Digital Marketing Archives

6 Digital Marketing Skills For Your Entry-Level CV

Entering any new industry is scary and exciting at the same time! Part of that comes from the effort to land your first digital marketing position. Your job application materials are a critical piece of the puzzle. Placing the right skills in the right place on your entry-level CV can be the difference between making it to an interview and getting placed in the trash bin with several other applicants.

The skills for your entry-level CV should be diverse and target the relevant trends in the field. The following skills will demonstrate your digital fluency and technical know-how to be effective in the field.

1. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is important because it is a platform for people to discover and share similar content. Link building is a vital asset of using social media sites and it helps improve a company’s visibility and web presence in relevant circles. It is a great benefit to a company for an applicant to feel comfortable posting effective marketing in multiple social media platforms.

2. Marketing Campaign Analytics

Combining all types of digital marketing, including social media marketing, is possible through savvy use of analytics. There is data available for basically all user actions and decisions. This data can inform decision making and assess whether you are able to help the company meet targeted demographics.

3. SEO Optimization

It is common knowledge that people do not go past the first three results in search engine results. This makes it imperative for your website to show up in the top of a result. Search engine optimization is a moving target with evolving standards. Staying abreast of the latest trends is critical to create a digital presence.

4. Content Creation and Delivery

People need to consume content to gain awareness of a company or product. Delivering engaging content through social media marketing and other platforms takes skill and a sense of what the customer or client wants to see. People digest information in short and bite size chunks and react to visual messaging. According to this Infographic, if your website lacks content, you could be losing up to 44% of potential clients. So, content creation and delivery is very important!

5. Communication Skills

Most of the work you will do is online. This does not mean that you will never talk to people. Actually, it is quite the opposite! As a digital marketer, you will excel in some technical skills and fall short in others. Digital marketing team members are able to create a wonderful and engaging experience by working in a collaborative environment. Showing evidence of past projects where you communicated well is critical.

6. Mobile Marketing

While many people have laptops or tablets, even more have smart phones. Creating digital marketing experiences that can work on any screen and with multiple apps is critical. We all spend a lot of time on our phone and can be subtly influenced by the marketing seen. Responsive design is a skill that any top marketer should learn.

In Conclusion

The above skills should make their way onto any entry-level digital marketing resume. Gaining a deep awareness of how to optimize digital marketing through social media and analytics is critical towards helping the business you will work for.

Author’s Bio:

Hello, my name is Emin, I am a Los Angeles-based designer and a marketing specialist, I love writing about guides and tutorials about Social Media Marketing and Internet Marketing in general.

Learn Expert Branding Tips So That Your Startup Gets Instant Recognition & Ultimate Success in 2019

Branding is supposed to be the major reason why startups fail or succeed and it is also, the key differentiator between highly-successful startups and startups that fail to make a mark in the industry. Startups require connecting with people and convincing them to buy their specific product or service that is still not recognized as a proven solution. As per http://fabrikbrands.com, “Good branding is at the heart of any great business. You need only look around you to see the evidence. Companies like Dyson, Virgin, and even Coca Cola didn’t just make an impact because they have great products. These companies are effective because they know how to present themselves to the right audiences at the right times.” While chalking out an effective startup branding strategy, you may find the process pretty overwhelming and may mean a lot of hard work on a superficial level but you stand to gain a lot if you build a brand carefully. Here are some expert branding tips for your startup so that it is able to create a strong foothold in the industry it belongs to.

Know & Clearly Understand Your Target Market

The very first effort to brand your startup is to gain a thorough understanding of the target audience. You must clearly know who would be the people you would be aspiring to reach, impress and convince. Think about the specific people who wish that they would be experiencing your brand. When you have identified your precise target audience, all aspects of your branding strategy must be connected and relevant to the target market.

Give Top Priority to Your Brand

During the initial days when your startup has just been established, you may not be paying too much attention to branding when your intention and focus is on selling off your products and getting income for proving your worth to the investors. However, you simply cannot overlook the branding aspect during the foundation years as you need to build a niche in the market and a name and reputation for your brand.

We know that brands find a way to emerge and evolve spontaneously so you must take the initiative to define them effectively and control them consciously. That would surely prove to be easier when your startup is in its initial phase and your team is quite small and very much open to innovative ideas. When you develop a coherent brand, you could stand tall among the rest and your business would be noticed by potential customers from the very beginning. You may seek professional assistance from a reputed company offering digital marketing NYC for smart branding solutions.

Consider Selling Your Story

You must focus on selling your story if you are thinking of building a robust brand. However, the greatest challenge you would encounter is that nobody would recognize you or your startup initially. Building your story is the best way of focusing on building your company identity and business culture. Narrating your unique story is a memorable way to identify effectively with you and your brand on a really more personal note. You need to sell an experience much before you sell any product.

Define the Brand Influencers

Your brand actually is supposed to be your business personality and could be expressed in numerous ways. Your brand would be surely reflected in your brand color, your logo, your voice tone, and your graphics style. The next aspect to consider is that of brand values. These are the traits and characteristics that determine how your business would be conducted and the way your employees would feel, think, and behave. It may prove to be useful if your brand is regarded as a description or summary of who you actually are when you seem to be at your best instead of a bunch of rules regarding what you should always be.

In this context, you may know that marketing channels could assume the role of brand management. Boosting your brand awareness i.e. the degree of understanding your customers have of your specific brand and the way they could interpret it as a strategic goal meant to boost your startups. You could assess that by paying attention to your target audience via the conversational channels such as social media.

Your Brand Must Be Different from Those of the Competitors

Your brand is an expression of your values and desires and exactly who you really are. However, we simply cannot deny the fact that specific industries would be coming up with an apparently common brand language wherein some fonts, colors, illustration styles are typical across numerous businesses. It is up to you to take the decision whether to use the already existing branding techniques in your industry or use some path-breaking branding techniques that obviously, are unique.

Consider Using Audits for Keeping Your Brand in Top Condition

Once you have come up with a brand for your startup and your startup has been running smoothly for a while, certainly, it would be a fantastic idea to monitor and examine the branding scenario on a regular basis with an effective brand audit. A brand audit seems to be very much an internal process which would be helping you in keeping track of the consistency of the brand, how effectively it aligns with your way of doing business and how your specific business is actually perceived by all your customers.

Boost Your Visibility for Branding Success

You need to maximize your startup’s visibility. Your branding objective is to reach your precise target audience via a well-coordinated message across a number of platforms. You need to customize your branding efforts for maximizing customer experience and generating passionate and loyal customers who could be advocating on your behalf, hence, boosting growth and traction for your startup.

Conclusion

Building a robust brand should commence with precisely the reason why you seem to matter to your customers, and gradually, build up to really bigger visual, as well as, verbal brand environment for playing with. We know that it is definitely, about consistency, structure, and active ideation for boosting your brand identity and recognition in the manner it matters most. When you come up with lots of designs, actionable guidelines and on-brand marketing messages, chalking out a marketing funnel seems to be a breeze.

Author Bio:

Barrack Diego has worked as an editor and writer for more than 10 years. He enjoys mentoring young and upcoming writers. To find out more about Technology, Business, SEO, WordPress, Social Media, Branding Tips visit Bigdropinc.com

Why Is Search Engine Optimization A Must In The Modern Age Sites?

Search engine optimization affects each web page, and when you have an online business, you will require search engine optimization for the website. SEO is the short form of search engine optimization. An internet website’s search engine optimization helps you to decide precisely how well it is gonna rank on different major search engines. Quite simply, how high through to the results page the hyperlink to the website will show for an exact search phrase.

Does SEO Really Matter For Your Website?

The key cause why search engine optimization is crucial for your website is the fact that effective search engine optimization results into increased traffic that might change into better sales, more ads clicked, more e-mail list subscribers, et cetera. Search engine optimization has a larger significance for smaller websites because they probably don’t have just as much of a financial plan to cover marketing. Traffic from different search engines is completely free.

Search Engine Optimization Forms:

There are two major regions or sub-divisions of search engine optimization. They are on-page search engine optimization and off-page search engine optimization. Both assist in making it rank better on different search engines. But aside from that, they’ve been fairly diverse. You’ll require a combo of both off-page and on-page search engine optimization to make the website rank the good.

What’s On-Page Search Engine Optimization?

On-page search engine optimization pertains to the actions you take in the website to optimize it for search engine optimization. It consists of the following:

• Content:

All of your written content that you publish in the site which comprises the keywords that individuals will utilize to find that content will improve the on-page search engine optimization. The keywords specify to the search engines that precisely what the content is all about, that’ll then improve the position within the search engine rankings.

• URLs:

Once you contain a keyword in the URL, it optimizes the On-Page SEO of the website.

• Images:

Images in the site have things known as alt-text that isn’t clear to the website viewers. You can append keywords within the alt-text that will be picked up owing to the search engines.

• Website Optimization:

The website design and hosting are significant to search engine optimization. Make sure the website is mobile friendly and also it has a quick loading speed.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimization:

It needs a range of steps that might improve the ranking of the site without changing anything on the site itself. It is known as link building, and it’s a method of making links off their websites back into your website. Backlinks are a sign of the worth for the content on the website. The significant thing aspect is to locate links back from quantity websites. Also sharing those links to your website using social networking will improve the site’s results because social networking links are perceived as backlinks owing to the search engines.

Top Advantages Off Search Engine Optimization:

Search engine optimization or SEO has become broadly adopted as a web-based advertising strategy because of its efficiency. Although, the digital background has altered drastically in recent years. However, search engine optimization stays an essential and viable advertising strategy. In a period when the net is the source for most individuals to find a service or item they need, there’s no better investment than site improvement for the company. While there’re a lot of benefits to a good search engine optimization strategy, here we have highlighted a few to make you comprehend it is remarkable.

Straight forward Increase In Traffic:

The best results in the search engine page get the majority of the clicks and visits, so ranking in such best search engine pages can bring about a huge boost in traffic for the site. A search engine optimization company also concentrates on making informative and keyword based meta descriptions and title tags, which come in the result pages. Having optimized descriptions and tags assists to boost CTR, which also promotes boosts in competent web traffic.

Best Advertising Return On Investment!

When you disburse for an advertisement, a fine amount of individuals will see it. There is a fair chance that some percentage of them may finish up purchasing the product or service. This top conversion rate is just one more of the benefits of search engine optimization services that cannot be matched by any other type of advertising. Google keeps the records about the searches and gets the individuals who looked for the tag on the site. Anybody can post an advertisement and people who see it might misclick. However, a strike from Google is much more appreciable than advertisements.

Long-Term Standings:

Once an advertising strategy is employed properly, the search engine results will last a fine amount of time, providing you some composure. You do not have to be anxious about the ranking; the site is offering you customers’ day out and day in without having to carry on spending marketing dollars.

Higher Brand Trustworthiness As More Individuals Trust Google:

Individuals believe whatever appears first at the search page of Google. There’s a joint trust between the individuals and Google as it’s a trustworthy company. By employing this strategy, you can turn the website into your brand name. The lower you’re in the Google’s rankings; the more people are suspicious about the site. On the off chance that Google has a spot given to you at the top mainly in the event that it’s a top-level posting with diverse subpages recorded under the principle landing page, it provides the website a brand value and position that no ad can beat. Ads can often be seen as irritating, and a lot of people have ad blockers introduced on their systems.

Branding:

Online listing progress the overall brand. A lot of famous brands have faced a fall in brand value owing to the lack of search engine optimization listing. Youngsters nowadays desire to purchase from brands that have a good online presence, and the digital method offers clients with the chance to reach to more and more individuals.

How Bulk SMS Can Be Used In The Education Sector In India?

Communication is the key to run any successful educational institution. We all remember the times around ten or twenty years ago when we would reach the gates of our school only to find out it was closed due to extreme winter. There was an eerie sense of satisfaction but also an undeniable agitation for not getting this information in advance. Who likes to compromise on some extra hours of sleep anyway!

Recently, the use of bulk SMS has bridged this communication gap between schools/colleges and parents. Parents and students no longer have to wait around for the school/college to send notifications by post, they can be updated simply with the ease of their cell phones via SMS. Mobile technology has come in very handy for this purpose.

Here are a number of examples of how bulk SMS can benefit a school or college:

1. Sending Reminders

Any impromptu change in the schedule of a school/college can wreck havoc on its functionality. For this purpose, bulk SMS massaging comes in very handy and can be used to send out weekly or daily messages to staff and students. Bulk SMS is an extremely efficient way used by educational institutions to reach out to tons of people at once. They can be notified close to the time of important events or deadlines.

2. Handling Queries

Parents often might have some unresolved queries about their children and various things related to them. For this reason, short-codes and USSD codes can help answer their questions. It’s not always feasible for parents or children to visit the premises of their educational institution for smallest of queries. For that reason, bulk SMS is a cost-effective and a time saving technique to make people’s lives simpler.

3. Attendance

One major problem with teenage students is their unannounced absence from their school/college premises. In such cases, bulk SMS helps to notify the parents or guardians of the children missing from school. This way, parents can track the attendance record of their children and can even notify the school via a text message if their child is unable to attend school/college on a particular day.

4. Homework

Homework is a crucial part of the educational curriculum. While some students are sincere enough to take care of it by themselves, others need to be kept under a strict watch of the school. For this purpose, the school/college can notify parents by sending a text when their children haven’t done the homework assigned.

5. Parent-teacher communication

There’s no denying that sending messages helps to bridge the communication gap between parents and staff but it also aides in facilitating their communication. Schools and colleges no longer have to follow the cumbersome traditional methods of circulars and notifications, they can simply connect with parents via mobile phones, a procedure which doesn’t even require internet connectivity.

6. Feedbacks

Feedbacks are very crucial for continuous and comprehensive growth of an educational institute. Every educational institute can make use of bulk SMS service for the feedback and carrying out surveys. Sending simple messages to parents and students and asking about their feedback is the simplest way to know where your institution stands. An institution can improve upon its shortcomings by utilising the valuable feedback from parents and students.

7. Student’s Results

Awry results can be a bit discouraging for some students and they might even hide it from their parents sometimes. Schools and colleges can inform the parents about the same using bulk SMS service. This helps in keeping a check on the students and parents can constantly monitor the performance of their children. It even helps to encourage students to perform better in exams as they know their results would never be hidden from their parents.

8. Emergencies

Bulk SMS service is a fast and a convenient way to inform parents about any emergency, like natural calamity, fire breakout, terrorist attack, etc. In such cases, parents can be immediately be made aware of the distressful situation and can take steps accordingly.

9. Unscheduled Holidays

Sometimes, due to unforeseen circumstances like extreme weather conditions, political upheavals, accidents, etc., the school or college might remain shut. Such impromptu closure can be brought to students’ notice with the help of bulk SMS service. Similarly, is a teacher falls ill, he or she can inform the students via bulk SMS about cancellation of classes.

10. Promotions

Educational institutes are always on a constant lookout to take themselves to new heights by adding to existing infrastructure, collaborating with international organisations, organising workshops, etc. In such cases, they can inform parents and students about their achievements and accolades via bulk SMS. It helps in building the credibility of the institute in the eyes of the people.

While technology is considered a bane by some, it definitely has its set of boons. It has undoubtedly made our lives simpler over the last few decades. It has not only bridged the gap between parents and school/college, but has also augmented the education sector of the country tremendously. Parents are today more efficiently informed about the paraphernalia that surrounds their children, as compared to twenty years ago. As informed individuals, they are in a better capacity to make informed decisions about their children’s education. While technology as a whole is to be credited for this, bulk SMS has definitely tipped the scale here.

Is B2B SMS Marketing an Effective Strategy to Invest On? Yes!

Whenever we talk about SMS (short message service) the first thing that clicks in our mind is countless and annoying promotional text messages that we receive on our mobile phones.

Well, regardless of how annoying it may seem, it’s still considered an effective marketing strategy for international B2B marketplaces. In fact, according to research around 75% of people have no problem in getting an SMS from a brand.

As B2B marketers we have to step ahead and take risks by trying every marketing channel there is, to generate B2B leads. However, you have to take the right steps, or any type of promotional activity can backfire at you and destroy your reputation. Therefore, we’ve come up helpful tips to make your B2B SMS marketing campaign successful.

1. Establish an SMS List

In order to make sure that your B2B SMS marketing is successful, the first thing that you have to look in to is that all the users on your SMS list have subscribed for your services. If you start sending promotional SMS texts to just about anyone, you’ll eventually witness a decline in the rate of engagement. You may even get flagged as a spammer if too many people report your number.

In order to make your list authentic and relevant, you can send emails to all your subscribers as an invitation to subscribe for your SMS service. Other than that, you can also promote this service on your website and social media platforms. Once you have a compelling list, you won’t have to worry about having your SMS ignored.

2. Keep a Close Eye on Your SMS Campaign

Once you’ve started sending SMS to all your subscribers, make sure that you monitor that campaign. Just like every other B2B marketing strategy, this one also needs to be analyzed every now then. Why? Well, you’re probably going to spend lots of money on this strategy, that’s why!. If it doesn’t generate the expected ROI, then it’s better to either make alterations or simply stop and think of something else.

3. Introduce Offers Your Customers Can’t Ignore

If you really want all your SMS to generate leads and increase your ROI, you’ll have to come up with exclusive deals and discounts. Your offer will definitely be the driving force of the leads you wish to generate.

In addition, you can also place an offer for all those customers who subscribe to your SMS service as a token of appreciation. People love free and discounted stuff, so this technique can surely build your SMS subscriber list.

However, one crucial aspect you should focus on is the frequency and time. Don’t over send texts, because it may irritate your user. In addition, always have a look at the clock before sending your SMS. You wouldn’t want to wake someone up with your message.

4. Segment Your List

By creating segments in your list, you’ll be able to send the most relevant content to the right audience. In order for that to happen, you also have to know your audience well enough. For example, if you’re promoting tech goods through your B2B SMS marketing campaign and send messages to buyers that belong to a different industry, you’ll only become a source of irritation.

Maintaining a happy audience is crucial for the future of this marketing strategy. Once you are able to develop a good relation with your client, all your marketing tactics will show positive outcomes.

Wrapping Up

If you are running an online B2B marketplace, SMS marketing can play a significant role in boosting your ROI. Once you have won the trust of your clients, you can even add links in your messages to enhance both your traffic and the number of quality leads. However, just like any other B2B marketing technique, planning is essential. To start off, follow all the tips we’ve mentioned above. Once you’ve got the hang of it and are generating useful results, you are free to experiment with new ideas.

Author Bio

Beatrice McGraw is a digital marketing expert who works for ExportHub – A Foreign B2B Marketplace. She just loves to share her knowledge with the world in the form of blogs, videos and various other types of content. In her free time, she is an active gamer and a techwiz who adores researching innovative solutions that emerge in the digital world. Follow her on Twitter here: @McgrawBeatrice.

Want A Thriving Business? Focus On Social Media Marketing!

Social media marketing is a strategy that involves the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. On these websites a business promotes its products or services. The kind of growth which is seen in social media promotions has been unbelievable. Also abbreviated as SMM this marketing methodology provides the businesses a word of moth feedback, from its existing as well as potential customers, and accordingly they modify and redesign their products and services to meet the needs of the users.

There are various types of strategies that work within the social media environment and promotions are done through a well-designed and managed marketing campaign. Also important is setting the scope.

Nonetheless, there has been tremendous growth in this sector. This Article is focused on the concept of SMM as a way to make a business thrive in a very competitive world. We have also taken inputs from a top-level marketing agency, so that we give you the real facts on what is Social Media Marketing all about. Now, let’s start with our analysis.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is a medium used by the digital marketeers to garner web traffic and attract attention. This process is helped by social media sites like Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. Actually this medium is used as a strategy to network with people who are looking for products and services that a company markets and also with the industry experts who have an influence on the market. The communication so developed then becomes a stepping stone for building a long term relationship between the like-minded people. This process also generates valuable leads which come in handy for acquisition of new customers.

Look, there is a constant competition that is going on among the rivals and all of the players look for a bigger share of the pie. So, it is logical to be wary about how your rivals are fairing, especially when they are selling the same product or service as you. You and your competitors are sailing in the same boat so it makes sense to understand how they are pitching products and services.

Next, we should analyze the reasons that a business should keep social media marketing as their primary focus.

SMM As A Revenue Engine

When we read the reports of the marketing and business analysts including those provided by the marketing agency we mentioned above, we found that most of the business marketers achieved huge marketing success from SMM. Simply speaking the social media websites like Facebook and Twitter have helped in a strong growth for a business and have been the reason for a company’s success. These are real reports that were published in some of the leading business magazines like Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, etc., during the last 3 years. It is now no secret that social media marketing has provided businesses an easy and effective way to create appeal for their products or services, regardless of how big or small the targeted market maybe.

Through the process of social media marketing businesses get the ability to reach out to wider audience. Moreover, company’s are able to implement new and unique ideas to target potential customers and establish one-on-one communication with their customers, which is also on a personal level.

Conclusion

Nonetheless, in order to gain the maximum benefits of social media marketing the marketeers should have in place a well-planned strategy. There should be no confusion regarding the goals of the company and what should be done, to achieve those goals through an established social media marketing strategy. The present need is to bring positive changes in customer outreach and company’s focus should be in that direction. If the company is able to create an effective social media marketing strategy, and their team works on it wholeheartedly, then revenue growth is yours for the taking!

Author Bio:

Jones Smith is a writer and marketing expert working for one of the leading marketing agency Toronto. He has written on different digital marketing topics including, SEO, Link Building, Content marketing and so on. He constantly explores trends in content marketing and uses them to increase engagement and ensure success.

Power of Social Media for the 21st Century Marketing

In the virtual world of hash-tags, repost, likes, shares and subscribe, social media plays a significant role in marketing as well. Though it is platform to connect with people around the globe and stay updated on the current happenings, it is also proving to be a great place for earning customers for your brand.

As Statista suggests, by 2019, there will be approximately 2.77 billion social media users in the world. Imagine those many people knowing and connecting with your brand! Wouldn’t it be a successful platform to advertise and promote your products, services or brand?

We bet, it will be! Curating a list such key points, in this blog, we will be discussing the power of social media in the 21st century.

Why Is Social Media Marketing Important Today?

Social media marketing has completely transformed the traditional marketing approach. While once new products were announced and marketed using print, broadcast and referral approach, with social media marketing things are simpler and easily accessible.

And, if you are still going old school, you’re incurring a huge loss for your brand or organization. With that being said, let’s discuss why is social media marketing important? And, how avoiding it can cost your business a significant loss!

1. Connects Your Target Audience

Everyday millions of people scroll through a number of sites to find a product or service of their choice. Regardless of the industry or sector, social media provides you an opportunity to connect to those people. Every content, advertisement, video or infographic you share on social media platform increases your chances of interacting with your audience.

Brands like Nike, Dove, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, etc., are perfect examples of audience engagement and interaction. And, we all know, how successful they are. Thus, it is fair to point that social media marketing helps in understanding your audience better than any other marketing approach ever could.

Besides, connecting to the target audience is easier and more personal through social media. All you need to do is – keep your social posts interesting and enlightening. The rest will take its course step by step.

2. Works as a Grapevine

Happy customers are loyal customers! And, they further bring more value with themselves. For instance, how many times have you recommended your friends or family a shopping site just because you were satisfied with its service?

We guess, many! Similar is the case with social media marketing. If your audience is happy with your campaigns and services your brand is offering, they will promote it without saying. As per facts, 71% of clients who had a positive social media service experience with a brand are likely to suggest it to others.

And, this is not all! With just the word-of-mouth your brand can gain customers you didn’t even know existed. In other words, connecting to the audience through social media is the fastest way to create brand awareness.

As we say, it works like a grapevine. From one person to another, the information travels so fast that the future of the product or service can be easily determined given the type of response you get from your audience.

3. Builds Brand Authority

Social media marketing totally works on the type of content you are sharing with your audience. Brands that have the best products and have deep understanding of the benefits of their products impresses the audience the most.

For a simple reason, the audience or customers are curious to know everything about the product you are proposing to them. Until and unless you offer them the best of the knowledge of the product, they might not trust your brand.

That’s the reason why brands focus on promoting their survival story, history and testimonials. These types of posts tell the customers what’s unique about the brand. As a matter of fact, it builds trust of the audience in the brand.

Other than this, being transparent with your customers is another strong authority building social media strategy. Brands address criticisms as they arise, which can help in gaining the faith customers place in your business.

4. Less Investment, More ROI

Social media marketing is a prompt, inexpensive, and the most effective way to reach a wider audience. It helps you cut unnecessary marketing costs, without compromising the output. How?

Well, as a matter of fact, social media platforms include millions of potential customers, colleagues, and competitors. And, they are accessible to everyone for free. Also, an average Facebook ad costs $0.97 which is way less than what you would have paid for printing out a few flyers.

Other than this, social media marketing also acts as a real time saver. According to statistics, 95% of the marketing professionals who use social media confirmed that just by spending 6 hours per week on social media increased exposure for their businesses. Could you expect any better way than this for marketing?

5. Multiplies Organic Traffic

Another major highlight of social media marketing is the fact that it helps in driving organic traffic to your brand’s website. As you post content with keywords and images related to your brand and category, it attracts new potential customers to your site/page searching for the same.

The more knowledgeable your content information is, the higher the chances of driving traffic to your website. In addition, being active on social media also draws traffic to the website/page. The improved visibility and engagement with the content helps to boost its reach.

And, therefore, is an imperative part of any strategy to develop organic high quality back-links. Other than that, optimizing your brand’s social media profile helps in making your brand appear in the organic search listings.

6. Drive Sales

As per statistics, marketers who have been using social media for more than 3 years say that it has helped them increase sales. The major reason behind this progress is that your audience is way more active and approachable on social media.

Besides, when you amalgamate your brand with the known faces, it attracts your potential customers. For instance, travel influencers like Johnny Jet, Chris Burkard, Louis Cole, etc., have a huge number of followers on their social media accounts. People tend to visit the places, try food joints, and take part in activities suggested by them.

Thus, their partnership with various brands likes Marriott, Toyota, MTV, Greyhound, etc., helps the companies in driving sales. All you need to do is partner with these influencers to feature your product in their posts, pictures or videos. Also, you can have them tell an appealing story or journey of your brand.

And, that is not all! When the influencers give open reviews about your brand or provide tutorials about your product/service, the audience ought to try it. As a result, increase in sale and popularity of the brand.

7. Aids in Managing Brand Reputation

Maintaining online reputation of the brand is significant as one bad review from an unsatisfied customer can bring a wedge to your business. As per a survey by BrightLocal, 88% of the people confirmed they trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.

Therefore, it is only fair to say that if your brand develops a bad reputation on social media, you might lose your customers. For instance, brands like Adidas, Dove, Uber, McDonald, etc., experienced negative response from the audience due to their appalling social media campaigns. However, they were quick to remedy it by apologizing or withdrawing the services at once.

In other words, defamation itself may not damage your brand. But, the way your brand responds to it can straightforwardly impact its reputation. Thus, always try to be pro-active remedial on the comments or reviews left by the customers as they can make or break your brand reputation.

8. Humanizes Your Brand

Unless you are just looking for a way to survive in the market, it is imperative to establish a connection with your audience. People must know that they are not just a potential target for your brand. And, you are not just an establishment looking for a way to make money.

The audience should believe in your brand values and how your product or services are developed keeping in mind the best interests of the customers. The simplest way to achieve this is through social media.

Instead of copy-pasting or relying on automated replies, try to know your audience. Understand their concern and reply accordingly. Most of the times what puts off a consumer is negligible response from the brand. When it’s your mistake or consumers are experiencing a problem, acknowledge and be transparent about it. This proves you care about your clients and they hold value for your business.

Wendy’s Facebook page is an excellent example of brand-customer connection. They actually take time to read and respond to their customer complaints. And, this is what makes their brand standout from its competitors!

9. Watch Your Competition

Apart from finding your audience’s preferences, tastes and behavior, social media also helps in monitoring the competition. For example, if your competitor’s product or service is lagging on some platform, you can use it to win new customers by directly addressing it.

Famous brand like Nokia failed miserably when it ignored the rising demand of upgraded software. The company kept focusing on the hardware which led to its offset. In that period of time, Samsung, Sony, HTC, Apple, etc., took liberty of it and launched phones that outperformed than Nokia.

Though social media marketing was not prevalent at that time, it is now. You can find various ways to map your progress as well as your competitor’s. Some popular tools for monitoring competitors include SocialMention, Marketing Gardener, SEMRush, etc.

After Thoughts

Social media marketing is here to stay! If you are still unaware of the benefits of social media marketing, then, it’s time to get in the game. The longer you wait, the more your business will suffer. However, with strategic planning and proper implementation, it can help you flourish your business.

Author Bio:

The blog is presented by Sharda University. Sharda University is one of the largest universities in Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) offering 216 varied programmes.

Facebook
Twitter

9 Benefits You Can Gift To Your Business by Using Chatbots

Nowadays, chatbots are popping up like dandelions with more and more companies rolling them out to increase customer convenience. According to ubisend, 21% of the customers find chatbot as the easiest way to interact with a business.

Also, customers are 10 times more likely to engage with a chatbot.

So, what makes these little AI-powered assistants so appealing?

Answer- their versatility. Chatbots can be used to perform a wide array of functions within the realms of customer service, customer interaction along with several “top of the funnel” marketing and advertising campaigns.

Moving on, with the introduction artificial intelligence, chatbots have become more sophisticated than ever. The technology behind these bots is so good that many times, it becomes hard to distinguish these chatbots chats from actual human conversations.

In this article, we will have a look at some of the foremost benefits of using chatbots for your business. Let’s begin.

1. 24×7 Customer Support

It is no secret that customer service is the most significant factor to success. Whether you are Multinational Corporation or a small local business, having a dependable round the clock customer support panel has a huge impact on your customer satisfaction.

With the help of chatbots, this customer support process can be largely improved. Chatbots can be programmed to quickly respond to repetitive questions as well as forward the request to a real representative in case a more complicated action is required. This helps in saving the time of customer service representatives by automating repetitive and monotonous tasks and enabling them to focus on more important areas.

Additionally, chatbots help organizations in handling more tasks at the same time, so no customer has to wait.

2. Availability on Messaging Platforms

Mostly, all customers are interested in engaging with a brand via chat, as it is faster and easier to use. Thus, the businesses have a great opportunity to employ chatbots on major social media platforms to locate the right prospective clients. This is a more feasible option than building an entirely new app to engage with customers as it requires a huge amount of money and time.

Also, reaching out customers through chatbots platforms like Facebook Messenger or Kik helps businesses in involving more consumers than through emails or newsletters.

3. Monitoring Customer Data and Gathering Insights

Chatbots are amazing tools to interact with the customers. They gather valuable customer feedback by asking simple questions that can be used for making significant improvements in your products and services. Also, the information gathered can be used for optimizing your website by fine-tuning the low converting pages. For instance, if you know that your landing page generates a high amount of traffic but doesn’t convert very well, you can use a chatbots to reach out to your visitors with a survey to understand the reason why they are abandoning the page without purchasing.

Additionally, chatbots can be largely instrumental in studying consumer behaviour, purchasing patterns and trends. A company can decode previous conversations with the customers to identify their preferences and further suggest them new products accordingly.

4. Generating and Nurturing More Leads

As discussed above, chatbots gather all relevant and useful information about a customer. This information can be used to develop personalized messages that guide the customer through his buyer’s journey, making sure that every step leads to higher conversion rates.

This is an important tactic that can help you to effectively rev up your marketing strategy. But, it is important to ensure that you do not get annoying with these personalized messages. Also, it is wise to do some A/B testing on your customized messages to determine which copy works best.

5. Chatbots Can Help You Scale Your Business Operations

One major cost that impedes businesses from growing is the cost of employing and training more people to handle and support customer interaction features. With chatbots, there is no such hassle.

A human can typically only interact with one customer at a time, but chatbots can handle any number of customer requests simultaneously, without any delay. They can quickly adapt as your business grows.

6. Improved Customer Engagement

A recent study deduced that companies who engage with their customers via social media platforms were able to increase the customer spend by up to 40%. Of course social media is a great platform to interact with users. But, having a chatbots on these platforms can further improve engagement rates by conducting interactive conversations.

In case of a typical customer service interface, the information offered to the users is generally more explicit. But a chatbots only furnishes to-the-point information at a time. This helps in making the conversation more interactive by keeping the users interested for longer.

7. Chatbots Help in Reducing Repetitive and Boring Work

Repetitive tasks often make people become weary of them. They get bored and start looking for variety and rotation. As a result, the business has a demoralized workforce. This in turn makes them prone to errors and also has a negative effect on their productivity.

On the contrary, chatbots excel at handling repetitive tasks. They are capable of automating monotonous jobs without making any compromises with the quality or customer experience. Also, since they are machines, they are less likely to make any errors.

8. Delivering Highly Personalized Experiences

Nowadays, customers are majorly looking for special and tailor-made experiences. With the advent of AI-powered chatbots, businesses are able to gather significant customer information and in turn, deliver highly personalized experiences. This helps in acquiring better customer engagement and higher customer acquisition rates.

9. Cost Savings

Employing a fully-functional chatbot is much cheaper and faster as compared to creating a full workforce, hiring employees for every task. Chatbots are a one-time investment that can easily scale as the business grows. By using chatbots instead of human workforce, you will not only save on employee costs but also avoid complications caused due to human errors.

In addition, the customers can easily and quickly start an interaction with the chatbots. This helps in improving user acquisition rates at minimal costs.

Final Words

The above discussion points out that chatbots are a great alternative to employees for performing repetitive and relatively simple tasks with optimal precision. These bots extend a cost-effective solution for automating one of the prime aspects of every business- customer satisfaction.

Also because of the rapid popularity of chatting platforms, the application and benefits of chatbots continue to rise. It is anticipated that chatbots will dominate how companies interact with their customers in the near future. Consequently, it is best to hire the services of a reputed chatbot development company to capitalize on this upcoming trend and keep an edge over the competitors.

However, the only challenge of using these chatbots is developing the right “personality” or conversation capability of your bot in order to increase as well as retain your brand perception.

Author Bio:

James Grills is a technical writer with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of mobile application development and IoT technology. He is a marketing advisor – currently associated with Cumulations Technologies a mobile app development company in India.

Social Media Management Is The Need of The Time

With a whopping 2.62 billion social media users around the globe in 2018, social media influence is undoubtedly something to contemplate upon.

When in their spare time, nearly 2 billion people spend on scrolling social media platforms; the sole reason it being interactive and fun.

Furthermore, as there is no shortage of any information in social media, it turned out to become a boon to the society.

A social media strategy allows you to get noticed by your consumers over your competitors. Your brand becomes visible to the digital eyes making it easier for your customers to find and connect with you.

Moreover, if you introspect, social media marketing is possibly the most cost-effective way. Create an account and sign up. It is almost free for major social networking platforms. An uptight online presence can make or break your brand.

So, how could marketers miss the incredible opportunity of acquiring customers through social media?

Marketers started finding out ways to channelize the personalized data to target potential audience on social media platforms. They already had a customer base which was managed by marketing technology software, but to entail more interaction social media came into the game.

Social media engagements gave them the advantage of utilizing the two-way communication with their target audience so that they get to know their wishes, and can cater to their interest with ease. Also, you get to reach and target more people than you can do through other marketing channels.

Maintaining the brand efficacy in the market needs to induce trust within consumers. Value addition is inevitable to build brand loyalty which persuades customers to share and subscribe.

Conversion happens when there is a sense of trust. The trust factor consists of Quality, promotional activities and interaction with consumers.

1. Quality

Quality prevails in this section, the quality of the product service or contents shapes a brand. In the long run quality with innovation is what marketers deal with. Through research of the existing elements must be carried out and action must be taken based upon the insights.

2. Promotional activities

Promoting content on social media contain everything about a brand itself. It is inevitable to provide quality information to keep the trust score flying high. Rushing or pushing posts deviates brand personality.

3. Interactions

Customers are assets, interacting with consumers on social media platform makes the customer confident and thus aids brand loyalty. Answering queries in real time and providing support also engages customers on a real-time basis. Customers don’t feel alienated, and this opens up the vast possibility for marketers.

But there came a dilemma as which platform to give more preference over the other.

Source: amplifymm.com/

When planning to get your social media ideas right, you cannot choose one platform over the other. Combining all the platforms is the key to a successful social media campaign.

Hence, social media management tools came into the picture. Social media management platforms started showing significant impact on brands garnering scalability and targeting the desired audience in an amicable channel.

Although in the preliminary stages it lacked clarity, however with the involvement of artificial intelligence and robust algorithm, the processes became automated. Social media strategy handling tools allow you to schedule posts, check insights of your audience interaction and do many more.

These tools have expertise in modifying their influence based on the mindset of the audiences in each of these platforms. Social media analytics tools provide valuable data and help in understanding which posts are doing well in your targeted niche. These data could include aspects such as the mood of your market, relevant issues that are trending, operational metrics for particular posts that you have used in the past and competitive analysis too.

To leverage the benefits out of social media marketing, invest in the most useful tools.

Here is the list of five best social media management tools which you can use.

1. HootSuite

HootSuite makes it easy to add multiple accounts and manage posts and contents cross-platform. It is amicable to schedule posts and thus saving time for creative work.

2. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar re-posts the quality posts when in need. The system analyzes the best interactive posts and re-shares when in need automatically. It pulls a lot of traffic on the go.

3. Buffer

Buffer tracks the links and examines the contents which are getting the most hits. Same contents are allowed to be customized for various social media platforms and shares the best contents within a fixed time frame.

4. IFTTT

“IFTT” stands for “If this then that” contains self-learning algorithms which automate the plan of action based conditional modules. Prompt and action mode allows marketers to manage individual tasks comprising of deletion of contents, updating apps, enabling contents on any social media platforms.

5. TweetDeck

TweetDeck is free and provides a multi-column user interface indoctrinating conversations, news and information based on the user’s interest. TweetDeck gives the opportunity to create great contents in real time.

All social media management tools that are available today comprises the evolution of social media marketing and reputation management.

Verdict

Having a great social media marketing strategy is not everyone’s cup of tea.

A brand which has good market penetration may become senile if not having an excellent social media reach. Few tactics sustain and can withstand the external pressure of creating a brand presence, whereas others do not.

Further, there can be no perfect time to start building a social media marketing plan. If you think you can do it with your limited resources, without even utilizing social media management tools, then follow your heart. Later you might find that starting a new marketing strategy is not that tough; you only need to keep patience. An excellent social media strategy can help you to change the way you do business.

Author Bio

Sreejani chose to spread her knowledge about content marketing through her writing skills. She serves as a Content Writer for Way2Target. Is well versed in strategizing content and her articles are known to ignite engagement amongst seasoned writers to everyday people. Believes in content being only a tree in the forest. Has a dash of tenacity and thus thinks audience multiplicity as a critical challenge to conquer.

Tips on Measuring Your Digital Marketing Campaign

The ads that one comes across while surfing on Facebook, Instagram, or any other online sites are nothing but digital marketing. A digital marketing campaign is a marketing strategy adopted by companies to increase their brand awareness and visibility amongst the audiences and various other online digital platforms. It’s an excellent way for the companies all over the world to establish their strength and position in the market.

Now the question is how do you start the campaign? Basically, the digital marketing campaign starts with the planning where you make a rough outline of your strategy. Then, the next step is development where we start to implement the outlined marketing strategy that was produced in the first step. Finally, the management which tells how much the strategy has worked and has been a success. Out of the many strategies. There are a lot of well-known digital marketing agency of Australia which offers many digital services to various companies all over the globe, one of them being ppc services Sydney that offers a proper PPC solution.

With the technology upgrading, the companies have learned new ways of promoting and earning money. Digital marketing has made it easy for these companies to grow their target audiences by promoting their companies through advertisements on various digital platforms. However, just giving the ads doesn’t solve the entire problem. Measuring the digital marketing campaign is an important step for any company seeking these digital strategies. For any company it becomes compulsory to check the success rate of their campaign and to what extent have they made an impact on the various digital platforms.

Source: Pinterest

Following are the tips to be restored in mind while measuring any company’s digital marketing campaign:

1. Sales:

Image Source :forbes.com

Sales are the best indicator for checking whether your digital marketing campaign strategy has worked or not. If you see that after your campaign, your online as well as on-store sales have taken a toll it simply means your strategy has been effective in improving your position in the market as well as on digital platforms. So, to measure your digital marketing campaign, sales are one of the effective tools.

Also Read: Digital Marketing Strategies to Increase Online Sales

2. Using effective tools:

Image Source : itechbuddy

There are various online tools which help in measuring the digital marketing success rate of companies. Some the effective tools include, Google analytics which helps in analyzing the overall performance of the website, Google alert which is used as a social media tool, webmaster which keeps a thorough check on the things going within the website and so many more. Such tools basically control what goes on the websites and help companies in analyzing their performances depending upon the reach of their websites which they check with the help of these tools.

3. Traffic:

Image Source: amazonaws

Traffic means how many visitors checked or open your website and showed interest in it. It shows how much data has been sent and received by the website. One can analyze the traffic on a website using the tools itself. High traffic on a website is an indicator of how well your company is doing because of the digital marketing campaign. It’s indirectly related to more sales of the company meaning the company earning more revenue than it did before the campaign.

4. Calculation of impression:

By impression, we mean the reach of your website. How many people have actually opened your website is what impression means. It’s usually when the company’s website leaves a good impression on the audiences that it leads to the high impression on a website. It’s like a measuring tool telling how many times your company’s ads were shown on various digital platforms.

Evaluation is an important step involved in a digital marketing campaign. You cannot know how your company has been affected by the digital marketing strategies if you haven’t evaluated your campaign’s success rate. For companies to improve their digital presence, they opt for a variety of services. A digital marketing company in Sydney offers an effective chance to gain influence on various digital platforms all over the world. Now, to know if this and many more services have worked at all, make sure to analyze how effective your campaign was. It’s only when a company evaluate its performance it knows where it stands in the real market with all the other companies in competition.

Author Bio:

Aella Johns is an SEO executive working with Ranking By SEO. She has been writing articles on many topics related to SEO, link-building, social media marketing, and many more.