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=Personal Reflections on CCT356=

==== CCT356 was a particularly interesting course to me, because I had been messing around with Google ads for a while and basic metrics made no sense to me, and even thought a high bounce rate was a good thing. Each class answered a question I hadn’t thought to ask yet, and actually learned to fix a couple of issues on my website that I missed the first time. It is a fact that I gained an insight into online marketing, and it is very interesting on how fast I could apply what I’ve learned so far. ====

==== While I’m not prepared to release my website’s name or in-depth statistics yet (it’s a web-comic site that’s been flat lining for a year or so), I’ve gained significant traffic sources from referring sites (34.11 % now, previously ~11%) and Search Engines also went up (44 %, previously ~20%) and direct Traffic went down (~60-70%, now ~30%), which was great, because it was mostly me spamming my links to sites that either forced No-referral or me sending links out to friends to gain Direct Traffic. ====

==== The marketing assignments were interesting to study as well, as it was really building upon itself each time; from a research of an existing marketing campaign to creating an actual one. The first assignment that I looked at was viral ads that gained a lot of viewers quickly. It was an interactive ad campaign that allowed users to tell Andy what to do. This campaign was extensive, because they created landing pages, fake Facebook accounts for Andy and the bear what to do and even created spin-of sites as well as fan sites. Even though it was a German product, it managed to gain viewership into the NA market as well. ====

==== The second online critique was also a viral ad that used cross media. It required the internet and the mobile to use. It involved people shouting over their phones to move their bike online, which was very exciting use of multiple platforms. It also showed how innovation can really draw attention quickly and with the nature of the internet, anything remotely interesting is instantly known to all in matter of days or even hours. ====

==== The final project was fascinating too, because we did an entire campaign for a real company, Steamwhistle Beer. They enjoyed free advertisements done, and even said that if it were promising they would actually use it. Anything we did was new, because Steamwhistle rarely advertises, and only just started a radio and television ad campaign. They hardly penetrated into the social networking sites, with just a landing page on Facebook. They had little ads online and even less in traditional media. Also, Steamwhistle had a few conditions that we had to follow; we couldn’t do ads that they have already done, which was fine as they hardly did any online advertisements at all. They shared numbers that weren’t publicly shared and we created an online persona for Steamwhistle, which they are currently reviewing.This almost felt like we were working with a real client, but with no consequence if we screwed up. ====