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/node/add/forum/0/

http://cs.selu.edu/forum/index.php

http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/info/forum/index.php

http://ymj.hsjh.ttct.edu.tw/ph332/

http://www.skjhs.ntct.edu.tw/phpBB2/index.php

http://communication.depaul.edu/wrdp/forum.php

http://classweb.gmu.edu/jwindmue/cgi-bin/YaBB.cgi

http://debryro.uvsc.edu/phorum/index.php

http://ask.it.uts.edu.au/index.php

http://www.balado.educsbj.net/forum.php3?id_article=52

http://www.whjh.chc.edu.tw/whjh2002/phorum/

http://cgi.educities.edu.tw/a6330/drink/apeboard_plus.cgi

http://mail.cufcd.edu.mx/html/modules.php?name=Forums

http://tzuchi.tses.tcc.edu.tw/nuke/comments.php?op=Reply&

pid=0&sid=3

http://w3.et.cyu.edu.tw/cgi/topic.cgi?forum=15&topic=25

http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/chinab/yabb/YaBB.pl

http://www.colegioamericano.edu.co/modules.php?name=Forums

http://student.ahc.umn.edu/dental/forum/index.php

http://www.imdr.edu/gbook/gbook.php?a=sign

http://alumni.darden.virginia.edu/alumni/open/jobPostingSetup.do;

jsessionid=48306d688a8532317e1c

http://www.met.psu.edu/cgi-shl/ultimatebb.cgi

http://xandoshow.valdosta.edu/board/index.php

http://agamenon.uniandes.edu.co/%7Emaraton/foro/index.php

http://mustuweb.mnsfld.edu/phisigmapi/pspbb/index.php

http://k12e.nano.edu.tw/k12/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.lssu.edu/org/dramaclub/forums/index.php

http://acadtech.gwu.edu/phpBB2/index.php

http://ctc.xmu.edu.cn/cgi-bin/topic.cgi?forum=3&topic=4985

http://www.becc.nsysu.edu.tw/twxoops-2016a_r20060829/

html/modules/newbb/index.php

http://aecc.uprrp.edu/forum/index.php

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/careers/employers/

forms/parttime-posting.htm

http://www.eduscan.info/forum/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

http://guestbook.cpu.edu.ph/cpubook/

http://awconline.azwestern.edu/current/hd_contact.php?link=

Blackboard%25252520Student%25252520

Help%25252520Desk:%25252520Contact%25252520Form

http://www.people.virginia.edu/%7Edbh6n/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/%7Ehca/forum/index.php

http://umaacorn.provost.ads.umass.edu/forumvt/index.php

http://bin.yale.edu/%7Ejc565/cgi-bin/index.php

http://www.educarman.net/modules.php?name=Forums

http://www.tuf.edu.pk/forum/index.php

http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/index.php

http://ogrenci.hacettepe.edu.tr/%7Earifd03/index.php

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/vis/forum/index.php

http://www.gbcnv.edu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi

http://npo.nccu.edu.tw/phpbb2/index.php

http://libra.sfsu.edu/%7Eshac/shacboard/messages/68.html

http://paginasweb.univalle.edu.co/%7Ecesiq/html/modules.

php?name=Forums

http://phen.nsysu.edu.tw/forum/index.php

http://www.educatout.com/forum/index.php

http://bryant2.bryant.edu/%7Eboac/phpbb/index.php

http://gluc.unicauca.edu.co/foro/index.php

http://fxmta.loxa.edu.tw/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.funlam.edu.co/modules/newbb/reply.php?forum=

15&topic_id=280&viewmode=flat&order=

ASC&start=10&post_id=1636

http://www.urban.uiuc.edu/alumni/guestbook.asp

http://forum.vie-lyceenne.education.fr/index.php

http://yi.ctu.edu.tw/%7Egeek/phpbb/index.php

http://fugazi.engr.arizona.edu/%7Eypho/phpBB2/index.php

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http://ranger.uta.edu/%7Esharma/discuss_board/discus/messages/

1355/1365.html?1163093159

http://agustiniano.edu.pa/foro/index.php

http://www.flps.hlc.edu.tw/91web/comments.php?op=Reply&pid=0&sid=86

http://webx.ntu.edu.sg/hall1/forum/index.php

http://www.colegiomayordelosandes.edu.co/aplicaciones/foro/

send-private-message.asp?redirect=close&toname=rum&hideborders=true

http://www.dentistry.hacettepe.edu.tr/phpforum/index.php

http://class.ylc.edu.tw/%7Eboe36/phpBB2/index.php

http://student.hkbu.edu.hk/%7Esarels/index.php

http://acm.cs.binghamton.edu/cf/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

http://tptc.iit.edu/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

http://clem.mscd.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/%7Esessionl/forumscript1040.pl?onderwerp=_Twinkling%2520stars_&todo=BekijkOnderwerp

http://bbs.hpu.edu.cn/hpubbs/forums.cgi?forum=20

http://www.edusys.in/bb/index.php

http://asstudents.unco.edu/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

http://acm.poly.edu/%7Ealtecha/guestbook/gbook.php?do=add_form

&page=1

http://www.mccc.edu/top//scripts/addgst.html

http://php.auburn.edu/student_info/indian/messageboard/

http://www.graduados.frc.utn.edu.ar/phpBB2/index.php

http://discussion.bus.wisc.edu/index.php

http://www.harkema.ucla.edu/forum.pl

http://cysung2.chit.edu.tw/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.health.uwyo.edu/pinkribbon/guestbook/sign.asp

http://304-4.avcenter.ntu.edu.tw/WritingCenter/phpBB2/index.php

http://ace129.auto.fcu.edu.tw/%7Ecslin/WWW/board/

http://cge.ym.edu.tw/index.php

http://www.indigenousknowledge.qut.edu.au/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.hpsh.tnc.edu.tw/phorum/

Just post your link once on these sites, otherwise your links will obviously be deleted and/or google will penalize you.

Squidoo Feedbacklinks - Links every marketer should have.

2009-10-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

As a lot of you already know, parasitic back-linking has been one of the best back-linking methods for a long time. This is still the case today.

Parasitic back-linking involves a web 2.0 site that allows you to create your own page, like squidoo, hubpages, myspace, wetpaint, etc. These sites live on user generated content, and are often referred to as "web 2.0 properties". Building pages on these sites and linking to your site from the page you have built is what we call parasitic back-linking. It is parasitic because you are feeding off a big site (like a leech feeding of a big human), this is good because your site (the leech) will gain a lot of nutrients from the big site (the big human). In a nutshell, google loves big sites like squidoo etc due to their popularity and active communities. Hence why having a link pointing from those sites to yours is a good thing, google will give you some love as these communities have linked to your site.

I hope my explanation of parasitic back-linking suffices, if not, be sure to ask me questions in the comments below.

Heres the step by step guide for generating your own Squidoo Feedbacklinks for your site:

1. Go to http://www.squidoo.com and do a search for your main keyword. For example you have a site about squid tentacles; your main keyword should be squid tentacles, so search for "squid tentacles" with speech marks (this searches squidoo for pages/lens' with that phrase in it).

2. Now that you have a list of pages/lens' in front of you, you can go to the first lens listed. On this lens there should be a comment/feedback section (somewhere where you can drop your link). If there isn't a feedback/comment section then just go back to your search results and click on the next lens' until you find one with a comment/feedback section (most lens' have comment/feedback sections so dont worry).

3. Now that you have found your first lens related to your keyword that has a comment/feedback section, you can place your link. First you must know a tiny little bit of HTML in order to have a link that works:

<a href="http://www.yoursitehere.com">your keyword here </a>

You will have to insert the code above into your comment if you want a back-link from the lens you are commenting on. A word of warning: Don't use the same keyword in the "your keyword here" section of the code over and over again, google penalizes your site if you spam that part of the link (anchor text, also known as the title of your link). Instead of using your keyword in the "your keyword here" section you could just enter your entire message in there to avoid the google anchor text spamming penalty.

4. Now you have to write your comment, nothing new here, just apply common sense to your comment. A good comment will simply be related to the lens. If the lens is talking about how slimy squid tentacles are, then make a comment about how you touched a squid tentacle once and can say that they are indeed very slimy.

5. Post it! Three results may occur: One, your comment may appear shortly (this is best). Two, your comment has to be approved first (this is second best because your comment may not get approved). Three, your comment might appear with no link ( this is the worst because your comment wont link back to your site). These three results are determined by the lens' creator (lens' master). You will only know if your backlink works once you actually try to post it.

6. Repeat 1-5 for as many (try to do it to all of) the lens' that come up when you search for your "main keyword" in speech marks.

The Squidoo Feedbacklinks method is very easy, and pretty damn quick (takes me about half an hour to backlink from 4 search result pages of lens'). Not many people use this method, especially now that squidoo is nofollow. PR is becoming less important, so squidoo links are still one of the best links you will ever get. I will go over making your own Squidoo lens and how to get that to rank in the near future.

P.S. " = speech mark, not quote. Although most people call speech marks quotes. A quote = ' and wont have the same effect.

Thanks for reading another post from wakkaoaka.com

Cya

Back to Business

2009-10-29T02:31:00.000-07:00

Hey there everyone :)

It's me, wakkaoaka, back after being bloody slack with blogging. Hope you're all doing well, if you aren't then you better subscribe to this blog, i'll make you feel better (sorry if that sounds wrong).

I've been studying full time for the last half of 2009, im doing a business degree and will major in marketing of course. I've got my first exam on the 31st of October, and my last on the 7th of November, then I will have a 3 and a half month holiday in which i can post a buttload of info, experiments, etc. This semester im studying economics, finance, organisations & management and the legal and social environment of business.

Anyways, im off to watch Cops Uncut now :)

I've got a tasty post for you all tomorrow, so make sure you keep an eye out.

Cya

Song of the Week: Epos - All Saints Day (Roger Shah's Original Mix) [HQ]

2009-06-21T00:28:00.000-07:00

University - Semester 1 Overview

2009-06-20T23:44:00.000-07:00

First of all i would like to say hi and thanks to all who have subscribed and or read my blog over the last 8 months. I am sorry for not posting as much as i used to, and i do hope you realize that is because I have been busy with other projects and university.

Before i discuss the changes that i will make to the university section I will give a briefing of what has been happening with my University so far:

It is now June the 21st and I had my final semester 1 exam on Thursday the 18th of June, this was for marketing. I studied a Business Degree part time this semester to see if i really wanted to continue down this path.

Now, I can say it was an easy decision to make to continue down this path and take on the four papers next semester. I know my notes on the first semester arent complete on my blog, but as i said above, i have been very busy. I signed up for four papers today:

Legal and Social Environment of Business

An introduction to the current business environment. The paper uses a stakeholder model of business relationships to focus on selected legal, social and ethical elements that impact on the operation of business organisations in New Zealand.

Fundamentals of Finance
An introduction to the management and financing of financial and real assets. Areas of study include the time value of money concept, the relationship between risk and return, financial management, and capital budgeting techniques.
Economics

An introduction to the economic analysis of markets, with emphasis on the behaviour of individuals, firms and government. The framework developed is used to analyse and evaluate contemporary economic policies in both New Zealand and international contexts.

Organisations and Management

An introduction to key management concepts and processes in New Zealand and international organisations. This includes an examination of management thought, practices and functions, organisational communication and organisational behaviour.

As you can see, Marketing isnt in the list. This is because I have already done the only Marketing paper in year 1, so you will have to wait until next year for more complex university level marketing. I would love to have done marketing every semester, but guess we will have to be patient.

Now that it is the holidays and i have gone very far on testing projects I can now freshen up my blog and fulfill the idea of a Marketing Utopia.

Oh yes, results, I haven't gotten my exam results yet, but will do soon enough :) Im loving marketing. Management Information Systems was OK, but still Marketing is my passion. "Marketing is my Passion" - Haha feels good to say that, it is true that you must be passionate about Marketing to make money online.

Now heres the change.

Instead of posting summaries of each chapter, i will simply post interesting articles related to my studies. Now this means i may not post everything i learnt in uni, but at least this way i wont have overpromised.

Anyways, i will post a song of the week soon and then you can look forward to some marketing articles related to my uni work during these holidays.

Song of The Week - Robert Vadney - A Day In Heaven

2009-06-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

Going to make a Final Fantasy XIII edit with this as the audio.

University Section Change

2009-05-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

I have decided that it is too time consuming to write up a summary of each chapter in my business degree papers. So, I will instead be posting blogs about topics covered in my business degree. I believe this will help my studies as well, because it will mean i will have to digest and understand the material in much more detail.

So basically: Less time typing, and more time understanding.

Song of the Week - Robert Vadney - Second Sky (Original Mix)

2009-05-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

An absolutely breath taking trance track I heard on dj shah's Magic Island. You will see @ 3mins what i mean...

Surprise! Tweetorum is here >=D (Plus a new JV)

2009-05-24T02:35:00.000-07:00

For the last week i have been busy as building a forum called "Tweetorum". The idea behind this is to have a place in which twitter trends can be discussed even when they have disappeared from twitter's "trending topics". It's also meant to be a place where fellow tweeple can get to know each other and twitter's trending topics together.

Overall Tweetorum is going to bring a whole new depth to Twitter by the simple fact that Tweetorum is a forum instead of a streaming blur of tweets.

This is just the beginning though, more and more features will be added to tweetorum when the time comes. One idea in the pipeline is putting the "retweet this" widget at the top of each forum topics.

Well that's all i feel like splurging on tweetorum for now, so heres the Joint Venture i've got going down.

Me and graphicnut have been working together on all sorts of things covering, first, Movie King. Movie king is a site that has been in development since the end of 2008 and I have been a part of the project for nearly the last month initially helping graphicnut with traffic (Able to get tens of thousands of targetted visitors per day).

I then started helping him out with monetizing the site, although all credit for movieking should be given to him because im just an advisor for graphicnut. And of course since it is a JV, graphicnut helped me out with a lot of things too, mainly technical things as im not too techsavvy. Thanks graphicnut for your help man.

While im giving out thanks i should thank Travs for designing the tweetorum logo for me. You can find samples of travs artwork at his t shirt store: TravsOutput

The whole blackhatzen team, thankyou for... you know what ;)

Aaaand of course xcubic for your programming 1337ness.

Im sure there was more shit i was going to mention, but oh well it's time for sleep.

Bye for now.

Management Information Systems - Semester 1 - Chapter 2

2009-05-21T21:25:00.001-07:00

Before you start reading this post read the Introduction to the University section of Wakkaoaka's Marketing Utopia @ http://www.wakkaoaka.com/2009/03/welcome-to-university-section.html

Information Systems for Collaboration:

Study Questions for "Using MIS":

What is collaboration?
How can you use collaboration systems to improve team communication?
How can you use collaboration systems to manage content?
How can you use collaboration systems to control workflow?
How do businesses use collaboration systems for decision making?
How do businesses use collaboration systems for problem solving?
How do businesses use collaboration systems for project management?

What is collaboration?

Collaboration occurs when two or more people work together to achieve a common:

Goal
Result
Work product

Greater than individuals working alone. Collaboration involves more than coordination and communication alone.

Feedback and iteration provide an opportunity for team members to:

Proceed in a series of steps or iterations in which 1 person produces something - others comment on what was produced - and so forth.
Learn from each other and change the way they work and what they produce.
Ultimately produce a produc that is greater than any single person could accomplish by working independently.

The three critical collaboration drivers are:

Communication.
Content Management.
Workflow control.

Communication:

How well can group members communicate with each other, and how well the can deliver feedback and criticisms without causing resentment.
The success of the collaboration group depends on effective communication systems.

Content Management:

Users need to manage the content of their work so that one's content must not intefere with anothers content. Content can be items such as: Documents; schedules; task lists; assignments; etc.
Team members need a system that tracks and reports who made what changes, when, and why.
An effective system is one that is flexible and robust. i.e a system that provides permission settings (who can do this and that and who cant, like forum management software).

Workflow Control:

Workflow is a process or procedure by which content is created, edited, used, and disposed.
It specifies that, for example, certain members create web pages, others review those pages, and still others post the reviewed and approved pages to the website. The workflow specifies particular ordering of tasks.
It includes processes for handling rejected changes as well as for dealing with exceptions.
It insures that the work flow actually flows correctly.

How can you use collaboration systems to improve team communication?

Synchronous Communication:

Team members meet at the same time, such as with face-to-face meetings or conference calls.

Asynchronous Communication:

Team members do not meet at the same time. For example a worker who works in new zealand and a worker who works in the U.K. may find the time difference (11 hours) difficult to communicate at the same time.

Virtual meetings don't require everyone to be in the same place at the same time.

Conference calls - Synchronous.
Multiparty text chat - Asynchronous.
Video conferencing - Synchronous.
Email - Asynchronous.
Discussion forums - Asynchronous.
Team surverys - Synchronous.

Example of a discussion forum:

How can you use collaboration systems to manage content?

There are three categories for sharing content. Your choice depends on the degree of control your team needs to complete their tasks.

The following methods of sharing are effective but provide no control over content management:

Email attachments are the most primitive but have numerous problems:

- Someone does not receive an email.
- It's difficult to keep track of.

A shared file server provides a single storage location for all team members.

- It uses a server and ftp.
- Problems can occur when multiple people try and edit the same file at the same time.

These methods of content sharing provide version management:

Wikis.
Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
Microsoft Office Groove.

Wikis are shared knowledge bases, repositories of team knowledge, which have or use tracking mechanisms for changes.

The most commonly known wiki is Wikipedia.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets:

Access it at docs.google.com
Documents are stored on a Google server.
Team members can access the docs from Google and simultaneously see and edit their docs.
It's a free service but all documents must be processed by google programs.

Microsoft Office Groove:

You create a workstation.
Document changes are automatically propogated by Groove so all users see changes.
You can use Groove asynchronously.
You can use any program.
Each user must have purchased a Groove license.

Shared content with version control provides more limitations than version management and more control over changes to documents.

It uses shared content.
Users are given an account with a set of permissions.
It requires users to check out documents before they can modify them.
Microsoft Sharepoint is the most popular for business use:

- It requires a publicly accessible server and more skill, experience, and knowledge than most college students are likely to have.

How can you use collaboration systems to control workflow?

Sequential workflow: When documents are reviewed by one person, then the next.
Parallel workflow: When documents are reviewed by all at the same time.
SharePoint site: Defines workflows for every person.

How do Businesses use collaboration systems for decision making?

Operational decisions:

Obtain data that concerns day to day activities.
Require little collaboration.

Managerial decisions:

Focus on the allocation and utilization of resources.
Require some collaboration.

Strategic decisions:

Are broader, organizational issues.
Are almost always collaborative.

Decision Process:

Structured:

- Understood and accepted method for making decisions.
- Require very little collaboration.

Unstructured:

- No agreed-on decision-making method.
- Are often a collaborative process.

What is the relationship between decision types and decision processes?

Operational decisions are typically structured.
Strategic decisions are typically unstructured.
Managerial decisions can be both structured, and unstructured.

How do businesses use collaboration systems for problem solving?

Structured decisions:

No feedback or iteration are necessary.

Unstructured decisions:

Feedback and iteration are crucial.
Communication systems are the most important collaboration systems for unstructured decision processes.

Problem Definition:

The first step is: Define the Problem.
A problem is a perceived difference betweem what is and what ought to be.
A good problem definition defines the difference between what is amd what is ought to be by describing both the current situation and the desired situation.

Problem solutions and solution brokering:

Collaboration systems provide team members with feedback and iteration that helps them:

Identify numerous solution alternatives.
Make a choice among these alternatives.
Broker the selected solution alternative.

Problem solving and collaboration systems are more effective when they successfully employ the three collaborative drivers:

Communication systems that meet their communication styles.
Content management systems that ensures all team members are working on the same versions of the issues.
Workflow control is less important because workflows are only required for structured problems.

How do businesses use collaboration systems for project management?

Project:

Dynamic application of people and other resources for creation of a product or achievement of some aim.
Dynamic because the application of resources will be changed as events unfold and learning takes place.
Projects normally have a limited duration; are started and completed; are not usually ongoing.

Project Management:

Application of tools and techniques to achieve project's goals within time and budget constraints.

Project Management Stages and Tasks:

Scope refers to the requirements to be achieved by the project. It is arguably the most important project-management task.
Trade-off refers to scope, cost, time, quality, risk, and people.
Project management requires collaboration skills.

The three collaborative drivers are important to ensure the success of a project:

Communication sytems are vital to decision making, they are also vital to problem solving and project management.
Content-management sytems are vital to problem solving, they are vital to project management as well.
Workflow control is critical to project management.

Thanks for reading yall, 14 more chapters to go for this semester of MIS.
Stay tuned ;)

Song of the Week: Dash Berlin, Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren - Man On The Run

2009-05-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

You stole a kiss and stole my heart
made me a fool right from the start
It wouldn’t have been so bad except
this little plan, it fell apart

If I were you
I’d dare not speak
I’d run like hell
In hopes of seein’ tomorrow

It’s such a travesty
the way you say our love should be
yeah, such a tragedy
think you can just break my heart and leave me
well you better run
Oh, man on the run
playin’ for fun
wind me up
leave me undone

It’s such a travesty
the way you say our love should be
yeah, such a tragedy
think you can just break my heart and leave me
well you better run
Oh, man on the run
playin’ for fun
wind me up
leave me undone

These lips are sealed, I’ll never speak
your name in loving memory
so don’t you try to make ammends
that’s what ya get for playin’ mean

If I were you
I’d dare not speak
I’d run like hell
In hopes of seein’ tomorrow

Ahhhh, break my heart and leave me
Man on the run

It’s such a travesty
the way you say our love should be
yeah, such a tragedy
think you can just break my heart and leave me
well you better run
Oh, man on the run
playin’ for fun
wind me up
leave me undone

Management Information Systems - Semester 1 - Chapter 1

2009-05-15T01:02:00.001-07:00

Before you start reading this post read the Introduction to the University section of Wakkaoaka's Marketing Utopia @ http://www.wakkaoaka.com/2009/03/welcome-to-university-section.html

This is the second paper i am doing this semester:

MIS and You

What is MIS?

MIS stands for Management Information Systems. It is the development and use of information systems that help businesses achieve their goals and objectives.

Heres a video introduction to the book in which these notes are derived from:

http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ph/bp/bp_akamai/mymislab/DMK2_1-1.html

There are three key elements in MIS:

Components that interect to achieve some purpose.
Development and use of information systems.
Achieving Business goals and objectives.

Here are the five information systes components:

Hadware - Desktops, laptops, PDA's
Software - Operating Systems, Application Programs
Data - Facts and figures entered into computers
Procedures - how the other four components are used
People - Users, technologists, IS support

Development and Use of Information Systems:

You should take an active role in that system's development
Your responsibilities also include protecting the security of the system and its data.

Achieving Business Goals and Objectives:

Businesses themselves do not "do" anything.
Information systems exist to help businesses achieve their goals and objectives.

What Should you Learn from this Class?

You should:

Have suffiecient knowledge to be an informed and effective consumer of IT products and services.
Be able to ask pertinant questions (useful questions).
Be able to correctly interpret the responses to your questions.
Be able to make wise decisions.

How can you use the five-component framework?

Five components interact with each other to create a complete system:

Actors - They can take actions.
Instructions - Software is instruction for hardware, and procedure is instructions for people.
Bridges -Connection between the computer side on the left and the human side on the right.

The Most Important Part YOU:

You are part of every information system you use.
Your quality of thinking is a large part of the quality of your thinking.

High-Tech Versus Low Tech - How do you tell the difference?

Low-Tech: More work on the human side than the computer side.
High-Tech: More work on the computer side than the human side
The determining factors are: Human Workload, and Computer Workload. If the system uses computers more than humans, it is considered high tech. Whereas, if the system uses humans more than computers, it is considered a low tech system.

You can understand and evaluate new information systems by evaluating and asking questions about each component separately and then as a whole system.
The five components can also be evaluated based on the order of difficulty and disruption - hardware is the easiest part while people are the most difficult.

What is Information?

We know what an information system is - an assembly of hardware, software, data, procedures, and people that interact to produce information. But what is information?
Definitions vary. Information is:

- Knowledge derived from data.
- Data presented in a meaningful context.
- Data processed by summing, ordering, averaging, grouping, comparing, or other similar operations.
- A difference that makes a difference.

All of these definitions will do, choose the definition that works best for the situation - remember the important point is to discriminate between data and information.

Information is Subjective:

Information in one person's context is just a data point in another person's context since what may be important to you may not hold the same level of importance to someone else.
Context changes occur in information systems when the output of one system feeds a second system. Data in a manufacturing system may be very important to that system. When it's combined with data from other systems, it may lose its prominence in the larger context.

What are the characteristics of good information?

Good Information must be:

Accurate - Correct and complete data.
Timely - Produced in time for its intended use.
Relevant - Both to the context and to the subject.
Just barely suffiecient - For the purpose for which it was generated for.
Worth its cost - There must be an appropriate relationship between the cost of information and its value.

What is the difference between information technology and information systems?

Because many people confuse the two terms, let's compare what each one consists of and how the two differ:

Information Technology pertains to:

Products
Methods
Inventions
Standards

Whereas,
Information Systems include five components:

Hardware
Software
Data
Procedures
People

Information Technology drives the development of new information systems.

Moore's Law: "The number of transistors per square inch on an integrated chip doubles every 18 months."
Dramatic Reduction in Price/Performance ratio: Ratio fallen dramatically for years.
Enabled developments such as: Laser printers, Graphical user interfaces, like Windows, high-speed communications, cell phones, PDAs, email, and the Internet.

How can you enjoy this class?

Apply what you are learning to situations and organisations of interest to you. (i.e. Internet Marketing, or your business).
Think aboyut the information systems around you and how they interact with each other. How do they affect your life and your job? (i.e Paypal, Google).
Every day you touch dozens of information sytems...

- Begin to ask yourself about the type of information those sytems provide you. Does the information system make a difference?
- How do they impact you in your personal life and your job?

End of Chapter 1.

Please stay tuned for more chapters as i digest a 3 year long Business Degree into meal size blog posts.

Businesses and the Recession.

2009-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is a question that many answer with: "Because of the recession".
Whilst that partly answers the question, there is more to it than that.

Have you ever noticed that in the news there are always reports of job losses due to companies downsizing. Sure, this is a terrible thing for the majority of people around the world who without their jobs would be homeless. But it is avoidable!

How? Simple: Business owners, CEO's etc should first cut their own salary during tough times like these and invest it into the business. The average CEO salary is $US336,248 a year. But they are still cutting jobs like there is no tomorrow. And the average wage for overall is: $36,764, that's about 9 times less than the CEO would get.

Im not against CEO's and others high up in their company getting big paychecks, they worked hard for it and deserve it in general. What I am against is companies throwing the cogs that make there business run, onto the street. You know what they could do instead? They could cut CEO's Paychecks to a fitfth of the size (from $336,248 to $67,249.60) and save FIVE jobs. That's five cogs in the business, five entire families you are saving, from ONE person's paycheck being cut down to almost double the average pay.

If you have just 10 people in the company earning this much you could save 50+ workers and families.

Why isn't this happening? Well, most businesses are run by accountant trained CEO's who only see profit losses and a need to save money. So instead of being creative like marketers, they cut down on something they see as "expendable"; average workers.

If any of these CEO's thought about cutting their own paychecks and paychecks of workers of similar prestige in their companies miraculously, then im sure they would think to themselves "Hmm, if we did this then our ceo's etc would surely become disgruntled and leave for another firm". Well, I doubt it! Anyone and everyone who has a job in these times is lucky... and to find someone willing to take on a new ceo asking for a $336,248 salary would be next to impossible, what with everyone deciding to cut down on spending and all.

I know im giving companies a lot of criticism, and you may be asking yourself "what would you do then?"

Firstly, i would do as stated above. I would cut down on expendable spending such as CEO's exuberant paychecks. Doing so would save me from having downsize 100+. Not only that, but the family members. Also, with 100+jobs saved i wont have to cut down on the work load being done. So whilst other companies cut back, produce less products/services: I will be the only one left with the big workforce ready to dominate our market.

Secondly I would look at working against the flow of every business today. I would look for more cost effective ways of advertising. Social media and internet advertising is on the rise, and are the most cost effective if you understand how to use them. In fact most advertising channels are becoming more cost effective in these times due to lack of advertisers. This is where I would come in. Instead of being a sheep and cutting back my advertising budgets, I would use this economic storm to my advantage. I would increase advertising budgets where possible, and take advantage of the cheap advertising that is now available. (radio seems amazingly cost effective at the moment).

Thirdly I would change my marketing strategy. How would I do this? Instead of brand building ad campaigns that focus on building an image of the brand in the customers minds, I would build sales campaigns: Ad campaigns that are just for selling my products/services. But i wouldnt advise just selling your normal full priced product. I would suggest advertising coupons, buy 1 get one free, discounts etc. This is called Promotional Advertising and is perfect for the recession.

The recession is a time for bargain hunters... which also means that now is a time for "bait" pricing. No, im not talking about the illegal bait and switch where you bait someone with a cheap product you wont sell because you have none in stock then sell them a higher price product. Legal baiting is when you have a product line or mix that includes low and high price items (baiting is more effective with a product line). If you have a line of hair products for example, you can sell the shampoo and conditioner for a low price, but also sell a super special hair product like a hair straightener or special conditioner as part of that product line. This is also known as upselling which you see all the time in Internet Marketing.

In conclusion: Now is the time to go in arms a blazin' with advertising. Now's the time to take advantage of companies cutting back, by going against the grain, thinking outside the box. When everyones down, be the shepherd to lead them out of their misery.

Two definitions of a leader come to mind...

Leader: to go before or with to show the way; conduct or escort
Leader: to guide in direction, course, action, opinion, etc.

To business owners/ceo's: It's your choice. Either lead your business out of the recession, or deeper.

Song of the Week: Nadia Ali - Love Story

2009-05-12T02:28:00.000-07:00

Is this song chillingly beautiful or what?

If you ask me i will say it,
You make me smile,
It's contagious,
And in your eyes,
I can see it,
Cuz your heart is the greatest.

When I'm with you, I am taken,
With the feeling that you've been chosen,
What I'm longing is the best thing,
In a long time that I'm not broken,

And I cant be without you
So dont go anywhere,
You show me love like no one else has done yet,
And with the road ahead,
This is the begining of this love story,
Of this love story.

Marketing - Semester 1 - Chapter 10

2009-05-04T20:59:00.001-07:00

Before you start reading this post read the Introduction to the University section of Wakkaoaka's Marketing Utopia @ http://www.wakkaoaka.com/2009/03/welcome-to-university-section.html

Chapter 10 Objectives:

Understand the role of price.
Identify the characteristics of price and non-price competition.
Understand demand curves and the price elasticity of demand.
Explain the relationships among demand, costs and profits.
Describe key factors that may influence marketers' pricing decisions.
Recognise the major issues that affect the pricing of products for business markets.

What is Price?

"Value exchanged for products in a marketing transaction"
Price = What is charged for something or what is given up in exchange for a product. Many different names: Tuition fee, rent, loan interest, wages, entrance fees, salary.
Barter = Swapping or trading for products.
Dimensions of price:

- Economic: "economic person theory" people have limited $ so want to get the most for it.
- Psychologically: Buyer's perception: "higher price = higher value"

Why is Price Important?

Price can influence:

How customers perceive a product.
Distribution channels.
Promotion methods.

Price is a component of the marketing mix which can be changed easily:

"Product" changes and development are a lengthy process.
"Place" distribution network based on long-term commitments.
"Promotion" long production and placement lead-time.

Price allocation resources in a free-market economy:
*To the seller Price is revenue & profit source.
*To the consumer price is the cost of something.

Set Price TOO high:

Perceived value <>

- Lost sales = lost revenue.
- Lost customers.

Set Price TOO low:

- Lost revenue.
- Negative effect as customers think lower quality (bad for branded items)

Profit - Total Revenue - Total Costs.
Profit = (Price x Quantity Sold) - Total Costs.

Revenue: The price charged to customers multiplied by the number of units sold.
Profit: Revenue minus expenses.

Supply & Demand:

Supply: The quantity of a product that will be offered to the market by a supplier at various prices for a specific period.

Demand: The quantity of a product that will be sold in the market at various prices for a specified period.

Classic Demand Curve (Slopes down & to right):

A graph of the quantity of products expected to be sold at various prices.
The higher the price, the lower the demand.
The lower the price, the higher the demand.
Inverse relationships.

- Increase in demand creates increases in quantities sold at same price.
Demand can be affected by things other than price:

Quality
Promotion
Distribution

(slopes up to right)-------------------------------------->

The higher the price, the more producers will want to make.
The lower the price, the less producers will want to make.

Classic Demand & Supply Curves:

Demand Fluctuations:

Influencers of Demand Fluctuations:

Changes in buyers' needs.
Variations in the effectiveness of the marketing-mix.
The presence of substitues.
Dynamic environmental/market factors.

Price Elasticity of Demand:

Price elasticity of demand is a measure of the sensitivity of demand to changes in price - the greater thje change in demand for a specific change in price, the more elastice demand is.
Price Elasticity of Demand = %change in quantity demanded, divided by, change in price.
Items which are considered to be a necessity (petrol, electricity, etc) or are required (school uniform, textbooks) tend to have inelastic demand.
Luxury items (dining, travel, concert tickets) tend to have elastic demand.

Factors that affect Elasticity:

Availability of substitues:

Elastic: Many substitutes & can easily switch brands.
Inelastic: Few Substitues & cannot easily switch brands.

2. Price relative to purchasing power.

Inelastic: Such a low price consumer doesn't care (salt)

3. Product durability:

Elastic: Price high enough consumer fixes rahter than buys new (car).

4. Product's other uses:

Elastic: If great variety of uses (steel)

Marginal Analysis:

Examines what happens to a firm's costs & revenues when it sells one more unity of product.
Marginal Revenue (MR): The change in total revenue resulting from the sale of an additional unit of product.
Marginal Cost (MC): The additional cost to produce an additional unit of product.

Profit is maximised where marginal costs (MC) are equal to marginal revenue (MR).

Type of Costs:

Marginal Cost: Change in total costs associated with one-unit change in output.
Variable Costs: Costs which vary or differ with changes in level of output. (Materials).
Fixed Costs: Costs which do not vary or differ as level of ourput changes. (rent).

Break-even analysis:

Break even point is the point at which the point at whichj the costs of producing a product equal the revenue made from selling the product.

- The point at which profitability starts.

- Break even point = Fixed costs divided by (price - variable costs).

Used to evaluate whether the organisation will be able to cover costs (break even) at a particular price.
Indicates the break-even point (BEP) - that is sales (units or dollars0 needed to break even.
Can be modified to incorporate a target return.
Limitations of break-even analysis:

- Assume any quantity can be sold at a given price.
- Total cost curve is assumed to be a straight line.

Factors Affecting Pricing Decisions:

4 Internal Factors (company):

1. Organisational and Marketing OBjectives:

Set prices that are consistent with the organisation's goals and objectives.
Prices should also be compatible with marketing increase (e.g. setting premium prices to enhance a product's quality image).

2. Pricing Objectives:

Setting prices low to increase market share.
Using temporary price reductions to increase market share.
Lowering prices to raise cash quickly.

3. Costs:

Set a floor price - products must be sold above their costs if the firm is to remain in business.
Reducing costs increases productivity and profitability.
Costs may be shared between products.

4. Other Marketing Mix Variables:

Price/quality image of the product or brand.
Selective or intensive product distribution.
Product pricing is used as a promotional tool.

4 External Factors (market)

1. Channel Member Expectations:

To make a profit at least equivalent to the potential profit from handling a competitors brand.
To earn a profit commensurate with the time and resources put in by the channel member.
To receive discounts for large orders and prompt payment.
To be supported by the producer with training, advertising, sales promotion and return policies.

2. Customers' Interpretation & Response:

Interpretation: What meaning does the product's price have to the customer?
Customer Response: Does the customer respond to the price by moving closer to, or farther away, from making a purchase?
Internal Reference Price - a Price developed in the buyer's mind through experience with the product.
External refernce price. A comparison price provided by others.

3. Competition:

Pricing to match, exceed or beat prices.
Judging competitors' responses to adjusting prices is essential.
Changes in an industry's market structure both cause and create pricing opportunities:

- Monopoly: One Company controls a broad product market.
- lack of regulation does not always mean one can set prices at will.

4. Legal and Regulatory Issues - Many Regulations and laws affect pricing decisions:

Price controls or freezes can be invoked to curb inflation.
Governments can set and regulate prices for specific products.
There are regulations and laws to prohibit price fixing, and deceptive and discriminatory pricing is illegal.
Differential pricing is not always illegal (eg student or pensioner discounts).

B2B Price Structure:
5 Types of Discounts:

List price: Base selling price. Producers commonly provide intermediaries with discounts or reductions from list prices.
Discounts: Reduction from list price.

Trade discount
Quantity discount
Cash discount
Seasonal Discount
Allowance

Geographic pricing.
Transfer pricing.

Geographic Pricing:

Reductions for transportation & associated costs.
F.O.B. Pricing: "Free on Board" some vehicle at some plac ex: F.O.B. Taiwan, FOB seller's factory. Seller pays to get it to "place". After that the title, risk and cost is buyers.
Delivered or FOB Destination: Including cost of transportation in pricing.
Other forms of Geographic pricing:

- Uniform geographci pricing.
- Zone Pricing
-Freight absorption pricing.

Thats chapter 10 down. I dont have enough time to type up chapter 11 as it is time for my test.

Stay tuned.

Marketing - Semester 1 - Chapter 9

2009-05-04T19:44:00.001-07:00

Before you start reading this post read the Introduction to the University section of Wakkaoaka's Marketing Utopia @ http://www.wakkaoaka.com/2009/03/welcome-to-university-section.html

Chapter 9 Objectives:

Understand how companies manage existing products through line extensions and product modifications.
Describe how businesses develop a product idea into a commercial produjt.
Recognise the importance of product differentiation & the elemnts that differentiate one product from another.
Explain product positioning & re-positioning.
Understand how product deletion is used to improve product mixes.
Understand the base characteristics of services & how to develop product mixes for service products.
Understand service quality & how to deliver it.
Explore the nature of Not-For-Profit Marketing.
Appreciate the organisational structures used for managing products.

New Product Development:

Why needed?

- To enhance the product mix.
- To meet changing buyer demands and needs.

Why so difficult?

- Risky.
- Often expensive in time & money.
- 95% never reach the market.
- Less than 3% of those that survive last for 5 years.
- New consumer (B2C) products fail more than businesses (B2B)

Managing Exisiting Products:

Adjustments to product items, lines & mixes.
Product Line Extension.
Product Modification.
Product Repositioning.
Product Line deletion or contraction.

Product Line Extensions:

What is a Line Extension?

A product closely related to existing products in the line.

- that meet different customer needs.
- that focuses on a different market segment.

Why are there so many LIne Extensions?

Line Extensions are a lesser-cost, lower-risk way to increase sales.

Product Modifications:

What is a Product Modification?

Changes in one or more characteristics of a product.
The original product is super-seded.
Can improve one's product mix, but:

- The product must be modifiable (can change it).
- The modification must be perceivable ( can tell it's been changed).
- Should better meet customers' desires (custoemrs are happy about the change).

3 Types of Product Modifications:

Quality Modifications:

- Changes related to product's dependability and/or durability.
- Increase quality to charge higher price, create customer loyalty.
- Reduce quality to aim at different target markets.

2. Functional Modifications:

- Changes related to a product's versability, effectiveness, convenience, or safety.
- Usually require the product to be redesigned.
- Makes a product more useful to more people and thus its market.

3. Aesthetic Modifications:

- Changes related to product's sensory appeal.
- Altering the taste, texture, sound, smell, or appearance.
- Aesthetic changes are subjectively evaluated, and may result in negative customer reaction.

Product Positioning & Re-Positioning:

Perceptual Maps:

Tools used to map consuemrs perceptions.
Allows product comparisons between brands.
Allows clarification of customer wants in terms of product features.
Allows comparisons between wants and product.

Product Line Contraction:

Symptoms of product line over-extension:

Some products have low sales or cannibalise the sales of other items.
Resources are disproportionately allocated to slow-moving products.
Items have become obsolete because of new-product entries.

Product Deletion:

The process of eliminating a product from the product mix. A declining product can:

Take resources away from new or more profitable ones.
Not produce adequate profits.
Cost more through lower production runs.
Cause negative customer image, impacitng sales of other proudcts and product lines.

Product Differentiation:

Creating products that customers perceive as being different from the competing products.
3 Areas of differentiation can include:

Product Quality.
Product Design and Features.
Product Support Services.

Differentiate by Product Quality:

Refers to the overall characteristics of a product that allows it to perform as expected in satisfying customer needs.
It means different things to different customers - durability to one, ease of use to another.
The concept of quality varies betweem business and consumer markets.
Level of quality = Amount of quality a product has.
Consistency of quality = Same level of quality over time.

Differentiate by Product Design & Product Features:

Product Design:

How a product is conceived, planned and produced to look good and function well.
Design or physical appearance.
Functionality or styling.

Product Features:

Allow a product to perform certain tasks.
Differentiate different models within one firm's product mix.
Have perceived mathced relationship with price and quality.
Cost of features must be within an acceptable price to the customers.

Differentiate by Product Support Services:

Usually referred to as Customer Service.
Include any human or mechanical efforts that add value to the product.
Part of augmented product layer.
Examples:

Delivery
Installation
Financing
Customer Training
Warranties
Guarantees
Repairs
Parking
Toll-Free Numbers
Open Hours.

Characteristics of Services:

Services are all about managing customer experiences, by relating company performance to customer expectations.

6 Service characteristics include:

Intangibility.
Inseparability.
Perishability.
Heterogenity.
Client-based relationships.
Customer Contact.

Characteristics of Services:

Intangibility: Services that cannot be touched, seen, tasted, heard or felt in the same manner as goods.
Inseperability: A characteristic of services that allows them to be produced and consumed simultaneously.
Perishability: A characteristic of services that prevents them from being stored, warehoused, or inventoried.
Heterogeneity: Characteristics of services that makes them less standardised and uniform than goods.

Differences between Goods & Services:

Intangibility:

A good is tangible, Buying it creates ownership. You can see it, touch it. A service is intangible. You can't retain it.

A service is experienced, used, or consumed immediately (ex: see a movie but retain only the memory). It is more difficult to KNOW what is being purchased.
Services NEED to place the emphasis on TANGIBLE ELEMENTS (ex:uniforms, decor of offices, visual symbols).
Most products are a combination of tangible & intangible.

Inseparability (simultaneous production):

A good is usually produced 1st and then sold. A shirt is made, shipped, stopred in retail outlet before it is purchased.
A service is usually sold 1st and then produced or consumed simultaneously. A Big Mac is ordered, paid for, and consumed almost simulatenously.
Services: Opportunity to get instand feedback. Importance of staffing - bad impression = bad mistake.

Perishability:

A Good may or may not be perishable.
A service is perishable and unable to be stored.
Services: Need to balance supply & demand (ex: seats in theatre for popular movies/times but half empty rest of the time). Price incentives are used to help balance.

Heterogenity (Variability):

A good may or may not be standardized. (ex: mass production means each car on assembly line is exactly alike - quality control).
A service is often performed anew with each customer (ex: same place, same person, different hair cut.)
Services: Need good training! Reduce perceived risk.

Other service Characteristics:

Client Based Relationships:

Creating and maintaining satisfied customers.
Repeated, on-going business.
Word-of-mouth promotion/endorsement.
Need to: Build Trust; Demonstrate customer commitment; Satisfy customers; Build customer loyalty.

Customer Contact:

Level of interaction between the service provided and the customer.
High contact services: Health-Care; Real Estate; Legal Service.
Low contact services: Car Repair; Dry Cleaning.

Services Marketing Mix: Start with the 4 P's:

Product:

Bundle of services: Core + Extras.

Pricing:

Perceived indicator of quality.
Demand-based pricing, and peak demand.
Bundling of prices - full or add-on options.

Place:

Short & direct channels as most services are provided directly. Face to Face.
The problem of matching fixed supply with variable demand patterns "Appointments & Reservations".
"People versus Technology" usage in providing services. Consistency versus personal contact. ATM's

Promotion:

Tangible cues can symbolise (or make more "real") the intangible service.
Guarantees, trained personnel, price and documentation can engender the trust so vital to a successful service transaction.
Word of mouth (WOM) is very important as the "evoked set" of options is typically smaller for services - and incentives for WOM do help.

Services Marketing Mix: Additional 3 P's:

Physical Evidence:

Adding tangible clues, consistent decor, uniforms, gold card.

Participants:

All staff and customers (and other customers)

Process:

How the service is coordinated = performance.
The interaction betweem the marketing mix and the present, coordinated and consisten performance for the custoemr.

Customer Evaluation of Service Quality:

Experience qualities: Attributes such as taste, satisfaction or pleasure that can only be assessed during the purchase and consumption of a service - restaurant, hotel, etc.
Credence qualities: Attributes that may be unable to evaluate even after the provision of the service - clients must rely on the integrity and competence of teh service provider- surgeon, mechanic, etc.

5 Dimensions of Service Quality:

Tangibles - Physical evidence of the Service: Clean doctor's ofice. Quality of food at a restaurant.
Reliability - Consistency & dependability in performing the service: Accurate bank statement. Flight departing on time.
Responsiveness - Willingness or readiness of employees to provide the service: Prompt service. Changing appointments.
Assurance - Employee knowledge, competence & ability to convery trust & confidence.
Reliability - Caring & individual attention provided by employees.

End of Chapter 9.

Thanks as always for reading.

Stay tuned for Chapter 10.

Marketing - Semester 1 - Chapter 8

2009-05-04T18:02:00.001-07:00

Before you start reading this post read the Introduction to the University section of Wakkaoaka's Marketing Utopia @ http://www.wakkaoaka.com/2009/03/welcome-to-university-section.html

Chapter 8 Objectives:

Understand the concept of a product and how products are classified.
Explain the concepts of product item, product line, and product mix, and understand how they are connected.
Understand the product life cycle and its impact on marketing strategies.
Describe the product adoption process.
Explain the value of branding and the major components of brand equity.
Recognise the types of brands and how they are selected and protected.
Identify three types of branding policies and explain co-branding and brand licensing.
Describe the major packaging functions and design considerations and how packaging is used in marketing strategies.
Understand the functions of labeling and selected legal issues.

What is a Product?

Everything, both favourable and unfavourable, that a person recieves in an exchange.
Product = Need - Satisfying offerings of an organisation.
Product can be:

Good (tangible physical entity ex: Big Mac)
Service (intangible application of human & mechanical efforts ex: real Estate services)
Idea (concept, philisophy, image or issue ex: MADD)
Event (ex:Around the Bays Marathon)
Place (ex: 100% New Zealand)

Why Buyers Buy?

Buyers purchase to get the benefits and satisfaction that they think the product will provide.
Expectations can be shaped by images, promises and symbols.
The products are formed by the deliver and processes that help satisfy these expectations.
The cues provided by symbols help consumers make judgments about products.

Product Classifications:

Business product: A product used to manufacture other goods or services, to facilitate an organisation's operations, or to resell to other consumers.

Consumer product: Products that are bought to satisfy an individual's personal wants.

4 Consumer Product Classes:

1. Convenience Products:

Staples: Routine buying, low effort, frequent purchases, low involvement.
Impulse: Unplanned, point-of-purchase displays.

2. Shopping Products:

Homogenous: Customers see little difference among alternatives. Price sensitivity high.
Heterogenous: Seen as different so features and quality important. Prices less sensitive. Extensive problem solving, may need help making decision.

3. Specialty Products:

Willing to expend effort to get specific product.
Product is important to the consumer.
Price sensitivity likely to be low and limited distribution ok.

4. Unsought Products:

Emergency Unsought: Products purchased to solve a sudden problem, products of which the customers are unaware.... and products people don't necessarily think about buying.
New Unsought: Need for product not strong or unaware it exists. Use attention grabbing promotion and distribution near similar products.
Regularly Unsought: Aware of product but not interested. Not a big concern. Use aggressive promotion and usually personal selling.

7 Business Product Classes:

1. Installations:

Usually depreciated over time.
Multiple buying influences and new-task buying are common.
Low potential buyers.
Infrequent purchases and long decision period.
Usually requires skilful personal selling.
Direct distribution channels.
Service may be required.
Leasing or financing options.

2. Accessory Equipment:

Charged as an expense rather than depreciated.
Purchasing and operating personnel are often buyers.
Shorter decision making period than installations.
Widespread distribution with intermediates playing important role.
Price competition is intense.
Product more common.
Advertising more important than with Installations.
Limited service may be required.
Quality important.

3. Raw Materials:

Unprocessed extractive or agricultural porducts.
Become part of the final product.
Grading is important.
Transportations & storing issue due to seasonality of production.
Long-term contracts may be required.
Markets or on-line auctions.
Price competition is intense.
Large number of small sellers so market sets price.
Personal selling important.
Direct distributiom channels.

4. Component Parts:

Finished items ready to assemble.
Distinguish their identity after becoming part of the finished product.
May need to be replaced - Sales for replacement components are done through the Reseller Market.
OEM (original Manufacture Market): Acts as standard business buyer. Personal Selling.
Consumer Market: Acts as consumer buyer. Advertising directed at replacement buyer.

5. Process Materials:

Materials used directly in the production of other products.
Become part of the product and are not readily identifiable.
Purchased according to industry standards or specifications.

6. MRO Supplies:

Maintenance, Repair, & Supplies.
Consumable items that don't become part of the finished product.
Standardised items.
Buyers purchase and straight rebuy except if important to operating.
Short lives and inexpensive compared to other business goods.
Widespread distribution.
Arrangements with intermediaries may be crucial.
Price competition intense.

7. Business Services:

Expenses that don't become part of the finished product.
Often a choice bteweem self-supply (use internal sources) or use of outside contractors.
Services customised to buyer's needs.
Cost + Frequency of use is important.
Inelastic demand often support high prices.

Product items, lines, & mixes:

Product Item: A specific version of a product that can be designated as a distinct offering among an organisation's products.
Product Line: A group of closely related product items viewed as a unit: Due to marketing, tech. or end-use.
Product Mix: All products that an organisation sells.

Product Mix: Width & Depth:

Width:

The number of product lines an organisation offers:

Diversifies Risk.
Capitalises on established reputations.

Depth:

The number of product items in a product line:

Attracts buyers with different preferences.
Increases sales/profits by furthur market segmentation.
Capitalises on economies of scale.
Evens out seasonal sales patterns.

The Product Life Cycle (PLC):

PLC: Introductory Stage:

The initial stage of a product's life cycle = its first appearance in teh market place:

Sales start at zero and profits are negative because of high initial expenses.
Aim is to make potential buyers aware of the features, uses and advantages.
Most new products start off slowly and immediate profits are rare.

The first stage full-scale launch of new products:

High-failure rates.
Little Competition.
Frequent product modification.
Limited distribution.
High marketing and production costs.
Negative profits.
Promotion focuses on awareness and informatio.
Intensive personal selling to channels.

PLC: Growth Stage:

The second stage sales rise rapidly and profits reach a peak and then start to decline.

Increasing rate of sales.
Entrance of competitors.
Market consolidation.
Initial healthy profits.
Promotion emphasises on brand loyalty ads.
Goal is wider distribution.
Prices normally decrease.
Development costs are recovered.

PLC: Maturity Stage:

The third stage of a product's life cycle where the sales curve peaks and starts to decline and profits continue to fall.

Declining sales growth.
Saturated markets.
Extending product line.
Stylistic product changes.
Heavy promotion to dealers and consumers.
Marginal competitors drop out.
Prices and profits fall.
Niche marketers emerge.

PLC: Decline Stage:

The fourth stage of a product's life cycle where sales fall rapidly or taper off.

Long term drop in sales.
Large inventories of unsold items.
Elimination of all nonessential marketing expenses.
Cutting promotional expenditures.
Eliminating marginal distributors and channels.
Advertising of special offers may slow the inevitable decline.
Planning to phase out the product, as sales staff move their efforts to more attractive products.

Product Adoption Process:

Customers who eventually accept a new product do so through an adoption process which has 5 stages:

Awareness
Interest
Evaluation
Trial
Adoption

Product Adopters:

Innovators - First adopters of new products.
Early adopters - Careful choosers of new products, often opinion leaders.
Early majority - Those adopting new products just prior to the average person.
Late majority - Sceptics who adopt new products from economic necessity or social pressure.
Laggards - The last adopters (suspicious of new products and the most risk-averse).

Branding:

Brand Name: That part of a brand that can be spoken, including letters, words and numbers.
Brand Mark - The elements of a brand that cannot be spoken (not made up of words). Often symbols or designs.
Brand Equity - The marketing and financial value associated with the brand's strength in a market.
Trade Mark - A legal designation of exclusive use of a brand.

Branding Strategies:

Packaging:

Functions:

Protect product from damage.
Maintain its functional form.
Offer convenience to consumers.
Prevent waste and make storage easier.
Promote the product by communicating its features, uses, benefits and image.

End of Chapter Eight.

Wow that was long.

Stay tuned for Chapter 9.

Marketing - Semester 1 - Chapter 7

2009-05-04T16:54:00.001-07:00

Before you start reading this post read the Introduction to the University section of Wakkaoaka's Marketing Utopia @ http://www.wakkaoaka.com/2009/03/welcome-to-university-section.html

Chapter 7 Objectives:

Discuss the various types of business markets.
Identify the majore characteristics of business customers and transactions.
Understand several attributes of demand for business products.
Recognise the major components of a buying centre.
Understand the stages of the business buying decision process and the factors that affect this process.
Describe industrial classification systems and explain how they can be used to identify and analyse business markets.

B2B Marketing:

The key is Intended Use.

Business products:

Are used to manufacture other products.
Become part of another product.
Aid the normal operations of an organisation.
Are acquired for resale without change in form.

Business Markets:

Four categories of business markets:

Producer.
Reseller.
Government.
Institutional.

Producer Markets:

Organisations that purchase products to make profits by using them to produce other products or using them in operations.

Manufacturers
Farms, Fisheries
Hotels, Restaurants.
Office Cleaners.

Resller Markets:

Intermediaries who buy finished goods and resell them for profit.

Wholesalers purchase products for resale to retailers.
Retailers purchase products and resell them to final consumers.
Many factors affect resellers' purchase decisions including: Level of demand; Profit Potential (sales per square foot); Supplier's ability to provide goods on demand; Ease of ordering and producer support.

Government Markets:

Commonwealth (or Federal), State and local governments.

Purchase a broad variety of goods and services.
Public accountability results in complex buying procedures requiring formal tenders, public bids and negotiated contracts.

Institutional Markets:

Organisations with charitable, educational, community, or other non-business goals.

Churches.
Charitable organisations.
Sporting and Social Clubs.
Universities.

Business vs. Consumer Markets:

Characteristic ▲▲▲ Business Market ▲▲▲ Consumer Market
Demand -------------Organisational--------- Individual
Volume-------------- Larger----------------- Smaller
# of customers------- Fewer----------------- Many
Location------------- Concentrated---------- Dispersed
Distribution---------- More Direct----------- More Inderect
Nature of Buy-------- More Professional----- More personal
Buy Influence-------- Multiple---------------- Single
Negotiations--------- More Complex--------- Simpler
Reciprocity---------- Yes--------------------- No
Leasing-------------- Greater---------------- Lesser
Promotion----------- Personal Selling-------- Advertising

B2B Marketing:

5 Characteristics of Transactions:

Orders are much larger and more costly/expensive.
Purchase deliveries are made more frequently.
Terms of sales contracts are longer.
Several people (or committees) may be involved in the purchase decision.
A buyer and a seller purchase from each other (reciprocity).

Attributes of Business Customers:

Typicall better informed about the products they purchase.
Demand detailed product information about functional features and technical specifications to ensure they match their needs.
Personal goals (in support of organisational goals) may influence buying behaviour.
Often become partners in new product developments.

Primary Concerns of Business Customers:

Price of goods affects the buyer's ability to compete.
Buyers look for Return on Investment (ROI) from the product, or cost savings.
Price of the product is compared to the benefit it provides.
Quality of product and meeting client specifications, is the paramount consideration.
Quality of services offered by suppliers in support of their proucts is valued highly.

Evaluation Criteria:

Quality: Technical Suitability; Applies to salesperson, product & firm; Improvements should be part of every marketing strategy.
Service: Pre-purchase service; Post-purchase service.
Price

4 Methods of Business Buying:

Description - Products are standardised and specified by certain characteristics.
Inspection - Products with particular characteristics must be inspected.
Sampling - Used where a product is homogenous and a single specimen can be evaluated as representative of the entire product.
Negotiation - Sellers are asked to bid on specified product characteristics, and purchasers negotiate with successful bidders.

3 Types of Buying Situations:

New Task Purchase: A situation requiring the purchase of a product for the first time.
Modified Rebuy: A Situation Where the purchaser reorders the same goods or service.
Straight Rebuy: A situation in which the purchaser reorders the same goods or services without looking for new information or investigating other suppliers.

Demand in Business Markets:

Demand is Derived: Demand for business products results from demand for consumer products.
Demand is Ineleastic: A change in price will not significantly affect the demand for product.
Demand is Joint: Multiple items are used together in final product. Demand for one item affects all.
Demand is Fluctuating: Demand for business products is more volatile than for consumer products.

Roles in the Buying Centre:

Business Buying Decisions (5 Step Process):

4. Selection of Product and Supplier:

Multiple Sourcing: An organisation's decision to use several suppliers.
Sole Sourcing: An organisation's decision to use only one source.

Strategic Alliance:

A cooperative agreement between business firms (strategic partnership).
Benefits of Strategic Alliances: Access to markets or to technology; Economies of scale by combining activities; Faster market entry for new products; Sharing of Risk:
Tips for Successful Strategic Alliances: Trust one another; Share a common interes; Bring different skills to the table; Share gains; Decide who has direct customer contact; Understand the importance of customer satisfaction.

Business 2 Consumer Marketing VS. Business to Business Marketing:

Business 2 Business Marketing:

Product: The product is relatively technical in nautre, exact form often variable, accompanying services very important.

Price: Competitive bidding for unique items, list prices for standard items.

Promotion: Emphasis on personal selling.

Distribution: Relatively short, direct channels to market.

Customer Relations: Relatively enduring and complex.

Decision making process: Involvement of diverse group of organisation members in decision.

Business 2 Consumer Marketing:

Product: The product has a standardised form, serivce important but less than for business products.

Price: List prices.

Promotion: Emphasis on advertising.

Distribution: Product passes through a number of intermediate links en route to consumer.

Customer Relations: Comparatively infrequent contact, relationship of relatively short duration.

Decision Making Process: Individual or household unit makes decision.

Thanks for reading yall :)

Hope you all have a good basic understanding of hour Business and Consumer Markets work.

Stay tuned for Chapter 8.