Before I start this article, allow me to greet you Happy New Year this 2012 year of the black water dragon. This year will bring prosperity according to astrologers and specially those who believes in Chinese astrology. And those businesses that relates to water will have a good chance to succeed unlike those connected with fire. Anyway so much for that topic, what I want to emphasize now is the business trends regarding marketing and advertising. Since the internet popularity explodes, with it, online advertising was introduced and in no time it was accepted as one of the means to market and advertise a business. In my observation and also those who were knowledgeable on online advertising know very well that the ads network Google Adwords (when Google also introduced Adsense) revived the online advertising after the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 (March 2000 to October 2002). I’m not sure if I’m 100% correct but that is how I observed it. Google introduced Adsense on June 2003 that enables small publishers to participate and I think it is no coincidence that after launching Adsense the online advertising industry was standing on it’s feet again.
Compared to traditional advertising: print media and television commercials, online advertising was cheaper and more cost effective because you can track your advertising expenditures, ads behavior like banner clicks and impressions and other detailed information. Yes online advertising was a great invention and tool for businesses but since the dawn of the internet, computers was the only device capable of browsing websites. And only a few years ago that mobile phones can now be used to access the internet. Yes of course there is an internet device also invented a few years ago and that is the tablet like the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy and others I didn’t mentioned. So aside from traditional online advertising, are you also paying attention to mobile advertising? According to the survey of emarketer.com, the time spent on mobile increased to 30% from 2010 to 2011. More than the time spent on reading newspapers and magazines combined.
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Have you seen the TV commercial of Lola Techie? well I think this is not a joke anymore seeing senior citizens or middle aged people enjoying social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Linkedin and Youtube. The trend in the U.S. is older people are now flocking to social networking sites and you know that most of the time we Filipinos are followers of the U.S. trend.
Why I said that? it’s because few years ago Friendster is the number one social networking site among Filipinos but when Facebook became popular, many of us specially the youth flocked into facebook.
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A Yahoo! Philippine news about banks here in the Philippines catches my attention after I logged out of my Yahoo! mail this week. This is about local banks who refuses to use social networks as a marketing medium. If you are interested to know more about the news, go here. Quoting from the news:
“Based on feedback, [banks] are still trying to get a feel on how to go into social media sites,” said Allan Tumbaga, president of the Bank Marketers Association of the Philippines (BMAP).
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This guest post is by Nisha Sandhu of merchantaccountforum.com
In today’s cloud oriented business world, almost every company needs an online presence. Once that website is up and running, the natural next step is make online sales. If your customer is accustomed to shopping from home and finds the only way to buy from you is to physically come in to the store or place a phone order, they may just move on to your competitor.
In today’s market, that might be someone in another town or even another country. Most of your shoppers may be local, but they are not limited to using local businesses. To stay alive in today’s economy, the smart move is selling online. However, this is almost impossible without the ability to accept credit cards and for that you will need a merchant account.
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I was a little intrigued then I read an article on Small Business Trends saying that “smart people are on twitter”. What I have in mind about twitter is, most users are celebrities, people who just want to know the tweet of their favorite stars and online marketers who wants to promote their businesses, products and services, blogs or websites. Micro blogging with just 140 characters seems not too intelligent in my opinion but come to think of it, how will you express yourself and tell everything you have in mind with just 140 characters using twitter? again quoting from the article:
Hubspot referenced a report from Edison Research that highlighted the education level of Twitter users. It seems that in comparison to the general population, they are more educated and early adopters who are ready to test and respond to the latest products and services. The Twitter community (21 million) is not the large volume that the Facebook community (152 million) is, but they are educated and focused, making Twitter the perfect place for business networking and relationship building.
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I think the iPhone 4 smart phone is one of the most cherished gadgets specially this Christmas. But the price seems not very practical for the average person or a worker. So what can be the solution to own one? If you are rich and don’t mind spending a lot of money for a gadget that won’t last a lifetime, then go ahead and buy one. But even rich people who are careful with their money will have second thoughts on buying one specially those who are not “techie”. My landlord who was an OFW in Italy still have his Nokia 2100 that looks like it came from a museum (he he he, just kidding) with a funny ring tone. When buying an iPhone, you can use your credit card but that is not really the right thing to do if you think you can’t pay it immediately to avoid the horrors of credit card collectors. You can subscribe to Globe Telecoms but you still have to submit documents for your capacity to pay and still won’t guarantee your approval.
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Have you ever imagine having your very own restaurant website but don’t have the technical skills to do it? Then if you want to try to make a restaurant website, just go to www.goa41.com. The steps are easy, just follow the direction given on the said website and you are on your way creating a dazzling website for your restaurant business.
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