Listening to Customers

I am going to use Foot Locker once again for this portion of the assignment. This interests me the most. 

What keywords are important?

here are some keywords that I noticed that are important, they also can be used as some searching strings: 

      -    Champs

      -     Ken Hicks (President & CEO)

      -     Matthew D. Serra (Chairman)

·         Lady Footlocker  

·         Kids Footlocker

·         Nike

·         Jordan

·         LeBron James

·         Sport Apparel

Twitter

·         @addiashoop

·         @drose (Derrick Rose) NBA basketball player

·         #ShoeHeaven

Also, for twitter, Facebook, or an search engine if shoe is popular during a certain time of the year, type in the name of the shoe as a keyword and footlocker links or trends on twitter pop up. Foot locker makes it very easy for their customers to assess information from “shoe” keywords or basketball players.

You can literally do a “Nike” Google search and footlocker is one of the webpages that pop up in the results.

What outlets matter?

I would say the conversation index that is popular is thing pertaining too:

·         Derrick Rose shoes

• ·         Jordans
• ·         Addias
• ·         Nikes
• ·         Champs ( another store affiliated with footlocker)

What are the customer hot buttons?

Foot lockers hot buttons will definitely include

• Price- Majority of people especially parents with kids or kids alone between the age range of (8 to 18 years), athletes, and college aged adults are willing to spend the money on these varieties of shoes. Especially when Jordan releases date events are going on.
• Availability- Due to high volume of Jordan shoe purchases to be particular, sometimes some footlocker stores run out of shoes and sizes very rapidly. That causes people to order them offline from other competitors or go to other shoe stores. Best solution for this is to measure and forecast customer volume during these times. Footlocker has a very great customer base. You will be amazed how many sneaker heads are out there!! I am one of them! lol

Social Media for Marketing

How are they using social media to change their marketing?

GM is using social media as a tool to reach target audiences through inbound marketing tactics like posting unique content that can easily share through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter and videos on YouTube. GM also advertises on Twitter through promoted tweets and YouTube through sponsored videos.

How well are they following the rules of PR?

GM is a pretty well know automotive company due to their rank and the automotive products they create. Overall, I think they are doing well following rules of PR. GM product are really controversial and the industry there in is very competitive and in High Demand. Customers are responding highly to what GM post on social media and always providing feedback.  I think this is what reinforces GM to stay on top of their marketing and PR tactics.

 What recommendations would you make for them to improve their efforts?

I would recommend them to stay on top of using social media. Social Media is one of the resources that most people make use of to find out information about a specific company. GM should pay close attention to they’re customer interests and think outside the box for more innovate marketing idea to post on the social media. 

Choosing a vendor

Choosing A Good Vendor- Module 2

The company I choose was Quicken Loans. I used to work for quicken loans as well so I am going to share a little information about what I know to support this blogging post. I tried to answer these questions with the best of my ability.

1.       What is the difference between your tool/solution and free tools from yahoo and Google?

By Quicken Loans being an online mortgage based company, we need more than what just Google analytics has to offer. We are looking for vendors that are uniquely designed to support data for mortgages and calculations and a program to better keep us update with our clients. Google and Yahoo do not offer those special tools. We are willing to put out money to gain revenue based off of our customer service. The ideal mortgage analytic vendor will be essential to our business.

2.       Are you 100 percent ASP, or do you offer a software version? Are you planning a software version?

Yes, Quicken Loans uses ASP.NET as a tool.

3.       What data capture mechanisms do you use?

We use SSRS as a data capture mechanism as well as logs, Java Scripts.

4.       Can you calculate the total cost of ownership for your tool?

I would assume Quicken loan IT could be able to calculate TCO. I can say that Quicken IT has a good eye for identifying proper tooling kits for data analytic and have a good way of keep track of appropriate prices.

5.       What kind of Support do you offer? What do you include for free and what costs more? Is it 24/7?

This question is kind of unknown, but I can add that since clients are putting in mortgages 24/hours daily I would say we have support at least during business hours or maybe even 24 hours daily.

6.       What features in your tool allow me to segment the data?

Quicken uses different segmentation which range from social media segmentation, reporting segmentation, BSS etc.

7.       What options do I have for exporting data from your system into our company system?

Quicken actually uses QIF exports for clients account and list information in a specific data file and the same for importing data.

8.       What features do you provide for me to integrate data from other sources into your tool?

I am assuming that Quicken Loan would use QIF exports/imports for this duty as well.

9.       Can you name two new features, tools, acquisitions your company is cooking up to stay head of your competition for the next three years?

Quicken is always look for more efficient services and to keep thing precise and straight to the point as possible. Something along those lines are always considered staying ahead for this company. Proactivity is key!

1.   Why did the last two clients you lost cancel their contracts? Who are they using now? May we call one of these former clients?

I am sure clients have cancel contracts with Quicken, there could be a range of reasons, but our goal is to keep future clients and keep them aboard.  

Social Media Content Analysis- Module 4

Part 1: Find the content

I am using three different sources to find content on Footlocker. I am using Google alerts, Twazzup, and Facebook for content on Foot locker.

Part 2: Determine the type of conversation that is taking place

Based off Twazzup and Google alert, the biggest topic of conversation is a Footlocker event. The events focus is for low income families and reaching out into the community. At a footlocker in Downtown LA they are giving away 5,000 free shoes to those that are in the need.

On Facebook, Customers are basically writing reviews about different shoes and writing reviews on the services they received from specific stores. Customers were also writing questions on footlockers Facebook wall about shoes and their release dates for Jordan, LeBron, and Nikes. These would be considered as a typical conversation that goes on footlockers Facebook and twitter pages.

Part 3: Determine the visibility of your brand

The recent news about footlockers 5000 shoe give-away event in LA would definitely be remembered. I think the Dominance would fall into the second category. It would be considered Dominance because the company is the main focus but other parties were involved such as everyone that participated in the event and the event focus which was on low income families.

Part 4: Was anyone quoted in the item.

No specific person was quoted in this item, unless we want to consider the talks about LeBron James and the releasing of his new shoe.  Those conversations took place on Facebook and twitter.

Part 5: Determine Sentiment and/or presence or absence of recommendation

I am going to use conversations I seen on Facebook. I would rate it as being “Balanced” simply because you've seen comments about people not being happy with Footlockers services at a specific store or you've seen comments that people are satisfied with their service or product.  All the responses are mixed which are quite normal for a company like footlocker. The goal that footlocker should always aim for is to have positive reviews that weigh out negative reviews.

Part 6: What messages were communicated?

Amplified messages are used for footlocker. Customers are inspired by amplified messages because they are able to see the product from picture or video, see the reviews and respond from that stand point.

Part 7: Determine Positioning on Key Issues or Battles

Here is a top Key Issue:  Here is a comment on Facebook about a customer complaining about how footlocker is not honoring what they say. The website states that you can return items that were purchased online to an actual store, but some stores do not accept. The Facebook user also complains about how bad the telephone customer service is. The Facebook user states that he will always be a footlocker customer, but some aspects of services can be ridiculous. This is an example of how actions need to be taken place. They need to honor what they put online. If specific services are guaranteed then it needs to remain guaranteed and all employees need to be caught up to speed about the company’s policies. Reviews and comments online are long lasting and It would be horrible to deter people away due to lack of business to customer loyalty.

Part 8: Quantifying the authority of the writer or poster

Footlockers Facebook group page contains over 27,000 likers

Here are some stats I got from Twitalyzer for Foot lockers twitter:

Impact: 15.8

Klout: 59

Followers: 35,034

Measurement Plan- Module 4

 I have decided to do a measurement plan on one of my old employers which is Target.

Define Goal:

 Our goal is to increase Targets online home sales.

Define Success:

 Since we are focusing on increase of sales, we are going to begin with our target.com website. We want to make it as easy and efficient as possible for our customers to view our home/furniture products on our home page with just a few clicks. We want to limit the time spent searching for products. The page will be made up to where the information and products are available right from the homepage.

We also would want to use our social media channels to promote the products more. Since some Target store has limited space to display all furniture goods and other home goods, most of those sales are done online. Creating URLS and posting them on the Facebook/ twitter page and creating hash tags would help in promoting the different sales products. Target would use Google analytic s to measure direct and referral traffic to seek effectiveness.

Determine Public's

Targets Public's would be:

•   Target Shoppers (online and in-store) 
•   Dedicated on-line shoppers
• Women (between the ages of  19-55)

Benchmarks

Target would compare its online sales against two competitors. One would be one of its top competitors which would be Wal-Mart. Another would be considered as an underdog competitor which would be K-Mart/Sears. Target would also take a look at their in-store sales of home goods and furniture.  They could do this using the old-fashion secret shopper’s method by talking too sales associates and doing comparisons.

Key Performance Indicators

Here are some of the Key Performance Indicators as followed:

•   Usage of Target Red Card
• Increase in created user accounts on Target.com
• Number of Checkout rates
•   Increase in home online sales

Target Tool’s

§  At the corporate level of the company they would know exactly how they’re sales are measured online. I would assume that they would use something like Google analytics or Omniture catalyst to monitor and measure online sales.  I know that on the in-store level the registers are set up to where it estimates were we are at in sales.

Economic Value

Economic Value

I see this is being valuable because I think it’s more efficient for Ford consumers to make a decision on the vehicle through the web application customization. It definitely saves time and money. I also think having the web application available on a social media website like Facebook bring publicity to Ford and their products. 

EXAMPLE: Let say the 2013 International Auto Show is coming up and they are doing a special marketing presentation for the Ford Mustang. We all know thousands of people are attending this event.  They even have visitors from out of town for this event. At the auto show, they pose that you can customize and see what feature are available for this Mustang through this application on Facebook. Most people are already users of Facebook so I think it they will be more prone to use it.  With that being said, the average cost for publication booklets for 20,000 people would cost $1131 alone (according to printpelican.com).  Not only ford would save money by using the web app but they will get business worldwide based off the national and international visitors from the auto show and a have an opportunity to build more revenue. This is definitely economically valuable.

Critical Few Metrics

I have chosen Twitter Inc. to observe some of their critical few. Here is what as followed:

Twitter Inc.

Few Critical Metrics:

Twitter wants to stabilize growth through user accounts and be known for their services to help consumers build business connections and relationships.  Therefore, a critical metric for twitter is the conversion rate. Twitter would want on focus on their conversion because this will determine the ratio of web users who makes an account and finds twitters services useful. If the users find it useful it definitely will show. Then Twitter will know that they have reached their goals based off the conversion rate.

Another metric Twitter wants to focus on Referring sites and keyword. Twitter should want to measure how people are getting referred to their actual website to make accounts. They want to make sure that these other search engines are effective enough.

Another metric is measuring daily active users. Once a user has made an account twitter wants to focus on often that account is being used. A special term for that is keep track of the user’s visitor loyalty and visitor recency.  Visitor loyalty tells you how often a user’s the website. Visitor recency how long it’s been since an account was used from previous visits.