Category: Marketing

Major Keys to Increase the Competency of Your Sales Team

August 4, 2015

Let’s not talk about inspirational quotes, promise of bonuses, sales rep competitions or passionate rep talks to boost your sales team efficiencies. Increasing the productivity of your sales team needs more than these. Improving sales effectiveness is a continual process and not an event-based approach. Every selling environment is different. So, how do you get hold of that perfect sales environment? Sales Pipeline Management It is the key way to increase sales. Right from the first point of contact with a prospect to the closing of a deal, sales pipeline has five important stages Prospects: The process involves outbound technique as cold calling and inbound technique to identify prospects resembling buyer persona. Qualification: Prospects are assessed against certain criteria to determine whether they’re worth following up. Proposal: Once the prospect qualifies, sales rep presents a proposal to demonstrate how the service can solve the prospect’s issue. Decision: Prospect’s decision depends on what the sales rep has presented. Repeat Business: After closing the first deal, sales rep keeps in constant touch and nurtures the relationship to encourage further sales. To maintain consistency with each one of these stages, you have to work on the momentum and flow within your sales pipeline. This requires understanding of the stage velocity, which is calculating the average time it takes for the prospects to move from one stage to the next. However, to understand this move, you have to identify: Whether there is any inefficient proposal process, too many questions unanswered or anything that doesn’t give the prospects the confidence to make a decision Whether any sales rep got stuck in the middle of the sales process Whether the qualification process is ineffective and leading to poor quality leads Where the sales funnel is leaking Pay Attention to Key Performance Indicator (KPI) The key to the success of an organization, measurement of performance and indicator of future results – KPI provides visibility into the existing activities that will impact future sales team productivity. However, you need to measure two types of indicators – Lagging Indicators that are outputs and results measured after the sale and Leading Indicators, which are actions and activities that are measured during the sale process as and when the pipeline is being built. You mainly focus on How many calls the sale rep is making per week? Who is the sales maker calling? How many of these calls actually turn into opportunities? How many of these opportunities turn into wins? How’s the sales rep performing at this stage? Most importantly, analyze whether you’re selling the products your customers want to buy. Assess real data in real time and do not rely on hopes and assumptions. Timely assessment of the performance of your team members is crucial to coach and plan effectively. Implement Digital Tools to Accelerate the Pipeline There’s nothing more frustrating than nearly closing a deal and then realizing the heaps of paperwork to complete for the same. However, with digital tools, sales reps will process documents faster and close the deals successfully. The social media and customer relationship management tools help them to improve their performance and drive more sales. So, take back the hours of time your team has spent documenting information and dedicate it to selling more and closing deals. Focus On When To Upsell and Cross-Sell a Service The aim is to introduce customers to complementary products that can get instant acceptance. Every time a customer wants to buy something, and if you can successfully offer additional products to complement and support the main product or persuade the customer to switch his purchasing decision to a more expensive product, you’ve successfully implemented the cross-sell and upsell techniques. The sales rep needs to observe the right opportunity as when they can increase the deal sizes and how to improve the probability of winning more deals by adding value to their proposals. The team needs to closely analyze the deals and identify the trends associated with it. The greater familiarity your customers have with the additional services offered, the more likely they’re to get associated with your business. However, the customers should feel the worth of every penny they spend after your products and services. The Sales Velocity Equation for Your Team The Sales Velocity Equation represents four important factors – #Deals that imply the number of sales opportunities, which are won or lost in a given time period $Value implies the average value of the deals you won Win Rate implies the ratio of deals won to the total number of deals Length of Sales Cycle implies the average length of time resources applied to a deal before that deal is won or lost Here Are Some Of The Best Practices To Implement Each Of These Factors: Increase the Number of Deals                 Profile the highest mutual value customers Answer their critical questions Offer right solutions to address their challenges Increase sales acumen through eLearning Use reporting tools to point the under-exploited opportunities Increase the Size of Deal Segregate the different types of customers and understand their challenges Highlight your business values Enhance visibility and collaboration and discover and expose new areas of potential revenue Increase the Win Rate Test and improve deal position Adopt the best relationship strategies Work on high value opportunities and where mutual value exists Observe when a deal is at risk or loss Curtail Sale Cycle Make the sales team identify the ‘real opportunities’ through a consistent and objective method Line up the customer’s buying process with your selling process with administrative overhead Assessing sale rep performance will always help you to improve sales team efficiency and enable you to identify areas of improvement on a per person basis. The benefits of having an efficient and effective sales process are worth your effort.

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LinkedIn Pulse Posts Bring More Eyeballs to Your Content

July 20, 2015

Every writer would agree to the fact that one of the toughest parts of blogging is actually to build the right audience. However, getting it published, generating interests and leads and the social media activities are something that most of the bloggers struggle with.  The content that you consider to be the best ever written can go unread and unshared simply because it is not reaching the right audience. All you need is more eyeballs on your content. Social media networks are helping you to accomplish your goal with its never-ending contributions. One such contribution is seen from LinkedIn publishing platform through its LinkedIn Pulse, a news application allowing LinkedIn members to create and share content written by various influencers across different industries. Members can get access to the valuable content, displayed in a photo-based grid. Besides, it also allows the members to tailor their news feed by selecting the sources and subjects that interest them the most. Unlike LinkedIn Today, that made readers leave the LinkedIn website to consume more content, Pulse encourages readers to reside on LinkedIn by producing unique and genuine content. How Does Marketing with Pulse Bring in More Traffic? The marketing potential of Pulse is untapped by the majority of marketers. However, it’s time to try this new publishing platform to connect with the right audience at the right time. Without a shadow of doubt, you’ve enough compelling reasons to explore this interesting destination… Enhanced Brand Awareness and Reputation With its ability to deliver great articles from top influencers and publishers, LinkedIn Pulse is more efficient in attracting audience’s attention. The more you publish your article, the more you’re increasing your brand reputation as an expert. One article that can take a long time to get views on your website’s blog can easily get thousands of views through this application. If your posts get featured more often, LinkedIn can even label you as an influencer. More Number of Viewers, More Potential Leads If your articles are really interesting and deliver value to your readers, the views can possibly mean having hundreds of likes, shares and new followers right on your company page. This definitely ensures the possibility of potentially new leads and clients. Besides, the notification that followers receive when you post content, your posts also show up directly on the followers’ feeds and increase your content visibility further. Add Link Back and Get More Traffic Once you add links back to your website, your LinkedIn Pulse posts drive traffic and click-throughs directly to your site. Here are different ways to add links back: Link Back with Banner and Image Pulse allows you to add images and link them to your post. Most importantly, Pulse posts have little to no distractions as it does not contain any advertisement and the focus is mainly on your content. Link Back to a Valuable Resource As you link to other valuable posts on your blog, do the same by linking a relevant and useful resource on your website. Simply link back to a post or two on your site that adds value for the readers. Link Back to Squeeze Page Link to a page that encourages visitors to share their email addresses in exchange of something, which is of value to them and start building your list of leads. Now, the traffic that you get to your site tends to be of high quality, as expected. Pulse Articles are Search-Engine Friendly LinkedIn is a highly trafficked website. This means Google is more likely to index the Pulse content and put in Google search result than the content you put on your personal blog. This augments your search engine visibility and also steers the readers towards your other social accounts and posts, which are displayed under the photo at the top of your profile. You Network with the Best Influencers of Your Industry LinkedIn is all about networking. It’s the only platform that has the perfect mix of professional and social context. You get more mileage from your best article in Pulse. The entire platform is made to help you make connection by giving you access to the right influencers. However, those 300 million sets of eyeballs can even glaze over your post, if your content lacks a compelling and click-worthy headline. For that matter, your entire content has to be extremely engaging. The Best Practices for LinkedIn Pulse Article Publication You can effectively drive Pulse article engagement through the following practices: Choose your topic and its title wisely. Avoid covering too many topics in the long-form post and keep your writing focused. There are no limits on word count; the long-form posts can be more than three paragraphs. Add images, videos or presentations to your content. Place three relevant tags that represent the content of your post. Publish whenever you’ve something valuable to share with LinkedIn members. Keep your content authentic. Make your most valuable content published on LinkedIn and get your voice heard and your company seen by numerous potential clients.

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How to Personalize Shopping and Improve Conversion Rate?

July 17, 2015

It is often one of the most important questions that a marketer might ask himself or herself. How do we personalize shopping and improve conversion rate? The answer seems to be a little convoluted. We need to understand how a website works and who is visiting that website. That tells us a lot about the demographics and psychographics of the audience. It also helps us to know who is actually visiting the online store and becoming customers in the process. Of all these, we need to remember that personalizing the shopping experience is key to ensuring that a customer will stick on. When companies do not understand this simple fact and continue to market products in a mechanical way, with a one size fits all approach, it just does not attract potential customers. In this article, let us take a look at how to personalize shopping and improve conversion rate. At the end of the day, we are all trying to convert leads into customers and this article will discuss how to do that with the help of personalizing of the shopping experience. There are, in fact, many ways personalization can impact purchase decisions and thereby, increase sales. Understand your customer The most important thing is to understand who your customer is. It is important to ask yourself questions such as “Is this person really interested in the products we sell?”. It is not worth the effort if your product is not relevant to the target audience. You need to understand their cultural habits, their lifestyle, their socio-economic status and a lot of other things. Your marketing campaign needs to be customized and personalized to suit your audience. This will attract those who fall into the bracket of your target audience and eventually, this will help you to make more conversions, which is the ultimate goal of all marketing exercises anyway. Show that you know your audience Once you understand your audience, it is important to show that you understand them. You need to use promotional events, advertisements and even web copy to display your empathy for your audience. When you treat them with empathy, customers will feel naturally inclined to buy your products because they feel “understood”. They can feel “understood” only when you decide to customize your marketing and promotional campaigns. This helps to build goodwill as well and that is very important to retain customers and also turn them into advocates, who will, in turn, bring newer customers as well. A lot of people are influenced by ergative reviews online. Thus, you need to customize your marketing approach to ensure that those negative reviews do not hamper your marketing strategies. Get the right visitors and create a space that is customized for them Use all the data that you can lay your hands on and ensure that you are able to create an atmosphere where your prospects and leads feel comfortable. Once they feel comfortable, you could be rest assured that you will end up converting them into either advocates or actual customers. Thus, customization of reaching out plays an important role in increasing conversions and this is very important for all businesses. You need to prepare marketing strategies that are completely customized for your audience. The script, the branding and even the products themselves need to be customized for your customers. The more you customize, the deeper your relationship will be with your customers. This is what is required to move towards success. Conclusion If you notice these points, you will realize that customizing the way you market your products and services will help you to build long term relationships with your customers. Customizing is one of the most important qualities of successful businesses. By remembering your prospects’ birthdays, anniversaries, marriages and other such important dates, you could wish them & send custom messages. You might also want to seek the help of professional agencies who are specialized in creating custom marketing and ad campaigns based on the tastes of your target audience. If you are unable to do it on your own, you could seek professional help. If you have felt customizing your business and marketing strategies helped you ever, do let us know in the comments section below.

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How to Effectively Use eCommerce Product Videos?

July 10, 2015

It is a well-known fact that humans are visual in nature. They prefer to process information that is readily available visually, instead of having to imagine something and then understand. However, one of the greatest mysteries of mankind is the popularity of textual content. It is something that goes against most cognitive theories yet the dreaded truth continues to persist. However, there is also a growing need for visual content and it is quite baffling to realize that there aren’t many product videos as there are product descriptions. Moreover, video content is found to be more popular among youngsters, very busy people and those who do not want to process a lot of textual content. If we observe, there has been trend towards streaming videos, explainer videos and other forms of video content that have been successfully used in marketing. It need not then come as a surprise that e-commerce websites are finding product videos a great way to boost traffic and increase sales. In this article, we shall take a look at how we can make use of product videos on e-commerce websites. 1. Publish videos on the homepage One of the best ways to promote a product on an e-commerce website is by featuring it on the homepage. You could create a video for a particular video and then feature it on the homepage, where more people are likely to see it. You could use the homepage space to promote products that you think deserve more attention. In fact, your best products could be featured on the homepage in this manner. 2. Use videos to describe individual products A less known utility of videos is to provide product descriptions. Most people think that product descriptions are, usually, required to be in a textual format. However, this is not always necessary. For the purpose of SEO, you could have a textual content while your video maybe more appealing to your target audience. In reality, using both a video description of your products and a brief text that goes along with the product is the right way to go. 3. Use videos to enhance your social media strategy You could upload product videos to social media platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion and others. This helps you to strike two birds with a single stone. People often publish videos just for the sake of social media marketing. With product videos, you can promote your products on your website and also use the same videos on social media platforms. This will help you to generate newer leads and also spread the word around about your products. 4. Use videos that go viral When you create a video, ensure that it has the potential to go viral. This is a very clichéd and often used word but yet, it makes sense to create videos that have the potential to go viral on social media & elsewhere. For this to happen, you might have to hire professional video companies that are well-versed with creating viral explainer and product videos. 5. An explainer video is not a product video You need to remember that there is a distinction between explainer videos and product videos. The two are not the same. An explainer video is, usually, for a more tech-savvy and professional audience than a product video is. Product videos are for general consumers and are the right choice for e-commerce websites that deal with general population. Explainer videos, on the other hand, cater to B2B solutions and are also for e-commerce websites that require a higher level of explanation within videos. Videos are only going to get bigger In the future, videos will gradually become more commonplace than before. People will begin to get used to seeing videos and some might even expect videos to exist alongside textual product descriptions. Adding to that, the Internet is going to get faster even in the more inaccessible parts of the world. With all this in mind, it makes sense to invest in product videos so that they can be used to boost conversion rates on e-commerce websites. If you need more information about product videos, contact one of our executives who would be glad to assist you.

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Are You Correcting the Major Digital Marketing Flaws in 2015?

July 8, 2015

A lot of small business players have realized the importance of digital marketing in their marketing budget. Digital marketing puts your business online and therefore becomes an essential part of your online reputation. Can your customers find you in search results? Are you engaging with your customers? Are you gaining insights into customer behavior? There is plenty to learn from your digital marketing efforts and get closer to your customers. However, many businessmen fail to rectify the flaws they are encountering in their pursuit. It is important to overcome your shortcomings and move ahead of competitors. This article will take a look at the major digital marketing flaws in the year gone-by and how you can mend them in 2015. 1. Mobile at the backburner A growing number of customers are consuming your content through the comfort of their smartphone. Small business owners can’t afford to remain stuck with desktop website by publishing content including text, photos and video, which is inaccessible or illegible on mobile. Having a mobile-friendly website with a responsive design is a necessity in 2015. The website needs to be published with just enough content that are easy to view on mobile. Furthermore, urban consumers prefer smartphone as their best friend while commuting to work. Tweaking your content into mobile-friendly form will enhance your reach. Push notifications feature for email and RSS feeds in mobile has long been used by digital marketers to share content with their target audience. Creating more mobile-friendly emails will further strengthen your effort. 2. Underutilization of Facebook page It is easier to create a Facebook page but it is a blunder to leave it unutilized. An unutilized Facebook page will soon go into oblivion and users unlike it; and it is very difficult to get the lost customers again. It is important to utilize it for sharing the most interesting content with your customers. Moreover, Facebook algorithm is changing in the way news feed works for the users and how businesses use their FB page. Use your FB page to know your audience. The main idea behind FB is to share content that is liked by your audience. So, shift your focus from selling on FB to posting engaging content. Let your employees support you in your initiative and respond to the customer queries. 3. Failure to form a content marketing strategy Digital marketing content is scattered across company website, blogs, social media profiles, emails, YouTube and so many other digital mediums but have you failed to form a coherent strategy that resonates clearly in the minds of your audience? There has to be some connection between your content across the mediums so that people don’t get confused. There are already too many digital marketers out there to steal your customers. Focus on quality content and use each medium as it is designed to be used. However, it does not mean that you can’t be resilient with your content strategy. The best way forward is to maintain a consistency of posting content, whatever medium(s) you choose. Experienced marketers have already realized the power of SEO with the right content. 4. Getting carried away by new trend Digital marketing arena evolves rapidly and digital marketers are always in search for new tactics. While a new trend might look exciting, it might not work for every marketer. They need to understand their target audience and find out what their audience likes. While the basic approach towards your well-known audience need not change, you can try new tactics over new customers. The idea is not to sway with the new trends. For instance, many big players indulge in flash sales and discounts to promote their products through social media but such a trend might turn into demise of a small player. Small players need to remember to play smart and fill in the gaps left by the bigger players. 5. Stuffing keywords to your disadvantage Google keeps changing its algorithm to be more just to original content providers. Keyword is an essential part of their algorithm. Digital marketers, in their bid to outsmart Google algorithm by stuffing keywords, relegate the quality of their content. On the other hand, Google makes sure that such unqualified content is not visible to the target audience. It is one of the significant changes made by the search engine giant to prepare for 2015. Try to use synonyms that relate to your keywords. Use the long-tail list of keywords rather than the most common ones to be more specific. Google Analytics is a great tool that helps you to do that. 6. Failure to track your digital marketing initiatives As we are already aware, digital marketing initiatives are speckled across various online mediums, it is quintessentially true that your customers too are varied and strewn across the internet. This brings us to pay importance to digital metrics that helps us to closely understand our audience. But, there is a caveat here. This exercise needs to be done precisely, else it might prove counter-productive. Boo.com and Pets.com failed miserably after they miscalculated their CLTV (Customer Lifetime value) and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). This led them to overestimate the size of their market and make wrong presumptions. Tracking your metrics rightly will get you closer to your marketing goals and objectives. Infographic like this often serves as a guide for small business owners to understand key digital marketing metrics. 7. Irrelevant landing pages It is irking for the customer who gets excited by your ad to land on an irrelevant page. Many marketers have done a slip-up to trap the customers into sign-up or pay a website visit by showing them an enticing product. Be clear with your call-to-action buttons to avoid turning-off your visitors. The customer acquisition cost is already running high as customers have become choosy and they are constantly bombarded with marketing messages from all sources. Follow a consistent approach in getting your message across through correct landing page. If your ad link says “sign up for newsletter”, then your landing page needs to

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Top Ten Tools to Increase Marketing Effectiveness

July 1, 2015

2015 is going to be more competitive than the last year. You must have realized it by this time. Whether you’ve a big marketing budget or you’re a start up, with little money in hand, harnessing the power of user experience marketing tools can be a major advantage in your ability to move swiftly in your professional field. Make a resolution to make better decisions and find effective ways to communicate with your audience with some of the finest marketing tools to successfully run your marketing campaign. Ten Most Powerful Tools to Gain Insights into Your Visitor’s Heart and Mind… 1. BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is a fabulous content development tool that is worthy of praise. Marketers can use BuzzSumo to research on content that your audience really want to read. All you need to do is enter a keyword or backlinks to get a detailed report on how well a content has performed based on social media shares. You can also filter the results based on language, time, type of content and country. 2. Crazy Egg If you’re curious enough to learn the reason behind why visitors are leaving your site, Crazy Egg is the apt tool for you. The Heat Map tool tells you exactly where people are clicking, and where they’re not. The Scroll Map tool shows you exactly what portion of the page that people are leaving on, and how you can place your most important content to make it more visible. And lastly, the Confetti Map that allows you to visualize what’s happening on your page and from which traffic source they’re coming from. 3. Uberflip If you do not want to let your visitors leave your site, Uberflip can be used to share a curated list of your content on your website. You can also create targeted call-to-action within your content to convert visitors into customers with the help of this user experience testing tools. 4. Kissmetrics Rather than simply tracking the general flow of traffic, Kissmetrics enables you to track a specific group of visitors and their online behaviours. The data collected can be extremely useful in increasing the marketing effectiveness. These insights help you to discover the best campaign sources, drive better retention and double the number of your most valuable customers. The primary strength of this software is its ability to handle user identities much more clearly. 5. Raven Tools If your marketing team need all-in-one internet marketing software, Raven tool is the solution. From robust SEO research tools to media monitoring to comprehensive reporting, Raven tool has it all. Once you’re set up with raven, you can easily create your first campaign within a minute. Raven is the ultimate time-saving machinery to make automated, interactive marketing report. Moreover, they’re continually innovating their platform with new features to make it better for their customers. 6. Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) VWO is a testing and optimizing tool that allows marketers to form A/B or Split tests and geo-behavioural targeting campaigns without the need for any HTML or technical knowledge. With split-testing, marketers can also test multiple versions of a website and landing pages and choose one that performs the best. VWO also has flexible multivariate testing software and a number of additional tools including usability testing, heat maps and behavioural targeting to ensure conversion rate optimization activities are taken care of. 7. Open.nr This tool allows you to add any relevant, targeted promotional message on any page that you share especially on social media platforms. With Open.nr you get your social media followers to share, buy, respond to your questions and also subscribe by adding a call-to-action to your social media posts. You can also conduct A/B testing, redirect link traffic back to the home page or customize your posts with brand colours and images. 8. SideKick Who’s opening your emails and how many times a day can now be easily tracked through Sidekick. It is always interesting to know your contact’s history, their latest tweets and other professional activities. Not only this, Sidekick also gives you the ability to schedule emails that you intend to send in the future. Furthermore, looking at contact information in Sidekick helps you to see which social media channels your prospects are active in. 9. Socedo No more you have to filter through millions of users on Twitter to find the relevant profiles. Socedo does the work for you. The tool also has the ability to boost web traffic, increase conversions by inputting hashtags, keywords or other search criteria. Socedo even helps you to automatically favorite tweets, follow prospects and send messages to initiate conversation. 10. Mention Wondering what people are talking about your brand? Now, it’s easy to keep a pulse on the conversation of customers, competitors and prospects with Mention. This powerful marketing tool helps you to track key phrases and brand names, in real time. This ensures that you never miss out a conversation with your existing and potential customers. So, here you’ve the best of tools to accomplish your goals.

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Actionable Video Marketing Techniques for Online Business

June 10, 2015

In an era where digitalization has taken over traditional ways of businesses, companies also must invest in digital marketing to maintain their market presence. E-commerce is trending like never before and with it, there are new marketing techniques coming up. Video Marketing is a relatively new strategy in the digital world, which has become very popular among various audiences. Consumer psychology shows that when you market a product through videos, it remains in the memory of the audience for a longer time. It is a well-known fact that human beings process visual information much better than textual content. Yet, we have always been used to reading books, web copy and now, blogs. While we do not discount the utility of textual content and words, it is also useful to publish and create videos that help to present content in an audio-visual format. A lot of people prefer videos to text and we could be using videos to tap into this sub-section of the audience. While it is quite a task to create videos, it is yet another to create actionable videos. Actionable videos encourage the user to take some action, mostly respond to a call to action. This could involve signing up at the end of the video, providing e-mail address after watching the video or even buying the product. However, to create such actionable videos, we need to bear a few things in mind. Let us find some video marketing techniques that can act as a catalyst in boosting your business: Demos Descriptions of a product or a video demonstrating a product works well with the audience, as there are many websites and products competing for attention. You need to find a USP or unique selling proposition to increase your audience base and also to turn your audience into your future clients. You can do this by making your website more interesting; create small videos to showcase your product. You can use animation or a music video format to be different from others. Product demos can also be used to encourage viewers to take some action. This could be in the form of a covert message within the video to contact you for further information or to sign up at the end of the video, which is a more overt form of asking to take action. Both these methods work very well and demo videos are increasingly being used by companies that have a flagship product. Descriptive video content You can also use descriptive content for the videos on your webpage. You may wonder why anyone would want to add descriptive video when you can just post a video. However, research studies show that descriptive video content adds to the effect. It is quite natural, as we have been used to reading pages of content and all of a sudden, videos are becoming more visible. Adding the content will entertain the audience who are getting used to the new format. However, content need not be too long; it needs to be short and crisp. If possible, add in humor and quirkiness. This can be used as a subscript or as textual matter that is inserted within a video. What this actually does is, it grabs the attention of those people who are not very fond of watching videos. By making descriptive videos, we are targeting two different and opposing kinds of audience – one that loves videos and the other, which is still getting used to video content but is very much happy with text. Corporate videos Corporate videos are a big hit among the audience as it evokes a sense of loyalty in your customers. Everyone is interested in what goes on in a company, especially, a corporate company. Use this advantage and boost up your video marketing by bringing in more corporate videos. The themes could be anything from production of a product or showing the fun you have while working. In order to make corporate videos actionable, you could request viewers to add you on LinkedIn at the end of the video. A short note, which screams out your LinkedIn profile address, can also be useful. Another option is to have a running message at the bottom, which occasionally reads out your e-mail address or your LinkedIn address. This will help interested viewers to contact you and probably clinch a deal or two. Social videos What are social videos? Basically, using the marketing videos on social platforms constitutes the idea of social videos. You can use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to share your video, to reach out to a larger crowd & increase your audience base. You might probably think that if your target audience is youth or the IT sector, then this is the best way to turn them into your clients. However, this is not quite true. Social media is used by all ages and demographics & it is a great platform for you to showcase your products. If you can manage to create videos that can go viral on YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion, you can achieve surprisingly high rates of conversion. The key here is to make videos that can go viral. For that to happen, you need to hire good script writers and video producers. To make social videos more actionable, ensure that you always have a call-to-action when you share them on social platforms. This could include urging your audience to follow you back like your page or simply, share your content more. Market research Market research is a must. You need to be aware of new trends in video marketing, if you don’t constantly update your knowledge on the current themes and also the format of product videos. This will help you to bring innovation in your videos. The more ‘newness’ you bring into your videos, the more client base you will gain. The reason why market research is an actionable video marketing technique is because it helps you understand your audience better. You need to save all the

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The Real Need for Syndicating Content

March 19, 2015

Content syndication is the act of publishing content, which is already published on your website, to other websites. The content so published on third party website with your due permission can be either full or a portion of original content. Syndication enhances reach of your content and improves visibility on search engines. In contrast to syndication, guest post is when you write content to be published on a third party website but do not publish the same on any other website including your own. Many content marketers believe that syndication harms their content by lowering search engine ranking and raising questions about plagiarism. This article will bust that myth and highlight the real need for syndicating your content. Why do you need to syndicate? Syndication is an excellent way to give wings to your content. It lets your content get exposure through superior third-party websites. Your content can be viewed by well-established audience of other websites who share common interest with you. For a growing business, this is crucial, as you want your content to be viewed by as many people as possible. Higher the viewership of your content, the better it is for your brand. A site with higher viewership and superior reputation will in turn garner respect for your content. This clearly indicates that your content is qualified enough to be published on a superior website. If your content is being liked by the audience, the demand for your content will increase. It will further increase traffic on your own website. Thus, as you might have noticed, without putting in extra labor, except of course building relationship with owners of other websites, you are able to create tremendous exposure for your content. You need to also be cautious while selecting a third party website. It need to score high on reputation, quality of content posted and most importantly relevance to your business. How does it help a small business? While content syndication has numerous benefits for marketers, it is interesting to see how it helps small business owners for whom frequent content creation becomes a challenge. There is nothing to lose in content syndication, contrary to the thoughts of many marketers. Once you publish your content i.e. write up, photo or video on another website, audience of that website starts engaging with your content by sharing, liking and commenting on it. Because you can use the links that drive the visitor back to your website, content syndication gives you a much needed impetus. Sharing buttons to social media pages, blogs, website and links of your landing page or website, all help you to take the credit of your work. The multiplication of content across the deserving websites will highlight your business ultimately. The reposted content always contains a postscript saying this content was originally published by so and so person or brand. Even if the postscript is overlooked, you still can use embedded links, sharing buttons and hyperlinks that direct the visitor back to pages owned by you. A number of websites focus entirely on syndicated content. You can look for relevant websites in your industry. Uploading RSS feed on your website is another good way for alerting your followers that you’ve published a new piece of content. Any third party website interested in your content might choose to publish the content on their website. Many social media profile owners like to share interesting content with their audiences and they look for website like yours to use content on their website. It is a win-win situation for both you and the publisher. You can also approach blogs in your industry to publish your content. While this is a free content syndication strategy, another way of going about it is paid syndication strategy. Paid syndication involves websites which go out in the market and syndicate content for you on the topmost websites in the industry. The right time to go ahead with content syndication is when you have built enough audience for your own website. It is essential because by this time you are able to strike a chord with your target audience and create content actually liked by them. You can experiment with your content. Whether it is blog or social media profile, don’t abandon it ever. Always do the necessary follow-up and answer to the queries generated. A loyal audience comes really handy as they share the content further. With necessary experience and credentials in content publishing & visitor engagement, it becomes easy for you to approach other websites. As a small business owner, it is evident that you can’t spend your entire time and energy in creating & managing content. After all, it is not your core business. It is always better to select a team of individuals who work towards developing content. Even if you have a remote content developer, it is better to keep a back up option. Appoint a manager to take charge of content syndication. All syndication efforts of your company need to be directed through him/her to avoid confusion for others. How to be selective? Syndication efforts need to be driven safely. You just can’t go overboard and syndicate whatever you like or whatever you publish on your site to other sites. Such an attempt diminishes the purpose of content syndication itself. Choose to syndicate selective content that intrigues the visitors to explore the details. This leaves room for visitors to pay a visit to the original content publisher. Apart from that, you always want your loyal website visitors to get the maximum information from your website. As a beginner, you need not prefer to withhold content, rather spread it as much as you can on “carefully selected websites.” Once you build the reputation as an exemplary content publisher, you might choose to redesign your syndication strategy. SEO consideration while content syndication Content syndication bolsters your SEO strategy as your content gets more recognition and credibility through publishing on renowned websites. Without having to write more content, you can leverage

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Crowdsourcing – Your Next Best Business Partner

March 6, 2015

The future will not slow down and so won’t the information. The amount of information available to people are expanding radically. Every individual voices their judgement about products and services. So, obtaining mass ideas and opinions is not a difficult job for the businesses in today’s world…and this is what they called ‘crowdsourcing’. The power and wisdom of crowds can be harnessed to produce solutions beyond the capabilities of individuals. Crowdsourcing – A Powerful Marketing Tool When I was working day and night to get the best infographics for my client, my problem was solved within a day when the job was assigned to a crowd of best designers. When you have collective ideas handy, you can always pick and choose the best ones. I realized the quality of the chosen ideas matched my requirements as expected. I no longer had to use focus groups, surveys and expensive research programs to collate ideas & form strategy. No wonder, my marketing landscape is seeing a drastic change in terms of innovation, efficiency, speed and relevancy. My business is no longer restricted to a particular audience, skillset or culture. I can source creativity from the experts across the world. However, you need to strategically carry the crowdsourcing market. Stuck for Ideas? Pull in the Best Experts from Different Parts of the World; That’s the Fun of It… Crowdsourcing minimizes labor expenses and maximizes productivity. When an organization can leverage resources and creativity of its audience in promoting its service, it is its biggest asset. Researching on new products, designing campaigns or solving complex business roadblocks, collective ideas can do wonders for everything. Crowdsourcing tool artfully manages the work of your creative team but from a distance. The team can dig deep into the issues and use the analyzed information to make improvements. Engage the best talents to acquire expert advice for your projects. No Violation of Regulations A well-designed crowdsourcing plan will never compromise on the ground of violation of information, data protection and company’s reputation. The Big Brands and Their Stories… It is not just Google and Microsoft but several other traditional firms like General Electric or Coco-Cola are using crowdsourcing techniques. Recently, Google announced a new proposal that aims at using collective ideas to improve translation. Google’s Translate Community is now open to all, especially, for those who speak more than one language to provide their own translations and validate the existing translation. In addition, Google has also promised to offer the ability to match and compare translations. Gradually, the company is giving users more visibility when it is a matter of their valued contribution. Google has also launched a new feature in Google Translate that will allow everyone to contribute their own translation, in case of any mistakes. Similarly, of late, Coca-Cola Company in China has asked for creative videos on crowdsourcing platform to show what coke tastes like. The company has categorically mentioned about creative point of views about the taste and not ads for coke. The whole idea is to check the coke taste experience of the consumers across the world. They want to see the creative expressions of people, especially, when they will try to explain the taste of coke to someone who has never tried it before. Besides the content, the company is expecting a thorough impressionistic market research to improve the brand. However, you need to know the tricks behind crowdsourcing your marketing movement. There is No Free Lunch… There is no dearth of investors seeking to finance a new product idea or company. The crowdsourcing platforms are doing remarkably good at drawing investments to get their job done. According to World Bank, by 2025, the global crowdfunding market would reach to $90 – $96 billion. Investors are more likely to assist entrepreneurs and NGOs as they see the potential of these platforms to reach the untapped markets. I did submit a request on an online crowdfunding platform stating what I needed, how much I needed and when I needed it by. This is a clever way of saying that only the best ideas will receive money. If you want high production value, offer a good return. Crowdsourcing is the best practice to accelerate return on investments and enables real time conversation between consumers & brands.

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What’s the Buzz about Facebook Video Ads

February 9, 2015

Sometime around last year, Facebook announced that it was testing Premium Video Ads to help advertisers reach their preferred target audience. The company stated that it was designed for those advertisers who wanted to reach a large target audience with the help of “high-quality sight, sound and motion”. Each of these videos would be 15 seconds long, it stated. It was designed to be non-intrusive. Moreover, if people scrolled past the video, it would stop playing as that would indicate a lack of interest in those ads. One could also tap on the video ad so that it expands full-screen and sound would begin to be heard as well. Over a period of few months, Facebook began to roll out these video ads in various places and garnered various reactions. Most digital marketing professionals believe that Facebook Video Ads are a great way to showcase a product or a service and not be intrusive. A video ad that does not play sound unless being clicked upon is a revolutionary idea. Most of us know how unpleasant it is when video advertisements begin to play without our permission, causing us to reduce our volumes. Facebook certainly has recognized this problem as offered video ads that only play sans audio until a person chooses to click on the video himself or herself. Growing importance of Facebook Video Ads The Age recently reported that “the amount of video on Facebook’s news feed has more than tripled”. It also reported that many advertisers are yet to discover the option of Facebook Video Ads. As more advertisers realize its presence and the valuable platform that it provides for companies, more businesses will begin to use them to market their products and services. In this article, let us try to understand what Facebook Premium Ads are and how they are going to benefit your business. How are Facebook Video Ads bought and measured? You can purchase and measure Facebook’s video ads just like how TV ads are bought and measured. If you have heard about TGRP (Targeted Gross Rating Points), it is applicable in the case of Facebook Ads as well. Facebook Video Ads are bought based on TGRP as well and the delivery is measured by Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings (OCR). Facebook also had mentioned that it was working with a company named Ace Matrix to ensure that the video ads suit the content that people see in their news feeds. Facebook also announced that it acquired LiveRail, a startup that will help ad publishers to be more efficient. Every video ad is to be reviewed and assessed before it gets live on Facebook. Some of the criteria that will judge the Facebook Video Ads are emotional resonance, meaningfulness and watchability. The idea is to ensure that there is a certain level of quality when it comes to Facebook Video Ads. Facebook does not want just any video ad to appear on people’s newsfeeds. This will also help advertisers to work on better video ads so that they get the maximum return on investment. Initially, Facebook limited the video ads to high quality advertisers, a euphemism for some luxury brands and top tech companies. Slowly, the service is being offered to others as well. Facebook Video Ads are becoming more acceptable Facebook Video Ads are slowly but surely changing people’s perspectives. People still have a negative view about video advertisements, mostly because of the intrusive way they play on some websites. By addressing this problem, Facebook has ensured that people are not intruded by sound from video ads, even if they play in the background. This presents advertisers and companies with huge opportunities to reach the right target audience. With more people joining Facebook and with Facebook acquiring better technologies, it is going to get easier to target the right kind of audience with video ads that are entertaining, informative and attention-grabbing. With the right marketing strategy and creative thinking, Facebook Video Ads can be used to generate leads and increase sales in the long term. If you would like to learn how Facebook Video Ads can help you, do contact our digital marketing professionals.

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