4th and Final Class Material Content Post

In class today we talked more about promotion including sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, and media changes. With sales promotions we went over how coupons, contests, and free trials are now all available online. An example of the coupons online is that DealCatcher website that the owner came in and talked to us about. I found a website with many contests and sweepstakes with this link. I have also come across many free trials throughout my searches.

With public relations we learned that it is no longer command and control. Buyers want to participate and be involved in the sales process from the beginning to the end. This means that there are going to be alot more blogs and user generated stories or opinions about products on the Internet. The people responsible for public relations of their company should try to track down these user generated sites to monitor what is being said about their companies. All the money being spent on advertising and marketing by the company can be canceled out by these user generated sites, so making sure they are saying positive things is extremely important.

We discussed with personal selling how the traditional salespeople are being almost replaced by online retail. I do not think we will ever not need traditional salespeople however because I feel like I can trust someone in person much better than what something says online. We also talked about fragmentation, integration, time shifting, and mobile media which are all examples of changes in the media.

Also, we read over an article titled, Mixed Media: Traditional companies are feeling threatened. I say, bring on the changes. This article talks about how in the past there were very limited options. For example, there used to be only one movie that played at the one theater in town which guaranteed its' success. Now there is a huge variety of entertainment so marketers cannot use the same techniques as in the past. Today the buyers are not passive, but active in the buying process. Also former ways of advertising are not as effective as they used to be. With TV commercials there are DVRs in which one can fast forward through the commercials. With newspapers there are many that are simply online or in print, but online also. I found one example of a newspaper website called onlinenewspapers.com. Professor Brown mentioned earlier in the year that there is a newspaper in England that stopped its' print version and is solely available online so this makes newspaper ads real difficult to continue their effectiveness. One last thing that the article mentions is that people want to be more active in getting their news. They want it right now, continually updated, and they want to discuss it with others online. This is a huge change from when newspapers were simply just in print. Like the article says, it is a challenge but also a great opportunity to allow the audience to be more active. Instead of being intimidated by these changes, the author Rupert Murdoch, suggests that companies take advantage of these changes and use them to benefit the audience and therefore your company or product.

One last thing...I think it is great that Professor Brown is getting the recognition he deserves for his great Barbaro website, Tim Woolley Racing. From being mentioned on tv to being featured in an article on ESPN, I think that it is quite exciting. All that hard work and tons of time spent on his website and Barbaro is really paying off! Congrats!

and ps. stiuqxela stiuqxela stiuqxela stiuqxela stiuqxela stiuqxela stiuqxela beat that Andrea haha... I'll track your stiuqxela progress through this link... stiuqxela: Andrea's BUAD477 Blog. maybe it will help Google finally crawl your site. I don't know why they haven't in so long especially after your lovely note to them.