Well, I finally upgraded.
Don't get me wrong - Blogger is a great service and it was the perfect thing for me to begin writing about stocks and marketing.
But I finally took the plunge and bought my own site. Everything stock and marketing related will now be housed at www.zacksimpson.com.
I'm also mixing in some posts about life, but I intend to largely keep in stock market and marketing-related.
To whomever has read anything I've written here: I thank you.
I'm a terrible blogger. I come around here...what? Like once every 10 months? Terrible!
But I mean well. I'm genuinely passionate about the stock market, and I remain an avid reader of all things marketing news.
My Motley Fool CAPS score has been wild over the past year. I briefly reached a 95 ranking, only to drop to 85 when I green-thumbed a number of silver stocks a bit early. I'm long on silver, so I'm not terribly concerned, and several of those green-thumbs are now earning me points and repairing my overall score to ~93.
These days I'm long on metals, energy, and Gorilla Glass.
If you're not familiar with Gorilla Glass, check out Corning, Inc (GLW). Their big revenue driver remains LCDs, but Gorilla Glass is the stuff Apple uses in their iPads, iPhones, as well as numerous other companies' products.
Basically the stuff is wonder-glass...it's break and scratch-resistant; perfect for touchscreen technology. It's also being used in TVs, kitchen appliances, and more.
Corning faces competition on a variety of their businesses, so do your due diligence, but I'm long on GLW and would recommend the stock. A healthy dividend yield will help while you wait for the stock price increase.
My other current holdings include: Melco Crown Entertainment (MPEL), Enterprise Products Partners (EPD), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), General Steel Holdings (GSI), and Taseko Mines Limited (TGB).
Truthfully, I'm skeptical about GSI. I just doubled-down to lower my cost basis, but the company is woefully underperforming. Unless they turn things around next quarter, I'll look to liquid my shares and move to something better.
I will probably never sell EPD. Enterprise has consistently raised their dividend nearly every quarter, they are profitable and healthy, and the stock price has nearly doubled from my original purchase price. It's hard not to love that.
Other than Enterprise, I love Melco Crown (MPEL) and the success they've had in Macau. I still feel they are under-valued, and the last quarter's financials back me up on that. I'm in this one for the long haul until the fundamentals change. Las Vegas Sands (LVS) and Wynn (WYNN) may eventually force my hand...
My only other long-term play that I'll begin buying into with RM is silver. Across the board I'm looking at silver exposure for the next 20 year period. Silver has applications in technology that gold simply doesn't, and I'm concerned about domestic production reserves. Feel free to disagree, but I'm putting my opinion out there.
As always, any suggestions made regarding the stock market and individual stocks are my own ideas and personal opinion. Always do your own due diligence before investing any amount of money. And good luck out there!
McDonald's might be the most popular of the bunch, but fast food burger operators know that the quality (and uniqueness) of their french fries will be a motivating force for repeat business.
I've moved! To read the rest of the post, check out the article on my new site: zacksimpson.com.
Here's the specific french fry marketing idea post.
Thanks for reading!
Fun fact: all the clever marketing in the world won't make up for a shitty product or poor customer service.
Despite the best efforts of marketing, branding and advertising, an organization simple cannot overcome ineffectiveness within it's core competencies.
Although this would seem to be a common sense business ideology, many businesses fail to invest in product refinement and customer service training. Why is that?
How many companies can you think of who have made their service the marketing message? Off the top of my head: Southwest, Zappos...and that's about it without spending much time considering it.Want to guess where these companies rank in their respective industries?
Our world is globally connected. We carry the power of the internet in our pockets. It is simply too easy for consumers to find your competitors if you do not provide them the service they expect.
What's more, they're more likely than ever to take to a virtual soapbox and decry your company. Why give them any reason to?
Companies must make money to exist, and I'm not suggesting businesses bow to the threat of virtual strong-arm tactics. However, most customer requests or complaints are usually well within the margin a business operates.
I used the example two weeks ago about Hainan Airlines and their shocking lack of customer service. I don't believe my requests were unreasonable (I was asking for their online quoted price over the phone, when their website went down), yet I didn't get my issue resolved, and I moved on to their direct competitor (Korean Airlines). It seems irrational that a business would operate in this way. What's more - I had heard nothing but POSITIVE things about Hainan Air. Perhaps it was an off-week for them.
To keep this short, businesses (particularly small to mid-sized businesses) need to invest more resources into their CRM, and in product/service refinement. If you sell ceiling tiles on the internet, invest in nothing but the highest quality tiles.
If you sell concert tickets online, then make sure customer relations management is a top priority. Positive customer experiences will lead to repeat customers, increasing their lifetime value. What's more, their virtual soapbox becomes their place to serve as a brand advocate. Which would you prefer?
The bottom line: Invest in strengthening your core competencies before opening up the marketing budget. If your customer experience is shoddy, you'll only do more harm than good by marketing to new consumers.
I wrote recently about online retail marketing after the recession, and since then, a thought has occurred to me: while the global consumer landscape is now different (expectations have shifted, etc), fundamental marketing research is still valid.
Today, I'm talking about the concept of customer lifetime value (CLV). In marketing, this means how much the average customer is worth to a business over the lifetime of the relationship between the business and the customer.
Of course, this is a highly variable thing, and not easy to calculate. It varies for each business type, industry and model. Contractual businesses (think real estate, subscription-based companies like insurance, cell phone service providers) rely on customers to renew a contract on a periodic basis. The reverse is called customer migration. Either a customer buys Product A from a business, or they do not.
If a customer doesn't renew a contract with a subscription-based company, they are considered lost. If a customer doesn't purchase Product A from Customer Migration Business A, they still might in the future. Determining the CLV metric for each business type is quite different.
In my opinion, drilling down CLV for customer migration businesses is much harder, as the marketer is not always certain when the relationship is over (from the customer perspective).
Once a business understands its CLV, it can use this metric to determine how much investment to make on customer acquisition, per customer. Example:
Ted's Toys Co. sells toys, and on average, customers spend $185 over the course of their relationship with the company. Marketer Jane from Ted's Toys knows that their products have an average 30% profit margin. This means, of the $185 spent per customer, $55.50 of it is profit for the company. Therefore, Marketer Jane must spend less than $55.50 to acquire each new customer, for the company to remain profitable. The lower she can get that number, the more profitable the company is.
Customer lifetime value is considered a long-term metric. It's not used for short-term goals, and generally emphasizes customer service and customer satisfaction as key barometers. Since we know that customer purchase behavior and expectations of value are now greater, CLV goes hand in hand with marketing to our post-recession world.
This week I was shopping for a round-trip plane ticket to Beijing, from Las Vegas. This isn't the first time I've been to China, and it probably won't be my last. I had done some research since my last trip, and had discovered Hainan Airlines. From what I've read, Hainan Airlines is an exceptional company. They are rated 5-stars by some publications, and the customer reviews I've read are largely positive.
With credit card in hand, I visited their website to purchase my plane ticket. Except, their reservation system wasn't working online, and I only received error messages. No problem…I called their 1-800 number. However, when I tried to make the exact same reservation over the phone, I was quoted a price 40% higher. When I expressed shock and mentioned the price on the website, the agent advised me the higher price was the best she could offer.
I got off the phone and sent a friendly email the customer service department of Hainan Airlines, expressing my disappointment in my experience. I said I had heard good things about the airline, that I was a ready-to-buy customer, and could they honor their online price. I even included a screenshot of their online quoted price.
It took about 24 hours, but I received a response, inquiring about my contact number. I responded with my cell phone number, and promptly called the manager who had sent me the email. Voice mail; message left. No response. I sent a message to their Twitter account. Nothing. I waited two more days, and opted to make my purchase with a different airline. Three days later, I still have not heard back.
The cost difference on the plane ticket was about $500 – significant to me. I have no doubt that if I flew on HA, my experience with the company would have improved, and I would make them my first choice when I fly to Asia. Surely that $500 has some margin built in to it. Surely the airline president would want my business at the online quoted price, if it meant I was more likely to buy again in the future.
This brings up several organization and marketing points:
Bottom line: Understanding key business metrics, like customer lifetime value, will help online retail marketers make better investment decisions in customer acquisition and retention.
I was re-reading some of my old investment articles (it's still something I believe in very much), and I decided share what the results were from some of stocks I had picked.
First, let me say that I am not at all an expert at this stuff. I dabble for personal pleasure and my own financial gain, but I make ZERO promises anything I say about stocks will pan out. These are just musings.
With that said, let's turn to my post from May 1, 2009 titled "Are the Stock Markets Downward Ho?". This was May 2009 - of course they were!
At the end of my rambling, I highlighted a number of stocks I owned or was interested in. These included: AUY, VGZ, TGB, MPEL, GSI, EPD, AOB and GLBL. I also mentioned ITLN and ACTU, but they are no longer traded.
My worst performer was easily AOB - American Oriental Bioengineering. It's a Chinese pharmaceutical company, and I (thankfully) sold the stock a while ago. Since May 13, 2009, the stock is down 52%. Ouch. I managed to sell long before that, but my predictions about a populous increasingly turning to medicines has so far been wrong.
Apart from AOB though, I've managed to do quite well. Taseko Mines (TGB) has managed to reward me beyond my dreams, and is up nearly 570% since my post! We had a bit of a snafu in October when the Canadian mining company lost on an environmental concession, but things are back on track now.
Similarly, my bet on gold has panned out nicely. I thought Vista Gold Corp (VGZ) and Yamana Gold (AUY) looked attractive, and they've grown 108% and 32% respectively.
I've been generally disappointed in General Steel - a Chinese steel company - but it's still up 22% overall. However it is down 62% from it's high over a year ago, and I feel like the market may be missing something here. Or maybe *I* am.
In 2009, I felt strongly that the oil and gas industry still had some real strength to it. I picked a couple two different players in the field: Enterprise Product Partners (EPD) and Global Industries (GLBL).
Global has exceeded my expectations, growing 228% since May '09. However my real love has been Enterprise Partners. It hasn't grown quite like Global, and the stock is up "only" 135% - but it's the dividend I love. Since May of 2009, EPD has paid out $4.51 per share in dividends to stock holders. The best part? The amount has steadily increased each quarter - from 54 cents/share to now 59 cents. It's really hard to be upset with that.
Lastly we come to Melco Crown Entertainment (EPD). This one is my baby. It's the second stock I ever purchased and it's one that I believe in for many decades to come. Melco operates a couple of high-end casinos on the Cotai strip in Macau. It's one of only six companies who has a license to do so, and their City of Dreams facility is arguably the most grand.
Despite some ups and downs, Melco is up 199% since May '09, and I will probably hold onto this one for a long time. Of course, I plan on holding on to most of the stocks I own, unless I'm ready to liquefy or the fundamentals of the company change.
So I suppose the moral is to pick companies you believe in, and hold on for the ride.
.The rest of the article can be found on my new site: www.zacksimpson.com/online-marketing-in-a-post-recession-world
I've moved just a few of the posts from this Blogger account over, and this is one of them. Thanks!
Conclusions drawn from Accenture research report.
