This is it, our last Guest Speaker of the module and indeed 1st year. This week we had Fiona Harte from Palm who are a company that specialises in mobile phones and other handheld devices.
She started her presentation by giving us a rundown of the company’s history since 1996, she also talked about their webstore which operates in 16 countries around the world.
Next she talked about key areas for eCommerice managers to monitor, these include:
Data Protection & Privacy Law
Accessibility
Brand & Trademark Protection
Intellectual Property Rights
Contract Law
Online Advertising Law
Next we are shown diagrams about Media Channels that drive online traffic, these include:
Search Marketing (Search Engine Optimisation, Paid Search)
Online PR (Portal representation, Social Media Blogs & Feeds, Brand Protection)
Online Partnership (Sponsorship, Affiliate Marketing, Co-Branding)
Interactive Ads (Site specific media buys, Ad networks, sponsorship)
Opt-in Email (House list emails, co-branded, E-newsletter advertising)
Viral Marketing (Pass along emails, buzz marketing,)
She claims that 85% of people online navigate using a search engine and points out how important search engine marketing is. Search Marketing has to be done correctly tho and this is achieved first by finding ut who you are selling to. We need to find out what is the target audience through age, gender, nationality. We also find out what search terms were used, what products are used and what other websites are visited. Picking the right keywards are important in search engine marketing. Keywords can also include people’s mis-spellings.
When writing adverts they should have primary keywords used, the advert should look good as well as give good description of services/features as well as testimonials and prcing and to show the correct website link.
In Affiliate programmes visitors come to the Palm store by clicking on links, banners from other websites. When these visitors buy a product at the Palm store, Palm pays back 4% of the commission back to the other websites where the visitors clicked from.
Palm are involved with advertising on social networking including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Linkedin, Flickr etc.
My Thoughts
I thought it was a fairly interesting lecture. I doubt I will end up doing marketing when I leave college but it’s important to know how it works when studying digital media. I have worked on a few websites before, some for hotels and when I worked on those we always had to include a page with banners and adverts that worked on the click-through formula, and the hotel got paid for anything bought on the other websites. I didnt really understand how it worked at the time but now I do after seeing this lecture. This lecture was heavy going in places as marketing can sound complicated, altho I was at the lecture my mind was more focused on my Interview which was taking place right after the lecture so I didnt pick up on everything in the lecture. It was good to read over it again.
