reflection+piece


 * CCT356**
 * Self-Reflection Piece**

Throughout the course, Online Advertising and Marketing, I have learnt that the technique to online marketing is very similar to traditional marketing in terms of its basic principles. Online advertising and traditional advertising are both used to build brand awareness and inform potential customers of the product or service they are trying to sell. However, there are also issues that concerns with online advertising. There are times when online advertisements are not getting the impressions advertisers want, especially with ad blocks on and the annoyance of intrusive ads. Therefore, it is important to be clear how to optimize your marketing strategy through the different techniques in online adverting, affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, and viral marketing.

In the course, we were able to understand these various digital marketing methods by comparing two different online campaigns, designing my own online advertisement as well as being able to generate a full online marketing campaign strategy for a currently running business. For our first assignment in analyzing different online advertising and marketing approaches, I was able to learn how social media today inevitably plays a significant role in marketing today. Especially when we are given the opportunity to generate our own personalized messages, things like Twitter and Facebook provide a great platform for free advertisements and product placement. These social media sites are effective because they function much similar to word of mouth marketing. Viral marketing enables content sharing to become much easier with the internet. With the right message and right environment, the message will spread. After having to analyze what elements in an online campaign works with the advertising company, I was able to incorporate what I had learned onto designing an online advertisement for a simulate airline brand and applying the knowledge into generating a viral campaign for a currently running Toronto-based youth t-shirt company.

In terms of what I could improve is the quality of my ad design. Although using flash banners was able to provide more information on the company, the overall effect and quality design makes the advertisements look a bit like a scam. This was due to the limited images I was able to find from stock photography. Perhaps in my future career when I am able to do it on a real company, I can generate my own pictures to use for an ad campaign. Another element I had changed in my assignments is the organization of my description and images. As an important concept of marketing, keeping viewers interested is essential. Therefore by incorporating images within the description text, will allow viewers to stay interested and informed.

Overall, I believe the skills I have gained from this course will most definitely benefit me in my future career. I was able to investigate practices and tools of effectively marketing and promoting goods online. Having to study those who have been successful in online marketing and advertising such as Matthew Inman, have allowed me to gain knowledge of the important skills in search engine optimization needed to have a successful website. Moreover, with guest speakers Juile Tyios, Pam Shaw, Michael Cayley and Vivian Ip, I was able to gain knowledge of the most current marketing methods used today.