Week 16 Part B: Building Out Your Strategy

 

            For my strategy, I chose to start with images using Facebook with scheduled posts to review results. Initially, I’ll start with images, but I might move to video and reels if the images do not gain enough traction based on analytics. For now, I didn’t really post these images because the business is a simulation, and I don’t want people using Social Media to think the business is functional. I created five images which are scheduled for release and I think would be useful.

 

May 21^rd scheduled image post for Queen Bee Sale

May 21^st scheduled image post is promoting a queen bee sale image to drive customers sales. The business is selling queens at a discount as we head to the end of the season. People order less during the mid-year so I’m looking to drive sales for beekeepers that did not re-queen, probably most of them are hobbyists. I will hopefully drive sales, get new customers, and ideally, they will order next season after having a good experience with our queens.

 

May 23^rd scheduled image post is World Bee Day.

World Bee Day celebrates our need to protect bees and their value to humans. They’re critical for the food supply as pollinators and they provide tasty honey which can help with allergies. Trying to educate the public on the value of bees is important, especially when it comes to avoidance of pesticides that may hurt the bees. In the future, may create video reels to drive traffic to the business, and educate the public on bees.

May 28^th schedule image post is Queen Bee sale ending reminder

The Queen bee for sale reminder for purchasing queen selling bees, grab a discount while you can! It sends a reminder message that time is running out to hopefully attract new customers into the business. The goal is to see how many customers hit the website and place an order with time running out. Hopefully with a discount I can engage new customers and they see the value the company provides in the marketplace. The long-term goal is to look at home many new customers initially ordered with the sale and returned next year.

June 9^th scheduled image post for customers to sign-up for the Newsletter

We want to drive sign-ups for the Newsletter that talks about beekeeping in the industry and allows us to promote our queen bee sales at a later point in time by having engaged customers. We will look to see how many people subscribe and stay engaged by creating a monthly newsletter with valuable information and reading the opens and website visits. We can promote new and upcoming events and equipment in the marketplace as well.

June 20^th scheduled image post is a reminder for customers to order before our season shuts down

The post is a reminder that our business queen selling is seasonal, and we are going to shut-down mid-summer for the season. Most beekeepers wand deliver in mid to late spring, mid to late summer has some value but only to hobbyists. It is important for beekeepers and queen bee sellers to align their timing and ensure that the queen bees are available when the demand is highest. Queen bee sellers often raise and breed queen bees in anticipation of the selling season, considering the specific needs and preferences of beekeepers in their region. Late summer is normally discounted so the effort may not be worth it based on sales price.

              In conclusion, the goal is to drive business and measure results based on scheduled posting. If a posting drives views and interactions, we’ll consider it successful. If it drive sales, even better, as that is our goal. Overall, we’ll adjust strategy with video and the newsletter to play around with metrics and results. The data analytics will really allow us to determine next steps and the value of our process.

Week 17 :Wrapping up post

 

Social Media platforms are used globally by millions and technology allows everyone to communicate information quickly. Popular Social Media platforms can provide much more than just a friends’ network when you need them for a business purpose.  Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google Analytics can help you drive your business which was the big change for me. The big change for me what the availability of AI, like Chat GPT, to quickly generate Blog content. The key to success is connecting with others and driving business. While there are risks with Social Media from a privacy perspective, I think the value provided to businesses was pretty eye-opening for me.

            Over the course of the class, I learned quite a bit about setting-up business accounts on Social Media platforms and search Engine Optimization. While I use quite a few social media platforms, I did not use the business accounts or know anything about paid advertising and success metrics. My use of media changed from personal to business with the goal of learning how to market businesses to drive revenue and profits based on data results. The platforms, along with direct marketing such as Mailchimp, were new and I learned quite a bit. It’s interesting to use data metrics to drive changes in how you advertise based on results.

            During research of failures and successes, the right path for views seems to be viral Social Media. Erika Thompson was born in 1986 and had a million followers, whereas Mann Lake has been supplying beekeepers nationally since 1983 and has less than 1 percent of her follower numbers at 7,350. Additionally, Erika has 9 million followers on TikTok which seems to drive some of the traffic to Instagram. Beekeeping is an old-school business and I believe Erika was able to drive traffic based on the risk she takes while working with bees, her age, looks, and personality. It seems that an individual’s appearance doing interesting things is more highly marketable then say, a 50-year-old man with more subject knowledge doing the same beekeeping tasks when it comes to Social Media marketing. That probably sounds socially incorrect but in terms of interest and marketing, I feel that may be what was happening based on my research. Successful organic campaigns seem to have some sexiness to offer as part of their marketing presence.

             My interest in Social Media products that I found focuses on automation and creation. I’m very interested in AI creating images to speed-up advertising, and the potential of chat-bots to respond to customer comments on Social Media platforms. Sprinklr seemed very interesting as a Chatbot along with Adcreative.ai to create Social Posts using AI. Again, I think the AI tools to execute high-levels or productivity is the future.

            For future classes, AI is going to make a big impact on the market over the next few years. For the course, I think that the impact of AI on future marketing opportunities, including jobs, would be a great area to focus on. My father and I had a long discussion about AI. He began learning neural networks around the year 2000, before I was born, and now commercial products exist. Based on our conversation, AI is going to be like a microprocessor, there’s no stopping it and the AI products will get better, cheaper, and faster. It’s going to be important for students to understand the impact to future jobs and how to use the tools to be productive and do more with less.

Week 16 Part A: Developing Your Marketing Strategy

 

To develop my marketing strategy, it will take time because there are so many tools available for online marketing. I think the main goal would be to look for a suite of tools that would allow me to integrate results without having to spend a lot of effort. For small businesses, they are focused on running and managing their business, so Marketing is probably done after-hours which makes it a long day for business owners. They may be able to use an outside agency to help them based on budget, but if not, as in my case, we need to go as cheap as possible. From a cost perspective to start, I would create a Website and use Social Media platforms along with Zoho free version, MailChimp, Hootsuite, and Google Analytics.

`Hootsuite social media management tools allow you to schedule and manage posts across multiple social media platforms. They provide a centralized dashboard for monitoring and engaging with your audience, saving time and effort in managing your social media presence.

Mailchimp or Constant Contact: email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing customer relationships. Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact enable you to create and automate email campaigns, segment your audience, and track email performance. Constant Contact can also be used to create websites and online stores, so that might be a good option as I market this small business.

Google Analytics: Implementing Google Analytics on your website can provide valuable insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and conversion tracking. It helps you understand how users interact with your website and measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. This is really important for a business; you need to know how well people interact with you and what works versus what does not work. For a business selling queen bees, I would like to see how well the social media and Website drive traffic to sales.

Creating business on Social Media platforms has been what I have enjoyed the most along with AI tools to generate images to post and drive interest. Learning how to use the analytical data tools to understand the value to companies for Marketing, and ROI, based on advertising spend was also important. I also enjoyed learning some AI tools to help me along the business journey. I do believe I’ve learned tools that will some additional practice, I can really help market a business based on what I’ve learned. is very good for you, so you know how to run one in the future.

I believe that a business needs 4-12 hours a week to effectively market the business and keep content fresh. I think that might increase if customer images are needed or they have heavy social media or business reviews that require a response. Really, it depends on the size of the business, larger corporations require dedicated full-time teams, but small businesses, again, probably 4-12 hours a week. I’m sure you can spend an endless amount of time marketing a business but it’s probably just best to find your best ROI based on your available time.

Week 15 Part B - What We Can Learn from Facebook Analytics

             Since I do not have enough followers on my Facebook page, I decided to talk about the implementation of App Tracking Transparency (ATT) by Apple. This has had a substantial impact on advertising costs for Facebook business customers. Apple has implemented measures that limit the ability of advertisers, including Facebook, to track user activity and collect personalized data. This has led to significant shifts in advertising strategies, targeting capabilities, and ultimately, advertising costs for businesses relying on Facebook's advertising platform.

After Apple updated its policy, users need to explicitly allow Facebook to track all activities across apps and Websites. Facebook's ability to collect detailed user-level data from its business customers has been limited, especially on iOS devices. This means that Facebook has less access to user behavior and preferences, making it more challenging to deliver personalized advertising experiences based on individual user data. The policy update limits how much information Facebook business customers know about the user/potential customer.

            Facebook's customer targeting capabilities heavily rely on user data, which includes demographic information, interests, and behavior. The Apple changes for iOS have made it harder for Facebook to collect this data and build precise audiences for its business customers. Advertisers on Facebook may experience challenges in reaching specific target audiences with the same level of granularity as before. Business customers that pay for Ads are going to be less effective and the ad cost is not as valuable because your response engagement is going to be lower or more expense to reach the right audience.

            The changes in Apple's privacy policy also impact the measurement and attribution of ad campaigns for Facebook's business customers. Without access to user-level data and the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), tracking conversions and attributing them to specific ads or campaigns becomes more difficult. This affects the ability to measure the return on investment (ROI) and the effectiveness of advertising efforts accurately. The challenge for business customers is that they cannot pull known conversion rates based on Marketing dollars spent for client. That said, it’s more expensive, or less productive, to effectively market using Facebook with Apple’s policy changes.

            In conclusion, Apple Privacy Policy changes have influenced Facebook's ability to collect granular user data and deliver personalized advertising experiences to its business customers, particularly on iOS devices. Facebook has been adapting its strategies and exploring alternative approaches to provide value to its business customers while respecting user privacy and working through the evolving privacy regulations.

Week 15 Part A: What We Can Learn from Google Analytics

 

Week 15 Part A: What We Can Learn from Google Analytics

 

Social media search rankings are influenced on SEO while the social media signals themselves, ( likes share and comments) do not directly impact organic search rankings, they can influence indirectly influencers with engaging and sharing social media content generated more visibility, reach and traffic. So, using Google Analytics, you can see all your data across platforms and track the user journey.

I think Google Analytics can be good for a queen bee selling business in many ways. I think monitoring the number of visitors to your website, their geographic location, and the sources that drove them to your site. This will help you understand which marketing channels are driving the most traffic to your website, whether it's through organic search, social media, paid ads, or other sources.

Also, I think another important feature is tracking any Marketing campaign performance. By analyzing the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns like email marketing, social media campaigns, or promotional offers, you can see what works best. Looking at the data for-click-through through rates, conversions, and bounce rates, you can figure out the success of your marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to optimize future campaigns and how much to spend.

You can also use Google Analytics to Track Conversion such as purchases or Newsletter sign-ups to see how customers are responding. By tracking, you can measure the success of your marketing efforts in terms of driving desired actions on your website and sales. This information can help you optimize your marketing campaigns and improve your overall conversion rate when customers access your website to purchase bees.

I think that using Google Analytics would allow a queen bee selling business to make informed marketing decisions, optimize campaigns, improve website performance, and ultimately drive more sales and conversions. The toolset is really robust so I think that the above three would definitely add value to the queen bee selling business and drive value to the company.

Week 14: Social Media Management Tools

             Researched multiple platforms based on the assignment and felt Zoho would be a good initial choice due to the cost. Many of the platforms were quite expensive on a monthly basis, but Zoho looked pretty cost effective. From a market perspective, it is competitive with Salesforce which is a premier business platform and quite expensive. If cost was not an option, I also liked Sprout based on research.

Zoho Social allows you to schedule and publish posts in advance, enabling you to plan your content strategy and maintain a consistent presence on social media. You can schedule posts for specific dates and times, ensuring your content reaches your target audience when they are most active. The tool provides social media listening features that allow you to track and monitor keywords, mentions, and hashtags relevant to your brand. This helps you stay informed about what people are saying about your brand and industry, allowing you to engage and respond effectively. This is a useful tool to market across multiple Social Media platforms with centralized management.

While Zoho Social integrates with Zoho CRM, Sprout Social offers integration with popular CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot. This integration enables you to seamlessly connect your social media interactions with your customer relationship management, providing a holistic view of your customer interactions. While Zoho is a good platform for the price, Sprout Social provides Enterprise level corporate support and integration. Sprout Social is good for large corporations whereas I feel Zoho is good for small businesses on a limited budget.

Sendible seems to be another good platform that includes social media monitoring tools that enable you to track brand mentions, keywords, and hashtags across various platforms. This helps you stay informed about relevant conversations and engage with your audience effectively. Also, it allows you to manage multiple accounts and schedule posts across different platforms from a single dashboard, streamlining your social media management efforts. This seems to be a good option if you are managing multiple Social Media platforms for clients.  Additionally, it provides analytics and reporting which will be important if you run a Marketing company.

            In conclusion, it’s important to pick a platform that will allow you to manage Social Media post with analytics, so customers know the value you provide. I think the big challenge, if you’re a marketing company, is to make sure you can manage multiple customer accounts from a single platform based on cost. The critical portion is making sure the platform can perform and meet your budget.

Week 13 Part B: Developing Online Advertising

 

For the assignment, I created three ads targeting my business with the goal of driving customers to my Social Media sites.  During this process, I used AI tools to create the images, which was interesting. Although not perfect, it is a significant time saver and I think for creating basic images, you can create them without the need for advanced UX or Photoshop skills, which is neat.

                The first ad has the potential to be successful as it tells you the life and role of a female worker bee in a colony. If the image is interesting to others, including schools, talking about biology and honeybee life expectancy, this image may circulate naturally without having to pay advertising dollars. The goal of this image is to provide information that’s interesting then have my business Social Media platforms drive views, follows, and comments.

The second ad focuses on emotion, shows that our bees don’t know how to surf, and the bee is backwards on the surfboard so it’s funny. Interesting enough, the AI Image tools put the bee on the surfboard backwards which was initially not my intent. I thought this turned out better with a funny Ad statement to make the image exciting. These images are perfect for my subject and company about bees, knowing it’s unique and we have fun with the business. We advertise that our bees work hard and reference our business name, again, with the goal of driving views and activities while avoiding spending advertising dollars.

The third ad’s goal is to be effective with the younger generation who love to play video games. Although a bee queen business is an old-school type of manual labor business, hopefully the next generation will want to level-up and buy our bees. Gamers will understand this image and I think it came-out pretty clean so we’ll give it a try and see how successful it may be.

In conclusion, I did not publish for Ad by paying because the business is not real at this point. We do not have an Ad budget, but I am interested in learning costs and measuring the response based on dollars spent with regards to return on Ad value. I know that these images will be effective and feel that AI did a good job generating, at no cost, while saving me a lot of time. Overall, it was a good learning experience and I will need to focus on data and stats to really see how effective the ads work.