Trolly Ads

Yesterday while roaming around the streets of my hometown, I saw a small local ice cream trolly covered with RIM banner. First i thought the trolly owner must have found the banner lying somewhere and used to cover his trolly, but closer inspection revealed otherwise. The trolly also had information about some present scheme of RIM. Wish i had my cam that time.

So we are seeing a vew form of promotion here. This is not new for ice cream, cold drink or other such brands who have their own branded trollies, but a modile service provider on a trolly was a little wierd. I guess this was a good way of reducing costs. This trolly would have roamed a number of streets in one day, selling its Ice Cream and how much would have RIM paid that trolly owner. So we have brand visibility along with very low costs. Also normally a trolly has its usual area of operation, that guy is going to roam within the same area everyday. This trolly was roaming around the college area, with very high density of students. I guess RIM had rightly placed its ad in the heart its market without having to purchase any wall, or billboard. So guys keep your eyes and ears open, there are many more such things out there :)

Kids influence buying decision???

I have been hearing about this in many of my marketing classes and have been reading about this since months. Everyone has been saying about kids influencing parents’ decision to buy a car, a TV, a camera, a washing machine and what not. Recently I read an article about kids asking their mothers to buy Whirpool washing machine ‘cause it has some magic in the ads. I have a question here, how many times have we seen parents taking decisions about household things based on what their kid recommendations? I think the marketers or at least the authors are getting a bit confused here. Yes the kids are influencing their parents’ decisions, but not in the case of products they have no knowledge about and definitely not because they have seen some sort of ad and have liked the “magic”. This is not a chocolate that mama will buy him cause there some genie coming out of it in the ads. In the categories like cell phones, laptops and all such fast changing gadgets, kids around the age of 12-13 years have much higher knowledge and are more up-to-date as compared to their parents. Here for sure they do influence their decision, but this influence is due to better knowledge and not due to some odd ad.

Direct Marketing

Most of you reading this blog might be well acquainted with the concept of direct marketing. For those who are new to it, direct marketing as the name suggests is reaching the customer directly, without using any mass media. The main modes of communication used in direct marketing are, Phones, Door-to-Door salesmen, E-mail, mails, SMS. Almost all of us have experienced it some day or the other. Direct marketing is a very cost effective and targeted marketing communication, with high return on every marketing dollar spent, but there are lot problems with direct marketing. First of all it causes a lot of annoyance to the customer. All of us have received calls from credit card companies, banks etc. for new offers. These calls or messages more often than not come when we are busy. The companies have now been forced into a “Do no Disturb” facility to the customers, for those who don’t want to receive these calls or messages. So how useful do you think direct marketing is here. Then there are the long used door-to-door salesmen. The boards outside many housing complexes saying “Vendors and salesmen not allowed” say everything. How many times have we banged doors on their faces? How many times have they been able to convince us to buy their product? Mails and Email are the most non-disturbing means of DM. Emails many times end up in the spam or bulk folder and thus get deleted without even being read. And spams from a company create a big negative image for it. So we are left with mails, well these wont disturb anyone and wont even go into spam automatically. But how convenient is sending physical mails.

Washroom marketing

As the name suggests, it’s advertising in the washroom, literally. Something like putting the advertisement and pamphlet about a product in the loo. This is a place our eyes can never miss, 9 out of 10 times its gender specific, and when you are in the loo, you might as well read it. Most of us have taken newspapers to the loo, which infact is filled with ads. There have been questions about the privacy issues in the washroom, but I can’t figure out how privacy comes into picture here. There is no camera there in the washroom, unless and until the advertisement is hiding a cam under it. I don’t think just placing something for you to read there doesn’t lead to invasion of privacy. Moreover it’s a sure shot method of reaching the customer. He/she will read it without any disturbance. And ya for everyone’s information there are companies too for washroom marketing like Positive Media of UK, IN YOUR FACE media corp. and many other.The marketing communication world is getting weirder by the day…

Search Engine Marketing

A few days back I had doubts about the effectiveness of Google Adwords campaign. I read somewhere and had also observed this in people, that when we search for something in Google, we know that the right hand side will have sponsored links and thus don’t give it much attention. My doubt was cleared when during a recent class discussion we were told that Google makes around 90 percent of its revenues from Adwords program. This fact was validated by a recent Economic Times article, where it is mentioned that Adwords generated over 5 Billion USD in revenue, which is around 99 percent of the total revenue. One more thing that clears my doubt is the emergence of a number of search marketing firms, not just in the developed nations, where we know Internet economy is quiet developed, but also in India. In a class discussion we were introduced to Pinstrom, a highly successful SEM firm from India. More about the company can be found at its site. In the same Economic Times article I found the names of three more Indian SEM firms, Communicate2, Webchutney and Quasar media, I bet if I go a search right now I will find lots more. So what happens in SEM. I will write here what all I have understood about SEM till now, the learning is still on. An SEM firm acts as a mediator between a company who wants to advertise on Google, through Adwords obviously, and Google itself. So suppose a company X wants to place ads on Google for its products or services. It will approach an SEM firm say Y. Y will decide on the key words for which ads for X should be placed, It would make the complete Adwords campaign, which involves, text, region to which the ads have to be targeted, etc. and then signs up for it. So the ads of company X appear on Google search from a particular region (might be a country, state, city, or a smaller region), for a particular set of key words. This is SEM in a nut shell.

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This is a post from my blog about Google

A lot info about the Marketing Jargons coming up soon....