Indonesia 18,550,000Philippines 10,300,000Australia 8,180,000India 6,900,000Taiwan 5,900,000Malaysia 4,870,000Hong Kong 2,830,000Thailand 1,960,000New Zealand 1,450,000Japan 930,000Vietnam 788,000South Korea 511,000
Google has just rolled out “Google Shopper,” a new mobile application for Android devices that offers a variety of different ways to search for products.In addition to basic search functionality, users can search by voice, take a picture of cover art, or scan a bar code to get detailed product information and price comparison. Google introduces the application on its website and in the video below.
As AndroidAndMe notes, the app clearly competes with the likes of ShopSavvy, who tells the publication that Google [and Amazon] “are and always have been our biggest competitors.”Google could deal a much stronger blow to the upstart by including Shopper – currently a Labs product – with new Android handsets. We also don’t see why Google wouldn’t extend the app to other mobile platforms as well.
Small businesses naturally gravitate to tools and strategies that quickly generate revenue without incurring significant costs. So it's no surprise that web-based marketing technologies have become a boon to small businesses because of their low cost and ease of use. Tools that are purpose-built for small businesses project a more professional image and deliver a richer set of management and monitoring capabilities than online tools targeted to consumers, which are often ad-supported and limited in function.
The essential small business marketing tools described below encourage stronger customer relationships and are easy to use and affordable, which makes them must-have tools in the small business marketer's toolkit.
Email marketing
Despite critics who have called email marketing's effectiveness into question, email marketing continually delivers the highest ROI for any marketing method. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing delivered $43.62 for every dollar spent in 2009.
What makes email marketing so effective? It's simple: permission and relevant content. This means that the recipient is looking forward to receiving messages and considers the content of the emails to be beneficial. For marketers, this translates into a pre-qualified list of prospects and returning customers. All you need to do to keep them is stay in touch with content that is compelling and useful.
Businesses can achieve several important goals with email marketing, but the most important are strong, lasting customer relationships. With email marketing, you can consistently communicate your expertise, your offerings, and your brand, thereby building trust and recognition. When the time comes for customers to make purchases, they'll naturally turn to the businesses they're familiar with and loyal to, and they're more likely to recommend those businesses to others.
Online surveys
The most successful small business owners understand that listening to their customers is critically important. Yet, it's not always practical to engage in one-on-one conversations to find out what every customer is thinking. That's where online surveys come in. Online survey tools allow you to easily request anonymous feedback from your customers at their convenience.
Whether conducted frequently, such as after a purchase, event, or customer service issue, or just once a year, surveys are an excellent way to glean valuable information about your customers' satisfaction, experience with your business, or feedback on your product. For example, a retailer might survey his customers to find out what product lines they'd like to see expanded. A consultant could survey customers to learn what marketing challenges are most important to them for 2010. In both cases, the survey results will help guide important business decisions that neither business owner may have determined without the help of the customer base.
Another benefit of online surveys is the opportunity for your customers to feel like they're a part of your business. In fact, asking customers about the best way to communicate with them -- either via email, Facebook, Twitter, or some other mode or combination -- is a great first step in gathering useful feedback. By opening up a two-way dialogue and inviting them to offer suggestions and constructive criticism, your customers feel that they're contributing to your success. Knowing that you took their advice or considered their feedback creates a sense of loyalty that will naturally lead to longer and stronger relationships.
Your social network of choice
Everywhere you turn these days, someone is talking about Facebook, retweeting Ashton Kutcher's latest comment, or asking you to connect on LinkedIn. While all the hype can seem a bit frivolous, the business benefits of social networks are very real. Countless small business owners have made valuable connections, including new customers, through their participation in social networks.
Participation is the key to success when it comes to social media. Much like email marketing, you must first offer real value before you can expect to get anything in return. Simply being there isn't going to place your brand at the center of the conversation. You first have to establish your credibility as a member of the community and a legitimate expert in your field.
Establish yourself as a resource by sharing your knowledge. This may mean linking to your blog posts, media coverage of your product or business, or your email newsletter. You can easily add value and show you "get it" by offering your thoughts and commenting on another's blog post or tweet, or by answering a question on LinkedIn Answers.
Once you've committed to a particular mode of communication, be consistent in using it. Frequency of communications is always a challenge for busy small businesses owners, but a regular effort to communicate will help deliver your message most effectively. Eventually, your audience will begin to anticipate your outreach and even look forward to your next tweet, post, update, or newsletter.
Low cost, high return
Today's small businesses face an ongoing battle for mindshare among their target consumers. These low cost, high return marketing tools provide small businesses with the advantage they need to cut through the noise and get their messages heard without breaking their budget.
Eric Groves is senior vice president of global market development for Constant Contact Inc.
If you’re a big fan of virtual goods (especially on Facebook applications and online games), then you’ll like what we have in store for you.This week, Globe Telecom made a partnership withBOKU, Inc., one of the world’s leaders in mobile payments. BOKU has developed direct mobile payments relationships with hundreds of game and applications developers, including the most popular ones in Facebook.BOKU’s Paymo service, together with Globe GCASH, now helps you virtual goods, services, and products from anywhere in the world, using only your mobile phone.
Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve teamed up with Globe GCASH, a leading mobile operator in the Philippines, to create a model for mobile payments of virtual, and eventually, physical goods. Through this great partnership, both companies will extend their reach to a larger international community that we think will benefit from being able to seamlessly effect mobile commerce around the world.
The online arena is still an emerging landscape for intellectual property (IP) where it is easy to misstep in trying to avoid IP landmines. Whether you are a small business looking for content to help get your website up and running or suddenly find an image or text you created on another company's site, it's possible you haven't taken the appropriate steps to protect yourself and prevent IP theft.
Marketers and online content creators often struggle to understand how traditional IP best practices apply to internet content. Major companies like Toyota and Skittles have recently come under fire for their usage of user-created media.
When Toyota launched a new microsite to promote the 4Runner SUV, the company did what others before had done: aggregated content from social networks to help promote the brand. This strategy didn't necessarily break the mold. After all, Skittles launched a similar website earlier this year with a much-publicized social media home page including Twitter feeds, comments from Facebook fans, and content from Flickr and YouTube.
Skittles ran into a problem with the inappropriate, and sometimes vulgar, content that appeared on the site, Toyota faced accusations of copyright infringement from photographers who had posted images on Flickr.
Social networks are free and flourish with user-generated content. The platform lends itself to a sharing environment, where copyrights and trademarks often aren't considered. However, as these sites become increasingly popular venues for marketing, a basic understanding of how IP law applies to online property will help you avoid finding yourself on either side of a dispute.
Here are a few simple steps to prevent an online intellectual property theft accusation:
1. Traditional intellectual property rights still apply to the internet and online forums.
There is a misconception in some quarters that if content appears online, particularly in a social forum or blog, it's public domain material. That's false.
An author of a statement and a trademark owner still control the rights to their copyrights and brands when they place their materials on the internet. One common element for online content is that the forum host typically posts a policy that notifies contributors that by placing content on the host website, the poster is granting the host a license to use and republish that content. While such policies might provide a valid license for the website host to republish material actually owned by its posters, it provides no license or rights to third parties visiting such websites.
2. Register your IP and know the scope of your licenses.
These are fundamental prerequisites to IP management. Copyrights protect expressions, which include a wide range of on- and offline content including writings, drawings, songs, pictures and movies. Trademarks protect identity. Registering your copyrights and trademarks enhances your rights, provides significant leverage in enforcing those rights and, in the case of trademarks, provides constructive notice nationwide of your rights.
Also, if you obtain permission to use material offline, you can't assume that it's fine for you to post or distribute that material electronically. You need to verify that the preexisting license included the right to use the material in the new form of distribution.
3. Prominently display your IP protection.
Many people copy online content out of ignorance. To help prevent this, post your notice of copyright in near proximity to your works. The notice should state the year the work was completed, the legal name of the entity/person that owns the work, and the copyright symbol.
The following is a standard format: ©2009 by Coats and Bennett, PLLC. A copyright footer on each page is not highly effective for giving notice that particular works on the page are copyright protected. If you operate a high-content site, it's a good idea to dedicate a page to "copyright information" where you state your position on other people using your content.
4. Understand who really owns the content you use.
Even if you incorporate properly licensed art in your brand's online presence, look behind the license. While you may have licensed the right to use an image from a particular author, does the image contain elements that the author has no rights to license for advertising?
For example, if you license a photograph of a person driving a sports car for use in an advertisement, you are most likely only licensing the copyright in that picture. If the person or car is identifiable, has the person in the picture and the product owner licensed or otherwise agreed to the use of their images in your advertisement? Such embedded images raise trademark and publicity rights, beyond the overall copyright.
Also, explore if agreements that were in place before you put the content online give the right to use the material in a new form of distribution.
5. Take action.
If your copyright is violated, put the offending party on notice that they must immediately take down the image or text, or properly attribute credit and pay your licensing fee. Because there is a third party involved, you can also put the ISP and web host on notice that the website is violating your rights. If you receive notice that you are violating a copyright, react quickly. An uninformed mistake can typically be rectified, but you may face serious consequences if you ignore fair warning.
6. Don't confuse copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Copyright infringement occurs when someone makes an unauthorized copy of someone else's expression, or makes an unauthorized derivative that is substantially similar to the original works (when comparing the similarities). Plagiarism is passing off someone else's ideas or thoughts as your own. While it may get you expelled from some schools and professions, plagiarism itself is not illegal. Plagiarism might also involve copyright infringement, but not typically.
Plagiarism is avoided by giving proper attribution to others when you use and repeat their thoughts and ideas. Attribution avoids the charge of plagiarism, it is not, however, a defense or excuse for copyright infringement.
Conclusion
Managing copyrights and trademarks online typically involves applying traditional best practices and law to this new medium. Expanding to new forums like online sites can help grow your brand and connect with consumers, but also means that you have to steer clear of IP infringement and protect your content.
The old adage "if it looks too good to be true, it is" applies more than ever to online content. It is easy to copy and paste content onto your site or post it online without a copyright. However, this practice leaves open the possibility of an ensuing legal battle that could be far more costly and time-consuming than following best practices from the onset.
The potential consequences for infringing someone else's copyrights and/or trademarks include loss of your profits associated with the conduct, the other party's damages, enhanced damages, attorneys fees, and a permanent injunction prohibiting further publication, as well as corrective advertising explaining the past infringement. Under certain circumstances, a party can be liable for up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each instance of willful copyright infringement.
The IP rights landmines are real, but with proper attention and knowledge, they can be avoided.
Anthony J. Biller, Esq., is a member of Coats and Bennett and leads the firm's litigation practice.
