Week 12B

1. Coupon Networks

I think the way I would incorporate a coupon into my business would be through my newsletter system. By doing this I will get people to come to the shop and to also open more of my emails that get sent out. I would start off by creating a basic 15% off any purchase (In store only). This would hopefully encourage people to use the coupon and make their way to the shop. Personally when I see any kind of coupon it gives me the extra push I need to make a purchase. The only downfall I could see it possibly losing a little bit of money at first, but the way I see it is that people will then purchase more items just because they got their 15% off.

2. Yelp 

By searching through some other surf shop yelp reviews and other local businesses around here, I found that a lot of people do have nice things to say but more often than not people are complaining. While people may give you a 4/5 or a 5/5 they still might rant about something that they didn't enjoy. This could help your company improve but also it could hold other people back just by reading a couple bad reviews. Overall this is a good way for the customers to locate the shop and to learn a little bit about what it's like. 

Week 12A

I believe the four online marketing tools that could benefit my business as of right now would be Yelp, Groupon, living social and Google Maps.

Yelp
This is always a good way to get feedback from the community on what you are doing good or what you can improve on. It will allow me to see how the way I am running my company is perceived by others and that way it will be easy to change the things that are going wrong. And by owning a local business this will definitely be something useful in the long run. In the end the only negative part about yelp is that most people only leave a review on there if they have something bad to say about your business, so this can make you look worse than you actually are.

Groupon and Living Social
These two marketing tools could serve as a great way for me to promote special deals or coupons that are available. Living Social is basically all about exposing the consumers to new deals everyday. This would be a nice way to get people into my shop and they are more likely to make other purchases, since they are already there.

Google Maps
This is obviously very important because it tells the consumers where the business is located. Since my business is a Surf Shop, the physical location is very important for people to know. All people would need to do is search my company name and then from there they would get the location, website and any other key information needed.  

Week 11B

Posts I commented on:
Patrick Conahan
Zameer Karim
Brent Reyes

Here is a screenshot of my newsletter:

Week 11A: Email Marketing

Creating a newsletter is for sure an easy marketing tool that will mot take too much effort. They could help educate my target market on what the business is all about and get those thoughts into their heads. In these I could also inform anyone of special offers, sales, or basically any promotion that well benefit the customer. These emails would include where to find any of the product and how to buy it.
 One big part of the email is it allows for you to share all of the online aspects that you business may contain, whether that the website for online shopping or simply any social media site that you have. Its also important that these emails being sent out aren't too boring, it would be necessary for me to include a cool font and some nice looking images with the email being sent out. I would do this in order to catch the eye of anyone who is on the email list.

Week 10B: Categories for my Business

If I were to setup categories to keep my business organized I would have a news section and a product section. In the first part I would include any special news that has a correlation to my business and basically any information that the target market wants to see or hear about. This way people can experience what is going in the industry that my business belongs to. In the product category I would show all of the different product being used, worn or even modeled. Here people can get a better idea of what the company has to offer and see if they are interested.

Being this specific would keep me organized and allow the viewer to find everything with ease.




Blogs I commented on: Michael Fanghella, Sonya Mcarthur, Andrew Sterk

Week 10A: Human Interest

Creating human interest in a business can be very important. Many people can connect to something a lot better if they have a personal experience with the subject and overall it makes a great marketing tool. In order to connect to the viewers on a intimate level you will have to make sure you are using a personalized tone that makes that person feel good. For the business I am using this semester, creating human interests is most certainly something that is beneficial to a company like that. Since the market is somewhat small, having a good vibe and using personal tones towards that amount of people is very important. Appealing to ones emotions can be one of the easiest ways to draw someone into what you are trying to get across. So, when you are advertising your business or product and you get to someones emotions it is very likely they will think about what you are selling more. For most cases using a personal touch is effective but it can sometimes be seen as unprofessional and may not fit every business strategy.

Week 9: Twitter

To find connections throughout Twitter I used various words, trying to relate them to my business as much as possible. I searched words such as surf, surfing, surf shop, and Encinitas. These searches led me to countless pages that are connected to surfing in some way, which is what my business is all about.
I followed different successful companies that are involved in the surfing industry in order to see how they are using their social media.
The first list I created is called "Surf Companies". This list is for any major surfing company out there, in order to model my marketing such as they do. My other list is designed for other surf shops or basically any local business here in Encinitas. This way I can have a good idea of what a business is like here and how to be successful.
The time most customers would see my tweets would be most likely be any time in the afternoon or late afternoon.