Marketing research paper

You are an e-commerce expert and you have some friends who own their own local bookstore. The husband and wife team have owned this company for 20 years and have built an amazing business that is very successful to the local community and is known to have an amazing collection of rare and exotic books. You have just completed a marketing plan for the Johnsons a few weeks ago, but now they realized how important social media is to improving their e-commerce and local presence. They loved your previous report and want you back to help them understand social networking and help develop a social networking strategy. You are an e-marketing and e-commerce consultant. Mary and Joe Johnson, the owners of Book Bunker, have hired you to help them create a comprehensive plan to utilize social networking in their marketing and advertising programs. Utilizing the knowledge you have with this organization from your previous report, you will need to give them a detailed report on how to utilize social networking sites to improve their online presence and local foot traffic. You will need to write a 5 page (2,500 words minimum) page professional business report outlining your ideas and strategies to create a social networking program for Book Bunker. Hi, Welcome back! Joe and I want to thank you for the solid work you did on our marketing plan. We have already seen improvements in sales due to the new website we have launched. As of today, 10% of our sales have been through our website... that is amazing. We are also utilizing the customer relationship management system you recommended. We have been using this data to reach out to old and new customers, inviting them to book signings, informing them of new sales and just thanking them for their patronage. We have had several book events, where Joe and I just sent an email and 40 of our local guests showed up and we had an amazing sale day. In short, we have a new buzz, one that we haven't seen in this store for years! We see that utilizing this new medium is not scary... and not too intimidating... it has been just the opposite, very rewarding. Joe and I were talking and he has been hearing a lot about social media... well, I don't know a tweet from a Facebook page, and to be honest, I am not sure how we can do anything with this, but realizing we were wrong about waiting so long to get online, we thought we would talk to you. Joe has all the details about what we are thinking. If we can have just half the success with social media that we have had with our customer relationships and online marketing plans, we will be thrilled. Take care... and thanks for your help. Hello, welcome back. I am sure you have heard from Mary that we are thrilled and pleased with our e-marketing program. Business is really going... thanks to your efforts. But we also realized that we made a mistake awhile back when we were not interested in social media. To be honest, we were a bit intimidated by e-commerce, and the thought of social media seemed impossible. However, things have changed and we are now learning how incredible the World Wide Web is for our business, so we should take the next step. We would like a three part report. First off, Mary and I are not familiar with all the details of social media. What is social media? How do companies utilize this new application? What is Web 2.0? How does that affect our store and our online presence? If you could give us some overview of these basic concepts of the new technology it would be helpful. In addition to this background report, we would like to have you outline the various companies that are providers of social media. We have heard of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, but we know there are many more. Could you possibly list about 20 other companies and tools that are available for us to utilize? Perhaps you could create a matrix that describes the company, lists the website and how the application would apply to our bookstore? Lastly, we would like you to recommend a social networking strategy to follow. Once you describe social media and outline various companies, what are your recommendations to us specifically? What companies should we choose to become involved with? How will it improve our business? A plan to follow would help us dramatically…and remember, Mary and I are not too familiar with social networks, so please be sure to be specific in your suggestions. We are looking forward to your report and know you will help us improve our business again! Thanks for your time. Given the scenario, your role and the information provided by the key players involved, it is time for you to make a decision.

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