Dan's Blog

This mornings guest speaker was Fiona Hart from Palm. Fiona has worked for 15 years in Sales and Marketing and has been working with Palm to manage and market their online e-commerce store. Today she gave us a brief look at what palm do, how and online store works and what’s the best way to bring people to the store.

Palm are a company who specialize in pdas (personal digital assistants) which are ‘smart’ phones to you and I. They run palm, windows and web operating systems and have been around since the palm piolet in 1996.

Palm Phones

Their latest and most successful launch has been for the Palm Pre which hit our stores last autumn if I remember correctly and is available only on the 02 network. It’s direct competitor is the apple iPhone and although it has not seen nearly as good sales as the iPhone it is still quite an innovative and practical device. It’s big selling point over the iPhone being its capability to run more than one application at once meaning quicker and effortless navigation.

Working in e-commerce, Fiona’s Team Scope is to

• Deliver on a financial target and to help grow revenue.
• Create loyal and satisfied customers.
• Provide market intelligence to Palm.

A very interesting  point Fiona made about e-commerce compared to traditional commerce was that by doing business online, they can use real time market analysis. This means that if they run a campaign or offer that isn’t doing so well they can reject it or change it to be more affective within 72 hours. This is opposed to printing posters or flyers, creating tv or radio ads or generally spending a lot of money on a marketing strategy that won’t work. It saves the company wasting a lot of time, money and plenty of effort. Definitely a plus side to e-commerce.

Fiona showed us a diagram of the process taken from when the customer orders the product to having it shipped to them to the merchant reciving payment. This is similar to the diagram she showed us:

Online store

A lot of Fionas talk was about marketing and how to get people to visit and shop at their online store. Search engine optimization being one of the best ways for them to advertise because 85% of people use search engines to navigate their way through the internet. Another popular way is by search engine advertising which is when the company pays to have their link close to the top of the search results. There are many more ways of online marketing but I would be here all day talking about them so instead I shall show you another diagram which highlights some other ways.

Online Marketing

This is some info i found about digital advertising from the state of the net issuse 16.

Digital advertising:

Digital advertising will be the third largest medium in Ireland in 2010 and grow by 9% compared with an overall advertising market decrease of 7%, according to management consultancy Billetts.
As forecasters go, Billetts has a better class of crystal ball than others, as it audits budgets for major advertisers. The consultancy puts a value of €86 million on Irish digital advertising in 2009 giving it a market share of 10.6%, on a par with radio. Billetts reports that online classifieds took a “huge hit” last year, with revenues halved, but search performed well and is now the largest category within online.
In the UK, the most recent IAB statistics for the first half of 2009 show online as the largest single category, with a 23.5% market share. Similar research is to be commissioned in Ireland this year from PricewaterhouseCoopers by the relaunched Interactive Advertising Bureau Ireland (IAB Ireland). This is widely predicted to accelerate the growth of digital advertising in Ireland at the expense of traditional media.

Fiona told us about a successful online marketing campaign for ‘will it blend?’ so i thought i would throw it in for fun.

Robbie Ward was in today to talk to us about his company BPM Media which is based locally in Blanchardstown Corporate Park and is made up from a staff of four.

BPM Media is a company that specializes in advertising mainly within pubs, clubs, venues, retail outlets and shopping centres.

From their website they state that they provide:

- the right atmosphere at the right time for the right customers

- unparalleled digital signage opportunities for in-store advertising and branding

 - potential to generate a revenue stream from your in-store display screen network or audio system.

Robbie explained how they use video screens and sound to push products and services from within the business itself. He gave us an example of a music video they would run in the likes of ‘Buskers’ in Dublin.

He opened by saying “Relevance is King ” in this industry. He explained that by using the right imagery, sound and interaction, that they can create a feeling and atmosphere in a place. Showing dance or pop videos during the day in a quiet pub would not be relevant but instead perhaps highlighting the lunch specials or upcoming events may help sell their products.  

Robbie spoke about the importance of understanding your audience. They must look at

• who visits the venue, how often and when?
• how they must try influence them
• and they must use the customer data to create a profile.

It is also extremely important to design timely content. By using digital media, it can be extremely reactive for business needs. For example a digital menu display would be able to change throughout the day to show lunch, dinner specials etc. By using print, it makes these kind of changes quite inconvenient.

 Anything that is displayed must be ‘exciting’ because Robbie found when they were starting out that the adverts they were doing were quite dull and boring so they soon found out that like tv, unless its stimulating it won’t be viewed at all. Another important point was if something is advertised on-screen it must be available. We have all seen it before when a shop or restaurant leave a sign up with an offer that isn’t running anymore so by using digital displays they can be updated more efficiently.

He also stated most importantly that audio should be handles with care. Making sure the audio is clear and at an appropriate volume is crucial. It can be the difference between someone buying something or just leaving the establishment altogether.

It seems to be to be a great idea for business. I can see this kind of advertising becoming huge over the next few years with the improvement of technology and the costs becoming cheaper.