For Every Product you purchase, TOMS will help someone in need

Did you know 92% of Millennial consumers are more likely to buy products from ethical companies? Are you one of them? Have you ever come across any products that resonate with your morals in life?

What is Ethical Marketing?

Let’s take a moment to clarify what ethical marketing means should we?
Ethical Marketing refers to the process by which companies market their goods and service by focusing not only on how their product benefits them but how they can benefit from being socially responsible or environmental causes.

Ethical Marketing isn’t a strategy but more of a philosophy. It includes everything from advertisements that are honest and trustworthy to fostering a strong relationship with consumers through a set of values.

Have you ever heard of TOMS?

I was a big fan of it when I was younger and, I can assure you it was the most comfortable pair of shoes ever and, the core value of the company touched my heart.
TOMS was founded by Blake Mycoskie in 2006 when he went on a trip to Argentina and found many kids without shoes. He decided to establish a company with a giving in mind.
TOMS displayed Ethical Marketing in all aspects by putting their social and environmental philanthropy on full display in virtually every aspect of its branding. Right off TOM’s homepage, it states – “For Every Product you purchase, TOMS will help someone in need.”
I was quick to purchase one understanding that someone in Argentina would have a pair of shoes to walk around. Since 2006, TOM’s footwear business donated more than 60 million pairs of shoes and, it was heart-warming when they shot a video of them in Argentina giving out shoes to kids allowing them to have something to wear and I was glad to play a part in it.

TOM’s displayed Transparency by shooting a video handing out shoes in Argentina and uploaded it onto YouTube.

Touching the hearts of many and gained the trust of consumers as Blake stood true to his company’s values and mission by not letting their customers down as many of then who purchased a pair of TOMS played a part in this campaign to provide someone with a pair of shoes.

Ethical Marketing is about cultivating brand loyalty by aligning Blake’s organizational values with his customers who want to play a part in this.

My readers, would you want to buy a pair of TOMS knowing that you will play a part in helping a child out there? Cause I did.

Google is the Answer to all your Questions

Do you use Google at least once a day? When you need to know more information for something, Google is always there for you and he has the answer to all your doubts. Do you agree with me that Google has been essential to our everyday life?

Felt like having a good steamboat place today and to know where is the best? Google it!

Have you ever wondered how does Google come up with all the search results? Like what goes onto page 1 and what goes to page 2?

Search Engine Optimization (Organic / natural search) is a process of increasing the probability of a particular website from your searches. Google is the giant search engine among other available search engines like Yahoo, Baidu, and Bing taking up a massive 80% with Baidu taking the runner up position at 11%. It is safe to say that other than the Chinese market, most of the searches are done through Google.

Among the search results, websites that are on the top of the page get 42% of the traffic, second gets 11% and the third only gets 8%. This clearly emphasized the importance of appearing in the top few selections of the search results as it helps to increase the Business Authenticity in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The big question is how to land onto the top few selections of the page? Google uses many tools and algorithms that are updated regularly to determine the order the websites are displayed in our SERP.

The most important is KEYWORDS. It is important to input keywords that are commonly searched by your consumers. Long-tail keywords account for 70% of all web searches because natural language search is becoming more popular and pervasive, especially now when most of the searches are done through mobile phones.

The other way to increase traffic is through Pay Per Click (PPC) where advertisers pay each time when a user clicked on it which can be commonly seen on our social media accounts where it is tagged as “Sponsored Post”.

A simple search on chairs will bring up examples of PPC but it could be costly for companies to constantly place their PPC on search engines.

I feel SEO has a greater impact as there is a 75% chance where consumers won’t read past the first page and it ensures a better brand image for consumers to click in by being at the top searches.

I would like to post a question to readers, which of these two-advertisement marketing strategies do you think is a better option for you to choose if you are their SEO Manager?

An Airplane can produce 10 terabytes worth of Data in just 30 Minutes!

Many planes are currently parked in Changi Airport and it is a sight to behold that history has never seen before. But do you know how much data are generated during a flight? You will be surprised to hear the figure. A total of 10 + terabytes can be generated in just 30 minutes of flight time! That is massive! With thousands of flights per day, data can reach up to Petabytes.

There are four sources of Big Data.

Internal 

Data is internal if a company generates, owns, and controls it.

External

External data are public data that are usually generated outside of the company. 

Structured 

Any data that can be stored, accessed, and processed in the form of a fixed format is termed as a ‘structured‘’ data. 

A structured employee data

Unstructured 

Unstructured data is data that is not organized in a predefined manner.

Many companies in the Media and Entertainment industry extract the information from big data to provide us, consumers, with more convenience. 

Predicting the interest of audiences

Do you know Spotify uses Big Data Analytics to collect data from you and me out of an astonishing 138million user all around the globe and analyzed the type of music that I frequent and recommend music to me based on the songs that I listen to? 

I am a huge fan of Chinese songs and don’t you think it is so convenient that they are recommending me songs of a similar genre?  

I am sure you have seen pages like this.

On-demand scheduling of media streams

A great example would be YouTube. 

I am a HUGE fan of Manchester United and whenever there are new videos from them, it never fails to in my feed and I always click into them. 

Usually, In an organization, Big Data is huge and it takes a skilled worker to compile them and churn out a predictive analysis which is easy for the management team to make a decision based on that. 

My readers out there, what do you think is a foreseeable future ahead of Big Data? Where do you think are the other areas where Big Data can be applied? Do let me know and I hope to hear some interesting ideas from you!

What is the first thing you do when you wake up?

Are you reading this blog post from a mobile? I’m certain! Considering that 80% of the world owns a smartphone as of today. From the year 2016 to 2020, there was an increase of 1 billion smartphones worldwide. That is MASSIVE!

With so many users globally and we are connected simply via the internet. No doubt that many marketers are turning to mobile marketing as we speak.

In this current era, do you agree with me that you visit websites though your phone, open emails through your phone, and even buy from stores through your phone?

Putting business right where customers are – On the go. It is so important to integrate your websites to fit into the universe of phones and trust me when I say this. A marketing plan that ignores mobile marketing is a failed plan.

A Brief History
2003 – First Commercial mobile SMS was launched
2007 – There were 2.4 billion SMS users and when Apple launched its iPhone, it was the beginning of a new era in marketing.
2011 – Mobile Marketing was $14 billion worth
2014 – number of smartphones exceeded the number of computers.

But Why Mobile Marketing?

• Reach
  With an astonishing number of smartphone users at 80%, the reach is insane and this is vital for every marketer when reporting numbers. Do you check your phone the first thing you open your eyes?
  

• Personal
  According to research, 91% of users keep their phones within arm’s reach throughout the day.
  
  It is normal to feel connected to an app when it is more personalized. Don’t you agree with me that when Grab tells you “Hey Nigel, there is a food promo waiting for you! Tap in to find out!” Naturally, you will want to tap in to find out more. Are you the same as me on this? There is just a form of personalization.

Some of the everyday thing that you and I receive to prevent us from losing weight

This is kinda sad

• Mobile E-Commerce
  As much as 78% of mobile phone searches resulted in a purchase. I prefer ordering things due to its convenience and the deals online are sometimes too hard to resist don’t you think so?

With mobile marketing spearheading into the industry at such a rapid speed, traditional marketing doesn’t seem to be that appealing anymore. The advantages of mobile marketing outweigh the traditional method easily. it is cheaper, faster and quicker. The list is endless and indispensable for companies of all sizes to leverage on.

So readers, do you agree with me that Mobile Marketing will eventually take over the Marketing Industry in the foreseeable future? Pent out your thoughts and comment down below! I would love to hear some interesting insights from you guys!

Sorry for adding extra Ingredient – IRVINS

A Thai tourist visited Singapore and wanted to buy some snacks back to Thailand and to her surprise, she found some fried lizards with it.

She immediately shared this experience on her Facebook and it went viral. In no time, everyone was talking about ensuring quality checks on Irvins products.

IRVINS took this matter to their social media account and apologized to everyone by not avoiding this matter or covering their mistake. Irvins choose to face it and learn from it to prevent it from happening again. Kudos to them for being honest and genuine in their business.

Using John Berger’s six steps to Contagious content, we can easily reach out to more consumers and use this to our advantage in creating a viral advertisement.

1. Social Currency – Sharing to look good in front of others

Here is Bellroy comparing their wallets against conventional one and it shows how slim their product can really be!

2. Triggers – Associating your brand that people will encounter often.

Need a fizzy drink to quench your thirst? A Coke is all you can think of!

3. Emotions – The more consumers can connect with the advertisement emotionally, they can instigate a form of positive emotions towards it.

Apple advertisement always amaze me with their cinematography when they shoot their advertisements! Have you watched the entire film before skipping them on YouTube?

4. Public – Making your brand visible so people will notice them.

The above is Dele Alli a famous footballer who collaborated with Secretlab a Singapore gaming chair company. When they see how comfortable he is in, I am sure many supporters want to own one too!

5. Practical Value – Offering useful tips to help your consumers.

Haylee sells mattress and they educate their consumers on finding the perfect score for firmness in their mattress to have a good night sleep.

6. Stories – Building a story to your advertisement that carries an emotion that you want to bring across to your consumers.

This video is about a Malay delivery driver working for MacDonald during the Ramandan period and the uncle decided to break fast with him and this touched the heart of many Singaporean. Will you buy an extra drink for your delivery driver? A simple gesture goes a long way.

In conclusion, creating contagious content is key to every marketer as it plays a big part to viral marketing. It could easily reach out other millions of users through the internet.

Readers, have you experienced any 6 STEPPS throughout your life? Do share with me some of the interesting articles that you come across! I will be delighted to take a look at them!

*Mr Ricky extended our blogpost submission to the Fourth of August 2020.*

Is Making Money off the Internet the answer to all our problems?

Do you love making money? Is money really the answer to all our problems? Does it truly bring happiness into our life?

Making money off the internet isn’t as easy as we speak off. There are 5 different types of revenue models and big companies use either one or the other to sustain in this industry and we call it the BIG 5.

Advertising

Advertising is the cheapest and easiest way to do and it helps to build brand awareness.

This is what I happened to chance upon while scrolling my Facebook and it is there to drive foot traffic to their website.

Subscription

Some of the popular sites like Netflix are the norm in everyone’s phone nowadays and we have to agree that we cannot live without them now. 

I no longer watch the Television now that all my shows are on Netflix.

Transaction Fee

E-Commerce sites mostly deals with transaction fees where a portion of the deal goes back to them for convenience fees and one of the example would be Amazon.

Sales

Selling a service online is also one the way to make money off the internet and a good example would be Fiverr. Sometimes we need the help of freelancers to help design a logo for your new business and you can easily find someone on Fiverr to help you with that. 

Affiliate

I personally have been part of the affiliate for Grab in Singapore. Back then when Grab entered the market in 2013, I was the first few to download it for its services and I immediately introduced it to my family and they gave me “$5 off the next ride”

In conclusion, out of the BIG5, I feel that Affiliate Marketing is one of the most important criteria models for start-up and SME as it helps to drive your traffic up by a tremendous amount. It is always important to do the math to ensure you are not on the losing end as both party benefits from everything.

I would like to ask my readers which of the BIG5 models do you think is the most important model for companies? Do comment in the section below!

Have you ever felt that Facebook is stalking you?

Social Media Marketing leverages on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook to promote their product actively. It helps to increases the awareness of their product by publishing great contents. Many companies prefer this to the normal marketing as it is financially more effect than traditional marketing methods..

We all know who Cristiano Ronaldo is right? He is the world most followed soccer player in the world with a whopping 232m followers!

During the lock down early this year, Cristiano Ronaldo made four sponsored posts on this profile and that generated a total of 2.5 millions in revenue! In the year 2019, you may remember that catchy collaboration between Shopee and Cristiano Ronaldo. It was simple yet effective. Cristiano Ronaldo made a total of 49 millions in revenue which is more than his pay of 39 millions playing for Juventus.

Referencing from Jennifer Golbeck in TedTalk, she said many tech companies like Facebook and Google tracks the user’s searches and they rely on sharing or exploiting user’s data in some way to track their pages that they visit.

Have you ever wondered why Facebook is so good at showing you sponsored posts related to your recent searches?

For example, I personally wanted to get a new mattress for myself a few months back and I have been searching non-stop for the perfect mattress. Facebook tracked my searches and they have been rolling out sponsored posts regarding mattress in Singapore and I was enticed to click on some of them to check them out.

It was absurd to feel that my personal data was being leaked and my searches are being watched closely and monitored by Facebook. I personally agree with Jennifer Golbeck when she mentioned that we as users of Facebook should have the right to chose if they wish to be monitored or not by consenting to this. This is somewhat like a doubled edged sword as you are exposed to potential products but at the same time exposing your digital prints online.

I personally feel lawmakers should Invoke regulations to ensure trust as confidential data should not be leaked or exposed. How do you feel about your digital prints being tracked constantly? Are you against it or not? Do kindly leave a comment as I would like to hear your take on this!