Virtual Money is the money that does not exist in a real form, it’s earlier examples were monopoly money or a in-game video game currency used for purchasing game items that are not transferable for real money. But now same idea has grown into much wide and valuable with online gaming system and environments that host it.71662524

Not in the real world then the psychology of the fast-growing virtual marketplace is turning out to be similar to the real one.

Virtual currency is to become a much more accepted form of payment for both online and offline gamming environments. With this new ways to develop brands and their marketing it’s not a surprise if virtual malls come into existence selling branded virtual goods directly to consumers.

social games are played online  with support of social media sites keeps users more connected , like that of Farmville game brand developed by zynga games where facebook hosts it exclusively . In these type of games where prices are dictated by actual demand, it has become very easy to experiment and implement a business models.

Factors that encourage the growth and popularity.

Experiencing happiness and emotions

Virtual goods are experiential in nature, gives immediate happiness. Gaming experience enhances with the use of the goods, one that offers us the ability achieve results and entertainment.

Consumers want to buy experiences, not just products, and want to feel empowered in what they buy. Goods should be low-cost, low-hassle and easy to amass

Virtual goods are low-cost and give better value.

These goods give the feel of owning  a big estate for 10 $ , users don’t find very hard to give away ten dollars for a feel of having a better image in the virtual world , as the other users are from real world too .

 Simplified transaction process

By integrating various payment portals into the gamming environment like
PayPal etc .  one does not  even have to leave your seat to find a credit card feed information , you can just continue on with your game without interrupting it  .

 

Google ads show ads can be anything on web page from text information, image, video or any interactive element in the web page .There are two sections inn Google

1) Google Search network: this includes Google’s search engine and search properties.

2) Google Display Network: this includes a wide range of websites that host Google ads.

Impact of Google ad words on your business.

• With largest audience in internet Google is the most connected network and place instantly remembered for searching anything by users. An ad display here will definitely create many leads for business.
• It all works on relevance of key words in a website, if consumer doesn’t search relevant key works present in website it will be shown to the searcher else it won’t.
• One can also concentrate in their target market as Google has option for more than sixty categories of website to carry out specific advertisement.
• It is also compatible with all kind of goals, increasing brand awareness and sales
•  More successful campaigns and popularity a ad makes more points are awarded, making your effort to reach the target market more cost-effective.
• It has comprehensive tracking and reporting, including conversion tracking. One can get information for  forecasting , implementation and results of their strategies
• It saves you time and is adaptable to your business. You control how much you spend in real time. You only pay when a user clicks on your ad or when you reach a certain amount of impressions. Budget and time control is most attractive aspect, one can control their own budget and expenses on their campaign with pay as you go system. Not only can your budget time frame also be decided.
• One can be more precise by customizing their ad even choosing their own font size and style, and can decide where, when and how ad is to be placed according to their own choices.

so hen using Google Ad Words is a cost-effective and goal oriented method to Internet Marketing why should not go for it .

http://www.virtualnet.co.uk/google_adwords/what_is_google_adwords.html

 

Social media and return on marketing investment

With business from all sectors using social media to expand their consumer base and reach them, some use it as an additional channel to reach consumers, some for popularity and support, for some it’s the core communication method to attract consumers.

With business whose majority of consumes are made and reached they have to take marketing through social media and online marketing seriously, and have most of their marketing budget dedicated for it ,still they have subdivisions a multichannel model of marketing  through online has various channels like  Social Media, Google SEO, Online Advertising and outdoor Advertising  which eventually routs to web .

so now, how to account the money spent on these marketing campaigns  what metrics they have to use to  gather information to keep track of their spending and also where and when to divert their investments .

Usually ROI (return on investment) gives information in general, for more specific information relating to marketing ROMI (return on marketing investment) is used . In definition ROMI = total revenue from marketing / money spend on marketing.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/is-social-media-marketing-measurable-the-big-debate/

Since social media is vast and has very large variety of users calculating gathering information is a difficult and complex procedure and even when data is collected it make difficult to measure accuracy of what consumer is looking.

And potential consumers can be from different social media platforms and navigate through links from each other that is also very hard to come to conclusion from where consumer interest is and where marketers need to concentrate.

Conclusion:

If marketers are going with specific areas to measure it can be more accurate and clear. Example if

Measuring number of visits per week or number of people from certain face book community , number of people joining in a week etc .

So fragmenting the information collected by areas, interests and what can be measurable in short term periods can be useful and quantum it when required for large scale can be really helpful .

 

Social network graphs :

A network graph pictorial description of interconnected objects .

When we call social network that same idea applies here a social media graphs depict the connections and social circles ones social media profile has with other.

Why is it useful?

With social networking growing and expanding very fast and touching everybody social network marketing campaigns are under taken by the marketers.

With a large profile population marketers has to figure out a way to reach their customers since not every profile will be their target marketers has to find how profiles connect with each other and their likes , dislikes ,preferences etc .

Nodes & ties: Each individual is called Node and connections made by one node to other node is called Ties.

Analysis of the noses and ties are made on the basis of functionality and reason for connecting within nodes.

If a node shares common ideology with other nodes underthem ,because of their involvement in certain area as well as their relationship in general.

Example: all the students of a university connect to a circle to share information this forms a circle further student from biology department connects to it for its update, with just looking at a node in a graph it can be easy to find out

Various type of graphs are used to extract various information needed .

They can be categorised into various types like regular graphs , small world graphs ,popular graphs , depending on their complexity and randomness.

Nodes form various relationships(ties) with other nodes can be from family ,social , business etc .

Why mapping social network profiles?

In marketing point of view graphs can used to identify individual node’s interests to find out if it fits into target market.

If it fits into target market its easy to find other nodes in the circle to find other potential clients and consumers .

Issues with mapping and graphs :

it is hard to figure out what in the real world is happening between the ties , the information provided by the node can be true or fake.

Making optimistic assumptions based on the information from the nodes can be misleading too.

 

Click to access viegas-cscw04.pdf

http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2010/12/facebooks-social-network-graph.html

 

 

 

 

WEBSITES AND USERS

 

These days website has become a gateway to the seek information about something, whether it’s a business or a individual .websites has become a platform to share information and updates.

In business perspective all most everyone presence is visible from a small business entity or a large corporate everyone uses a website to mark their presence but how would this website cerate consumer attraction and create more market presence.

In order to the effective website design understands the mindset and consumer’s approach to the website is crucial.

1) Do users really go through all the details?

In most of the cases web pages are roughly scanned buy the users looking for something that is relevant to their purpose of visit , the moment they find it they have their concentration focused in that and carry on further , this process is called as heat mapping through which areas where vistiors focus can be found out ,  so the presentation of information in right format in right position in the web page  where there is density of heat is important .

By having knowledge about the areas of information looking for which a user visits the website has to get priority in making web development strategy. And this information must be made short and attractive to user’s sight in best understandable simple but effective wordings.

2) How organised is your website.

Almost every web site and webpage is a organised one , but effectiveness is also major part of it , basically in general users are visiting  a web page to seek some information , if a web site makes them to look carefully and think , can make the loose patience this leads to a question  how patient your users are the more you make user think to search his the more impatient they become its simple like a buyer in a grocery store loses his interest when he is not properly guided to particular section  .

So the level of complexity must be based on the patience and the need of the consumer.

3) User interface and safety

User interface is an important factor and must be taken seriously, many things from technical compatibility to navigation between pages, considering from what segment users belong and their technical skills   . And also make sure that interface should make user feel secure when revealing their information, a website with more advertisement banners and the content the display will make feel less genuine and loose users trust.

So considering the visitor’s perspective and feedback and openness to updates and devlopment  improves effectiveness of the website.

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/smartin/int_design.html

http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin/projects/ui_design.html

http://www.bearzweb.com/effective_web_design.html

 

 

social network analysis

Information posted on your social networking site is like your own presence in online world and this information is open to everybody.

Once you advertise yourselves it’s the people who chose to picks the information, well question raises whether it’s good to reveal all the information or not. So there is one logic, one is not sending this information from point A to B, they don’t chose to pick who sees the information skipping almost all the privacy laws. There are some aspects where people use this as platform to make popular and create social connections for better connections.

http://mashable.com/2010/03/02/data-mining-social-media/

How about vice versa.  When it’s time to finding people from this large social networks there are lots of people waiting for your information ,from large companies to small organisation or  whoever needs to market themselves to their target market tries to obtain information, with increase usage of social networking on internet this information has never been so easy to collect

The data collected through social networks can be seen broadly in three ways

1) Attribute Data: Attribute data is about opinions, behaviours, attitudes, interests that a person’s profile shows.

2) Relational Data: Relational data tells about connections made to other profiles like social circles and meetings, ties and relations with others.

3) Ideational Data: And ideational data tells about ones ideas, motives, aims and things that are to be done future.

With this kind of data marketers become very clear about making their marketing strategy and reaching their target area.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-internet-analytics.html

To extract information from the data, marketers use analytics software like Google analytics which shows all information in an easily viewable and understandable graphical format.

Social Network Analysis software: A list

There are many other analytic tools and software that can combine statistics and neural network techniques to determine relations structures such as UCINET & Net Draw, Visualize, yED Graph Editor, Discourse Network Analyzer etc .

How it helps marketers.

With usage of these software tools marketers can unfold the connections that are masked and cannot be seen though general view. This helps in making strategic marketing plans and focus on future development.

Holley, V.K.a.J., n.d. http://www.orgnet.com. [Online] Available at: http://www.orgnet.com/BuildingNetworks.pdf [Accessed 27 SEP 2011].

scott, j., 2004. social network analysis a hand book. 4th ed. London,Thousand oaks CA , Newdelhi: SAGE.

 

 

Marketing: From Traditional to social media.

It all started with Digital age, when more and more people adapted to it and changed the way they communicate. within short period the more people has turned to almost everybody  with the exception of old school population ,  change occurred from post box to mailbox , from postal address to E-mail address  touching  every part of daily life.

Digital age resulted in new marketing techniques based on E-commerce the style of promotion did add new dimensions in marketing model but some delivery methods did add only a new face to old technique like post box that used to be filled with unwanted mails, now got a new form called junk E-mails.

When E-mail marketing took the acceleration in 1995 in parallel with the growth of internet user’s, marketing was initially limited and targeted to technology oriented users who had e-mail as primary but later on this spread over to commercial usage on wide scale.

Leading to next generation of web usage called WEB 2.0 and with this a new trend for connecting people around the globe has started. Since the last decade the emergence of social networking and its popularity has multiplied with great pace. The whole momentum shifted to social networking and with number of messages one person receives and sends is more than that of his e-mail account.

Marketers started using this new platform for making consumers and targeting them this led to creation of new social media marketing phase.

Well how does it work then? , there are many internet marketing consultants out in the market, and what they do is.

• Identifying client and creating a profile and deciding content for that profile.
• Surveying people and gathering other kinds of information that matched the profile, from the feedback and information in hand they fix out what kind of content they want.
• Finding online communities of people that matched the client profile.
• Finally transforming the client knowledge into content and distribute this content all over the Internet.  Through various platforms like Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Face book, forums, blogs, social networks, social bookmarking sites and article directories.

Once a business is in the social networking space recommendations will be the key for the business to spread.

So keeping the consumer satisfaction is directly proportional to number of consumers in the social networking more satisfied consumers will give more popularity ultimately more business.

 

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