What does the future hold for LinkedIn? The market has been pondering this question since LinkedIn's IPO this year. LinkedIn has thrived under the current economic conditions, with high unemployment rates and a surge in the number of people looking for jobs. The networking and job search features on LinkedIn are essential to anyone who is looking for a job in the current economic conditions. As new people sign up, they often spend additional time building up their profile, updating their experience, building up their network and simply finding out what LinkedIn has to offer.
Over time, the key to LinkedIn is to keep people coming back even when they are not unemployed, graduaing from college or looking for a career transition. To this end, LinkedIn has been rapidly expanding the professional networking and features on its website, in order to expand the value proposition it offers to its users. The expanding number of professional groups on LinkedIn is expanding the possibility for LinkedIn to become the center of future online professional exchange and seminars. This expands the role of LinkedIn beyond just networking for jobs. It provide a forum for ideas, solutions, information exchange and discussions. In addition, LinkedIn has started incroporating business news and industry news into the user home page to provide relevant and interesting news based on user profile.
LinkedIn members can also integrate their LinkedIn accounts with other applications or networks that can be used to benefit LinkedIn member's profile. This includes links to twitter accounts, word press blogs, huddle online workplace collaboration, project management tools, slideshare presentation tools, e-bookshelf, box.net for online file storage, and portfolio display. These tools add to the value to LinkedIn accounts and can eventually provide opportunities to do work collaboration and discussion online in a professional context. The goal is to increase the amount of time users spend on LinkedIn for non job search and networking related functions.
Lastly, LinkedIn also provides premium accounts for users. These premium accounts provide additional networking functionality and visibility. It also provides premium accounts for recruiters and companies who use LinkedIn for human resource recruiting purposes. These premium accounts provide additional revenues for LinkedIn to supplement advertising revenue. The business model of LinkedIn based on job search and networking also has the potential for generating a higher percentage of premium accounts compared to free accounts than other companies using the freemium model because it provides a potential direct financial benefit for the user - finding a new job or finding the right workers.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
ZMOT and Online Retailing
Google recently published a free e-book title ZMOT Winning the Zero Moment of Truth. In the book, ZMOT is described as "the moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about a product or service you're thinking about trying or buying. Putting it simply, it includes the online research, product comparisions, price comparisons, use reviews, coupon code search, online shopping, store availability checks that all internet users are all so familiar with. ZMOT occurs before the traditional FMOT (first moment of truth) which tradtionally occurs when the potential customer encounters the product in the store shelf.
Online retailers have the additional advantage of combining the ZMOT and FMOT into an integrated shopping experience so that consumers are researching and "seeing" the products at the same time. Amazon.com website provides a good example in that product information, pictures, video, description, reviews, ratings, competitive products and price information are all presented together on one product page. Consumers now instantly have a large amount of information at their disposal for evaluating the product and making a decision. Amazon.com's one click purchase option also make buying on their site easier than any other purchasing method and also increases spur of the moment or impulse purchase through one single click. The disavantage of online retailers is the limited ways of enhancing the FMOT experience since shoppers cannot actually see and feel the product in their hand. This has hampered the growth of online retailing in certain product categories and services. At the same time, the increasing acceptance of online shopping and fact that online retailers have made returns easier, make it more likely that consumers will use ZMOT online experience to make their purchase decision and bypasss the traditional FMOT in the store. In this regard, Amazon.com is constantly enhancing their platform and have made it relatively easy for consumers to return products if it did not make consumers' expectation due to lack of FMOT experience.
Online retailers have the additional advantage of combining the ZMOT and FMOT into an integrated shopping experience so that consumers are researching and "seeing" the products at the same time. Amazon.com website provides a good example in that product information, pictures, video, description, reviews, ratings, competitive products and price information are all presented together on one product page. Consumers now instantly have a large amount of information at their disposal for evaluating the product and making a decision. Amazon.com's one click purchase option also make buying on their site easier than any other purchasing method and also increases spur of the moment or impulse purchase through one single click. The disavantage of online retailers is the limited ways of enhancing the FMOT experience since shoppers cannot actually see and feel the product in their hand. This has hampered the growth of online retailing in certain product categories and services. At the same time, the increasing acceptance of online shopping and fact that online retailers have made returns easier, make it more likely that consumers will use ZMOT online experience to make their purchase decision and bypasss the traditional FMOT in the store. In this regard, Amazon.com is constantly enhancing their platform and have made it relatively easy for consumers to return products if it did not make consumers' expectation due to lack of FMOT experience.
New Ideas from E-Marketing Presentation
Attended an extraordinary student e-marketing presentation where the business models and marketing strategies of leading social networks and online startups in both China and the United States were analyzed and dissected.
It is interesting to note that advertising and freemium business models dominate among social media companies and online startups in both China and the United States. This is the predominant revenue source for most of these companies. This highlight the extreme difficultly of generating revenues through charging for content or membership fees in the online world where information is still seen as free. For each exclusive membership site, there are multiple other sites that offer the same information for free, making it extremely difficult for content membership sites to gain market share and build up a large enough audience. Only the very premium or prestigious content provider can charge membership or subscription fees and often only for exclusive contents while most of the articles are provided for free. A potential future business model, is to charge a negligible fee for each use or access while depending on volume of users to drive revenues. A small almost negligible fee is likely to be more acceptable to online users compared to an annual or monthly membership fee.
It is interesting to note that advertising and freemium business models dominate among social media companies and online startups in both China and the United States. This is the predominant revenue source for most of these companies. This highlight the extreme difficultly of generating revenues through charging for content or membership fees in the online world where information is still seen as free. For each exclusive membership site, there are multiple other sites that offer the same information for free, making it extremely difficult for content membership sites to gain market share and build up a large enough audience. Only the very premium or prestigious content provider can charge membership or subscription fees and often only for exclusive contents while most of the articles are provided for free. A potential future business model, is to charge a negligible fee for each use or access while depending on volume of users to drive revenues. A small almost negligible fee is likely to be more acceptable to online users compared to an annual or monthly membership fee.
Innovative Startups Ideas to Learn From
Business insiders published a list of the twenty most innovative online tech startups recently. With the imminent launch our online auto repair marketplace business for online auto repair quotes and repair shop ratings, some of the ideas that was presented have direct application to our business.
Zocdoc is a online doctor appointment booking service where people can easily book doctor appointments online. Revenues come from the $250 listing fee for doctors. The online service is free for users of the site. A similar model can be applied to scheduling routine auto repair maintenance. This could be extremely attractive for independent repair shop and local dealer service department who may not have want to maintain their own online auto repair scheduling service. The site also provides another additional source of customers for their business, many of whom may not otherwise hear about them.
Quora is a Q&A online query website where questions are answered by experts instead of the average Joe. For an auto repair quote and information website, this business model could be used to provide valuable and reliable information to help drivers identify potential problems before using the online auto repair quote service to request repair estimates.
Skillshare is an online class website where experts in any field can teach their topic of expertise to anyone who is interested. This can be customized for the auto repair field where experts technicians could post auto repair tutorials or white papers to help drivers understand what goes into each repair and how it is actually done. The use of expert tutorials and white papers can help drive traffic to the site, build up trust in the site among users and increase the value of the site to advertisers. Using professionally generated content will also increase the percentage of website visitors who may eventually use the site to request actual auto repair quotes and schedule appointments.
An analysis of the funding sources for these 20 innovative startup shows that most of the initial funding still comes from venture capitalists that support startups, with additional funding coming from wealthy individuals.
Zocdoc is a online doctor appointment booking service where people can easily book doctor appointments online. Revenues come from the $250 listing fee for doctors. The online service is free for users of the site. A similar model can be applied to scheduling routine auto repair maintenance. This could be extremely attractive for independent repair shop and local dealer service department who may not have want to maintain their own online auto repair scheduling service. The site also provides another additional source of customers for their business, many of whom may not otherwise hear about them.
Quora is a Q&A online query website where questions are answered by experts instead of the average Joe. For an auto repair quote and information website, this business model could be used to provide valuable and reliable information to help drivers identify potential problems before using the online auto repair quote service to request repair estimates.
Skillshare is an online class website where experts in any field can teach their topic of expertise to anyone who is interested. This can be customized for the auto repair field where experts technicians could post auto repair tutorials or white papers to help drivers understand what goes into each repair and how it is actually done. The use of expert tutorials and white papers can help drive traffic to the site, build up trust in the site among users and increase the value of the site to advertisers. Using professionally generated content will also increase the percentage of website visitors who may eventually use the site to request actual auto repair quotes and schedule appointments.
An analysis of the funding sources for these 20 innovative startup shows that most of the initial funding still comes from venture capitalists that support startups, with additional funding coming from wealthy individuals.
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