Go to the new site!

Hi guys, pease go to my new site (http://thought-matters.net) for marketing and technology news update! 🙂

Why The Internet of Things (IoT) is more important than Apple Watch?

Apple Watch started pre-order last week and many of my friends have tried it in person. Here is an interesting review about AppleWater from Bloomberg. Apple Watch generates so many eyeballs not only because it is the first innovative Apple product after the late Steve Jobs, but also its potential involvement in human’s life. It goes beyond functions of cellphones – -which is (originally was) “connecting people” , to “connecting yourself with the world”. It tracks your real-time heartbeats, your movement, your interaction with the outer world and collects your everyday behaviors. It translates your actual movement, the concrete “things” into “data” that can be used in virtual internet. It is probably the most visual explanation of the “Internet of Things” – – transforming things into internet. Apple Watch is part of this Internet of Things revolution.

Report from Federal Trade Commission released in Jan this year estimated that there would be 25 billion connected devices (such as smartwatches, smartphones, activity trackers and all kinds of sensors that are connected with internet) as of year 2015, and by 2020, 50 billion. Translation, there are more connected devices than human beings. Further translation, there are billions of micro-sensors collecting our data anytime anywhere and anyhow.  Now you may wonder, how would that affect me?

More sales deals 

Well, the good news is, there will be more customized sales deals that may fit your interest. Based on your favorite recipes (record from browsing history), the restaurants and stores you have been to (location-based sensing in your mobile) and your purchasing power (from e-receipts), restaurants will be able to find you and provide you with special deals that may fit you the most, and match your needs the most. Sometimes these data and algorithms are so sophisticated that they are able to figure out your needs before you think you may need it. Read the fun story about Target figuring out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did. Sounds great (not great for the teen girl though), isn’t it? As if you had a personal assistant who selected the best deal for you, except the fact that may or may not be the best deal for you.

Due to data algorithms, companies are able to provide deals to you that they think you would affect due to your previous behaviors. You are also highly likely to accept those deals. Yet, chances are you may not be able to compare the whole picture before conducting any purchases. What if these are not the best deal? What if, the deals are more important to your life, such as home mortgage and health insurance?

Who decides what? 

Conventionally, when you need banks to provide loans to purchase something big, you spend years  in working on your credit reports. Credit reports are regulated by government and the related agency FTC has been working on the transparency issues related to credit reports. Because you know the importance of your credit report, you would do everything to maintain good credits through years of practices. What if, one day, you can determine your credits through your personal behaviors?

The one day has come. Auto insurers already request drivers to install in-car sensors to determine the driving behaviors and thus decide the premium they need to pay. Drivers refuse to comply may need to pay higher premium.

It is interesting to observe how consumers behaviors would affect their own consumptions, thanks to the capability of algorithms and spread out of interest of things. However, what if the data collected is misrepresented, what if the algorithms is not correct, what if the data is misused in controlling price discrimination, and what if something goes wrong? Generally speaking, consumers will seek government for help when something goes wrong.

Privacy and private companies  

So assuming a consumer realizes the mortgage he/she gets is of higher interest rate than he/she should have received based on historical records? Can he/she confront with credit reports? Yes. But can he/she challenge the bank’s decision? Not for sure if the bank made such mortgage loan decisions based on its own algorithms other than using credit report. Can he/she have access of his/her own personal data recorded in the bank’s system? Probably yes, probably not.

Now can you tell the difference? Credit reports are monitored by government, and government agency has the right to access such data. However, private company reports belong to private corporation and government agency cannot monitor such. So the chance of consumers having any assess or sayings to their personal data collected by private companies, really depends on the consumers and T&C written by the private companies.

I hope this is not too complicated to understand. That is, you may have a saying to your own personal data collected by a private company, if the company is socially responsible. So, before we successfully convert all companies into socially responsible corporations, we can learn to keep our personal information secure following tips by FTC.

I hope you find this is more important than Apple Watch. 😉

How I found these 70% off designer dresses online

Since I still have the “Spring is here and I must buy something” impulse. I kept looking for other website. Now that I knew I want to look professional and simple, I started the adventure from Organic Search (e.g. Google Search) on “discounted designer dress” and found this website.

The website provided 40% – 70% discounts on famous branded designer dresses and the average price was $150 – $200 after discount.  Though i wanted to look professional, I was still a poor student. So I immediately filter the results from “under $100”. Not many results showed up (obviously) and only a few were interesting. I immediately selected the interesting ones, compared their original prices and confirmed that they were of great discount. I made the purchase of 2 $100 dress (original prices would be $400 – $500). The whole process only lasted for 30 mins: 28 mins spent on research + 2 mins on making the decision. They were not cheap, compared with my previous experience. However, I was contented. I also wondered why.

 

Customer Journey on Online Shopping (again) 

As explained in my previous blog, companies use many digital marketing tools to boosting sales in customer journeys. Those tools may not be necessarily useful if you are not targeting the right customers. However, whether someone can be your target customers are also highly depend on the company size and style. Approaches of a small company in digital marketing campaigns can be very different from a larger one, even though they may sell similar products.

Google’s customer journey analytical tool allows us to take a closer look on how company size, industry and region affect the customer journey. Take online shopping in the U.S. for example, the purchase journey for small businesses starts from organic search. Then the small companies can use social and generic paid search campaign to boost interest. Since small companies are relatively unheard of, it is harder to get referrals therefore most efforts are made in emails and brand paid search. The most difficult part would be gaining brand awareness at the beginning and earning trust during the process.

However, for big companies, since they have established their brand image in general public, they can start their customer journey through display play and social media campaign to remind customer about their existence. Once the customers show interest to products, companies can use paid searches, emails and referrals to boost the interest. The most difficult part will be successfully differentiating itself from other brands and create the “call for action” (call it the impulse, or sales).

Find the right customers and excel at the online journey  

After all, targeting the right segment may be the most important step. For companies with many or limited resources, it is critical to locate the right target audiences and then polish the customer journey with digital marketing tools. Yet, for both small and large companies, the last step before purchase is direct campaign. Customers still want that direct human touches. I think the next challenge will be using digitalization and data analytics to create highly customized and passionated direct campaigns within budget.

Like me wanted to use minimum money to buy the best dresses, many companies are trying to use minimum digital media budget to gain maximum impacts. After all, calculating ROI still matters.

I spent 4 hours shopping in one website, found 8 dresses total under $200 and bought none

Last Friday night I suddenly had the “Spring is here and I must buy new clothes” impulse. It was 8pm and I didn’t bother to go out. I vaguely remember this online shopping website I saw somewhere sometime ago. I was then determined to spend money on that website. Don’t ask me why.

There were many great sales at reasonably good prices. I found one black dress and the other one and then the other ones. After online “window” shopping for 1.5 hours I put 8 items in my shopping cart with the total amount under $200. Most of them were of 50% off cute little black/white dresses, so it was about $25 per piece. Good job, huh?

Though the website would like me to click the “purchase” bottom ASAP, I spent the following 2.5 hours comparing price and feature of each of them. Unlike most female online shoppers, I don’t return things bought online (Yes, sounds like a man, or maybe just another rational picky lady). Therefore I must make the correct decision that I’ll be proud of. When I compared dress A and dress B, I found them looking too alike then I deleted B then I compared A and C …

Finally, at midnight, I was having a headache and decided I must go to sleep. So I closed my computer and bought nothing. The head-aching experience was so strong that I refused to continue the other day. So the website gains no business from me, even if I was very determined to spend at the beginning. I wondered why.

Customer Journey on Online Shopping

Looking at my own experience, I try to analyze myself using “customer purchase journey”. The customer journey on online shopping nowadays has involved so many digital marketing campaigns and became very complicated. Generally speaking, companies use digital marketing campaigns such as Display Click, Organic Search and Social Campaigns at the beginning to increase brand awareness (e.g. me got to know the shopping website somewhere sometime ago). Once customers have heard about the brand, they may conduct research online or seek friends’ opinions. Then companies can use Generic Paid Search, Brand Paid Search, Email etc to boost customers’ interest. Finally, companies use Direct Campaign (e.g. phone calls, Direct Mail) to seal the deal.  Google has developed this complicated analytic tool trying to figure out how people shop online. But the time frame of such journey varies depending on each customers and all of these campaigns efforts can be vanished when the customers are suddenly interrupted for unknown reasons and quit the journey.

Two days from now, I haven’t received any email from the website asking me to go back to my deal. But I saw their Click Display and items I picked when I was browsing other website, I knew I was being “re-targetted”. Would it be their “lack of following-up email” that fail me? Or the overwhelming re-targetted images that annoy me? I don’t think so. There is nothing wrong with their digital marketing campaign. I quitted the journey when I was making the decision. Deep down in my heart I was not thrilled by those dresses. Then would it be their website design that’s not good enough, or not appealing enough for me?

Brand Image and the Target Customer 

Maybe it is because their website is not appealing enough for me. Maybe I am NOT their target customer. Looking at their displayed models, most of them are young girls with a little bit “rebellion” and expressive style. Looking at me, I am also young but trend to be simple and professional. Maybe our styles don’t match. So now it explains everything – – it is not that I am too picky, or the website is not good enough —  it is that we don’t match. Its brand image doesn’t match with my personal image and I shall not be their target customers.

Should they try to pursuit me through more marketing campaigns? Honestly, they shall NOT. Because the resources the company may put on me, including re-targeting and emails may never lead to a sale. I’d recommend them NOT to spend marketing expense on me. Sometimes it is Okay to fire your customer. In this case, I fired the website and the website should also fire me.

Yes we should break up with each other. And it is good for both of us.

What do I think?

Being primarily trained as a Sociologist and now exposed in digitalized world, I cannot help but keep thinking about the way I think. Do I think the way I want to think, or do I think the way others want me to think? Do I think uniquely or do I just think the same as everyone else?

Do I really want to dress like this?  

I was going to attend a Charity Ball and I had to spend about $150 in renting (NOT even buying!) a dress. At that moment of paying I’d rather we were all animals instead. Some Sociologist (i.e. Elliot Aronson) thinks humans are social animals. The only disagreement I have with him is that animals don’t need to catch up with fashion trends.

That $150 dress couldn’t even keep me warm, but I needed that in the charity ball.Why? – Because I didn’t want to look “out of place” among friends. I didn’t want to be “out” of the group. See, the decision was made because of “the group”. Again, if you ask me what would I prefer wearing: T-shirt or formal gown. The answer would be a no-brainer. But at that situation, my friends, my group, and the society wanted me to wear the other wise. Personal thoughts are sometimes compromised by socialized norms.

What are affecting our thinking?

Facebook was reported utilizing user data to conduct psychological/neurosciences experiments without users’ consensus in Mid-2014. The news went wild because no one wanted to be a lab rat. The way “the trust engineers” (claimed by FB) thought was they were using data to help people finding communication channels and even happiness. They wanted to know “what makes people happy” and wondered whether they could “create” “happiness”. Now the creepy part is “can emotion be created”? The answer is, probably yes. The prison experiment conducted in Stanford University about 40 years ago showed that personal emotions made by created under certain external hints. It was probably the most criticized experiment ever – a dozens of healthy totally normal male volunteers were randomly selected to be prisoners or prison guard in a prison. Those males who were before normal started to act like their assigned roles – “prisoners” were submissive and afraid of the “prison guards”, while the “prison guards” really thought they had the power and generally abused the “prisoners”. The experiment ended rashly in a few days when horrible physical abuse happened.

Yes, human emotions are easily affected by outside world. With the spread of Internet, we are exposed to many emotions and thoughts that could be inspiring as well as irritating. It is absolutely true that someone with knowledge could multiple human minds, in the form of cyber-bullying, racism attacks, or even native advertising and fashion blogs.

So if Facebook was using these data to in the “pursuit of happiness”, can we support it? Well, what is the “pursuit of happiness” are we talking about? Your happiness or my happiness? So are the Internet company big evils that they abuse our personal data? So where are those data from? Did you accidentally or purposely give away some of your personal data?

How to make decisions

As we are exposing to more info, it is even more critical to filter the info taken. Also life is full of trade-offs, when you have the knowledge to tell the pros and cons, you are in the painful stage of making decisions. However, I hope after reading this article, you could think twice before saying or doing something online and offline. Whatever you are thinking is affected by the others, while you are also affecting the others.

Wait, am I trying to affect you now?

Content? Content. Content!

Content marketing is very hit now. Everyone is talking about content marketing, native advertising and social media content etc etc. But how to create the “right” content, generate web traffic and increase conversion rate still reminds as a myth.

In the old business world, when you have a new product, you might go to the most crowded market and yield to the people to introduce your good. Then people would go home and tell their friends about what they saw during the day and of course also mention about your product. Then people came back and bought your products. Most executives in the conventional business model may think content marketing also work that way. You pose something cool about your product and share it in social media, and then people will be amazed and start following your social media account and then start buying your products. Everything can happen within a month or two. Well, yes, magic like that can happen, but only when magic happens.

The power of internet users 

People usually consider “internet” as another medium channel. Before marketers place advertisements in TV and gather great visibilities. So we simply place advertisements online and can also expect great results. But that’s always not true. What’s wrong with this logic? That is the power dynamic of internet users have changed. People are not obligated to sit in front of computers to finish reading anything. People are not supposed to trust anything online. People are not supposed to react to anything online either. Plus you never know how who is reading what and how they are going to react. Internet is not only another medium channel for campaigns, but also another channel for customers to ignore/escape and/or change to another campaigns without any commitments.

Because of the switch of power dynamics, content generators need to be focus, precise, consistent, as well as extremely careful.

Focus on the “right” content

Since the ultimate goal of content marketing is to generate sales, it is important to focus the content on the “right” directions. No, I am not talking about merging content with advertisement, I am talking about providing “contents” that your customers want to know. If your target customers want to know about big data analytics and you don’t want to ruin your momentum by putting random articles about branding. Always focus on what your customers want and what you want them to get from you. To translate into human language: know who you are and be yourself.

Be precise, be valuable 

People want to know the latest trends, and you want to add value to your target audiences. You don’t have to be a Harvard professor to provide valuable content. Thank god we are in the internet world. You are able to access the most popular topics through Google analytics, Google trends and other numerous channels. Use your knowledge and merge with the hottest topics, and provide the most updated information as well as boost your SEO ranking. By the way, today (March 9, 2015) is the Apple Watch special event, you certainly want to talk about that if your company’s related to wearable technology and high tech.

Be consistent  

The whole thing can be explained by the following quotes from  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince: 

{ “I am looking for friends. What does that mean — tame?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”
“To establish ties?”
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world….” }

Be careful and sensitive 

We live in a very diversified world with many ethnic groups many occupations many cultures many backgrounds. We are very different. If content marketers only think from their own perspectives they may neglect or even possibly hurt others feelings. Yes, we are very different, but we are all the same as we all deserve to be respected.

———-

The constantly changing internet world makes it intriguing to spread message. Good content shall not only bring in useful message for the company/customer, but also contribute to the society in general. Though we are no longer believing people yielding in the market, we still share our ideas with friends and trust what our friends say. With the aid of internet, word of mouth spread much faster and further than it ever has. So, be focus, be precise, be consistent, be careful and be good, the magic may happen.

Introducing my best friend – my phone!

Have you noticed you touch your phone more often than touching your friends? Lately, I realized I could no longer depart from my phone. so I have decided to track how I use my phone for three days last week. Here are the results.

Day 1: February 19, Thursday 

Like most of millennials, I started my day with phone alarm. First thing first, checked updates on Instagram, Facebook and wechat and see how many likes I got from last night’s posts.

But I was more than excited to start the day because I’d go to an iron chef restaurant with a friend for lunch. Thanks to Restaurant Week, we can now enjoy food at the fanciest restaurants in reasonable prices. We found out the news of restaurant week in early February on Facebook and made our reservations ASAP.

Turned out some friends hadn’t heard of NYC Restaurant Week, YAY, another good excuse to try more restaurants! So I was like searching the restaurants with my laptop and sending message to friends to see if they were available on certain dates. Things need to be done quick through phone + laptop!

Day 2: February 20, Friday 

The coldest day I have ever experienced: -12 degree Celsius (feels like -20 degree C).

   

Fingers hurt if exposed in cold air for 5 seconds. What’s worse than this brutal weather? – – There was no food at home! I was debating between to buy groceries and have them delivered, or simply order take-out. So I mentally list the pros and cons of both:

• Grocery delivery: can get more food for the week + cheaper + healthier diet – takes 2 hours
• Take-out: get food immediately + takes 45 mins – unhealthy – less flexibility

When I was deep into my mental debate, my friend messaged me and asked if I wanted to go to her place for afternoon tea. It was a big fat YES! TGIF! I would walk for 6 blocks for hot tea and sweet cakes!! So the rest was history. So my phone helped me to get connected to the world. 🙂

Day 3: February 21, Saturday 

I needed to get up early to catch up a bus to visit my boyfriend’s family. Why? Because it was the Chinese New Year (CNY)! I was so bored in bus and started digging out my mobile apps. I opened Wechat (the biggest mobile social media in China) and found out my high school friends were giving away “lucky money” online. Giving away lucky money is the most important thing for CNY as people bless each other with real money. This year the money was given out through social media platform because people could link their virtual bank account with their wechat account!

So this is how it works. A person decided to give away certain amount of money to certain amount of people in a group, say $10 dollars to 10 people in a group of 25. The first 10 people who open the link could get the total $10. Yet, amount for each person is totally random so one may get $5 while the other may get $0.1. That was pretty intriguing and exciting.

Sadly I don’t have a Chinese account so I could not use the money. Then I changed to Mashable to read some news and suddenly my screen was directed to a “blue man” video advertisement. Thank god I have muted my phone. I was like, “no, I don’t want to see you” and immediately close the pop-up ad. I needed some quiet moments and decided to hide my phone and sleep on my ride.

   

———————–

Then this is the end of experiment. My friend is my best friend because it is always reliable,  resourceful, and connecting me with the world. Instead of saying my phone is my best friend, it is more accurate to say the internet sources I choose help me with my daily operation and adventures. After all, I am part of the Internet of Things world.

So this is my internet of thoughts.