Payment Methods, Advantages of Online Shopping, Crowdsourcing and Social Media Marketing

Payment Methods

• Online shoppers commonly use a credit card or a PayPal account in order to make payments.
• Other alternative ways:
  • Billing to mobile phones
  • Cash on delivery
  • Check
  • Debit card
  • Electronic money
  • Gift cards
  • Postal money order
  • Invoice

Product Delivery

• Downloading (for music, movies, images…)
• Drop shipping (the manufacturer ships the item directly to the consumer)
• In-store pick up (going to a real shop)
• Printing or by e-mail (ticket for a concert, cinema, etc…)

Advantages

• Convenience: Online shops are usually available 24 hours a day and many consumers have internet access both at work and at home.
• Information and reviews: Online stores give more information about the product (instructions, demonstrations, advice or how-to guides). Customers can leave comments about the product.
• Price and selection: Generally, prices are lower on this channel. Do not forget the shipping costs.

Disadvantages

• Fraud and security concerns: Make sure that the online retailer is legal and exists. Lack of full cost disclosure: It may not be easy to see the total cost up front (additional fees such as shipping are often not visible until the final step).
• Privacy: Giving personal information.
• Product suitability: Maybe the product we buy is not what we were expecting.
• E-mail spam

Platforms

• PRESTASHOP
• SHOPIFY

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.

How does it work?

Everyone contributes in a small portion, which creates a large result.

Where can we find these contributors to our project? In the net, in the social media. They respond to an open call and create a network focused on the solution of the problem.

Users, known as the crowd, can be paid or not. Sometimes the recognition is enough, or just the intellectual satisfaction.

The Oxford English Dictionary made an open call for contributions by volunteers to index all words in the English language.

Genealogy Research: If you are looking for your ancestors, this can be a way to find information from other people.

Modern Methods: Nowadays, the internet has become the first tool to get access to others and the information they can supply to us.

Crowdvoting: It occurs when a website gathers a large group's opinions and judgment for a certain topic (Doritos, Heineken, Domino's Pizza).

Crowdsourcing Creative Work: For projects such as graphic design, architecture, writing, illustration.

Types of Crowdsourcing

Wisdom of the crowd: It is another type of crowdsourcing that collects large amounts of information from people and creates a complete database about a topic (Wikipedia).

Microwork: It is a crowdsourcing platform where users do small tasks for low amounts of money.

Criticism: Crowdsourcing has been criticized because of the low monetary rewards paid to crowdworkers.

Crowdfunding

Goals may be getting donations for special humanitarian situations.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

It is using social media services and techs to engage with our customers.

CRM has applications in:

• Marketing
• Customer service and sales
• Peer to peer customer support
• Idea management
• Market research
• Product launch
• Brand's reputation
• Payment processing
• Email marketing systems
• Content management
• Call center and customer support

What can we get from CRM?

• Understand the customer
• Retain customers through better customer experience
• Attract new clients and contracts
• Increase profitability
• Decrease customer management costs

How can we implement CRM?

Automated billing systems.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites. Advantages of Social Media for Companies:

• Easily accessible to anyone with internet access
• Improve brand awareness and customer service
• It is cheaper to implement marketing campaigns

Social Media Websites

People can interact with the company and the product. ("Share a coke" study case). Without a big investment, everybody is talking about your product.

Blogs

Enormous impact in fashion. Recognition from brands like Dolce&Gabanna, Burberry or Vogue. Blogger is a respectable career in the fashion industry.

Mobile Phones

Easy access to the platforms. Always connected.

Engagement

In this context, engagement means that customers and stakeholders are participants rather than viewers. Everyone expresses and shares an opinion or an idea. Customers become part of the marketing department.

Tactics

Twitter

Allows companies to promote their products on an individual level. Short messages that followers are more likely to read. Real-time connection.

Facebook

Facebook profiles are far more detailed than Twitter accounts. They allow providing videos, photos, and longer descriptions. They can also include testimonials from other users.

Foursquare

Users can check into locations via their smartphones. A good marketing strategy to promote a business offering discounts or free food/beverages for people checking into their location. Special privileges for the mayor of that location.

Google+

Similar to Facebook but able to integrate with the Google search engine, Google Adwords, and Google Maps.

Instagram

It is a free photo-sharing program and social network. In September 2012, it had 100 million registered users.

Blogs

They allow a company to provide longer descriptions of products and services. Include testimonials. Links to Facebook, Twitter, and other blogs.

LinkedIn

It is a professional business-related networking site. Creates professional profiles and interacts with other people working in similar areas or companies.

Yelp

It consists of a comprehensive online index of business profiles. Businesses are searchable by location, similar to Yellow Pages. It is a social network with company profiles.

YouTube

It includes lots of ads which are usually synced with the content of the video. Videos can be sponsored.

Social Bookmarking

It enables users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents or eBooks, creating folksonomies.

Brand Ambassador

It is a marketing term for a person employed by a company to promote its products within the activity called branding. They are especially active in the social media. They can be celebrities or professional figures.