MKT 250: Web Business Creation

The best part of this week was finishing the ad optimization project. I'm actually very proud of all the work I've done, especially given that this semester has been the craziest one ever for me.  Social media is actually something I've got a bit of experience in. I have started a business myself as a photographer, and since my boyfriend is an amazing marketer, I've also had the pleasure of running ads on Facebook/Meta. Through our ads, my yearly revenue tripled, I booked 3x more shoots including weddings, and I receive new followers daily. It's been so fun so far, and I would love to experiment with that for my jewelry business as well. I have seen a lot of ads on TikTok recently. I think I could have a lot of fun implementing the TikTok strategy I wrote about in my intro paper. I think it would be an awesome experiment, so I might actually do it :)

This week we learned more about SEO, which I thought was super cool! The best part was that I thought I really understood what made a page rank higher in searches, but it turns out there are so much more factors than I ever imagined.  The article we had to read was really interesting! Something that I didn't know and had never even thought of is that search engines can read the code on a page, which means that if you have key words directly in the code as a page title, your page will rank higher. That is so cool to me! I didn't know that even the code could affect a search engine's results, but knowing this will definitely help me and also help others who I share this information with.  I think it's also cool that the SEO article talked about providing value. You have to make it clear that your website offers something unique that the customer can't find anywhere else for it to perform well -- otherwise there is no reason for them to be there. This is an important p...

 This week we started our ads campaign!! Even though I didn’t really expect much, I was surprised at the reach and the clicks on my ads. It was cool that something so relatively easy can make such a big difference when you’re trying to sell stuff. I’m sure almost nobody would find or visit my website without the ads. Something I’m excited to start doing is offering holiday gifts. I’m hoping that if I do that, I’ll start to see more sales. I think it’d be fun to also figure out ways to design my own jewelry and sell it. I really enjoyed figuring out how to install the analytics tracker. I also think it’s so cool that I can see how many people are clicking on ads, and it’s especially cool that it’ll track how many people make it to the checkout page!! That’s such a cool feature, and I really think that’ll be the most accurate gauge of how many people are actually buying stuff. I’m really excited to see the data that I get from it!! I’m looking forward to next week :)

 This week was more challenging than I expected! I'm glad there's always a lot of materials to help us out, otherwise I would have had a bad time. One of the things I enjoyed contemplating this week was why we need to use Google Analytics to help us drive more traffic to our websites. I didn't realize that there was a tool that could track conversions, which is so cool! It's awesome to know that not only can it see how many people are on your site, but it can also track what they're doing there and if they make a purchase. I'm so glad I know this now. Something that this information can do for me is give me insight as to where I'm losing customers, so that I know exactly which step of the process I should focus on improving. This can keep me from wasting time on metrics that are performing well and instead spend my effort where it really matters. Overall, it was a great week and I'm excited to learn more about Analytics!

I really enjoyed this week! I had a lot of fun with the search-responsive ads activity, and it was awesome to be able to learn what kinds of key words work best and how to help your customers find your stuff. It was also fun to help others, ask lots of questions, and learn from my classmates! I really enjoyed participating in the discussion board this week. It was really fun to read everyone else's ideas and ask them questions about how to make mine better! Something else I decided to try, outside of class, was experiment with other kinds of ads. My boyfriend is an amazing marketing student, and this week we got to work on experimenting with ads for my photography business that I run on the side. This week, due to running a number of PPC ads on Facebook Ads Manager, I was able to book 4 shoots, which is more than I usually get in like 4 months! It was super exciting, and I'm really loving being able to see what kinds of strategies work best to spread awareness of a business or ...

 This week I did a lot of thinking about key words. I've tried to run ad campaigns before, but never with any luck. I think what was really missing was the right key words. I also don't think I targeted the right age group or the right demographic. This has taught me how important it is to niche down. So often I've found myself trying to be everything for everyone. This is neither effective nor possible. It's important to find the people that are looking for your product and focus on them and nobody else. You will do much more with your business and your life if you do what you're good at and ignore all the rest of it.  I think this is a good lesson for life and business!