CSIT155-F18-TBantle

I created a few ads that I thought would be effective. I had some fun with this assignment as I got to get a little creative. The first one shows the sun shining on our fruit as it hangs in the trees and it encourages the viewer to buy some as a gift. This is a stock picture that was offered on Facebook. They had many to choose from which was helpful. It shows that we get our hands dirty to grow the best avocados we can and the viewer can get to know us better by liking our page. This is just a simple Instagram ad with a Shop Now button. There was an article that came out today about a shortage of Mexican avocados, so I thought I'd include this in an ad to urge a call to action and show some of our perfect fruit hanging in one of our trees. Hope you liked my first ads. I can't wait for our season to actually open so we can start running some real ads. Maybe next month!

This week I researched the many Facebook advertising options. Using the principles of good design with eye catching images and urging calls to action, I know I could implement a few good ideas into our ads. The different types of current Facebook ads I found listed on their website are: Video, Collection, Carousel, Slideshow and Single Image. Using Boost Posts is essential due to the algorithm they have now and I often receive discounted offers from them to do this so that is helpful in lowering the cost. I just need to set up our target market which won't won't be difficult as just about everyone loves a good California avocado. Some of the ads are only available to mobile users, not desktop, so I probably won't be using Canvas and Collection Ads. Another simple way to engage new customers is by using Messenger. We are already using this option. We get contacted by people around the world asking a variety of questions from how to grow avocado trees from a seed, to can th...

In researching similar businesses, I found more than 5 Avocado sales companies that sell direct. I was able to find more by looking on the California Avocado Commission's website. The Google search engine has not been efficient for me in my searching. Some of the advertising I found is effective, but some isn't, because they are not consistent with their type of content or their frequency of ads. "Mraz Family Farms" has somewhat annoying ads. For example, they used a video that showed a man's hand cutting open a reed avocado and putting it on toast with Trader Joe's Everything seasoning, but they never show you who the guy is and when the owner of the company is a celebrity, he should show his face in my opinion,  so I felt a bit let down at the end of the video. It was effective though in that it left me wanting to eat that avocado toast and maybe it would cause the viewer to buy some. Avoganic is another example of ineffective ads. Because the California...

In researching other forms of social media, I discovered Google Business. It's not the same thing as Google+ and  Google + is now obsolete anyway. Google Business is free and you can use it if you have a business location or don't.  When you create a business account with Google Business, it adds your business name to a google search. You can create a website for free if you don't have one already. Google Business lets you publish your events, products and services directly to google search and maps. By creating posts, you can place your timely text, video, or photo content in front of customers when they find your business listing. I think that is really cool, especially because it's free! Other options I like are social community websites such as Nextdoor when you can add your product for sale to many communities or on Facebook Groups, there are community exchange pages where you can type in a city such as Fallbrook and up pops the Fallbrook/Bonsall Area-Sell,Buy,Gi...

Normally with our avocados we sell direct to a packing house, we don't have a store front or an address for picking up, but we could if we worked at a weekly farmers market. It's hard for us as we do not live at our grove and it's an hour away from our home. We would like to sell direct, but using LinkedIn would not be a good platform for it. If we sold at a farmers market, Yelp would be a good platform as it would give reviews on our fruit and show the price is worth it. I would not use Coupons, Groupon, or even Living Social. I am guaranteed making money selling to a wholesale packing house, as there is a demand for California avocados so selling using coupons would be a loss as it would not be worth it because Groupon charges 50% of your selling price. There's so much work involved just in picking the fruit, cleaning it, weighing it, packaging it, then shipping it, if we offered coupons like Groupon, we may as well just sell to a packing house and forego the hass...

Creating the mass email required some creativity and pictures. Not sure I got it quite right yet, but it's a start. I tried to keep it simple and to the point. I sent 3 screen shots in a test email to Claudia Faulk. I commented on the following blogs: Olivia Cruz, Christian Dahmann, Jesus Farias and Cole Walker.

If I were to write a newsletter, I would write one just before harvest season which usually starts in January, but this year will probably start earlier than that and again throughout the season bi-weekly, until the end of the harvest which is in July for us in San Diego. I would offer a discount coupon code for 5 or 10% off to inspire readers to buy now. The content would consist of the following ideas: Our fruit is hand grown by a small family on 12 acres in the avocado Capital of the world. We take pride in how we grow our fruit, raise our bees to aid in pollinating the trees, how we water and fertilize the trees, how they are in season NOW, how the oil content is just right, how ours are pesticide & herbicide free, high in zinc and other essential nutrients and amino acids that our bodies don't produce on their own, how they last longer than mass marketed avocados because we don't gas them with synthetic ethylene like the packing houses do to speed up ripening, how th...