Social Media Presence

April 3, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Social Media Presence

Just marking your presence in various social media platforms isn’t enough, one has to gain a following too. The whole purpose behind maintaining the social media presence is to generate more leads. One has to have a good fan base or following in facebook, twitter, linkedin, instagram etc. A larger group of people following you ensures a bigger reach. It can be really confusing to figure out the best technique or way amongst so many ideas all over the internet. Though, in reality it isn’t so. There are some easy and effective ways to increase your visibility:

1. Figure Out Your Target Audience – It is definitely important to be active in the various social media platforms but simultaneously one should also be aware of the fact the platforms where your target buyers are spending time. One should create profiles for top social networks. Whatever be the size of the company, big or small, whichever industry or target market, people are either talking or would want to talk about you on various social media platforms. The least that you can provide them with is means to get in touch with you on the choice of their preferred social medium.
2. Optimising Your Social Profiles – Even if you have profiles or would create them, one has to optimise the social profiles. You can have an easy to recognize username, photo, and to the point and clear description about the website. That also includes a link that can be easily tracked. Since social media updates too come under the search results, one should optimise posts on facebook, tweets and updates on Linkedin.
3. Promote Yourself Everywhere – You can do that on your blogs, signage, website, print ads, email marketing messages and business cards. Most of the social media sites, these days have an official ‘Follow’ button included in their websites and blogs. One can post links to other social accounts in a normal post, adding a link to another social site in the bio or description section of a different one or pay for sponsored updates pointing people to other social networks. You can also try the Snapcodes available in Snapchat. These are all different ways for cross channel promotion.
4. Focus on the Quality of Content– Along with promoting and sharing oneself through content, one has to keep in mind that to mark your presence your content should be something that is worth sharing. This is how more and more people will start following you. The posts and tweets on various social media platforms should be different, interesting, engaging and useful. Try and avoid more of self promotional content. Though if you really feel you should then make sure it is a small part and not entirely about promoting your product or service. There should be variety and newness in your content and adding visuals will be icing on the cake.
5. Start Sharing Your Content – Now that you are into promoting your social presence in most of the platforms, you should make sure that the site visitors and email subscribers share the content with their personal networks as easily as possible. With more people sharing it, the content will automatically reach a larger audience group apart from your direct fans and followers. Social sharing buttons can be added to blogs, landing pages for ebook, email messages, articles etc.
6. Keep Interacting With Your Audience – The reason why we are writing, sharing and promoting is to make new connections and keep maintaining the older ones. Just as you keep sharing useful and interesting content, one should definitely monitor one’s presence and interact with fans and followers. This way you can build a loyal fan base. You can post updates, questions and have discussions too. Keep a tab on the mentions of your company name, user name and a unique hash tag every day. Not to forget, one should also reply when people mention you on any of the platforms. Even if not every day, at least whenever it is possible. You can thank them for appreciating, reply back to their queries and even to any negative comment, do give an answer. 
7. Form Contacts with Stalwarts – Through social media, one can follow leaders and experts from your industry. It can be a brand or a person who comes up with excellent and engaging content and has plenty of knowledge. This will help you a lot in exploring and you will get to know a lot of things that you were unaware of. You can find them easily through facebook, twitter, linkedin etc.
8. Use Hashtags- We all have come across crammed words together after a pound sign. Hashtags are an easily searchable tag which gives it a unique identity and makes it easy to search. This makes your posts more visible. For e.g. you want to know about fashion trends, you can search it by related hashtags to know more about it.  
9. Hire a Good Social Media Manager – There is no rule book that once and for all can teach you the nuances of social media. It keeps changing with time and there is some or the other new trends that comes in. Hence, you would need a social media manager who is an expert in the field. He/she can manage your accounts, update about latest trends, post interesting content and experiment with something new.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Email marketing

A low cost marketing medium is really effective and widely used. It encourages direct action

• Do not go for an email list. They mostly feature incorrect and irrelevant addresses and are just sheer waste of time.

• One should always seek permission to send emails, either by choosing  the opt-in process or maybe  a double opt-in.
• Always include an unambiguous and prominent, one-click unsubscribe link in all your emails.
• The initial mailing list will originate from your teaser website, and this can be supplemented by asking people to register through the various social media platforms.
• One can never be sure about the conversion rate, it can vary every time. So t every step, keep maximizing the percentage.

The easiest way to ensure a high delivery rate is to use an established mailing app to send

Try and avoid using trigger words which can trigger your email to spam. By checking your own spam filter will give you an idea for other words to avoid. It is really important to have a perfect subject line. Half the battle is won when you have a perfect subject line, increasing the chances of the customer eventually opening it. Do keep the body of the email crisp and short. Elaborate on the subject with benefits and value to the recipient, followed by an unambiguous call to action which is linked to a relevant landing page on your website. Make sure to send the mail to yourself first before sending it to anyone else. This way, you can check for the display and if it passes the spam filter or not.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Press releases

Not exactly a news item published on your website, but rather news worthy information is precisely a press release. It is written keeping in mind the media and the journalists.

It might seem of not being of much use, but has lot of benefits. It helps in increasing the visibility of the app. The story can get published in different publications. They increase your credibility and SEO.

How do you actually circulate it?

Below is the process: The most effective way to circulate a press release is to use one of the many online distribution agencies, most of which follow a similar process.

1. Start to draft a press release based on the required format.
2. Based on the topic and geography, you can choose media outlets to send the release to.
3. Then it is checked and proof read for clarity and errors.
4.  The press release can be distributed through several channels like RSS feeds, news wire services, emails to journalists and websites.
5. With the help of the reporting tools, track the reach and success of your press release.

With increasing price, the reach increases as well. Thus, making it easier to communicate the message to a larger audience. The distribution agency might dictate the format for your press release, but mostly they do have a common structure.

1. Release Timing refers to the time of publishing the article. It is either ‘FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE’ (in all caps) or ‘HOLD FOR RELEASE UNTIL [DATE]’ for a particular date or time.

• Headline is the most integral part of the press release. The best way to grab attention. It is should be short, crisp and to the point. Try and avoid jargons, jokes and superlatives like fastest, largest etc. The trick lies in presenting the headline with strong action words and in present tense long with the required SEO keywords.

• In the first paragraph; we mention the location from where the release was distributed as well as the date which is referred to as dateline.

• Introductory paragraph or the opening paragraph gives an idea about the story. In this, you can include, various factual data like who, where, what and how. Also embed a link to the app related to your product or service along with some keywords.
• Second paragraph summarises the features and benefits of your app. This should include supporting data like research, facts and statistics. By adding a quote by some expert  or company, can add a human touch to your story.
• An additional paragraph is basically the remaining copy which should not be more than about four hundred words. To cover other features and benefits, you can use additional short.
• Boilerplate is the text depicting the information about your company in maybe one or two sentence.
• Contact information should definitely be there in your press release. That is the main reason behind writing it i.e. to invite a journalist to contact you and take the story ahead. It should have the company name, email id and telephone number.
• At the end of the press release, put three hashtags centred on a new line which is what you call as ‘Close’.

The whole purpose of writing the press release is to inform the journalists and media in general. Hence, it is important that you should slot it in the perfect time and date. Avoid days, when there is some big event and with no relevance to your app. Though, if the there is some story that could help you too, go for it. One can co-opt into it as well. Human stories could also interest them a lot. If possible, include names of famous or influential.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

A/B testing

To get the best results from your ads, try variations in proposition, target keywords, copy and title.  The ‘Create a Similar Ad’ feature by Facebook is designed to speed up the process whereas AdWords helps in optimising their display and measure the relative success of adverts in an ad group. This technique is useful for more than just ads, though. App features, website marketing, messages, call to action and email campaigns can be tested against to figure to their effectiveness.

Visual Website Optimizer and Google Website Optimizer are among those apps designed to ease the A/B testing process.

There are four important points to remember when you create and run your tests:

1. You need to understand the purpose as well as the effect to keep the variation in each test to a single element, such as the image or title.
2. In most cases you will find that, while conducting the A/B tests for sign up buttons, adverts and call to action is done to measure the click-through rate as the default goal. Though more clicks never imply higher revenue. One should rather focus on variations that lead to more profit.
3. Numbers can be really confusing. The solution lies in the confidence or statistical significance which is part of A/B test tool for preferably accurate results.
4. See, the statistical confidence may keep varying. Hence, fix the number of tests up-front. Usually you will find certain sample duration or size in most of the tools. You can also use the Google test as a tool.

Other than variation in words, one can also check positions, sizes, images, colours and prices. Since all these will help you to better understand the attributes which can make valid test subjects and influence the customer conversion. There is no denying that A/B tests are powerful, but let’s not base every design decision on them. They will measure the change brought in by one variable and its impact and avoid the subtle changes.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Google ads

Just like the SEO keywords, opt for similar keywords for Google ads. Use the ones which are less competitive because these offer the lowest cost per click.  With dozens of customers who have come and gone, it leaves you in a better state to calculate conversion rate and return on investment accurately.

Make sure your Google ads are as focused as the Facebook Ads. Higher click through creates more prominence and lowers the costs for the adverts. You can make a list of negative keywords at the campaign level and for each advert group redefine them separately. The more the negative keywords, more the chances of it preventing your ad from being displayed. The following tips can be used to make the adverts more effective:

• In order to make your ad more prominent, you can include the target keywords in the advert title. This way, any word that matches words in the search query will be displayed in bold by Google.
• You can always highlight the USP or some unique feature that breaks the clutter and gives you a distinct identity from your competition.
• You can include relevant numbers or statistics, prices and discounts. Focus more on the use of numerals.
• Use more of words or phrases that are call-to-action or active. For e.g. buy, call etc.
• Since the advert space has certain limits, use grammar creatively. Do check for spell errors and typos.
• By using this to create a display URL that features the target keywords or benefits, reassures the reader that the advert links to a relevant page.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Facebook Ads

While planning the advert copy, keep in mind the relaxed environment of Facebook. Avoid formal style and include more of social phrasing. With other marketing messages, focus on benefits and not features. Choose an image that is relevant to the topic and which is uncomplicated.

If your target is Facebook Ads, enter up to twenty-five countries mentioned in the location field. For apps that are available in English, one can still target countries where English isn’t the primary language: You just have to specify that you only want to show the ad only to English speakers in the Languages field.

Your app market will decide the targets like age, sex, relationship and education. Usually the broadest default option is adequate for most of the apps. See, we can keep assuming about these criteria’s but beware not to experiment too much unless you have data or research to back it.

When people mention their interests, activities, hobbies etc on their profiles, it becomes easier to classify your target audience. For e.g. Facebook has pages of various famous apps or websites and even groups which can help you in targeting people who might be interested in your product or service.

Try and include smaller interests too, as these can actually target the most relevant users. Whereas, generic interests such as music or reading cannot be termed as great targets. This might include lots of users who might be completely irrelevant and eventually lead to rise in bid price.

A better idea would be to sub divide the demographics instead of generalizing it. For e.g. rather than going for reading as a general interest focus on personalized adverts. You can create different adverts for different authors.  This way the adverts will perform better.

Writing convincing adverts is difficult. The easiest way to improve your chance of success is to use the ‘Create a Similar Ad’ feature which will bring in variations to your initial advert, each with a different image, title or tweak to the main copy. With time, you will have a better idea as to what of your audience does and doesn’t respond to.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Online advertising

The best way for most web apps to start is by creating online ads. You can easily make them and around a fixed small budget. You just have to pay for the leads and most probably you might know or have knowledge regarding validated learning by testing viable product features with adverts: Effective call to action, language people respond to etc.  These ads come in different formats, sizes and payment models:

• Cost per mille (CPM). Here, one pays for each impression or view of your advert, irrespective of the fact if the user does really notice or click. It is measured per thousand impressions. As you start choosing higher positioned, interactive and larger adverts on popular websites, the rates tend to increase. These are the best option for businesses that are willing to create awareness through increasing the frequency of the ad, so not really a great one for small web apps with low budget.
• Cost per click (CPC). Every time a user clicks on your ads, you pay for it.
• Cost per acquisition or action (CPA). In this case, you have to pay every time the user clicks and performs a call to action, be it downloading a case study, making a purchase or signing a trial. Though, it might seem as a great option for a web app but you won’t find any established or reputed offering it. That is due to the high risk factor.

For start-ups short on budget or time, text based CPC adverts are the best option. Two of the largest networks offering Text CPC ads are Facebook and Google ads, each with a different feature:

Bid model is used by both the networks. The more you are ready to pay, more prominently your ad will feature. With little competition, it won’t cost you much. For competitive demographics on Facebook or competitive keywords, the cost might increase per click

Facebook Ads are actually cheaper than Google AdWords, but it becomes very difficult to compare both directly due to the difference in their targeting features.  The reason behind this difference is the difference in the purpose of using them as well as the intention. For information, we use Google and for socialising, it is Facebook. Hence, we can pick a general target market for each ad.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Outbound Marketing

Gone are the days when shopping meant planning it days before, going to endless shops, be it hot summers or chilling winters. Thanks to the web, things have changed. There has been a huge shift in the way people buy. One can shop from the convenience of home or office, whenever we feel like. To be more precise, we have more control over buying decisions, one can easily get product information, peer recommendations and consumer reviews.

These behavior patterns drive two types of online marketing:

1. People mostly prefer shopping online. So the next step as a seller should be to tell them that you have a clear idea regarding their preferences and interests. This can be done through outbound marketing.
2. Customers search and research online to know more about the things that they would like to purchase. What you need to do is that your app should be found as well as considered as authentic and trustworthy. This can be done by inbound marketing.

The concept behind outbound marketing is to attract attention, through interruptions or disruptions in the day to day life of potential customers. This can be done by sending email, unexpected sales phone calls or adverts on a webpage.

This is a common scenario for almost all of us. Every morning we are flooded with hundreds of such messages. Now that, these messages have become a regular part and keep over flowing out of the inbox, people have started ignoring and blocking them.

Now, coming to another impact on outbound marketing opportunities is the recent drift away from the mainstream broadcast mediums. The obvious mediums like television, radio and newspapers are on a decline mode and people are moving towards user-friendly and easy sources online. Even the use of email is decreasing as people find it easier to communicate through social networking apps and messages through mobile.

Using outbound marketing techniques should not be the only technique to be used, but there are good enough reasons to still try the

• You can use email campaigns and online adverts which are easy to implement.
• You can easily measure the effectiveness and results for better idea regarding the profit and loss.
• They are quite easy to scale. For data shows a net profit say Rs 100 in adverts, simply raise the amount that can be further spent.
• There are certain areas where inbound marketing cannot reach. This is where you can use outbound marketing techniques. There are some sectors or an industry where the customer does not research much while buying nor participates in any social activity. Thus signifying that the customer has some latent or unmet need which can get revealed through outbound marketing.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Easy Ways to Generate Leads

So you have tried it all? Be it printing flyers, sending e-mailers, facebook ads and so much more, but still, with no success in making your brand the next big thing in the market. Well, there isn’t one right way to for everyone. Every business is unique in its own way, so should be the target market and communication style. Hence the lead generation strategy that we implement should actually reflect those aspects of the business.

Lead Generating Website

 With so much of buzz on lead generation, we keep wondering where this comes from. It‘s none other than the website. The website is the hub of all the future online lead generation activities as well as online marketing. These are designed not to generate leads. These mainly feature jargons and are focused strictly around their services. You get this feeling of going through an online version of an old-fashioned brochure. Thus being hardly of any help to the web visitors. On the other hand a lead generating website will feature a user-friendly description of what they actually do and even identify key problems or needs that could be solved. the whole idea is to make the entire experience so easy that the visitor gets whatever he/she seeks for in a few seconds or else be prepared to bid goodbye. In short a lead generating website is all about easy access to valuable information, Lot of chances for the visitor to sign up and a hassle free contact method.

Blogging                                                              

One might get confused that despite not being able to generate leads, how can a blog be one of the most effective lead generating tools. Being directly connected to your SEO, it increases the chances of you being found online. You get complete access to express your opinions and undivided attention of your readers. To further promote it, one can use social media, bookmarking websites and article directories. Just keep in mind to optimize your blogs to generate leads by having a sign-up section for your news letter and by using the margins to promote your product and services.

PPC

Be it companies, consumers or others, majority go for Google search first, that is one of the biggest reasons why PPC is considered one of the best tool generation techniques. Use more of ‘long-tail keyword phrases’ which is basically three words or more as search terms. The best part about using a long-tail keyword phrase is that due to their specificity, they’re less competitive than related, shorter search terms.

SEO

It is a marketing tool used to help search engines to easily locate the relevant websites or be it the webpage that an individual or a company is looking for as well as keywords and HTML coding to optimize the page ranking and using the right terminology. As a lead generating tool, SEO is important for small and mid-sized companies to improve the visibility of their business on internet. So, if we optimize the SEO for a website that would help one to get lead as well as bring in more website traffic. RANK TRACKER, BRUCE CLAY, ALEXA etc are some of the rank monitoring sites. SEO tools which help in monitoring the ranking and position.

List Building

The single most important influencing factor in your marketing success is the quality of the list of your prospects as it can eliminate virtually all marketing waste. If you have a list of well qualified prospect, it is no less than a priceless gem because by utilising it properly will give incredible amount of revenue for you from those  people who have a proven interest in your product or service. It will automatically take your sales higher, if the thousands of properly qualified lists are used in the best way. These are readily available for virtually any marketing purpose and help identify the specific businesses, key decision makers, within the geographic areas you specify and demographic characteristics you desire.

Telemarketing

Along with the other techniques, one can use telemarketing too. The best part being flexible in scope, message, and the things it can accomplish for you. If used with direct mail, it allows you to identify the prospects and helps you reach them directly through two media. An effective way to keep growing and building your relationship with your prospects. Thereby making it easier for them to come to a purchasing decision and help you in increasing your sales results by up to twenty times. One also gets immediate feedback from customers, opinion of prospective customers about their wants, what they like, and what not.

Use Your Competitor’s Resources

To stay in the business one has to be very cautious, there can be an opportunity lying anywhere that can take your business to pinnacle of success. Almost everyone keeps a track of the competitors, but then one should also look for chances where the competitor might have missed or maybe left an idea undeveloped. Do make arrangements to obtain details from all of their unconverted enquiries, unsold prospects and unconverted leads.

PR and Publicity

Usually what we read, see, and hear in the media has actually found its way through PR. The never ending craving by the media for factual, interesting, and newsworthy or entertaining information they can share with their customers, employees, members, viewers or readers and listeners. If approached in the right manner, will give you free coverage on television, radio, trade journals, magazines, e-zines, web sites, newspapers and newsletters who serve the marketplace you’re trying to reach.

Social Events and promotions

There isn’t a special rule book for your success but then making the entire experience of working with you special and memorable will eventually bring you to the top spot. One has to come up with innovative ideas, something that is exciting, fun, informative, valuable or educational and a memory or an experience that stays back. You can take your business to new heights and form more meaningful bond with your customers. Events provide an amazing platform to not only educate the consumers about the product or service but even turning people into prospective customers.

Social Media lead Generation

The entire world is on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc, so these are definitely on the priority list of every business owner. Though social media can be time consuming, it can also help you connect on a deeper level with potential customers. It is almost like using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as different virtual phonebooks, where one can actually search and get info about your services or keywords as well as people who are already talking about your products or services. You can also use Hoot suite to search for new customers by using saved searches on Twitter.

Local Listing

Does your business draw customers from a specific city or location?  If yes, then local listings and a local SEO strategy is the best strategy towards success. The first step is to check if your business is listed and not to forget listed correctly. That can be done on local listing websites like Google Places, Yelp Local, Angies List and Yellow Pages Online. Make sure to check the website URL, physical address, phone number and services. One can set a local listing template for the customers to ensure that there is consistency across all local search sites.

eBook and White Papers

 A great technique that can be used by B2B companies or a business that works in a very technical space. This is basically for people who love to read and gain expertise about that particular industry. One thing to keep in mind is not to go all out promoting the services or products. People want to be informed about the product or service not sold. So while writing keep in mind the tone neutral and give actionable insights. You can rather share the eBook socially or ask your network to share it for you.

April 2, 2020 in Digital Marketing

Techniques for Effective Inventory Management

It isn’t just the holiday season but in regular days are more or less a chaos for most of the eCommerce website owner. They are over loaded with apprehensions, expectations and not to forget headache too.  With never ending demands of customers and the inability to effectively manage the inventory is a constant struggle that has to be dealt with. Almost all the ecommerce website owners even the bigger names have gone through this situation. This actually shows how important it is to manage the inventory properly. Here, we are sharing some tips which might come handy:

1. Learn from the past: Gather data from your past sales records, and plan your techniques for inventory management accordingly. By collecting the sales data of your competitors, you can decide effective inventory management strategies based on it. That way you will get an in depth idea on what kind of products you can stock, quantity that you need to stock, duration and managing inventory returns it.
2. Know Your Customers – Get to the pulse of the customer and form strategies based on it. A campaign that is created and executed properly will make it easier to sell your products.
3. Don’t ignore technology: Managing inventory isn’t a cake walk. There are so many procedures like packing, tracking, managing and shipping products which can be really confusing but with tools and good inventory management system being available; this lengthy and confusing procedure gets streamlined. So, nothing has to be done manually. Yes, there are many tools and eCommerce inventory management systems available which help in making the entire thing easier.
4. Out of stock items does no good to your sales: One should always avoid making tall claims which later could become really troublesome to deliver. Try and keep a good stock of the items which are in high demand because customers returning sad and empty handed doesn’t leave a good impression.

5. Returns inventory: It isn’t a very good feeling seeing returns but then there is nothing to be sad about it. One cannot avoid this situation. Though one can start paying more attention and do a thorough research on the various reasons which are responsible for it. Be it faulty products, wrong size or product description and issues in shipping etc. You can have a talk and present your concerns with the suppliers, manufacturers and reach to the root cause behind the issue. In extreme case if it still returns, send it to fulfillment partners who can sell it.