Online Security

As a retail employee of a company that requires confidential information to start accounts, I often hear customers very concerned with giving out their private information to establish service.  Social Security numbers and credit card information is a sore subject for many people due to the consistent flow of security breach stories in the news.  I come from an era that grew up online shopping and I barely blink an eye when ever I enter my social security number, save a credit card on file, or sign up for auto-pay.

The worry for many people is that their information will be used to steal their identity or drain their bank account.  I do not balance a checkbook, I manage my account through an application on my phone.  I have a one-click option through Amazon rather than use an incognito browser to make a purchase.  I have had my credit card information stolen twice, but my bank was quick to recognize the charges weren’t me and they immediately refunded my money and shipped a new card.  This only reinforced my trust with the bank I use.  I also use a free credit score website to see if anyone is running my information.  This low monthly cost gives me peace of mind to shop and operate as I choose and helps me plan for my future for purchases I might make down the road. 

This week’s content in my marketing class covered security and privacy on websites and inspired me to look up some of the most famous breaches in recent history.   It was pretty alarming to see all the connections I have the sites that have been hacked, in which I made no changes to log in information or my credit cards associated with the security breaches.   For example, I found that Gawker, Fidelity, Target, Global Payment Systems, Adobe, Yahoo, Evernote, and even the Federal Reserve all have had issues in the last 5 years with their private customer data!

After doing my own research on security breaches and reading about the scale of the crimes that took place, I will definitely be more careful with my information going forward.  I read several articles including ones on CSO, SC Magazine, and GoLocal Prov News that detailed the major companies I listed above.  As an employee that works with customer privacy, I have always taken their personal information and followed protocol 100% to ensure they are taken care of.  The lessons I have learned this week have only reinforced me to continue to do so. 

Augmented Reality in Advertising

Whenever I watch futuristic movies, I always notice that advertising has evolved to become extremely specific to the person walking by the storefront or shop.  A scene in particular that comes to mind was when Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report is hiding from the authorities and walking through the mall.  The advertisements and billboards surrounding him used scans of his eyes to connect the data they had on his character to be effective in their advertisement.  He walks into the GAP, and a voice coming from a nearby speaker asks if he enjoyed the last purchase he made in store.  The movie takes place hundreds of years in advance, but we are beginning to see advertising evolve in our world today.  Augmented reality is an exciting platform that takes regular print ads and embeds videos, pop-up content, and even mobile performances when you use smartphone to scan over an ad with this technology. 

Business Insider recently posted an article of “11 Amazing Augmented Reality Ads” that use this technology to take the company’s advertisements to the next level and surprise consumers.  Starbucks holiday cups offered an application that when in use, invites you to interact with five different characters who are holiday themed and react when you tap them on your phone.  One of the most interesting ads that I saw was the way Net-A-Porter uses augmented reality technology to create a virtual storefront.  The window looks very basic to a passerby, but with the use of their app, you can uncover video from the catwalk and details on the clothes available for sale inside. I’m really excited to see how this technology continues to evolve.

Digital Market Manipulation

In an article written by Tarun Wadhwa of Forbes, I learned of the topic “digital market manipulation.”  What I didn’t realize was that I was being exposed to this form of advertising for some time now but did not realize the name for it.  This term has to do with the merging of social media and paid advertisements and has become increasingly popular recently.  If you use Facebook, Twitter, or Vine; you are exposed to the “paid advertisements” that pop up in your newsfeed.  These ads are often a type of product that you have purchased in the past, or may be one that an algorithm determined you to be a potential customer in the future.  Popular viners often have advertisements incorporated in their six second videos that are clearly a result of their popularity on Twitter’s video sharing site, Vine. 

Wadhwa gives an example in the article about what digital market manipulation may come to be in the near future, “Imagine that you are halfway through the second week of a grueling diet. It’s been going alright – but lunches are always the hardest for you. You walk out of your office building to get a salad, when suddenly, you get a text message. It’s from a nearby restaurant offering you a discount on your favorite burger, encouraging you to “cheat just this once” and they’ll throw in a free side of fries.”

The majority of people in today’s society have a negative association with internet tracking and targeted advertisements because they feel that they are having their privacy violated and used against them with specific ads that pop up in the websites they use.  With digital market manipulation, this type of advertising is only going to increase in frequency and accuracy and it will be even more important for corporate marketers to understand the “sweet spot” of being creepy and effective.

Missing the "Sweet Spot"

In week 6 of class we discussed the "sweet spot" in advertising where the ads are beneficial and don't seem obtrusive into our privacy.  I was at a conference last week for work the Vice President of our customer experience team told us a story about Target and how its team was using predictive strategies to target customers for coupons.  Their research found that expecting mothers are often extremely loyal once they found the location that they plan on buying their baby products for the first several years of the child’s life.  Target hoped to find these customers and send them coupons to help bring the business into their stores.  

An analyst narrowed down several items including unscented lotion, supplements including magnesium and zinc, and extra-large cotton balls. 

This was truly incredible analysis that allowed the team to find these potentially loyal customer and they looked to send them coupons early in the second trimester to get ahead of the game.  I looked up this story and found an article written in Forbes that goes into detail on how the process went from innovative, to creepy when a man in Minneapolis walked into a store and said,

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

It turns out that Target was right and the father didn’t know yet that his daughter was pregnant!! They have since evolved their “targeted” advertisements to include more than just coupons that are geared towards pregnant women just in case a similar situation happens and they aren’t correct that time.

Important Tactics for Social Media Optimization

This week in class we discussed how social media impacts businesses and studied what companies do to make themselves stand out from the competition.  I started thinking about the companies that I pay attention to or that piques my interest when browsing the web.  I ended up choosing Old Spice as my subject to write about in our discussion board because I had no brand loyalty or preference in the products they sold, but am now a customer simply because I like them more than their competitors because I think their advertisements are funny.  

Like many people my age, I have a number of social media accounts that I am active on currently including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Vine.  Although I do not personally post on the majority of these sites very often (Instagram most frequently), I do use these applications several times a day to see what my followers/users I follow are up to.  Facebook and Twitter posts capture my attention most often when a video or photo is tagged to a post.  Instagram and Vine are platforms that run 100% on a photo or video for every post and have become extremely popular.  I came across an article that titled "Why Images and Photos Rule Social Media" and round some interesting facts on the topic.  Below you can see a chart the article featured that shows what is most important to include in a social media post to generate interest.

I was really surprised to see that videos scored so low in the important tactics used for optimizing content.  The article did state that "videos are 12 times more shared than links and text posts combined, compared with photos, which are just two times more likely to be shared than text updates" and that photos can often stop users in their tracks like videos but can be viewed at work and do not require sound.

The more I read about Social Media's impact on a company's marketing campaign, the more I come to realize that the advertisement industry has come a long way from print ads and now require skills that connect with consumers on a personal level through these platforms.  I'm excited to see how it continues to evolve!

Team Snapshot and Upstage Resume

Have you ever walked into an interview with a boring resume? Are you looking for a way to stand out from the competition when applying for a new job? Upstage Resume is here to help! With a variety of customized templates, Upstage Resume will help transform your resume from bland to beautiful.


As part of the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Team Snapshot will be promoting Upstage Resume through an online paid search campaign. Below Team Snapshot provides background on the organization, its mission and products, a competitive analysis and a technical analysis. This information will be used to allow Team Snapshot to help grow Upstage Resume's business.

Background

Alysha Watson was updating her resume three months ago when she became inspired to show off both personality and creativity through the design of her resume.  She realized that her document hadn't changed much in the last 5 years besides minor formatting changes. Lauren, who eventually became Alysha’s business partner, was a graphic designer that Alysha collaborated with to create her updated resume. The design was created to catch the eye of a potential employer, with a finished product that included a headshot and graph used to display Alysha’s skills in a visual way instaed of basic bullet points.  Alysha received nothing but positive feedback on her new resume and found that a lot of her peers and friends were interested in having her help redesign their resumes. Alysha and Lauren began working on a website that would allow consumers to send in a basic Word document resume and select a template from over 20 designs for their new resume. The site launched on April 1, 2014 and because Alysha and Lauren both have full time jobs, they are fulfilling orders as they come in during their spare time.  

To quote Alysha on her new company: “Upstage Resume's vision is to enhance the traditional resume with color, creativity and design. We want to help the every-day person "outshine the competition" with a resume that is unique and one of a kind.”

We (the members of Team Snapshot) chose Upstage Resume for the Google Online Marketing Challenge because they are a brand new company that has great potential for success. Because of their easy-to-use website and creative resume designs available, Upstage Resume taps into a currently un-pursued niche market. Upstage Resume is currently using basic marketing tools , which leaves a lot of ways Team Snapshot can help grow the business (they use Shopify to track click through rates and page views but have not pursued any further advertisements besides their pages on social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter).  

Mission & Products: What the company seeks to do and how it does this through its product offerings.

Upstage Resume’s mission is to provide a product that will help their customers, primarily job seekers, stand out from their competition by providing customized resumes and cover letters that look and read very differently than typical boilerplate resumes.   By enhancing their customer’s current resume through creativity and design, Upstage Resume delivers a product that is a more distinctive and eye-catching deviation from the normal tool of job seekers alike.

Upstage offers 15 different resume templates as well as custom resume and cover letter design. They also offer upgrades and revisions should your resume change or require editing.  Upstage Resume commits to a 72 hour turnaround on resume deliveries, but offers expedited service for a premium.   Upstage does not edit the content of their customer’s resumes, choosing to focus their business on design. 

Competitive Analysis: What other companies out there could be substitutes, or offer similar services?

There are a lot of options out there as far as receiving some sort of assistance with writing your resume or creating a resume that is aesthetically pleasing.  Upstage has determined that their two biggest competitors are Loft Resumes and Resume Launch. 

Loft Resumes is very similar in that they take a basic structured word processing document and translate it into something that matches form with function.  With that being said, Upstage’s costs are far lower and their designs are uniquely designed.  Loft has a lot of options to choose from, but the costs average $99, which is considerably higher than the $35 charged by Upstage.  Their website is also very similar looking to Upstage’s, but a person looking for a job might not always be able to rationalize the cost.

Resume Launch serves a different client base than Upstage Resume.  Again, they offer unique resume product designs that translate boring structure into beautiful resumes but their designs are less interesting than those offered by Upstage. We suspect that a lot of their revenue is driven by their resume assistance offering, which is manned by one person (implying that turn around on purchases is either slow or not top of the line).  Based on reading their twitter account, they are constantly looking to broaden their resume template offerings, advertising new templates on almost a weekly basis.  This will make them more competitive going forward and might force Upstage, new to the market, to consider ways to differentiate themselves.  Their costs are also lower for templates at $25.  

Technical Abilities: how is Upstage Resume utilizing technology?

Upstage Resume is an entirely web-based service organization. Because its products are purchased, paid for and distributed via the website, Internet technology is a core functionality requirement. If the organization forgets to pay its web hosting fees, the website would go dark and there would be limited opportunity for the business.

Upstage Resume relies completely on social media and word of mouth to spread awareness. They are currently utilizing a website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter page, Google+ account and LinkedIn profile. Due to their recent launch, they do not have a large following yet on any of these sites. Their Facebook account has the largest audience, which consists of 305 “likes” for their page. One of their current strategies is too communicate flash sales and special offers via their social media sites. Because of the importance of an online audience going to these sites, one of Team Snapshot’s goals will be to increase social media site traffic.

There are a number of suggestions Team Snapshot has put together regarding Upstage Resume’s social media sites. First, because sales and special offers are only listed on sites like Facebook and Twitter, including direct links to these pages should be obvious on the company’s landing page. A site user currently has to scroll down below the fold to find links to these pages, and there is no call to action or benefits callout on why a user would want to follow Upstage Resume on social media. Second, it makes sense to have an Internet presence on multiple social media sites; however, defining what each will be used for is important.  A critical aspect of social media for businesses is defining the purpose of that social media account. Should all social media sites be used to communicate special offers, or just a few? What type of audience is each social media site trying to attract and what does that actual audience look like? How can we incorporate analytical sites like Google Analytics or other platforms to gain insight into who is actually going to these sites?

All of these points will be addressed in how Team Snapshot helps Upstage Resume grow its business in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

Search Engine Competition

I never gave the search engine industry much thought before reading this week’s assignments and I always used Google to find whatever it is I needed to know.  While preparing to write my post on the discussion board I stumbled across an article written by Hal Singer of Forbes that analyzes the online search “market” that Google is being accused of monopolizing.  I expected to read that Google’s main competitors were Yahoo, Bing, and AOL.  What I found out was that the greatest competition Google faces comes from Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.  Facebook has the ability to create queries that mine through an enormous amount of data that is posted on the social media giant’s pages.  The survey also found out that one third of all people who search for a product pull up Amazon’s page first.  Another avenue that consumes use to find information is to download a specific application directly to a smartphone to use a reference for research.  For example, I downloaded a fitness application that allows me to quickly find calories of anything with a barcode.  I use this app I found through Apple’s Store because it is quicker to find and more reliable than what I may get when using Google.  The article was written during the time Google was first being analyzed to determine if it violated anti-trust laws.  The research ended up proving that Google was not a monopoly, it also proved that it didn't have the stranglehold on the search industry as we all once thought.