How Adobe is Opening Doors for Marketers

Through a handful of my Marketing courses, including my Marketing Campaign Planning course, we have discussed location-based marketing. Using this type of strategy is helpful in a number of ways for marketers and businesses. Being able to contact consumers in a more personal way based on their geographic locations is quite beneficial. A marketer is able to target their consumers more when they have information about them. This week I came across an interesting announcement made by the Adobe company. 

Adobe & Location-based Marketing

This week I learned that Adobe announced they are making it easier for businesses to reach customers using their business apps. Adobe has made these updates to their mobile services. It will allow for businesses to have in-app ads based on their consumers activities, metrics and even location. This tactic aims at making it more effective for businesses when targeting consumers through apps. 

According to Forbes.com, Adobe is making this push in competition against salesforce.com and is in pursuit of marketing dominance. About  two-thirds of Fortune 50 companies use Adobe's Cloud Services. In co-ordinance with this, Adobe has put out options such as the in-app messages, mobile app management, mobile campaign management, and a new Adobe social app. These types of services are pertinent to consumers today because consumers are more likely to go to a businesses easily accessible apps as opposed to their mobile website. 

How Does This Apply?

Marketers need to know these new options and where their consumers are searching. They should have the ability to access these features to gain success in effectively reaching consumers. It is important marketers keep up with these trends. They will be able to make more personal connections to consumers. These features allow businesses to send push notifications to app consumers when they enter their stores. Location-based marketing and technologies allow businesses to do this. 

References

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Adobe-All-In-with-Location-Marketing/story.xhtml?story_id=10300CL9W1CP#

http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/11/18/adobe-embraces-location-based-marketing/

Watch Out For Social Media

This week I wanted to discuss the hot topic surrounding allegations against Bill Cosby. As you all may have heard either from Cosby's career, or more recently, he has numerous negative publicity to address concerning sexual assault allegations. When hearing about this topic, I found it very interesting that this issue started to pick up again because of a social media back fire. Those managing Bill Cosby's website (http://billcosby.com/) had created a meme generator for the celebrity. A meme is typically a humorous image with some short blurb on it. The most popular ones tend to go viral and are seen by many. I can assume the meme generator was supposed to be for fans of Cosby and a way to have his fans be engaged. Unfortunately this backfired for the star and brought more heat to him. 

Media Gone Wrong

People out there who saw this generator decided to portray Cosby negatively and use his own troubled situations to be funny. This is far from funny for the star. Memes created by the public have opened up more questions for sexual assault allegations which Cosby has been facing through the years. His team who created the generator had initially promoted tweeting their fun creations to Bill Cosby, which made this whole situation worse because it easily grabbed attention. With the option of social media, especially Twitter, it is so easy to hashtag and search such images or posts. Social media has made it so easy to share information instantly, which can be very bad for situations such as Cosby's'.

What to Do?

http://diymusician.cdbaby.com

Those who manage Cosby and his publicity/online presence have since taken the generator down, which is a great first step. From what I have learned through my courses, there are a few actions to take with these situations. I have specifically learned the three "A's". These are acknowledge, apologize, and act. I believe this could be part of Cosby's rebound to this situation. It does not matter whether the allegations are true or not, he needs to acknowledge what has occurred through social media. His team must apologize for the stir and share that this was of course not the intent. They need to act by taking the generator down and through positive work try to create a better image of Cosby after the meme incident. 

The Big Take Away

The big take away I provide to you all from this situation is this: expect the unexpected. Bill Cosby's team did not intend to create the meme generator for negativity, but it fell under the unexpected. There is always something that can go wrong and not everyone will take what you post the same way. Social media provides many benefits but also creates the possibility for negativity and the ability to falsify information.

To see more on this social media back fire:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-wp-wp-root--bc-cosby15-20141115-story.html

Creating Awareness With Raffles

This past week I attended the Grinspoon, Garvey & Young Entrepreneurship Conference at the Mass Mutual Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. The conference was created and has been held annually "to encourage innovative thinking and entrepreneurial acumen in young people." At this event I met other students from local colleges and sat in on two speaker sessions. The speaker session I want to mention is a social media speaker session. I heard three professionals speak and answer questions in regards to social media and business.

Prosperity Candle

One of the topics from this session which sparked my interest was given by Kim Hutt, the Director of Marketing for Prosperity Candle, a company which provides handmade candles and jobs for women rebuilding their lives. During her talk, she discussed what she is doing for the social media of Prosperity Candle. One of the sites they utilized for promoting the brand is called Rafflecopter. Rafflecopter is a site which provides a service of setting up giveaways for your company or product. The slogan of the site is "Rafflecopter is the world's easiest way to run a giveaway." I found this to be an interesting way to easily offer and control a giveaway to your audience. In the image above, it shows Prosperity Candle's recent giveaway, as well as how Rafflecopter works. A company embeds their giveaway address to any or all of their social media. From there, their consumers must share the post in various social media sites in order to increase their chances of winning the giveaway.

When & Why Use Rafflecopter?

Rafflecopter is a great way to have a giveaway in a simple and easy to use format. It is a savvy way to get consumers to share your product and brand through the giveaway. If one consumers shares the giveaway via their numerous social media accounts, many of their followers will see the posts. This process gains awareness and interest into the product and brand. Kim Hutt explained the best time in which her company utilizes Rafflecopter. They tend to have giveaways, such as now, right before holidays. If they increase awareness before big purchasing periods, people will think of their company when going to buy gifts for the Holidays or Mothers' Day, for example. In the consumer pathway, creating awareness is the first stage. It is important to create this awareness for consumers to recognize and know what your brand is. Overall, I find this site to be useful for companies in creating that promotion through social media and initiating that awareness a brand needs.

http://static.squarespace.com

Sites mentioned in this post: https://www.rafflecopter.com/

                                          http://www.prosperitycandle.com/