Internet marketing – What will be the content next time ?

Going through some of the comments in the blogs I could experience a range of emotions from a tinge sadness to maybe its getting over!. The last 10 weeks have been an interesting journey for me. This is the only marketing elective I chose and in hindsight it was a wise decision thanks to my friend Srijib. I have learnt about the range of tools, mediums and strategies one can use on the net. Also surprising is the speed of evolution. We read about it daily but only when one studies it in depth does one feel the impact. It also gives another frame of thinking and one more platform for a marketer. Maybe one lecture in the core marketing subject should be devoted to Internet marketing? However my biggest learning is the need to be in touch of the developments on a continuous basis especially if this is not related to your core job. I don’t think browsing the newspaper is enough. Any ideas how this could be done? Maybe we should refer to each year's class slides for an update. I don’t think any other academic course will have to change its content so frequently.

MoBank © The wherever you go bank

"It gives the ability to do what you want, whenever you want"

"If you're on your way home and remember it's your mum's birthday, with a click you can pay for flowers"


I am working on my research project on Direct Banking (Internet/Mobile banking ) and how it is reshaping the retail banking sector and I stumbled upon this.

The concept for MoBank is to enable its customers to do banking, shopping and book tickets via their mobile phone. It will be available first on iphone and then on blackberry. It works by connecting the buyer, via the internet on their phone, to a payment system. They have a PIN number to pay/buy, meaning the user does not have to enter their 16-digit credit or debit card details every time they make a transaction. So literally you can operate all your transactions from your mobile phone.

This company has been founded by former First Direct and Egg bankers Steve Townend and Dominic Keen and is already attracting interest from technology and mobile industry. In 2008 it won a Red Herring 100 award for the best start-ups in Europe; and also won the Oxford Siad Business Venture Award 2008.

I guess this is one of the few instances’ in which this concept has been taken from an emerging market and applied in UK. This already exists in parts of Africa and Asia.

The company’s website ( they haven’t started as yet)

http://www.mobank.co.uk/


And additionally info on mobile banking

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/features/114497/Mobile_payment_services_-_Banking_on_mobile_payment.html

Perception of buying on the net – Everyday low prices?

Increasingly consumers feel that the Internet offers the cheapest price for any good. This perception may be based on the belief that selling via internet is cheaper as there are no overheads or brick and mortar costs. In Business banking, banks have started offering value added services on the net to corporate and to small and medium enterprises, but to their dismay have realized that consumers do not want to pay for these services. Customers feel anything available on the net should be free.
The fact that internet usage has been increasing rapidly is a great. However how does one manage this perception, can prices keep going down? Is it possible to charge a premium using Net as a medium. What I mean is the price on the net is higher than in a retail outlet. I am not talking about deals but a sustained pricing strategy. Anyone aware of such a situation ?

Internet makes one P of marketing extinct?

Internet has been instrumental in modifying the 4 P’s of marketing. One P place or distribution is perceived to be in threat. Internet combined with a delivery mechanism (read DHL, post or courier) are putting pressure on traditional distribution mediums like retail outlets for consumer durables . This was led some to believe that the showrooms are a thing of the past. I think it is a long way before traditional distribution outlets disappear. Today customers go to an outlet, explore the items available and maybe then may decide to buy the item online, either because it’s cheaper or it is convenient. As social individuals we all love the shopping experience, going to a showroom, exploring the options. I was wondering what are your views on this ?

Think of a world where there are no shops on Oxford street … would you still enjoy just shopping on the net?

Retail Banking and the Internet

Retail Banking is under pressure. Revenues are down due to higher losses, lower lending and decrease in fee income. Bankers are increasingly looking at cost reductions to improve profitability. Internet banking provides some comfort. ATM’s were primarily used to drive customers out of branches as it is more expensive to service them from a branch. Now it’s the turn of Internet. In some countries banks charge differential fees for a particular request. E.g. Stop payment charges are zero over the net, a small amount from an ATM and a nice fee if done from the branch, a form of price discrimination. I haven’t seen this much in UK, does any one of you have such experience ?

Customers have started using most of their transactions on line. It is impossible to remove all the bank branches but it makes we wonder in the near future do we need so many branches. It was a requirement before online banking? does it make sense now ?

10 Great ways to improve your online presence

I picked this article from the net, this is intresting.... Can we get 10 more ideas in addition to these listed below ?

1) Search engine marketing
Having a brilliant website does not always lead to traffic and conversion success. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a collection of techniques that help sites achieve strong search engine rankings through Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. The difference in traffic count from one site to another is multiplied tremendously by attaining first page position in common Google searches, and preferably a top 5 position. New research suggests nearly half of online consumers use search engine to search for products.
2) Article marketing
Article marketing is a fast-growing online marketing tool that offers some SEO benefits as well as increased media communication with potential audiences. Companies are writing, or hiring SEO writers to write, articles that offer quality information and search engine benefits based on effective use of keywords that consumers search for. Articles can be placed on your site, shared through a blog, or submitted to one of the many free online article submission sites.
3) Pay-per-click or sponsored link advertising
There are certainly many opportunities for free promotion online. However, as is the common rule of advertising, you have more control over what you pay for. Google, Microsoft, and many other small and medium-sized companies offer pay-per-click or sponsored listing opportunities. This is where businesses pay to achieve high position in a sponsored link section of consumer searches. Costs for placement vary as you can usually bid on a per click cost to achieve higher positions. Essentially, you pay to generate visitors to your site as they search. The key to success with PPC is to have effective .landing pages., which are the pages on your site where clickers land. PPC is usually a short-term traffic generation technique as successful sites increase SEO.
4) Use social media
Social media networks are taking over internet marketing. These are popular sites, including Digg.com, Twitter, MySpace, and more that provide a natural online network. Essentially, it offers companies a built in opportunity for viral marketing. Your company can network with others, submit articles and news for users, and essentially help direct the movement of word of mouth through the web.
5) Enter the blogosphere
Any serious website must consider the advantages of a site-based blog or a companion blog from an external location. A blog is an online diary or ongoing written communication with visitors. Some companies have a blog on their site that serves as a constant update on news, features, and other information for visitors. Others use some popular online blogs including WordPress and BlogSpot. You can operate your blog, build networks and groups, and provide link backs to help drive traffic to your site. Many sites use their blog for SEO as it increases content and adds link backs (an important search engine factor). Many companies publish regular blog articles.
6) Exchange links
A common technique for online growth is link exchange networking. This involves finding partner sites that are willing to provide a link to your site, in exchange for you doing the same for them. This adds another location for consumers to find you. More importantly, links from sites that are popular and high in traffic can be very beneficial to your Google popularity, and ultimately, your search engine positioning.
7) Use RSS feeds
RSS feeds are ways for your visitors to stay in touch with what is going on with your website. Google Reader or Google alerts is a popular feed. By adding a button on your home page, readers can subscribe to an ongoing feed that updates then as new items are added to your site. It is a great way to drive repeat traffic.
8) Share the news
One of the best ways to grow your online presence is to track and retain visitors. Having a way to easily capture contact information from visitors to add them to your contact list is vital. Writing a regularly newsletter (2-4 times per month) to communicate directly with your clients/customers about recent news, events, and to stay in front of your audience helps with growth. Newsletter distribution with links back to your site can also lead directly to increased traffic from recipients.
9) Add pages
A general rule of thumb of increasing SEO performance is to add traffic. Having more cached pages that are indexed by Google and other search engines helps gives your site more impact in search engines. Additionally, you can set up additional pages as independent landing pages to help increase sales conversion for specific products as they become easier to find for visitors who do not have to navigate through your site to get to sales pages.
10) Learn how to 'mobilize'
As the iPhone and other multi-purpose cell phone products increase their internet technology and features, companies have greater ability to contact consumers. Understanding all of these opportunities can be a tremendous advantage to your online presence. Text messaging, mobile updating, and interactivity between your site and the mobile environment can all help grow and retain traffic

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios and one of my favourites


I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.