Have you ever talked to your friend about buying a certain product for example wireless earphones, and the next thing you see are advertisements on your social media sites like Facebook regarding the said product? Does that ever creep you out and get you all paranoid like “Who’s listening?!” because it sure does that to me. And because of that, do you ever question: How safe am I on the internet?

Well not to worry because in today’s post, I will giving you tip on how to ensure your safety on the internet.

Tip 1: Limit personal information you post on the internet

Personal information are information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:
a.whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
b.whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.’

Personal information such as mobile number, home address, relationship status can all post as threats to your cyber safety. All these information can lead to bigger threats. Therefore, always keep your personal information limited and not hand it out simply.

Tip 2: Turn on your privacy settings

Browsing and social media usage can expose a lot about you! Be sure you turn on privacy settings to keep put unwanted attention from hackers or other cyber dangers. Web browsers and mobile systems have privacy- enhancing settings available so be sure to enable them. For instance, on Instagram, you can keep your account private so only those you approve can follow you. However, note that some privacy settings are made hard to find so that companies can have access to your information for marketing purposes. SO! Be sure to find that privacy settings by hook or by crook!

Tip 3: Ensure a secure Internet Connection

In this day and age where internet is so prevalent, we would do anything we can to stay connected, even if it means finding random wi-fi connections. However, did you know that by doing that, you have no control over its security? Meaning people can access to your information and possibly use them for whatever means! Hence, always ensure that you are connected to a connection that is secure!

Tip 4: Choose Strong Passwords and NEVER share them

The photo above is a prime example of what your should NOT do. Choosing passwords such as “123456” or “qwerty” is the worse thing to do, and writing them down on a notepad is the absolute nope! Such passwords are easy to guess and easy to hack, people who have attained your password pretty much have all the information they need to cause trouble. To be safe, choose passwords that are strong. Most websites now make it a requirement to have passwords that are minimum 8 characters in length; inclusive of characters in at least 1 of these 3 categories:
1. Upper Case (A-Z)
2. Lowe Case (a-z)
3. Special characters (~`!@#$%^&*()+=_-{}[]\|:;”’?/<>,.)

A strong password should not contain a common proper name, login ID, email address, initials, first, middle or last name. If yours does, then you know what to do!

Tip 5: Download anti-virus programs and keep them updated

Anti-virus programs do not protect against every threat, however they do protect against malware. They detect the malware and remove them keeping your devices safe. Be sure to keep them updated so they stay current with your operating systems and and applications. Good Anti-virus programs include McAfee, Norton, AVG and more!

Be sure to keep these tips in mind and fend for your own cyber safety!

In this day and age where technology is thriving and advancing so quickly, it is hard not to adopt it or not that have a strategy that involves the usage of mobile.

• 

• 

According to Statista.com, the number of mobile usage in 2019 is forecasted to be 4.68billion and to increase to 4.78billion in 2020. A research done by ComScore also indicated that mobile users consume more than 2x minutes as compared to desktop users. This shows the amount of potential mobile marketing has that marketers can tap into when coming up with strategies for future campaigns.

Mobile Marketing Tools

As you can see, the potential is endless! So how can we realise this potential? Before we start, we need to understand the classification of the mobile marketing tools. Below is a table that explains the 4 classifications, victims, patrons, strangers and groupies.

Moving on to some of the tools that I have personally encountered most!

1. Mobils Ads.
Mobile Ads include mobile banners and display, idle screen advertising and in-game advertising. The photo is an example of in-game advertising whereby the game that gives players a choice to get more tools by watching a whole advertisement if they do not want to use a diamond to purchase the tools. Many players will choose to watch the advertisement so they can get the tools for free. Mobile Ads falls under the strangers and groupies classification. This is because companies are able to reach out to a large number of users and send out a general message to them. Customers who are exposed to the advertisement or message also do not identify themselves, therefore the companies do not know who they are dealing with. However, companies must be mindful when migrating the content from a big screen to a small one.

2. Mobile Coupons.
Mobile coupon itself is not an actual coupon, but rather a promotional communication displayed on the consumer’s mobile device. They can take many forms such as text messages, Mobile promotions validated at point of sale and in the form of emails and more.

Mobile Coupons would fall under the classification of patrons and groupies. Customers and receivers of such advertising usually gives the companies permission to send them marketing materials and most of the time, are personalised. However, they can also choose to receive such information without having to disclose personal information, just like the example I have inserted at the right.

3. Mobile Apps

• 

• 

• 

The above are screenshots of the Sephora App. The reason why the Sephora app is so successful is due to various reasons. Firstly, it notifies users of promotions, new products launches and at the same time serves as a blog to give recommendations and advises. Secondly, it allows users to make purchases immediately through the app providing users with convenience. Thirdly, it doubles as a Sephora membership card that users can flash and scan when making purchases in store. The app is also has a very simple interface that users can easily understand. Sephora app would be classified under patrons as all who downloads the app will receive personalised notification and also email from Sephora when there are new products and promotions happening.

HOT TIPS!!

To ensure that mobile marketing apps are successful, companies need to ensure the following:
a. It must helps to solve a problem
b. Is easy to use
c. Is updated frequently
d. Is built for Native Platform
e. Makes Business
f. Is kind to phone battery
g. Free

Companies should also be familiar with Google Micro-Moments, an intent-rich moment when a person turns to a device to act on a need-to-know, go, do or buy.

With that, we have come to the end of this article! Thanks for reading~

In the previous post, I talked a little about IMC, how to create a successful campaign and some of its tools. Today, I’ll be touching on one of the best but hardest to utilise tool – viral marketing!

According to Investopedia, viral marketing seeks to spread information about a product or service from person to person by word of mouth or sharing via the internet or email. The goal of viral marketing is to inspire individuals to share a marketing message to friends, family and other individuals to create exponential growth in the number of its recipients. (Kagan, 2018)

Now that we know what viral marketing is and what is aims to do, let’s look at my top 3 viral marketing campaigns and analyse why and how they became viral!

1. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

What started as a simple fund raiser became an internet sensation in July 2014. The challenge aims to raise funds for the ALS Association (ALSA). You and I knows how this challenge works – dump on yourself a bucket of ice water, nominate 3 people to do it within 24hours and donate to ALSA. But did you know, the challenge raised over $115 million and there were more than 17 million participants worldwide?

How did that happen? According to the 6 principles of contagiousness, it was due to Practical Value. Practical Value states that people like to pass on practical and useful information and that sharing these information strengthens social bonds and gives us satisfaction that we have helped someone.

The Ice Bucket Challenge is more than just a fun fund-raiser , it helped to generate awareness of ALS and was able to garner so much support and love from the community. People who participated in the challenge mostly did it because it was for a good cause. As a bonus to make it more attractive, the nominees have to complete the challenge within 24 hours. Having the nomination system and being a challenge for the greater good allowed the challenge and message to spread so quickly that ALSA was able to raise over $50K within a month.

2. Extra Gum – The story of Sarah and Juan

The next is an ad from Extra Gum. This ad published on 7 October 2015, garnered over 22million views on Youtube till date. It’s a story revolving around Sarah and Juan and showed how their love unwrapped with Extra Gum. It showed how Extra Gum was at every step of their relationship. Again, according to the 6 Principles of Contagiousness, this one obviously went viral because of the story it told.

Stories are way more effective because they are more personal, trustworthy and easily remembered. The story of Sarah and Juan was sweet and relatable in every way. In addition, the song in the ad, Can’t help falling in love, is a classic and stirs up emotions in people making the ad even more unforgettable.

Another genius thing was that the ad was accompanied by the hashtag, #GiveExtraGetExtra. It tells people that when you give our Extra Gum, you get extra benefits. In the case of this ad, Sarah got love in return. This appeals to hopeless romantics like myself who wish and would try to #GiveExtra in hopes to #GetExtra.

3. Ad Council – Love Has No Labels

The Love Has No Labels campaign is easily one of my favourites ever. In celebration of Pride Month, Ad Council came up with the Love Has No Labels campaign to challenge the public to open their eyes to their bias and prejudice and work to stop it in themselves, their friends, families, and colleagues. The campaign went viral and generated 59,344,931 views on Youtube. Not only does it educate people it stirred up much emotions. Not sure about you, but this campaign never fails to bring tears to my eyes. It is, in my opinion, so beautiful, touching and brings so much joy and warmth to my heart.

This campaign was a rather controversial one as it evoked various emotions from various groups of people. Many positive emotions were evoked from the campaign, it gave people in the LGBTQ community courage to come out to their family and friends, it gave everyone warmth and taught the public the beauty of acceptance and love. It was beautiful how they shed light and dismissed the bias and prejudice people may have and how it brought hope to so many.

However, it also brought many negative emotions such as disgust and disapproval. There was many anti-LGBTQ comments found under the video disagreeing with same-gender love and hated on the black family who came out with their son. Many made pedophile jokes regarding “Love has no age” implying that Ad Council supports pedophilia.

Either way, both negative and positive emotions made the campaign viral and conveyed their message worldwide.

In conclusion, there are many reasons why a content can go viral and the above mentioned are 3 out of 6 reasons. I hope that this post helped to increase your understanding of virality.

In today’s post, I will dive into the world of IMC! What is IMC? IMC stands for Integrated Marketing Communications, which blends various promotional tools and communications/ marketing/ advertising services and techniques to maximize profit. IMC is ultimately achieved through concise and consistent messaging that fosters familiarity and consumer affinity. (ANA, 2019)

The 4Cs!

The ladies in my family have always joked about the crucial 4Cs (Career, Credit Cards, Car, Condo) in defining a good husband. But the 4Cs I am about to introduce is no joke, because they are how you ensure a successful integration of digital media into the IMC.

1. Coherence is about making logical connections between different communication platforms.
2. Consistency refers to not having contradicting messages conveyed, but rather have messages that are supported and reinforced by one another.
3. Continuity means having consistent and connected communications over time.
4. Complementary is when the different communication platforms and messages are synergistic.

How to IMC?

Creating a successful IMC is very much like finding love. There are 7 simple steps that needs a lot of evaluation or else something can go entirely wrong. Without further a do, let’s jump right into this guide to IMC and love~

The first step to creating a successful IMC is to have a clear understanding of your target audience. Just like in love, you have to understand your partner, how he/she thinks, what his/her love languages are so you can convey your message in the best way.

Now, moving on to step 2, choosing your channels. In a relationship you have to choose the right way to convey your messages that will be best received by your partner. For instance, nagging at your partner may show that you care about him/her a lot, but it may rub him/her off the wrong way. Linking back to IMC, you have to select and know the pros and cons to the channels and how it will help ups reach your objectives.

Step 3: Having a consistent look. In the context of a relationship, you want your partner to always see you as this reliable and trustworthy person he/she wants to spend the rest of eternity with. This applies exactly the same for an IMC, you want your image to be the same so your target audience will develop a sense of attachment and reliance.

Other than having a consistent look, a successful IMC has clear and consistent content. For instance, the most important message that you want to send out in a relationship is “I love you”. You would want your partner to feel and know it so you have to keep “I love you” as a constant in everything you do, be it planning a date, cooking a meal, sending a text to your partner. Likewise in and IMC, you want your message to be consistent through all media and channels. This covers steps 4 and 5.

In the case of a relationship, your friends and family are your marketing teams and agencies. You want to make sure they do not pain you in a good light and they help you throughout the course of the relationship. Therefore, step 6 is ensuring that the marketing teams and agencies are working in sync.

Finally, in a relationship you need to constantly evaluate and take note of the consequences of your actions and words, whether they are good or bad. If they are bad, you have to make things better. Likewise for a campaign, you need to track and evaluate your campaign making sure what you are doing works.

Tools

Now that you know how to create an IMC, you need to know the tools that will be beneficial to your campaign. The above are multiple tools that you can use to communicate your message to your target audience. Before selecting the tools, you have to ensure that you know the pros and cons of each, and how they can be advantageous or disadvantageous to your campaign.

I hope that this article helped you understand the idea of IMC better! In the next post, we will look into one of the IMC tools, viral marketing! We will discuss about viral marketing and review some of my favourite viral marketing content!

Many companies are not aware of SEO and how they can use it as a tool to propel their business forward. This post will serve as a quick guide on what SEO is, why you should use it and how you can use it?

WHAT IS SEO?

SEO is the acronym of Search Engine Optimisation – A structured approach used to increase the position of a company or its products in search engine natural or organic results listings for selected keywords or phrases.

Search Engines have 2 major functions:
1. Crawling and Indexing, whereby the search engine’s automated bots crawl through links the the World Wide Web then storing them in massive databases to be recalled later when needed for a search query.
2. Providing Answers. Search Engines are answer machines that returns informations relevant to the searchers’ query and ranks the results in accordance to popularity.

WHY USE SEO?

SEO aids in making a website easy to understand for the users and for the search engine bots. It also helps the engines to understand each page and how it may be useful for the users. When a user’s search query is unclear and vague, SEO helps to pick up clues that the search engine understands.

By understanding search engine and SEO, companies will be able to properly build, format, and annotate your web content in a way that search engines can digest. This helps to drive traffic to a company’s website which is crucial for consumers to understand more about the company, and the products and services it provides. In addition, it does not incur high costs as well.

CONCLUDE!

SEO is definitely an important tool that enables and helps users alike to achieve more relevant information that are linked to a company. Therefore, to drive more traffic to their company, business owners should increase their understanding of search engines and SEO so that they can better utilise the platforms and push their business to success.

Social Media Marketing is essential in propelling a business to success. With the rapid advancement of technology, companies have to engage in Social Media to stay relevant. Besides staying relevant, Social Media allows for customer engagement, communication and is also a cost efficient way to make a brand standout. With the right mix, companies can use Social Media to their advantage. Let us take a look at how Peel, a mobile phone accessories company uses Social Media to differentiate itself from its competitors.

1. Instagram

• 

• 

• 

Peel has an extremely appealing and cohesive Instagram feed. It is inline with the brand’s minimalistic and stylish image. Being a brand with aesthetics as one of its major selling points, minor details in their posts helps to reinforce the message they want to send out. In addition, having an attractive feed makes people more inclined to following the brand. Not only does Peel have an aesthetically pleasing feed, their content are also engaging. Every post is accompanied by either a quote or a question, and they actively reply to users. This helps to connect the customers to the brand.

2. Facebook

Peel’s Facebook page is not only consistent with the minimalistic theme of the brand, but also contains interesting and attention grabbing video contents. For instance, the one above whereby Peel attempts to show buyers what happens after they order Peel case. The light-hearted video transports viewers into Peel’s office, giving them a glimpse of what the work environment is like. Videos as such differentiates Peel from its many competitors as customers will feel more integrated and welcomed by the brand.

In addition, Peel also uses Facebook to communicate product features, functions and new product launches with customers. Through Facebook, Peel is able to answer any enquiries that customers may have, improving on customer service. A fast reply makes customers feel that they are valued and important.

3. Blog

Blog are important to enhance customer value. Peel makes use of its blog to post related contents, and contents that bring customers closer to the business. For instance, articles like “10 minimalist gift ideas” give customers suggestions and advises on the gifts to buy and “The year ahead for Peel” informs customers of Peel’s plan the coming year. This keeps customers involved in the process and engages them better.

Key Takeaways!

In conclusion, there are a couple of things we can learn from Peel.
1. Integrating customers to the brand and increasing brand value is of utmost important.
2. For any marketing campaign to succeed, all marketing platforms should send a consistent message.
3. Having a cohesive feed/page goes a long way.