The Social NetPlots

Click "I detest it"

Image by Frits Ahlefeldt-
Laurvig  under
Creative Commons 
License

The Social Networks seems to be a fertile ground for innovation in matter of complaints and protests.

A mixture of creativity, humor, and ease gave an unpredictable turn to the disappointment and anger that aroused by a discriminatory act in a small Texas town some months ago.

Indeed, a gay couple stopped to have breakfast at the Big Earl City Pittsburg, Texas bar last May. The waitress (she was the owner's daughter) came over to tell the couple that they would not be welcome next time as the restaurant "does not provide services to f*#s". By the way, in front of the restaurant there is a sign that reads  "Welcome to Big Earl Where Men act like Men, Women act like ladies, not saggy pants, we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone",  which in Simple Creole tantamount to saying:  "if you're gay or black, best keep driving . " With such idiosyncrasy, it doesn’t come too difficult to imagine the impact that would have caused to the owner of the local the reaction of the gay community: instead of publicly ousting the place, and launch a derogatory campaign against it, they turned to social media to sponsor the restaurant as a fantastic destination for those gays looking for a good breakfast in town.

Perhaps you're familiar with social networks that are, at once, portals for reviews and criticism for various premises that provide products or services to consumers (restaurants, gas stations, retail outlets, etc). In the case of Big Earl's the virtual stage protest that was chosen was  Yelp (a review portal and information guide popular in the United States). The end result was that the corresponding page to this restaurant ended up looking more like a political grandstanding than a list of recommendations and suggestions. Perhaps this was the reason that Yelp’s executives finally cleared away much of the comments. However the consumer backlash worked, and still parading through the door of Big Earl myriads of gay couples line up to get sure that the restaurant’s manager never forgets the lesson.

Advertisement: new forms of fugacity

Picture by Esther Vargas under
Creative Commons License

You may have noticed the gradual trend to brevity exhibited by the most popular online platforms

such as Facebook, Instagram, and more recently Snapchat, all characterized by a casual, brief, increasingly fleeting and ephemeral style.

Brands are challenged to promote their products through an application in which the content disappears in seconds. Not an easy task for advertisers to come up with a shocking announcement, interesting, "sticky", efficient enough to capture the attention among that waterfall of twitters, status updates, and conversations often disjointed and lacking in consistency. Especially in the case of Sanpchat (currently the 3rd. most popular social application among youth, behind Facebook and Instagram), the randomness of conversation sometimes makes it difficult even for robots aimed to detect the use of keywords, get to determine what kind of notice or advertising is more or less relevant. However, advertisers are including such platforms in their advertising efforts, and even beginning to capitalize on unexpected benefits of their campaigns.

As per Instagram, this application introduced the first paid ads (for mobile version) in last November. Less than a month later, the report released by the company showed the experience as a great success: three out of the four sponsors included in the report revealed having achieved the perception that they were pursuing for their brands, reaching an audience of between 7 and 9 million users without flooding Instagram with their ads. Indeed, in a span of nine days Levi reached nearly 7 million users in the US, while Ben & Jerry achieve similar results, reaching nearly 10 million people in a campaign the same period.

Although, as noted above, the information exchanged on these platforms is highly volatile, fleeting, and most chaotic cases, this type of advertising has virtually endless possibilities. Imagine the kind of information available to applications like Facebook or Snapchat: the average teenager publicize events such as their new relationship, or if they’ve gone on vacation to this, that and such place; if they have visited some disco and found it brutally boring ... This is like a diamond in the rough for the advertiser trying to define the profile of its consumers. And to skillful miners, half a nugget is gold...

What does CRM, Pipeline and Sales Funnel mean?

What is CRM?

The word CRM (English Customer Relationship Management ) is a marketing concept that refers to a method or system to organize and keep track of the various stages that make up the sales chain of a company. As such, ie as a method, it can be executed on paper or verbally. However, in common usage, the term is used to refer to software business management and business administration such as Salesforce, Zoho, Workbooks, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.

What is Pipeline?

This term is used to designate engineering based on different branches, which have valves and pumps to drive, at each distance, the flow of a given substance (in this case, a "commercial substance"). This type of data stream output implies that a phase is another input. Thus, the various stages or phases are linked in the manner of a pipe, making the flow speed through the pipeline. Perhaps a valid translation of the term into Spanish would be "Aqueduct sales" ( AS ).

Why is the concept helpful? One reason for segmenting the calculations, is that it improves the diagnosis of the present situation of the company: where is the business today, what sections of the marketing chain are neglected, where are they over-allocating resources and eventually the causes.

What is Sales funnel ?

Like the word Pipeline, the English term funnel (in Spanish embudo) is graphical and pretty self-explanatory: the top of the funnel, the widest part illustrates all potential customers ( CP ) consumers or users of the service or product the company sells. Includes thus, in a vague and undifferentiated way all potential candidates  that the company has indexed in its database as potential customers, even in the case of people who are not even been shown the product or service yet .  

The bottom of the funnel, illustrates what is happening as you go through the sales process after product presentation, negotiations, etc., until it reaches the narrowest part representing the final percentage of actual buyers or consumers.

The sales funnel is a marketing tool to quantify potential customers (or sales value) at any given moment of the marketing process.

Its utility lies in helping to predict the number of CPs that with probability, will become customers of the company.

Another of the advantages is that through continuous monitoring of the coefficients, detects problems in the sales pipeline and take corrective action before it is too late.

The  sales funnel shows AV obstructions, downtime outside the standard norm, or if there is an insufficient number of CPs in a given stage of the process. This knowledge allows to determine where sales agents should focus, efforts to maintain sales at the desired level and to meet sales targets.