Scenario: Walking down a high street window shopping, something catches your eye and you enter the store. The next thing you’re doing is walking out of the store with a purchase.

The above scenario shows that without realising, you can actually become one part of a sales tunnel very quickly. Online things are different, granted people window shop but only seasoned buyers will go to the same online shop time and time again. This would usually happen if they’ve had a really good buying process, excellent customer service and event better delivery times.

For the general Joe/Jane Blogs who might only buy twice online in a month, buying online is generally different. They’re more likely to hear about a product socially.

Word of Mouth has changed dramatically in the last year or so, you’re more likely to find a group of people talking about a product online than you would physically. It takes one conversation with one link added for someone to become a buyer.

The question is, once you have a buyer how do you keep them interested in you and your company to come back and be return buyers?

The answer, you stay social.

Companies large and small really need to hook up to the fact that people are people, just like themselves they also need to understand their customers. Customers LOVE interaction. They LOVE feeling a part of something bigger. Get to know your customers socially, make a friend and you’ll gain a loyal follower. Remember however that it is not good of you to force yourself on people, present what you have in the right way to the right people and you are half way there.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit through a seminar titled “Building a brand with Social Media”.

This seminar intended to educate those unfamiliar with social media websites and in particular how they can be used as a marketing tool to build a brand for your business or product. The internet has allowed everyone their own voice and this seminar explained the platforms available such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and blogging to get this voice heard.

The keys to success are simple; talk, engage and communicate, be human and be honest. Do something different and be remembered for the right reasons. Even if you are remembered for something other than your product at first, people will associate this with your company and improve brand awareness.  Also, don’t think about the competition, you cannot control what they’re doing so concentrate on what you are doing.

A point that was echoed throughout the seminar was how this cannot be done overnight. Developing relationships and building a community around your brand takes time but if done properly will show results. You must treat this community you have built with respect and if you make an error resolve it and make people love you by doing something positive and different.

The Internet is the only tool that allows you to see what many others are thinking about you and your brand instantly without any extensive market research. You can identify people who love what you do and those who hate it and gather feedback about what you can do differently.

During the seminar, the speaker explained how Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and blogs can be used effectively in business;

Using the tool search.twitter.net on Twitter you can find those searching for your, or similar, products or services and utilize this by engaging with those people. The speaker gave personal examples from his own experiences, for example , after tweeting about his hay fever he received  a message and link from Lloyds pharmacy leading him to hay fever tablets. This can be done with any business, all you need to do is search for those tweeting about your product or service and engage with these people. This is also a great tool to find instant information from your customers about your brand and the products/services you sell and if necessary, turn your haters into fans.

Once you have a community of followers you can tell them about new products and tweet out offers.  If you engage with those with influence in your field you will become even more respected especially if they retweet your tweets to their followers.

Facebook offers paid advertising that is highly targeted meaning you can advertise to those who have mentioned they like or need a product or service that you’re offering. Not only this, you can create groups and fan pages for your business and build a community similar to twitter updating those interested in you with products and offers.

Flickr is a photo sharing application where you can upload photos and join different groups. This is another opportunity to add links to your website.

If you can write a blog with good content, you will gain interest and raise the profile of your business. Again, this is something that takes time and you have to gain respect in your field with interesting content that will bring regular readers.

Also, SEO should always be part of your online marketing campaign and you should hire a consultant to do this for you but use the right company.

The seminar looked at online marketing versus print marketing stating that although dependent on the industry, online marketing was much more efficient. This is because word of mouth is the best type of marketing and due to the instantaneous reaction of the internet, it cannot be beaten by offline print marketing. Online you can reach a global audience in little time, social media is massively viral and with the millions of users, it is easier for something to spread, for example, the T-mobile dance in the train station and Samsungs LED sheep.

The seminar was interactive showing live examples of the ways in which social media can be used. The speaker posted a prepped post to his own personal blog and demonstrated how, using bit.ly, you can shorten the URL for your post then use the twitter feed service to send the RSS feed of your blog to twitter. The link to your post will then be seen by your followers and if any of them decide to retweet your link it will also be seen by their followers.

The speaker suggested it was a good idea to employ a social strategist who will market your business online using social media for those who feel they are unable to do it effectively.

Social media is expanding at an alarming rate and it would be foolish for businesses not to embrace this.

Advertising online on social media sites not only allows you to target your product directly to the people who will be interested in it but also measure your success through tracking clicks and sales. We are particularly interested in advertising on fashion blogs, where we expect our target demographic would congregate. This is the main advantage of social media marketing as adverts can be targeted to a very specific audience. Also, online advertising is interactive, it is not a one-way medium as potential customers can click on your add and be directed straight to your website where, if they wish, can find out more information about you.

Advertising space is mostly sold on a CMP (cost per mille) basis which means you pay so much for every thousand impressions. Unlike affiliate marketing, which usually functions on CPC (Cost per click) model, you are paying for an advert regardless of whether it produces any conversions. However, for the amount of visitors social media websites receive, it would be a missed opportunity not to advertise here.

There are many successful fashion blogs with significant traffic numbers reaching hundreds of thousands of people worldwide so to reach this kind of audience can only be beneficial to us.

Buysellads.com is an advertising marketplace making it easier for advertisers to work with website publishers and vice versa. There is no need to deal with several different publishers and your ads can go live the same day. They have a database of over 1000 websites available to advertise on and I have identified a few fashion blogs which would be suitable for Eliot turner. One of them is http://www.myfashionlife.com/ which is updated daily with fashion news, shopping and product reviews. My Fashion Life generates over 250,000 page views per month and has a traffic rank of 64,145. We will consider using an advertising marketplace such as this rather than going directly to individual websites as it may save time.

When it comes to the advert itself, it is important that it connects with the audience and is specific to that particular audience, if the message is generic you will not have the same impact. Also, the advert needs to be catchy and entertaining without talking at them. The headline should ignite the reader’s interest convincing them you have what they need whilst being short and simple. The design should correspond with your branding and it is a good idea to include company logos and product images.

Here are the potential influential fashion blogs we would consider for advertising from all over the world:

• http://fashionblog.dailymail.co.uk/
• www.cosmofashion.co.uk
• www.fashionista.com
• www.shoppingblog.com
• www.makingitlovely.com
• http://galadarling.com/
• www.karencheng.com.au
• www.outblush.com
• http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com
• www.trenddelacreme.com
• http://womantribune.com
• www.myfashionlife.com
• www.busybeelifestyle.com

I am Alex Irwin!

I am currently working for Carrot Media as part of an eight week work placement set up by Shell Step, a placement scheme matching students and graduates with valuable work experience in relevant businesses. After several interviews with other companies, I was excited to read about this company as the project they were offering for a prospective employee was like no other; the eCommerce experiment. At a time when it is getting progressively harder to find a job,  I would have welcomed any placement offered to me, hence why I am so excited to be part of such a unique project that I know I will enjoy.

I have just completed my second year studying Media, Communications & Cultural studies at Newcastle University and I am hoping to gain valuable experience in the media industry from this placement whilst offering my own ideas. Part of the Shell Step scheme is to find a student to be awarded ‘The UK’s most enterprising student’ through consideration of what each student has offered to their host company.

I must admit my knowledge in the field of social media is somewhat limited, however I am hoping my enthusiasm in this project will make up for what I lack in technical ability and those following this blog will agree that it’s hard not to get excited about the project.

Throughout my eight weeks here I will be assisting the team with:

• Market Research to maximise sales
• Advertising the eCommerce experiment
• Social Media sites
• Social Media Marketing
• Blogging the process
• Working with the national and local print media to gain interest
• Building Connections with both suppliers, potential customers and those interested in the project
• Product Buying
• Product Advertising
• PR

I am looking forward to learning from and inputting towards this project!

Little bit of background behind today’s first video blog post. Last night I decided to put together a short video on something that has been bugging me about Twitter lately, and it links very well to marketing the eCommerce experiment and Eliot Turner. I chat a little about the auto-follow feature in Twitter and how it can be violated so that people can have a 0-10000 follower race in hours. It’s not marketing at the end of the day, follow people for a reason, engage in conversation for a reason and win those customers that LIKE you!

If you look at the most successful online shops in the market place you will see they rely heavily on email marketing. Therefore it’s really important that we build an opt-in email database rapidly. We are going to use quick and simple viral marketing techniques to build the database. Spam is an increasing problem for everyone using email, so it’s incredibly important that the data is gathered in a sensible and ethical way.

We are going to use an online prize draw competition to build interest in the site before launch. We will be giving away a few products and asking people to enter through an online form. The form will have an option to opt into the email distribution list to ensure only the people interest in our products receive the email.

Although we are running a pre-launch competition this is a long term market strategy and we will be running regular giveaways over the next 6 months. We are aiming to build an email marketing database of 10,000 active subscribers over this time frame.

We use what we feel is one of the best distribution systems in the market place which allows us to manage the mailing list to follow anti spam legislation. It will track sales, open rates, clickthroughs, demographics and much more. Most importantly the system will automatically allow people to unsubscribe and cleanse the data when hard bounces occur.

So the million dollar question is, “how do we get people to enter the competition en-mass?”

There are sites on the Internet that spread the word of online competitions. There are professionals who do nothing but enter online competitions and make money from doing so. For us this is very much a safety in numbers exercise of getting a huge number of people to sign up with only a certain percentage actually interested in our shop. Don’t forget that a further percentage of people will not want to be contacted by email and choose to opt out when entering the competition. Once we start sending marketing emails, we will lose further emails from hard bounces and people un-subscribing. Therefore to get 1000 active subscribers after the first email sent we need about 3500 entries per competition.

After 6 months of running the competitions we hope to have built the level of interest significantly to generate constant email sign ups. Our experience at carrotmedia has taught us this is a tried and tested technique which works fantastically for our clients.

Apparently (http://www.asos.com) holds an email list of over 2 1/2 million subscribers and costs per email address as £60. £60 being an average basket size. If you work out the numbers its quite astronomical. I’ll talk more on this in the near future.