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Week 14: Developing Online Advertising

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      This is an example of ads I would use for my social media accounts for Cousha Coffee. I feel that these would be effective because although they are basic in nature, they let new customers know about my store and how and where they can visit. In addition, when it comes to advertising for your store there is usually an objective that guides it. This can range from any kind of call to action or it can be used to update, to influence or to remind customers about your store and products. When it comes to these objectives, I think it would be most useful to inform customers about my products and what my business is all about because it is brand new and people know nothing about it. I think I could use multiple objectives for my business as it grows and gains popularity. An example of this would using an advertising campaign to influence customers that visit other coffee shops and explain to them why mine is a product they should try as well. I also would use my ads to

Week 17: My Final Blog Post!

            Although I do not own my own business, this class has taught me invaluable information on how I can market, promote and advertise for a future company should I try and create one. I never knew how many different apps and tools there were to help improve a business and make sure it is reaching further and further into the Internet. I have enjoyed experimenting and learning how to use so many different ones, in addition to just having knowledge of how company’s work and what they do to advertise to me as a consumer. Finally, this class has taught me the importance of consistently creating content across multiple platforms in order to keep a store in business. This class was one of my favorites during this semester.             Before taking this class, I was not aware of the different uses of social media. I had my own profiles on some of these platforms like Facebook and Instagram but I never posted anything and mostly just used the to look around when I w

Week 16A: Planning Your Future Strategy

Throughout this class, we have used multiple Internet tools like Twitter, newsletters, some old fashioned networking and more to create or improve our businesses. The ones that I enjoyed using and thought were the most useful were Instagram and Google Analytics. When it comes to using these tools for marketing and advertising, money should not be spent endlessly but it is crucial to invest in ads to further grow your business. You should at least post daily on your social media accounts and about 10% of your budget or more should be used to market your products. In the social media driven world today, you are constantly building a visual profile of one’s self. Instagram is the epitome of this and because it so popular amongst a younger demographic, it is extremely useful in advertising and growing your business online. This is especially true for restaurants and food vendors because users can see your products and become interested by the way the food looks and the ae

Week 11A: Email Marketing

            Newsletters and emails in general can be a great way to keep in touch with current customers, as well as cater to new ones. One aspect of them is how often they are sent out, which is extremely important. It’s key to find a balance on how many emails to send because you don’t want to turn your customers off or have your emails get lost in a messy inbox but you also want to remind them of the things going on with your company enough so that they have you in their mind often. I personally think sending one newsletter a week is acceptable with the addition of occasionally adding in extra emails to let the customers know about last minute deals or subscriptions. This way you don’t flood them with excessive information but also keep them in the loop.             In addition to this, the content and the aesthetic of the newsletters are other aspects that are essential when composing and sending emails. I think grabbing the attention of your customers with the look to

Week 12A: Using Other Online Tools

So far in this class we’ve used multiple social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but there are many more tools that still out there that could further improve my fake business and everyone else’s as well. For my cafĂ©, I think Yelp would be the best other sites/tools to utilize to develop my business. For any restaurant, Yelp is an invaluable tool to market your menu and what your customers think of you with their reviews. To integrate into my current business plan, I would incentivize customers to leave reviews in exchange for something small, like a free coffee. Encouraging customers to leave reviews boosts the star rating each business has and will make it easier for new customers to find and try your store. It would also allow me to see what complaints or suggestions any people have and see how I can exchange, fix, or improve on what they’ve said. One more positive aspect of this website is that it can show important yet basic information about your sto

Week 13A: Online Advertising - Analysis of the Marketplace

            There are numerous examples to follow for advertising when it comes to cafes and coffee shops. Three large-scale examples of these are Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Pete’s Coffee. Two smaller examples are Blue Bottle Coffee and Holsem Coffee in North Park, San Diego. While they each have their own intricacies in their advertising models overall, the larger companies tend to be similar to one another and the smaller ones vary depending on what their goal is. The big companies like Starbucks are more about quantity over quality. They focusing on making sure they have a store on every block and make their logos and products extremely recognizable so that they are what people think of when coffee comes to their mind. An example of what smaller companies might do, like Holsem, is build with the community and advertise directly to them be portraying a certain feel and unique product. I think both these types of advertising are effective because you see how successful they

Week 10A: Blogging for Business

Almost every time a person goes to the Internet to search for a service or product, it is usually prompted by a question or a problem in his or her own life. While plenty solutions or answers to these things can be simple, a large proportion of people can be looking to connect mentally and emotionally to the answer for their problem or question. This is why it is useful to add human interest, in some cases, to your posts on your websites. If a person feels an emotional connection to your product or service they are more likely to use it, continue to use it and may even branch out and suggest to other people with the same problem. We see broad examples of this on television or the internet daily: a commercial for life insurance where a father is proud of his son for finally having children and starting his own family, or an internet ad for baking supplies where a mother and daughter have their aprons on in the kitchen and are smiling at each other with flour on their faces. Wh