Girl Starts Marketing Career

I have been trying to juggle a full time job, full time enrollment at college, and most recently a part time sales job. Although I didn’t hold that position for long, I found that learning to be a salesperson was too much stress for me right now. I like developing strategies and finding new targets, not actually selling the product. I am going to return my equipment this afternoon and I kind of want to see if I can develop strategies for them free of charge, because I have a couple of unique ideas. I don’t want to devote myself though because I need a real internship that can offer me more. The company sells “healthy home products”, such as: vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, central vacuum cleaners, carpet shampooers, and other similar things. Here are my ideas:

Air Purifier: The central air purifier is a very high tech medical grade device that circulates the air 7x in one hour. It removes allergens, bacteria and pollutions. I think it would be a good idea to target businesses with the central air purifier. The target business would be one in which its customers spend a decent amount of time, like a café, ideally one that is frequented by environmentally conscious customers. There are plenty of these in Philadelphia! Adding to the value of the air purifier would be a plaque (can be cheaply made, but well designed and classy) which can be placed where diners can clearly read it. The plaque will speak of the medical-grade clean air provided in the café at all times. This would also work as publicity for the company!!

Central Vacuum Cleaner: A central vacuum cleaner has a large canister installed in an area of the home and it has an outlet in each room where the hose can be attached. This can be targeted at home builders. For around $1,500 a very classy, high-quality central vacuum cleaner can be installed in a home. It could be a great selling point.

Below you will see the Twitter profile of a company named Intense Debate. I’m working on installing their program so I can have comments on this blog. It wasn’t working so I decided to see if anyone on Twitter knew how to use it (and because I wanted to tweet something since I hadnt in awhile). I tweeted “Anyone experienced with Intense Debate? Having probs installing to my blog.” 

As you can see the company follows up when their name is tweeted and the message isn’t good. The company responded for all to see by Tweeting @ me with an offer to help. By doing so they publisize their commitment to customer service. To me it looks like they actively pursue opportunties to help. Their responses are varied and personable; it appears genuine. That’s important because here you will see their profile consists of mainly customer service responses, and having the same response wouldnt give as great an image. They should say more than just customer service repllies though, but all-in-all smart thinking! 

Follow me on Twitter: GirlMarketsSelf

There are major benefits of using LinkedIN, a social networking site for professions, such as: networking opportunities, self/company branding, employment searches and due diligence. There is another benefit to LinkedIN - the opportunity to glace into someone else’s resume. It’s like seeing what cards the other players are playing with! Business people of the new generation know that it’s important to portray themselves well on LinkedIN because it’s so public. What a person writes in their LinkedIN profile may be their best representation, and essentially their resume’. Study their wording, format, accomplishments, history - and compare it to your own. See how you compare to someone you deem successful or admire.

Tip: Create a LinkedIN for your company. Here is the link:  http://www.linkedin.com/companies?didentcompy

One way to brand yourself online is to connect with your social network followers.  When I can I try to thank my followers in a personable way so they can see me as a real person with a real blog. You should message your follows on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or other social networks. 

Twitter Thanks:

ex 1: “Thanks, (name) for following me. To witness the start of my marketing career visit GirlStartsMarketingCareer.tumblr.com.”

ex 2: “Hi, (name). I’m Kristina, a 25 y/o aspiring marketeer. Thanks for following me and I hope you enjoy my tweets!

Update: I have been introducing myself to new followers and so far two people Tweeted that they liked what I’m doing & then they provided a link to my blog. Combined, these two people have about 2,500 followers who got positive feedback about my blog!

The big assignment in my entrepreneurship course is to compose a business plan. My professor recommended we register for a free trial membership to Hoover’s, which is a really expensive, top notch industry analysis company, to obtain information on our industry. Once I had entered my information for a free trial I began to glance around the website and ponder where I should go first. Then an instant message popped up and I was being greeted by a representative named Paul. He asked me a few questions - what industry was I interested in? Who did I plan to market to? He then transferred me to Andrew. Andrew offered to call me and discuss what they can offer me. We talked for a little while and he then invited me to join a web conference. He left me with his number and emailed me a 14 page summary of my industry.

The instant message appeared as soon as I felt unsure of where to go next. It was nice to have online customer support there with me when I needed it. Since Hoover’s memberships can cost thousands of dollars a year, new memberships can mean sizeable earnings. How do you increase the chances that I join for a full membership? You cater to me!!!!!! You make things easy for me to understand and you show me what you have to offer me!!!  Understanding customers needs is the start of good marketing.

Hello, Hoover’s!

Tip: Free trial Hoover’s membership:    http://www.hoovers.com/products/100001001-1.html                 

I recently found out about iGoogle and I love it! It’s a home page, or “personalized web portal” that you customize. A homepage is what you first see when you sign onto the internet. In the past there was minimal opportunity to customize the information delivered on that page. I remember when I used America Online years ago, we were given a couple of homepage selections to choose from, “business” was one for example. The information on the homepage would be business-related if that is what you had picked. With iGoogle you pick whose news, or RSS feeds rather, you see when you sign on. I have RSS feeds of my favorite bloggers, WSJ, and other news sources. Basically, if a website has an RSS feed you can add it to your iGoogle. I also have the weather and a few other gadgets. You can change the design too!

RSS feed = Real Simple Syndication. Basically it takes information from a website and delivers it to you.

Here’s what my iGoogle looks like:

My internet marketing class has really made me recognize the importance of web surfing for professional purposes. I’m starting to view the internet as a treasure trove of information and resources that can benefit my career ambitions. This week alone I have applied for a dream  internship, read professional histories of successful marketing professionals, learned how to use social networking tools, began following great RSS feeds, and just generally became more aware.

My ideal career will be marketing and/or owning a company in the natural skin care industry. I have had this ambition for around 5 years now. I’m sure that you would all agree with me that “Green” living/products/production/etc are the wave of the future. That’s because most of us have been ignorant and are just now realizing the damage we have done to the planet and our health. It is a matter of time until we start seeing dramatic changes in our consumer-driven worlds. The same holds true for skincare. People are most successful when they are passionate about what they do. There are few reasons why I am passionate about natural skin care:

For the most part there are no FDA regulations on skin care or cosmetics. So long as the producer says the product is safe, it’s sold. Women are very vulnerable to good marketing that directly relates with the way they look and feel. The cosmetics industry is huge and, sadly, good marketing alone is enough to fuel that fire. 

There are certain things we can do for ourselves that have a direct impact on our self esteem and overall well being. Some examples are: excersizing, eating right, keeping our house clean, managing our money, and for many women another one is consuming cosmetics and skin care products. Women feel fantastic when they find a good product. I hope that one day “Good” means healthy.

I have started following Biz Stone (the creator of Twitter) on Twitter and it appears that in doing so I will receive emails from him about how to make the most of Twitter! Free advice from the creater of a product that can help my blog? I’ll take it! Here’s a copy of the email message he sent:

Hi there,

Last month I restarted this monthly Twitter email update. If you’ve been around for a while, then you might remember getting my emails. If you signed up and requested this update more recently, welcome! A lot happens every month at Twitter so we want to keep you in the know. As always, you’re invited to visit http://twitter.com — to come see what’s new.
New Front Page
We’ve discovered over the years that Twitter is a work in progress. At first, the idea of tweeting only appealed to a few but then it caught on in a big way. Now Twitter is an incredibly rich and expanding information network. Our design team has changed the front page to reflect this metamorphosis and will continue to adjust accordingly.
Official Twitter Conference
We’re hosting our first official Twitter developer conference this month. It’s called Chirp. The event will take place in San Francisco over two days. The first day is April 14th at the Palace of Fine Arts. On April 15th, we’ll be gathering at Fort Mason right along the bay. We’re looking forward to meeting in person. For info, tickets, or to watch online, visit the Chirp web site.
Fighting Spam
Our Chief Scientist Abdur recently published a short piece titled, “State of Twitter Spam.” In it, he explained how the definition of spam is different when compared to the common email variety. Spam is inevitable on a popular system but we fight it aggressively. Less than 1% of tweets per day are spam and we work diligently to reduce that percentage.
Location, Location, Location
We added a new feature to the Twitter web site that allows you to attach location data to individual tweets. This feature may not appeal to everyone so it requires that you activate it first in your Account Settings. You can choose to share an exact location or a general location such as neighborhood or town. This additional context is potentially very powerful.
Thanks,
Biz Stone, Co-founder (@Biz)
Twitter, Inc.

I’ve created this blog for my internet marketing class. The majority of our grade is based upon our efforts to generate traffic to it. So far I have created a Facebook fan page and Twitter account. My plans for the future are to locate other blogs, forums, and web communities that may attract members of my niche, aka females in the early stages of their marketing careers. I will post to those communities and include a link to my blog. I intend to post a video blog here which will also be posted on YouTube. I think a video is important because my blog will be intimate and honest and viewers should be able to feel close to me. Those are the ideas that I currently have as far as the web is concerned. I intend to also network in person. I’ve actually found myself becoming more motivated to jump start my career. I’m considering organizations that would attract members of my niche and have so far found the Junior Chamber of Commerce. Next I will look for marketing-specific seminars. I will create business cards for myself and have those on hand at all times.

More ideas to come!