DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING
Syllabus | Assignments

Assignments/Process for Internet & ECommerce Marketing

Market Happenings Assignment and Marketing that "worked on you" (25 points -- 8 points each event).
Present at least three Internet market happenings or "what internet marketing worked on you" experiences during the semester. Internet marketing is changing the way the world does business. Those changes are ongoing. In this assignment the student will present 3 Internet market happenings or experiences (meaning marketing what has worked on you -- email campaign, banner ad, social network connection, etc. OR what does not work in the same categories). The student should be watching for important marketing activities or events that impact the Internet marketplace and as those events unfold, study them, prepare some thoughts about them, and at the beginning of a class time (at least 3 or more times during the semester) you should present to the rest of the class your findings and why they are important. Specifically address (a) What is important about the current happenings in Internet markets, (b) How the market happenings are being used to impact Intenet markets, and (c) some possible applications in Intenet marketing.

ECommerce/Internet Marketing Processes
Phase One. Marketing an ECommerce Web site starts in the idea phase of the project. The idea testing and exploration generally provide insights and leads helpful in the marketing process. There are a number of marketing objectives to be met at this phase in the process including (a) relationship building (meaning relationships with vendors or communities or customers, etc), (b) customer feedback (important insights into customer needs), (c) is it real testing (discovery and exploratory conversations with a variety of vendors, customers, etc), and (d) intellectual property exploration (such as domain names, keywords, content creation or acquisition, etc.).

Assignment 1 (25 points): Figure out your idea and marketing objectives (real, live, company or organization that is either your company or you are dealing with a client). You will need to have access to the site (host/username/password/). You should also have a web site to market that is version 1.0 ready. Additionally, you should list some general objectives as what you wish to accomplish marketing wise.

Phase Two. In this phase the market research is conducted. The primary purpose is to better understand the market you are currently operating in or the market you seek to enter. In this phase you will explore many of the questions associated with a given market and seek to find answers to key questions. You should be able to answer in depth questions relating to:

Assignment 2 (25 points): Conduct market research on above listed items. Turn in research paper on topics listed above (yes, printed).

Phase Three. In this phase we examine the competitive environment and conduct a (a) fundamental competitive assessment as well as the (b) common features competitive assessment in the market. In the competitive assessment phase we address key issues of competitive uniqueness, differentiation, strengths, weaknesses, advantages, disadvantages, and commonalities. At the completion of this phase you should be able to answer the question "Why us?".

Assignment 3 (25 points): Conduct competitive analysis including fundamental and common features analysis and address key issues listed above.

Phase Four. In this phase we conduct a Web Review (of the current web site) by targeted users (it also means you must have your web site built out to a version 1.0 completion in order to conduct this review). In this review you will gain insights about new features, usability, functionality, that can be used to improve the User Experience. Keep in mind that successful ECommerce happens when user experiences are preferred.

Assignment 4 (25 points): In this assignment the student will conduct a user test on a web site. This means the student will review all aspects of the site utilizing a live user test approach (meaning test on people live and watch what they do, ask questions, receive feedback, and record the entire event). The student will then transcribe the entire users testing experience.

STUDENT PRESENTATION (25 points): Present executive summary of phases 1-4. The presentation should be brief and concise and professional.

Phase Five. Marketing Metrics. In this phase you manage ongoing data and metrics from your marketing efforts. There are a number of software solutions (google analytics, omniture, etc.) you may be exploring (you will be using google analytics primarily). Through out the semester you will be actively tracking and forecasting key metrics relating to ECommerce marketing. You will seek to increase and improve metrics including visits, page views, pages per visit, bounce rate, average time on site, new visit, geo location for visits, referring sites, direct traffic, search engine traffic, time on site, content overview, content views, and traffic sources, among other metrics.

Assignment 5 (25 points): Install Google Analytics or other metrics gathering application. Familiarize yourself with the data being gathered as well as the terms and definitions of all metrics available. Begin tracking key metrics and identifying opportunities and issues. Report findings...

Phase Six. Technical Marketing Plan/Techniques. In this phase we explore options for ECommerce/Internet Marketing and craft a marketing plan that may including the following:

Assignment 6 (25 points): State the campaign(s) goals and how the campaign(s) will achieve the goals. What specifically are you going to do? What techniques are you going to use and focus on? What is the schedule for marketing activities? How is it all going to work together? How are you going to measure goals?

Phase Seven. Integrated online and traditional marketing. Explore optimized options for marketing in both the online and offline segments.

Assignment 7 (25 points): What other marketing are you going to use? Print designs? Packaging? Face-to-face? TV? Radio? Mailers? etc.? If your plan includes any of these options you will need to prepare samples of what would be used. If not, you get a zero on thisÉok, choose at least one or two of these items.

Phase Eight. Online Marketing Implementation Activities. In this phase you will learn from what is working and what is not working and explore options for doing more of what is working, online marketing and metric wise. Specific activities include (a) content, content, content (meaning text, copy, photos, video, quality content, (b) consistency in adding additional quality content (meaning every few days you are adding new content to the site and seeing the impact of the content in the metrics you are tracking), and (c) viral or level of connectedness to users (meaning how much was the content shared). This phase is where you should be spending significant time and effort.

Assignment 8 (45 points): Explore all of the following and build out three of the following (i.e. a video, a blog, and a Facebook ad). Please focus on building out QUALITY CONTENT and where the content is going to go:

Phase Nine: Metrics Analysis/Priority. In this phase you will explore metric measurement alternatives and options and try to determine which of all the metrics are the most important metrics for measuring success for your project. Some questions you may ask include (a) Is the best metric/measurement for success page views or is it actual sales coming through the site? (b) Is it profitability or is it return on investment? (c) Is it bounce rate or traffic patterns geographically? There is loads of data and metrics and you must determine what are the most important data points and metrics to measure your success? Finally, you will explore what metrics should be paid attention to most in your specific ECommerce marketing activities?

Assignment 9 (25 points): Identify the most important metrics to measure and explain why they are the most important.

Phase Ten. Marketing requires ongoing and consistent effort and the phases in the process should be re-explored on an ongoing basis. In this phase you should look at each of the other phases and determine where additional and ongoing marketing efforts are needed.

Assignment 10 (25 points): What are you going to do over the semester? What kinds of consistent effort are you going to have? Are you going to tweet twice a day? Are you going to post to your blog daily? Are you going to post a new video each week? Are you going to do daily Facebook posts? Are you going to sent out a text message once a week? Explain the reasoning behind what you are going to do and why it will work?

FINAL STUDENT PRESENTATION (25 points): Present executive summary of phases 5-10. The presentation should be brief and concise and professional.



Project Grading "Metrics"
Student Name:_____________________________