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Instagram Marketing: 10 Simple Tips To Gain Massive Followers

written by Khushi Srivastava

Every company, entrepreneur or influencer who’s investing their time and money on social media marketing cannot ignore Instagram. Why? Because Instagram has 1 billion users.

In 2016, Instagram had just 500 million users. In January 2018, the number of users hit 1 billion. 80% of these users follow a business profile.

Statistics just put into perspective the growing popularity of Instagram. Like Pinterest, Instagram gives users opportunities to explore their hobbies and hence, it’s a great platform on which businesses can engage their audiences.

As of today, there are approximately 52 million business profiles on Instagram. These businesses are the ones that are benefiting from the powers of Instagram. Another statistic points out that 75% of the users take action after looking at the brand’s Instagram post.

Statistical data deduces that Instagram is an important social media platform for businesses. Equally important is it for entrepreneurs and influencers.

How To Gain More Instagram Followers

The key to being successful on Instagram is to know how to grow one’s ‘followers’. Once that hurdle is crossed, it’s then all about keeping your followers engaged.

Using statistical tools, case studies, and examples; we have found 10 proven tactics that anyone can use to grow their Instagram following and engagement. These tactics are given below:

1. Make it a practice to post content regularly

 According to a research study that was conducted in 2017, the more often you post, the more likes you get and consequently, your followers too increase.

Follow this simple rule. Make sure that you post at least one piece of content daily. By doing so, you will not just see an increase in your following, your engagement rates too will see an increase.

The study found out that those profiles who posted more than seven times a week got more likes than the other profiles that posted less often. Another interesting find of this study linked higher engagement rates with more frequent posting. Before this research study was conducted, the belief was rather contrary- the less you post, the better your engagement rates.

The reason why the findings of this study concurred with the findings of the previously conducted studies is because in this study similarly sized accounts were monitored and compared– which proved to be all the difference.

The study also proved that posting often can increase your followers’ growth rate considerably.

2. Spend some time and effort in finding and promoting quality hashtags

 Did you know that you can follow hashtags on Instagram?

To be popular on Instagram, you need to know your hashtags in and out. The reason why hashtags are so important on Instagram is that Instagram is a hobby exploratory social media platform where people search for content through topics. Hashtags align your content with these topics and thus, ensure that your content reaches a mass audience.

Instagram allows users to tag their content with 30 different hashtags. However, ideally, a post should be tagged with a maximum of nine hashtags.

Online tools such as Display Purpose can help you find the right and different kinds of hashtags for your posts. Like Display Purpose, there are many other free Instagram tools available online that can help you find the right hashtags for your content.

So this is how Display Purpose works. You type in the main subject matter of your post. You will then be given multiple options of the different kinds of hashtags with which you can tag your content.

3. Learn to use ‘Analytics’ to your benefit

Instagram has this feature that’s called ‘Instagram Insights’. However, this feature is available only to ‘Business Profiles’. Instagram Insights is like your Google Analytics for Instagram. It gives you all the information that you need in order to understand how your followers are interacting with your profile.

 To get to the Instagram Insights page, follow these three simple steps (remember Instagram Insights is only available for business profiles): 

  • Head to your business profile page.
  • On the top right-hand corner, you will see a ‘bar’ icon. Tap on that.
  • Choose what you want ‘insights’ on. You can select between specific posts, stories and promotions that you have run.

Instagram Insights allows you to track three key metrics: Impressions, Profile Visits & Reach.

 Learn to use analytics to your benefit. Go through the Insights page regularly. Read the data. Understand what kind of content gains the most impressions, reach and engagement. Try finding out which posts of your reached people who weren’t following your page. Posts such as that can help you gain your follower count. Statistical data can help you improve your efficiency. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring the numbers!

4. Implement ‘Cross-Posting’ to your advantage

 Cross-posting is the simple practice of trying to integrate the content that you share across all your social media platforms. It sounds like a very complicated task but in reality, it’s simple. You just have to take a little bit of effort.

In fact, since Instagram’s Facebook takeover, cross-posting has become extremely simple. Instagram’s interface itself allows you to easily share content on Facebook, Tumblr & Twitter. As marketers and businesses, it’s your duty now to exploit this feature to your benefit.

The objective of cross-posting is to let your customers know that you exist on different social media platforms. Why? So that your postings get more exposure. The more exposure that your postings get, the more engagement they will entice and hence, new customers will have a better image for your business.

To prove the importance of cross-posting, Buzzmo conducted a research study in 2016. The study found out that images that were posted on Facebook via Instagram generated 23% more engagement.

One tip on how you can go about cross-posting your content. Try embedding the posts that you share on social media with pictures that are linked to your Instagram account.

5. Find out the best times to post at & make it a practice of posting content in those time-intervals only

 Okay so here’s the truth. Different social media platforms have different ‘best times’ to post it. Not just that. The best time to post at even differs within a social media platform. What one’s trying to say here is that; there’s no one particular best time as to post at that can be applied by all businesses on Instagram

The best time to post at depends upon your followers.

To find out the best times to post at for your business, go back to Instagram Insights. That’s where the information that you need is awaiting you. In order to get maximum engagement for your posts, you need to find out at exactly what time your followers are most active.

Here’s you get that information:

  • Head to Instagram Insights (Business Profile- Click on ‘bar’ icon)
  • Click on ‘Followers’.
  • Click on ‘See more’.

And more, you shall see indeed. On this page, you will be able to get exactly the kind of information that you need. What time your users are most active, on what days they are the most active, where your followers are from– there’s a lot of data for you to analyze. Analyze this data and find the best time to post for your business.

Instagram Insights is only available for business profiles. So, what do you do if you don’t have a business profile? How do you use analytics to your benefit then? You use other Instagram Analytic tools that are available online. Sprout Social, Simply Measured, Iconosquare are all examples of great Instagram Analytic tools.

Note: This above paragraph applies to ‘Point 3’ as well. 

6. Plan regular ‘Profile Takeovers’

 In other words, take an effort of collaborating with other businesses or influencers that have a mass following on Instagram. Think of it as a mini ‘co-branding’ process. You are using the following that others’ have to ramp up your own following by giving them also an opportunity to do so. A successful collaboration has to be structured as a win-win deal.

So you primarily have three different collaboration strategies to look at: influencer marketing, sponsorship and partnerships. All three strategies are great. Influencer marketing is the trend nowadays. It’s growing in popularity because of the ‘credibility’ that influencers bring. However, it can be an expensive Instagram strategy.

Make a business decision. Choose the strategy that’s correct for you financially.

A great example of influencer marketing done right is- Coachella. Coachella tied up with 416 influencers. Sure, it was an expensive strategy but it resulted in generating 4.4 billion impressions– more than their events main sponsor H&M.

7. Experiment with different content formats on Instagram

 One of the reasons why Instagram has become so popular with the millennial population is because of their innovation. Every now and then, new content formats are springing up. Hence, by doing so, Instagram is able to keep the attention of their audiences and thereby, give businesses new opportunities to engage with their customers.

The popularity of video content is growing. Engagement for video content is growing fast– much faster than what’s happening with static content.

Instagram has some very interesting content formats for business to exploit. Live videos, stories & TV- these three content formats promise great ways to stimulate engagement.

Opel- well-known car manufacturers ran a sequence of carousel ads via the Instagram stories feature- the result was 2.5x greater registrations.

To see the Opel story click here.

Freshly Cosmetics- a cosmetic brand used Instagram stories to drive its consumers to their website-the result direct sales increased by 9 times.

Instagram Story run by Freshly Cosmetics that induced people to visit their website.

Yes, these case studies primarily focus on driving customer engagement. They don’t directly show how experimenting with different content formats can increase one’s followers. But what they do show is that people respond better to new content formats. And, that’s what can help you gain followers!

8. Make it a point to share user-generated content

 Here’s a fact: User-generated content has a 4.5% higher conversion rate than non-user generated content. Take a look at Buffer Social- their Instagram following grew by 400% and they account much of its success to sharing user-generated content.

Apple really uses user-generated content well and it’s proven to be successful marketing strategy for them. Business wise also, using user-generated content makes a lot of sense. Lesser effort-greater rewards.

The key here is to find a way to attract quality user-generated content. The contest route works best here. The prize of the contest need not always be monetary gratification-social gratification works equally well, if not better. What do we mean by social gratification? Give them the credit for their work. Bring them into the limelight through your business.

User-generated content has that authenticity factor to it that’s otherwise found lacking in other posts. That’s why it strikes a chord in people’s hearts and generates more engagement.

An example of GoPro using user-generated content. Look at that engagement!

9. Host Contests

 We humans are selfish beings. Until we see an advantage for something, we seldom act on it. Incentives go a long way in getting people to do what you want them to do.

On Instagram, the best way to incentivize people to follow you or engage with your content is to host contests. Yes, hosting contests is an old and cliched way of getting things done. But it still works and that’s what’s really important here.

Instead of hosting the old regular question and answer contests, identify the person contests-try putting your own spin on the contests to make it more exciting and interesting for the audience.

‘Tag a friend’ contests work really well to gain new followers! 

10. Make use of ‘Filters’ & ‘Emoticons’ in your post

 Adding ‘emoticons’ & ‘filters’ to your post serves a bigger purpose than fun. Believe it or not, they are great tools to entice engagement and promote the following.

A research study conducted found out that filtered photos are 21% more likely to get viewed than unfiltered photos. The same study found that filtered photos have 45% higher probability of getting a comment. Say goodbye to the days when ‘real was king’.

Here’s another weirdly fun statistic: in the UK, emoji is the fastest growing language. At least 50% of all the captions and comments on Instagram posts contain emojis.

Not to sound too old fashioned but if you aren’t using filters and emojis in your posts, the world will leave you behind.

To Summarize

With that, we come to the end of this article. Instagram is a fun social media platform. Sure, it’s about followers and engagement metrics but more than it’s about being exciting, fun & personal. If your posts encapsulate that, you should have no trouble with gaining a massive following on Instagram!

July 27, 2018 0 comment
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Online Marketing

How to Use Google AdWords to Boost Your Online Marketing

written by Khushi Srivastava

In 2018, what’s the first thing that a consumer do if they want to buy something? The days of visiting the shops to inquire about each and every product are long gone. Nowadays, with the growth of online business and the ease offered by search engines, people search the internet and order the desired product with a few mouse clicks. Saves the effort and time!

But while searching for a product online, the primary factor that comes to play is the products which are shown to us. In other words, the immediate search results which are provided to us. Here is where the significance of Google AdWords lies.

What is Google AdWords?

Google AdWords is a term we have heard since 2004 and has brought a remarkable change in the business or marketing sector. AdWords has been and is a big game changer and will continue to grow as long as online business exists. So let’s get a bit deep into this topic.

Google AdWords is a paid online service by Google that allows you to place or prioritize your company website or links on a SERP (search engine results page) by spending some money. With the help of AdWords, you don’t have to waste time and effort to bring up your website to the top with stuff like SEO, etc. This service is not at all difficult to use and does not cost the hefty sum of money either. The search results will be organically placed at the top or at the side with a small yellow Ad box just above the respective search links.

This is not a service provided by Google alone. Yahoo and Bing also have their online advertising services. But for now, we will be exploring the service by Google alone.

Basic things to know about AdWords

Merely saying, to get an AdWord service, all you need is to select some keywords which are related to your service/product and then create an advertisement which will be appearing on the search engine results page based on the given keywords. However, yours will not be the only organization that wants people to look up to you based on those particular keywords. Rivals can bid for the same word, which often leads to mixed and prioritized results.

If you are adamant about your ad appearing on the first page of searches made by the same keyword, then you must be willing to bid against other rival marketers on how much amount you are willing to pay AdWords every single time a person clicks on your ad.

The more money you are willing to pay for PPC, there is more chance of your ad topping the search results. The word ‘chance’ needs to be stressed upon as it is not only the highest bid that pushes your ad to the top. A feature called ‘quality score’ is used by Google to determine this.

 What do you mean by Quality Score?

Google monitors your add and it is based on this observance that your add is placed. It checks how useful and relevant an ad is to the users and the search terms used by them. It also takes in account how relevant the landing page is and the number of clicks the ad has previously received, known as CTR (click-through rate).

For example, if a user search for ‘Men’s Adidas Originals’ and your ad is shown saying “buy Men’s Adidas Originals here,” once the user clicks the ad it should directly lead him/her to the page which features Men’s Adidas Originals trainers. But instead, if it goes to the generic homepage, that won’t be good enough. 

The higher quality score you can get, the better it can be. Even if your best bid is less than your rival’s bid, having a higher quality score can push your ad above your rival’s ad.

About Bidding

Every time a user clicks your ad. It will cost you some money to Google AdWords. This price which you will have to pay for each click when using their service is called the CPC (cost per click). Either you can choose a maximum bid amount, or you can opt for the automatic option. In automatic option, Google will automatically select a bid amount within the budget and (theoretically speaking) will bring the most number of clicks in that budget.

There is another option called CPM (cost-per-impression), which is not very commonly used. If you opt for this option, you will have to pay AdWords for every thousand times your ad appears on the search engine results page. In this, the user need not click through. The payment method is left to the choice of every individual.

Google AdWords takes about 0.26 seconds to look all the relevant advertisements circling a specific search term, decide to auction or not, hold the auction and work out between the maximum bid and quality score. This is the time taken for the search results to appear after entering the search term. (Provided you have an internet connection with decent speed)

Some of the successful AdWords Ads till date are given below:

  • Logo Design Guarantee
  • North American Spine
  • ThermaCare
  • POC Hiring
  • BeyondDiet.com
  • Dr. Simoni – Plastic Surgeon
  • Rodeo Drive Plastic Surgery
  • 1-800-Need-Help
  • Proflowers.com and From You Flowers
  • Elance.com

What makes these AdWords Ads top the list beating all the competition around them are because of the following features:

  • Use of Numbers
  • Use of ASCII characters
  • Main focus on benefits
  • Offer proof or credibility
  • Usage of quotes
  • Questions asked
  • A strong offer is made
  • Call to action is included

The Money Spent on Ads: A Case Study

Even though some people claim there are many drawbacks to Google AdWords, the money spent on Ads by different sectors states otherwise. Almost all the business sectors have spent the significant amount of money on online advertising through the Google service which tells us that there is a large impact on people due to this online marketing/ advertising.

  • Amount spent by Finance and Insurance sector on Google pay-per-click ads: $4.0 Billion
  • Amount spent by Retailers & General Merchandise sector on pay-per-click ads: about $2.8 Billion
  • Amount spent by Travel and Tourism sector on PPC advertising with the help of AdWords: $2.4 Billion
  • Amount spent by Jobs & Education sector on Google AdWords ads: $2.2 Billion
  • Amount spent by Home and Garden sector on AdWords service: $2.1 Billion
  • Amount spent by Computer and Consumer Electronics sector on AdWords PPC ads: $2.0 Billion
  • Amount spent by the Vehicles sector on Google advertising: $2.0 Billion
  • The amount spent by Internet and Telecommunications sector on Google ads: spent $1.7 Billion
  • Amount spent by Business and Industrial sector on Google PPC ads: $1.6 Billion
  • Amount spent by Occasions and Gifts sector on ads: $1.2 Billion

Source: https://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-earnings

The use of Google AdWords | What & Why

AdWords is Measurable and Flexible

AdWords come equipped with a lot of PPC metrics so that you can check what is working and what is not. It also can be used to show your ad for specific keyword searches, view detailed information (product images, contact info, links, directions), filter the audience on different aspects and grant access to non-search websites like YouTube, Gmail, etc.

More speed than SEO

Unlike SEO, AdWords does not take a long time to see the results. Once the campaign is live, ads will start appearing, and instant results can be observed. This can also help you to build up an effective better SEO campaign.

Controllable costs for Advertising

A daily limit on cost can be set in your online advertising campaign which will help you to stay within the total budget. This limit can be increased and decrease according to your wish.

Get ahead in the competition

Use of AdWords will help you to get ahead in competition as you will be appearing in the top search results and getting a lot of clicks. Suppose, if your competitors are also using AdWords service, the only way to beat them is by staying in the game.

Increased Brand Awareness

In addition to boosting the market, the use of AdWords will create a name for you in the market. The awareness is increased, and people usually tend to buy things whose brands they are usually aware of.

Gmail – Email marketing

The use of AdWords allows you to reach customers through the email platform also. Since 2015 Gmail ads are in use and cost less compared to search ads.

Performance measurement

Unlike the traditional means of advertising like newspapers, cable tv, brochures, etc. the performance of AdWords ads can be monitored. Monitoring helps to create changes and offers scope for improvement. Some of the things that can be monitored are people who clicked on the ad., leads generated, traffic from AdWords to the site, cost per lead, etc.

Explore more

Google AdWords helps you to explore more and in-depth. You can find out how many pages of our site have been visited, duration of visit, the bouncing rate of your page, new visitors, repeat visitors, etc. with the help of Google Analytics.

Is Google AdWords suitable for everyone’s use? Or who can use them?

One must not go for Google AdWords just because they have seen it to be useful to some other person. You must first find out if it is suitable for the kind of business you are involved in and if it is then the next step is figuring out what types of ads. can be of use to you.

Google AdWords can be of your use only if these criteria are met:

  • Only if you have an online audience for your product or service.
  • If the search terms or keywords which are related to your area of business are searched online often. This can be found out with the help of Google’s Keyword Planner.
  • Whether articles related to your service or industry are published online by online bloggers and magazines
  • Whether Google displays relevant search results related to your keywords
  • If your rival competitors are also investing in online marketingthrough paid or unpaid means.

Top 10 PPC Management Firms of AdWords

  • Ignite Visibility 5060 Shoreham Place, #260, San Diego, CA 92122
  • Directive Consulting Orange County, California
  • Jellyfish Baltimore, Maryland
  • Galaxy Weblinks Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Powerweave Columbia, Maryland
  • Hanapin Marketing Bloomington, Indiana
  • USA Marketing Associates Mansfield, Massachusetts
  • Jumpfly Elgin, Illinois
  • Agency PPC Chicago, Illinois
  • ZeroCompany Dana Point, California

Source: http://www.10bestppc.com/companies/adwords/

Drawbacks of AdWords

Unawareness: Even the perfect things will have one or two drawbacks so does Google AdWords. Even though it works so well, it has been observed by a study conducted that about 40% of the online consumers are not aware that the Google AdWords are advertisements. Most searchers usually skip the AdWords search results thinking it to be something unrelated or spam. This is a major drawback as it directly goes against its very own purpose.

Alternatives to Google AdWords: The Yahoo Bing Network: the YBN accounts for about 29% of online searches in the United States. Its own data shows that the searches made on the YBN spend about 23% more on the same sites from other search engines

Search engine optimization: SEO includes all the processes, methods and tactics to bring your website to the top and rank high in the results of search engines. If you have an awesome SEO, there won’t be any need for an option for the paid ad. services. But experts suggest that both SEO and online ads. are vital in the area of online marketing and is effective differently.

In The End

Since Google AdWords is a powerful way to reach out to your audience, we can’t find a reason to not do it. In addition, we recommend that you use Google Analytics when you start your Adwords campaign. Google Analytics is a tool to review your ad strategy in more detail than the standard Adwords data.

If you have any useful information to add to it, feel free to share in the comments below.

July 19, 2018 1 comment
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Online Marketing

How Virtual Reality Marketing Can Contribute To The Success Of Brands

written by Khushi Srivastava

The field of marketing is witnessing a tremendous rise and is trying to incorporate numerous tactics to stay on top. Brands have been using many techniques over all these years but the innovation that is occurring in today’s world, as far as marketing is considered, is beyond our wildest imagination.

Virtual reality is a concept that was limited to entertainment and games earlier. But with the tremendous advancement in technology, it has spread its paws to the field of marketing too. Since many years, VR has played a crucial role in many areas. Let us take a look at what virtual reality marketing is and how it can be a significant advertising medium.

What is Virtual Reality?

Before straightaway diving into the details of virtual reality marketing, let us know what virtual reality is. Virtual reality is a technology that uses high-performance sensory equipment and computers that are used for the stimulation of bits of the imaginary worlds or the real world.

It enables us to experience environments that are unrealistic. Without even leaving the premises of your home, you can swim with fish, fly a plane or virtually go to any planet you like. The computers enable you to experience things that are not real. As you move around the space, your virtual world moves along with you. It takes the user in a different and a unique dimension.

Virtual Reality Marketing

What is Virtual Reality Marketing?

Brands and consumers can equally have access to the virtual reality technology. With the help of quality headsets powered by advanced smartphones, anyone can get immersed into the exotic world of virtual reality. Any brand with an aim to expand their territory must give virtual reality a go. VR campaigns can provide a massive gain to the organization apart from strengthening the client base.

In order to create an engaging and personalized interaction with consumers, most of the brands these days are experimenting with the use of virtual reality in marketing their products.

How Virtual Reality Can Be a Big Advertising Medium

Even though this concept is not in the mainstream yet, brands are increasingly beginning to take part in VR campaigns to uncover new marketing opportunities.

1. Enhanced Customer Engagement

With the help of VR, the customers are completely immersed and engrossed in an experience that intrigues them at a personal level. VR can be influential at an emotional and mental level due to close virtual contact with reality. The entire concept is highly engaging and has an enormous impact on the whole thinking level of an individual. It brings the brand closer to the consumers and also brings people closer to each other.

VR Marketing

The shared experience is what builds new relationships and improves the existing ones. It gives an insight into how the product is going to turn out and whether it is going to work properly or not. A successful virtual reality experience assures the customers that the product is useful to them, thus, increasing the sales and revenue generated. Increased revenue means increased profits for the company and an overall enhancement of the brand and its products.

2. The Programming Of Human Brain

Our brain is programmed in a way that it responds to virtual reality. Virtual reality experiences influence our minds at a deeper level. Total three parts of the brain control our reactions and perceptions: the reptilian brain which is responsible for primitive instincts, the limbic system is responsible for motivation, behavior, and emotions and the neocortex carries out the high-level thought process. Even though the content of your other marketing tactics is outstanding, it is next to impossible to appeal to all the three parts of the brain at the same time.

This being said, there is absolutely no doubt that VR marketing is one of the most effective promotional strategies. By providing your potential clients with an interactive virtual environment that gives a realistic experience, you nudge their brains, thus, prompting them to take some action.

This way, the chances of a positive reaction are increased as the audience are mesmerized owing to the enhanced experience. Instead of just seeing or listening to things, the customers can feel them working. They feel more connected to the brand. This acts as a trigger for reaction.

3. Versatility

Virtual reality can be used in various industries. Since it is a rare thing to use it as a marketing strategy, the brand which adopts this approach to marketing will definitely gain an edge over the others. Tech geeks are already familiar with the magical effect of virtual reality.

They already know the experience that the developers of the game provide. Just like VR is used in the entertainment and the sports industry, it can be easily implemented in various other niches as well. An example is, if you are having registrations done for a particular event, you can let your customers get a peek into the actual thing with the help of virtual reality. The conceptualization of experience can be created via virtual reality with ease.

VR marketing in 2018

4. Video Marketing

One of the most successful approaches that have proven their efficiency in the past is video marketing. When a product appeals to the customer base visually, the odds of sales drastically increase. Videos have always been a compelling and influential way to drive traffic to an e-commerce website. Now imagine this excellent strategy providing a 3D experience. Isn’t that amazing? The marketers will face no difficulty at all in illustrating their concepts and provide a better understanding of the product to people.

5. Rapid Growth

Without a doubt, VR is one of the most rapidly evolving technologies in the world. The explosive growth of VR is evident from the sales of VR gadgets that is ever increasing. The unprecedented rise is nothing unexpected. As more and more companies begin to create virtual content, the user base will keep on growing. The number of consumers displaying an interest in the VR gadgets is increasing day by day. Thus, the companies that start investing in providing VR experiences to their audience will be the ones on the top.

Top 3 Examples Showing The Impact Of Virtual Reality:

1. Pokémon Go

The game Pokémon Go took the world by storm in 2016. All you have to do is install the application and it enables you to search for a pokemon in the real world. The characters on the screen could carry out an interaction with your surrounding environment perfectly. With the sudden explosion of the user base, people started to spend more time on the game rather than various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It soon became a sensation worldwide and almost anywhere, you could easily spot a person playing this game.

The various businesses began to purchase add spaces to attract more customers to their brand. In exchange for a nominal fee, companies started to see this game as a way of attracting a crowd. This was the first instance that made people realize how huge the impact of virtual reality can be. It is quite unbelievable how a virtual reality game could actually drive real customers to a store or a joint.

Virtual Reality marketing examples

2. IKEA

IKEA is a home design company that allows its customers to test the products virtually before they buy them. This home furnishing store has launched an app known as “Ikea Place” that enables people to test how a particular piece of furniture works for them in their own homes. This saves the store the trouble of trying to convince the customers via ads and blogs.

3. Volvo Test Drive

Racing games have always been favorites of gaming geeks. Now imagine the car your game character is driving is the one you are about to purchase and the feel you get while driving is a test drive. Volvo Test Drive has incorporated this feature as a Google Cardboard initiative. You can download the app even if you don’t have Google Cardboard. This move has brought Volvo in the big picture again and has made its services easily accessible.

To Sum Up

All in all, the use of virtual reality in the field of marketing has paved the way for new opportunities. In the past five years, we have seen an entirely new face of the world in the form of VR that we could have never imagined. In this tech-savvy world, the incorporation of VR can entirely revolutionize marketing, and the present situation of brands can improve to a great extent. By embracing virtual reality, you can avail of the benefits that come with an improved customer relationship and engagement.

As companies and brands grab on to this opportunity and a rapidly growing trend, the consumers have been consistently showing their support by encouraging and using the technology. Along with the technology, the user base is also on the rise. It seems as though the technology is serving us well and will continue to do so for years to come.

 

June 13, 2018 0 comment
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Online Marketing

8 Ultimate Tips To Build A Great Email Marketing Campaign For Your Customers

written by Khushi Srivastava

The ultimate goal of an effective email marketing campaign is to bridge the chasm between potential customers and loyal customers. With increasing number of emails hitting the mailbox of the user, a successful email marketing campaign should focus on differently working to grab the attention of its customers. You might have the most exclusive offers or discounts available, but it comes out to be of no use till you can reach your audience through the right ways.

The first important step for a successful email marketing campaign will be to get that first click on your email. You need to follow a full proof strategy to be able to tempt users to peep through your email and read it. Here are a few excellent tips which can help you start your email marketing campaign successfully. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that the change won’t come overnight. You would need to be consistent with your efforts before you actually see your customers building through an email marketing campaign.

8 Tips To Make An Effective Email Marketing Campaign

Trust me, the only thing that you need is more conversions and leads to be able to earn huge profits. Also, customer engagement should be your sole aim in the initial stages of email campaigning. It is just the play of words which can persuade the customers to use your services. The only way you can make a place in their heart is by drawing an effective and strategic email campaign to compel the customers as to why they need to choose you over others. This list would definitely help you in building a more effective email campaign to make a place in the competitive market.

1. Writing An Attractive Subject Line To Make The First Impression On The Users

#TIP – Proper subject line with perfect grammar.

Adding a persuasive subject line is highly recommended as this is the key to your success. You cannot expect the customers to click on emails which have irrelevant and dull headlines as their subject. You need to create an irresistible feeling in the customers so that they feel an urge to open your email and read it. You can create curiosity, tempt your customers through exciting deals and offers, and lure them with a bunch of freebies. This is what you should keep in mind while building a subject line which can make a difference. An added call to action will be icing on the cake if you want your users to drop everything and make a purchase with you. Buy, Purchase, Download and Learn More can be some of the CTAs which you can use to your advantage.

2. Personalize Your Emails To Attract Your Target Audience

#TIP – Create an impression by using images and videos.

It has been observed that emails that are more customized perform way better than those who are not. A simple way of measuring whether your email is performing well or not is through CTR and open rate. According to statistics, 36% of revenue was driven by emails which were more segmented and targeted. You need to focus on providing relevant content to your users and at the same time persuade them to avail your products or services. Talk to them as a friend and not as a machine. Connecting with your audience with a personal touch will be fruitful rather than just writing a fancy email with nothing concrete to offer.

3. Give A Detailed Account Of Benefits, Not Features

#TIP – Focus on advantages and importance.

You need to remember that customers would always want to hear about how they can be benefitted from your products or services. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are emphasizing more on how their lives can be immensely transformed by using what you offer. You just need to write the advantages in such a way that you subconsciously convince your customers to take action before the opportunity is gone. You should know the right tactics of marketing your content in the ways that it doesn’t seem hyped or exaggerated. Also, some credible customer reviews can add value to your well-written email.

4. Keep Your Email Brief, Crisp & Concise

#TIP – Lengthy emails should be avoided.

Writing long emails won’t create more impact as it is thought by many. On the contrary, in the era of listings and visual marketing becoming equally popular, long emails can backfire your effective email campaign. Longer emails tend to bore the readers, and they lose the patience to read the most important parts in that longish written piece. Hence, the key to increased customer engagement will be to be compelling and convincing.

5. Don’t Get Spammy To Get The Attention

#TIP – Avoid sending too many emails.

You might feel the urge to see your email marketing going well when you put your utmost efforts. But, trust me, you need not become desperate if you don’t see the positive results of everything you do. Spamming the inbox of your customers is a big NO. The sole reason is that you have to make a place in the market gradually. You cannot expect overnight results. Getting spammy will only create a bad impression on your potential customers. What do you do when you receive a lot of emails from a particular company? It makes you feel annoyed and irritated, and you are sure on not using their services ever. This is what can exactly happen with you. Also, using all caps and too many exclamation marks in your email copy would all go in the drain as your key to expanding your business should just be persuasive content.

6. Know Your Ultimate Goal

#TIP – Let the readers connect with your business.

With every email copy being sent to your customers, your focus should be on the result that you desire to reach. It could simply be increased conversions or more purchases or just creating awareness among the customers that you exist. Whatever be the case, you have to subtly hint your customers as to what your end goal is. You have to direct them to do exactly what you want you to do. Follow simple content marketing tips to follow this idea in a better way. Your email copy should be like your sales manager who effectively conveys what he wants the users to do.

7. Keep A Check On What Your Competitors Are Doing To Attract Traffic

#TIP – Stay updated with industry trends.

You might have left no stone unturned, but you can still be disappointed if the tide doesn’t flow in your favor. Email Marketing is a bit of luck with a lot of hard work. Achieving the results you strive for, is not always possible. What you can do in this case is look at how your competitors are doing your business. It is not wrong to follow what others in the market are doing. You learn a lot when you try to imitate others if not blindly but differently. You can try out doing something out of the box to captivate your email readers. Experimenting new stuff is what can keep you going in email marketing. Therefore, don’t shy away from making those little changes which can help your business grow exponentially.

8. Reward Your Readers

#TIP – Distribute gifts, coupons and gift prizes.

Effective email marketing will about be about creating awareness among the customers and keeping them well informed about the industry you are dealing with. Add relevant case studies and statistics to showcase that you know what is happening in your industry. Also, let them know that they won’t regret reposing trust in your products or services. An email copy should be informative at the same time so that users know what they are signing up for. They shouldn’t feel that it is just another email copy which is trying to snatch a part of their money. On the other hand, build your copy in such a way that they are convinced to believe that you are best in the market and worth their precious time and money. This is ultimate step to building a complete email marketing campaign. 

To Sum Up

Hence, in a nutshell, try a mix and match of old and new email marketing trends to stand out in the crowd. Also, remember that solid foundation of your business cannot be built just with email marketing. It is undoubtedly one of the essential aspects of content marketing but not the only one. In this dynamic industry, you need to be open to new challenges. You never know what might work for you. Therefore, don’t shy away from trying the things you are hesitant of. In the end, what would really matter would be how well you are able to build your target audience. It is a win-lose situation if you are not willing to do the things in the right way.

May 30, 2018 3 comments
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Content MarketingSearch Engine Optimization

How To Write SEO-friendly Blog Posts For Your Site

written by Khushi Srivastava

 

Do you own a website? One of the best-proven ways to keep traffic pouring in your website is through making your posts SEO-friendly. For bringing traffic to your older posts or articles, you must aim at making them search engine friendly. In the long run, only search engine rankings will help in getting relevant traffic from the older posts or articles on your web portal.

SEO-optimized posts or articles are pieces of content that are written following specific rules that enable the given content to appear on Google (other search engines as well) and then, rank higher for SERPs for specific keywords. When you are devising content for your site, it is imperative for you to follow such rules such that your site has a higher chance of ranking higher on the search engines.

In today’s highly digitalized market, creating SEO-friendly content has become crucial for active revenue generation for the online businesses out there. If you wish to enhance the overall ROI for your business, it is high time that you start creating SEO-optimized articles and blog posts that reach out to the target audience easily and quickly. In this post, we will help you learn about the ways of writing SEO-friendly articles in WordPress.

Writing SEO-friendly Articles on WordPress

1- Plan Out Your Content

This is one of the most basic and essential steps that you need to follow while creating content for your site. You must follow the “Think first, Write later” rule for coming up with a content that catches the attention of your target audience effectively. When you have a proper plan laid out in front of you, there are lesser chances of making any errors. Think about a proper topic that will help the readers gain some insight & adequate knowledge about your products or services.

Once you have a fair idea of what you would like to present to the readers, start preparing grounds for its effective implementation. You must always note that ‘content is the king.’ The topic that you have chosen and the material for it must be relevant enough to deliver the right information about your business. Focus on the relevant keywords pertinent to your product or service range. Most importantly, the content must be trending in the current scenario.

2 – Emphasize on Post Title & Meta-Title

For this, you would, first of all, need to understand the difference between ‘Post Title’ and ‘Meta Title’. Post Title is how your readers will see the title of the given post on your site. Similarly, Meta Title is how the search engines will be showing your position in the provided search results.

If you have not mentioned the proper Meta Title in the respective SEO settings for your post, the content for your site will be treated as the Meta Title. Moreover, it is also essential to contain some important keywords in the Meta Title for your blog post. Meta Titles and descriptions are crucial for your blog posts. These help the post rank higher for a given set of keywords in the search engines.

 3 – Select the Right Keywords

Keyword selection is another vital component of devising an SEO-optimized content for your site. The keywords that you will be selecting will help in determining whether or not the given content will achieve better ranks in the search engines. The experts recommend that you must always start off with simple keywords and then, move towards the complex ones as your domain gets strong & established enough.

For obtaining the right keywords for your site’s content, effective keyword research is vital. Take your time and research for the keywords phrases that your target readers must be using on the different search engines. Once you have come up with some possible target keywords, you can make use of proper Keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Bing Keyword Research tools, and others. These tools will help you in gaining a proper insight into the competitiveness of the given keywords for creating an SEO-optimized article.

 4 – Make Use of Keyword Variations

When you wish to create the SEO-friendly content on WordPress, you must be aware of the technical specifications involved. One such important aspect that you need to consider is keyword Variation. Keyword Variations are also referred to as LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). The primary purpose of the LSI keywords or Keyword Variations is to make your site’s content understandable by Google. Thus, it helps in increasing the possibility of ranking your site’s content for more keywords on the search engines.

5 – Post High-quality & Valuable Content

Once you have understood all the technical aspects of composing the SEO-optimized content on WordPress, it is also important to get through with the generic rules. One of the most vital considerations is to write high-quality, informative content for your readers. On the Internet, you can come up with a plethora of articles & posts. But, you tend to read only the particular ones that you find relevant or informative enough.

This principle must be applied when it comes to posting your site’s content as well. You must aim at writing highly informative and user-friendly content. It will help the readers gain an interest in your site’s posts such that they will keep re-visiting your site for more such material.

6 – Link to Proper, High Authority Sites

If you wish to minimize the overall bounce rate, you must make use of the concept of interlinking. You must aim at linking your site’s content to some high authority sites that must be relevant to the particular blog post. However, while doing so, you must note that the sites that you will be linking your content to should not be competing with your website on the main keywords or targeted keywords of the given piece of content.

Conclusion

When you wish to make your site’s articles & blog posts rank higher in the search engines, you must follow the tips as mentioned above for making the content SEO-optimized and SEO-friendly.

May 18, 2018 4 comments
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Content MarketingOnline MarketingSocial Media Marketing

The Best Way to Use Emoticons, Memes, & GIFs for the Success of Social Media Marketing

written by Khushi Srivastava

Memes, emojis, & GIFs are everywhere on the Internet. The famous memes like the Grumpy Cat, Success Kid, Bad Luck Brian, and various others are the top celebrities on the different social media channels. Social media, in the current era, has become so fast-paced that making your business recognized over a particular portal seems a highly daunting task. This is where the fun elements like memes, emoticons, & GIFs could help you out. These elements of easy interaction are simple to interpret, easy & fun to share, and the great assets to your overall success on the social media platforms.

While these different forms of visual expressions have been around the corner since we started drafting our emails, the recent times have observed a significant rise in their utilization for the marketing purposes by multiple business organizations. The main reason for this sudden rise is quite plain & simple: businesses & brands out there realized these expressions of being a great way of engaging and connecting with the modern-age millennials. Moreover, these graphics or animations served to be a great form of enticing visual content and there is no denying that social media craves for attractive visual content.

There is no doubt how popular memes, emoticons, & GIFs have become on the social media. However, how useful are these for the marketers out there? Let us have a quick look at the same:

  • It is Easy to Establish Connections with Emojis: You must be aware of the fact that emojis & GIFs are quite easy to understand & interpret. Moreover, most people are able to identify themselves with these graphics because of the close familiarity. For the marketers, even when you discussing a boring or dry subject with the use of proper memes or emoticons (that could be otherwise complicated for the layman to understand properly), you are able to tone down the importance & seriousness of the given subject. Make the subject fun-filled with hilarious memes or emojis or go forward with explaining a dull point with the help of a GIF. 
  • Great Way to Showcase Your Products: GIFs & memes can be regarded as great ways of showcasing your products or services to the end users on different social media platforms. These graphics have the capability of capturing the avid attention of the visitors in an effective manner when compared to some static image.
  • Creating Engaging Stories with GIFs: With the ongoing social media marketing trends, you can expect the GIF trend not going away anytime soon. These are great resources for effective story-telling. But, how does that help you as a marketer? You must realize that people love stories. Therefore, why not craft a proper story by making proper use of the GIFs & emoticons or even introduce a new product on the social media through these elements?
  • GIFs & Emoticons Add Great Value to the Brand: Before you start using the emojis & GIFs for effective social media marketing, it is important to note that these must reflect the innate meaning of your brand. Try making branded emoticons & GIFs and utilize them for engaging with the respective followers on different social media pages.
  • Add Humor to the Marketing Message: Emojis, memes, & GIFs can be used for adding a great deal of humor to the marketing message from your brand. When you use these properly for social media advertising, you can engage a wide pool of followers effectively. However, you must be careful while adding humor to any aspect of marketing in order to avoid any issues. 
  • Engaging with Customers: A simple GIF or emoji can be used for breaking the ice or interacting with your customers. You can try making them participate in some contest wherein they have to send replies with the use of GIFs or emojis. Such activities will help in developing positive interaction with the end users of your brand.

Using Emoticons, Memes, & GIFs for the Success of Social Media Marketing

Now that you have realized the importance of using emoticons, memes, & GIFs for the success of your social media marketing strategies, here are some ways in which you can use each one of them to their full advantage.

Emoticons

We are all well-aware of the use of emoticons or emojis in our day-to-day lives. We use them almost every minute while replying to texts, messages, emails, or tweets. Almost every social media channel is filled with the use of different types of emoticons signifying different expressions. To top it all, these fun elements of expressing oneself can also utilized by the business organizations or brands across different social media channels for ensuring effective marketing of the products & services offered by them.

How to Use Emoticons for Marketing?

  • Make your brand stand out from the others by designing & developing your own set of emojis
  • Use the emoticons productively towards enhancing the customer engagement on different social media platforms. For instance, you can ask the audience to vote or play a contest of something by exchanging proper emojis.
  • Respond to tweets or comments with the use of emojis for establishing a communication with more specific emotions.
  • Use the emojis for telling a proper story of your brand
  • You must realize that unlike other forms of expressions, emoticons are not bound by any language. Thus, these can be progressively used for conveying your message on the social media in an effective manner.

Memes

The best thing about memes is that these tend to be extremely versatile. These can be available in the form of an audio file, a simple image, a video representation, a GIF, a phrase, or a combination of all the given traits. Memes are usually mean to imply fun and greatly signify heavy sarcasm. With such creative minds on the Internet, people always come up with creative ways of using & interpreting them on the social media. Given their importance, as a marketer, you can also make use of the memes for promoting your online business.

How to Use Memes for Mareting?

  • Memes can be the perfect solution to your humor-based marketing campaign on different social media channels.
  • By using memes in a proper manner, you can enhance user engagement as well as effective sharing of the content available on your site or social media pages.
  • You can target the specific group of end users who are able to understand & interpret the meaning of memes. By doing this, you can establish a stronger connection with them on a positive note.
  • Memes can offer a perfect way of answering both negative as well as positive feedback & comments on the social media.

GIFs

Standing for Graphics Interchange Format, the GIFs are defined as a collection of pictures that are bundled together into a single file that is shown in proper succession resulting in a well-defined animation. Out of all the possible marketing techniques on social media, the GIFs are known to generate the highest levels of productive engagement than simple images. Moreover, these also tend to be cheaper significantly than creating videos or audio files on the social media marketing scenario. Given the rising trends of using GIFs on the social media platforms, most marketers out there are looking forward to utilize these for the success of their online marketing skills.

How to Use GIFs for Marketing?

  • Spice up the social media marketing campaign by creating an animated version of your brand’s logo or other forms of content.
  • Showcase the available products or services on the social media pages in the form of GIFs.
  • Drive relevant traffic to your site’s content including blog posts with the use of GIFs.
  • Engage with your followers on social media by asking them to tag some friend that could be related to the given GIF or animation.
  • You can also ask the followers to give proper feedback like a GIF.
  • Reply to queries or comments on the social media by making use of witty GIFs.
  • Go forward with telling a story or describing some products by using a GIF.
  • Try animating some brand-related data that can be shared on the social media channels.
  • Announce some major news or collaborations in the form of GIFs.

To Conclude

While you must have realized the importance of using emoticons, memes, & GIFs for effective social media marketing, it is important to note that context is everything. You cannot simply go forward with posting anything that stands highly irrelevant to your site’s content or meaning. You need to ensure that your target audience is able to familiarize with the particular context in which you are making use of these graphical expressions. If you utilize a GIF for bragging about something that happened in your personal life, but your target audience is completely unaware of the same with respect to your business, then this might create a wrong impression.

Be careful! Be fun!

April 8, 2018 0 comment
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Content MarketingOnline Marketing

6 Ultimate Ways To Develop Intelligent Content For B2B Marketing

written by Khushi Srivastava

Content marketing is no new shiny thing for B2B. Businesses are relying on multiple contents like websites, landing pages, emails, frequently asked questions, social media content and more mediums. These are made to reach out to a wide base of the audience using desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. As the reach is increasing, content and strategies, both are evolving. The stats show that 87% of the B2B marketing professionals rely on content marketing today and its trends to bring in more engagement.

If you are a B2B marketer, keep your marketing plans well informed with this article to tap the potential of “Intelligent content”. There is no sign of the slowdown in using content as per the stats. Effective and well-formed content has always worked for B2B.

Today it has become critically important for content to be innovative and interactive. For Business to Business sales, marketing through text or visuals (i.e. content) forms the spine of generating qualified leads, and enhancement of brand value.

What Is Intelligent Content?

Intelligent content is the future of content marketing and is paving its way into the B2B marketing strategy. With technology evolving on the artificial intelligence front, how the content is delivered needs to be thought over. The intelligent content can be delivered as rich structurally and must be easy to discover, can be reused and is adaptable.

 

Practicing intelligent content ensures:

1)    Saving time

2)    Building Futuristic content

3)    Improved audience engagement.

Developing intelligent content requires it to be broken down into fragments and then developing each fragment in an optimized manner. These fragments are them formatted together with a semantic flow. A structured content speaks value about your business and may be time-consuming at inception but can lead to building a future-proof content that can be upgraded easily.

Intelligent content development must be adapted at a small progression pace as it is a big task that saves you multiple iterations of content.

6 Ways Intelligent Content Will Change The Face Of B2B Marketing

Go with the flow and understand the top 6-way intelligent content will change the face of B2B marketing:

1)    Long-form Blogs

Developing long-form blogs brings in 9 times more engagement than the regular short-form blogs. The long-form blogs are more researched data that builds trust among the audience. You may find it difficult to always create long-form blogs so as per intelligent content strategy it is advisable to keep upgrading and updating your existing blogs often. It must be a strong part of your blogging strategy to keep updating the old blogs and make them long form.

Short Blogs do not have a long shelf life so you need to make sure that your additions increase the shelf life of the blog so that your initial effort does not go for a toss. These upgrades can make your content long-form, newer, likable by the search engine and may increase the organic traffic up to 402%.

We witness most of the B2B marketers publishing blog posts that are 500 words or even less. So there is an extra space where marketers can attract attention to their business by delivering a content that is long-form, structured and well-researched.  Long-form blogs tend to be backlinked and is evergreen. When you take pains to make a long content, it connects to the audience that you have something more to offer apart from the crowd.

It is a single point to connect with every aspect the audience is looking for.

2)    Snackable structure is the core of engaging Content

While we advocated the long-form content in the first point, it is to be noted that the structure of the content will become crucial now. An ill-structured long-form blog can kill your efforts to get a connection.

What do we mean when we say the content must be snackable? It needs to be understood that the content we offer to our audience is not just there to read but it must be digested well and must be presented in a pleasing manner. Here is the checklist of a well-structured blog

  • Easy to grasp the vital points of the blog and as it is long, the dots must be well connected.
  • Put your points across in such a way that the reader does not forget what he read.
  • It should be bulleted
  • Use of bucket brigades must be optimum
  • Keep the sentences and paragraphs short and relevant.

Planning your content structure will help you write a well-structured content in shorter duration. You will not have to stare at the content and try to find out what is missing. Imagine your audience trying to figure of what you are trying to say, it could be a disaster.

When your structure is precise and can easily be understood, the audience would like to read more and more. This is the point when you develop connections with the lead who would qualify to be a potential client.

3)    Infographic content

It has been proved time and again that adding infographics increases the engagement by more than 3 times. The massive amount of data is available on the internet now. Frankly speaking, this data is confusing the readers. They want to see a simplistic representation of this data and understand easily what it means to them.

Be the one who does it for them. Your audience must have gone through multiple blogs and would keep glued to yours if you add infographics. A mix of good design, writing, and well-analyzed data is the ideal way to represent figures in visual form. They make your long-form content compelling and attractive.

Did you know the infographics loaded blogs get shared across social media virally? It increases the traffic as well as adds to your search engine ranking.  Creating a right infographic goes a long way.

4)    Develop case studies

When we talk about B2B buyers, they are a segment of buyers who will buy after an extensive research. Around 78% of the buyers would go for an in-depth case study before they take a call to buy from you. A real-time case study is a simplistic way to make buyers understand your potential. So, it should have engaging content, which is written with good research efforts.

Case study must be well formatted so that it automatically answers the questions of the buyers and builds a trust that you can do the same for them.

1)    Design of a case study must address all the problems and solutions. Ensure no gap is left.

2)    Add evidence of the product success.

3)    Add visual content.

4)    Offer alternative solutions or services that you are capable of.

The case study is a great tool to showcase your work. Use headers, bullets, and bolded text to add SEO value to your case studies.

5)    Share email id [or a medium to connect] through your content

Prompting your audience to leave their email id or contact number in exchange for a piece of content like webinar, e-book, or whitepapers is a huge conversion factor. These email id’s or phone numbers shift the audience from cold zone to warm zone as they have shown interest in your content.

Now it is a matter of brand value, so the content you share with them in lieu of email id must be worth engagement. If it is not, the brand value is compromised, so you are walking a thin line here.  It has been proved by the stats that almost 79% of the audience will leave their information in exchange for a webinar.

It can be the first step to a long-term relationship!!

6)    Content lifecycle

Remember, your content is not floating around just to spread knowledge. It is there to bring in conversions. Hence, you need to post engaging content all the time. Content that converts potential leads into clients has a 3-5 stage lifecycle, where step by step the audience is brought closer to make the decision of purchase.

B2B buying is a long process so your content needs to be intelligent enough to first educate, build trust and convert the audience. Today only 49% of content marketers are using this strategy to get more conversion. Tread into this new zone that gets you closer to your customers.

Conclusion

As a content marketer, you and your content must always be aligned with your buyer’s journey. Engaging content is the spine of content marketing, and so is true for B2B marketing. Using the above mentioned powerful tactics will ensure the businesses make a decision in your favor. If required, hire good content creators to help you out. The content must be nurtured as the audience has become more intelligent and does not take a decision in haste. Identifying the platform that can turn your content viral also plays an important role but what matters the most is the “CONTENT”.

The audience is in active conversation with each other and the good content can spread like a forest fire. Using the interactive form of content has brought in more traffic making 53% of the content marketers adhere to this form. It helps them stand out of crowd and grab more conversions.

Content is evolving every second and you need to keep pace with it. You, competitors, are building new strategies every day to march ahead of you.  We would love to hear your stories of how you made your content effective and intelligent.

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March 23, 2018 3 comments
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Content MarketingOnline Marketing

Your Easy Guide To Ideal Online Content Length

written by Khushi Srivastava

It’s surprising how once we start writing a blog post or a Facebook post and we lose the track of the word limit. Did it ever occur to you that content length can lead directly to your website traffic? At one point or another, you must have felt overwhelmed with the questions about the credibility of the work you do that can be either blog or social media management.

Several questions would have daunted your mind with anxiety, like:

  • What is the ideal blog post length?
  • Is it mandatory to use all characters while tweeting on Twitter?
  • What is the optimal length of an effective headline?
  • Does my reader read my entire post?
  • Am I engaging the audience or making them switch to another?
  • Should I write short snippets on social media or go for long-forms?
  • Does the audience watch the entire video on YouTube or just skip to the end?

You can heave a sigh of relief. With so many flooding your mind, productivity narrows down to zero. However, the ideal content length does make the difference until the ball is in the content’s court. Engaging, conversational, and effective content still rules the content marketing strategies.

“Content isn’t the king, it’s the kingdom.” – Lee Odden

Posting the content at certain lengths can prove as an advantage to your content thus helping in the boost of your brand image and value. With such chaos and clutter of words around, it’s merely impossible to rely only on our instincts and experiences to chalk out the above questions. A good research based on trivial facts and figures of the current trends in the industry can prove to be fruitful for the long term to your content marketing strategies. Adhering to the ideal word limitations won’t cause any hindrance to your creativity. It will only enhance your online content, increase your visibility, and drive heavy traffic towards your content.

A Quick Tip: Every piece of content you write should only be as long as it takes to convey the entire message, and no longer. A minimum attention span would result in loss of information due to boredom or negligence.

Let’s dive deep into this blog and understand the ideal length for every online content?

For Social Media

Facebook

A little harder to visualize but Facebook’s status length has gone from a whopping 420 characters to 63,206 length limit. To post amongst thousands of other brands competing for the audience’s attention is not an easy task.

Brands go unwavering heights to attain audience’s attention and stand out of the crowd to prove their worth over their peers. With short and compelling Facebook post you can grab the audience in your trance and later turn them into loyal customers. Keep it clear, concise, and clutter-free as Facebook’s news feed is already heavily loaded.

The ideal content length of a Facebook Post is 40 characters.

Twitter

In the fourth quarter of 2017, the microblogging service went to an average 330 million users. The famous micro-blogging website Twitter sees millions of tweets daily and to try tweeting in this huge abyss can be pretty daunting.

You get to have your tweets ultra-specifically noted down which can create some impact on the audience. Try Twitter’s Analytics to check the number of characters in your tweet. You need to get noticed in seconds after posting as its feed changes faster than of Facebook’s.

The ideal length of a Tweet is 71 – 100 characters.

Google Plus

On Google+, you receive highly engaged audience which increases your course of action towards making and drafting superfluous posts. Keeping the Google+ text within one line can enhance the overall look and readability of your posts.

The ideal content length of a Google+ Post is 60 characters.

Instagram

With exquisite features and excellent layouts available on Instagram, it is a famous must-have application these days for sharing photos and videos. What about the character limit on Instagram? Is the text content even important on Instagram? Instagram’s main focus is on visuals rather than text-based content. However, captions help to engage, converse, and provide value for the brands. With only first three lines visible in the news feed of your consumer, make sure you keep the extra information for the later part. Follow the KISS rule – Keep it Simple and Sweet.

The ideal content length of Instagram is 125 to 150 characters.

 LinkedIn

The platform for all the professionals, LinkedIn is one of the oldest and eldest of all social networking platforms. This platform is simple with a headline of an article and link to that article. The LinkedIn posts highly depend on who you’re targeting, businesses or consumers?

The optimal length of a LinkedIn post is 25 words.

For Streaming Media

TED Talk/Presentations

For those who have given presentations or seminars might have this notion – “How long should my presentation be to make it effective?” The very familiarity with the TED Talks can give a fair idea of how presentations are and the way they are delivered. The average time given to a speaker is of 18 minutes as people cannot focus on that time span.

The ideal duration of Presentations/TED Talk should be of 18 minutes.

Podcasts

The most versatile and convenient platform for delivering content – Podcasts doesn’t have any restriction on time or content. Creating short and effective Podcasts without distracting the audience, as they say, the average podcast listener stays connected for a span of 22 minutes, is tough. Focus on your main key area of the podcast and tune in accordingly.

The ideal duration of a Podcast is 22 minutes.

YouTube/ Tutorials/ Explainers

The main reason why Tutorials are viewed is to get the gist of the thing to be learned. Informational videos need to be crisp and succinct in order to be viewed by the target audience. Time is precious, so utilize it to gain fruitful results. With chunks of online content, be specific to get noticed.

The ideal length of a Tutorial should be 3 minutes.

For SEO

Blog Post

You often navigate to other blog posts if the one you’re reading is a bit long and the tonality is not conversational. Use of shorter sentences and impactful data can help you gain visitors to your website through your content writing. According to a study, longer content is ideal to be read by the search engines on the basis of quality and topic of the page. However, there is no particular size to a blog post but writing effective ones will always get noticed.

The ideal content length of Blog Posts is 1500 words.

 Headlines

Headlines attract and allow the visitors to read the blog post. To get ranked amongst several online content competitors can be difficult. A headline expert says that a typical reader can only absorb first three words by reading the headline. This increases the need to make your headlines stand out of the box.

The ideal length of a headline is 6 words.

Title Tag

Optimize your title tag with keywords which are relevant to your topic as it helps the search engine in ranking but also catches some eyes to generate click-through useful for content marketing. Use of target key phrase and making it short can increase your chances of getting found.

The ideal length of the title tag is 55 characters.

Meta Description

Meta Description, an HTML attribute also called as snippet can be roughly around two lines which explain the content writing of a given webpage. Though, according to some sources, many snippets cross the bar of 300 characters which can be experimented as well. But, to be on the safer side, let’s keep in mind what the optimal length should be.

The ideal length of Meta description is 160 characters.

 Domain Name

A short domain name can help people memorize and remember it. Great domains are short with .com extension.

The ideal length of a domain is 8 characters.

Content Length Summary

To sum it up in a brief context according to the infographic from Buffer:

The Ideal Character Count:

For Tweets: 71-100 characters

For Facebook posts: 40-80 characters

For Google Posts: 60 characters

For Paragraphs: 40-55 characters

For URL Domains: 8 characters

For Hashtags: 6 characters

For Subject Lines: 28-39 characters

For Title Tags: 55 characters

The Ideal Word Count:

For Blog Headlines: 6 words

For LinkedIn Posts: 25 words

For Blog Posts: 1,600 words

The Ideal Number of Minutes:

For Youtube: 3 minutes

For Podcasts: 22 minutes

For TED Talk: 18 minutes

For Slideshare: 6 minutes

Conclusion

Content writing in generic terms is writing content which appeals to the audience. Hopefully, these insights would help you make your identity stronger and your brand reach more people. This could just be your beginning towards attaining your content marketing goals.

Let us know which strategies turned the table? How did you manage your online content?

We’d like to hear from you!

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March 20, 2018 0 comment
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Content MarketingOnline MarketingSocial Media Marketing

7 Ways to Write Catchy Headlines & Get Noticed on Social Media

written by Khushi Srivastava

To understand the metrics on which social media marketing thrives can be pretty daunting sometimes. After a thorough and in-depth research, you got your first post out on various social media platforms.

The posts were scheduled when the engagement ratio was estimated to be higher. Likes, retweets, share, and comments were meant to happen. It was about to go viral as the posts were designed accordingly.

But, Alas!

You got few likes and comments from a handful of people who seem to be in some relation with you. Rest, the post got lost in the abyss of various other posts and all your efforts neared to zero.

What went wrong you might wonder?

Why your audience’s feed was more of their cousins or friends latest posts rather than your informative and beneficial one?

What are the missing ingredients to a healthy and engaging social media post?

Well, the catch is simple.

Design a comprehensive social media marketing strategy which aids your posts to reach every social media platform. In simpler terms, the leading social media platforms have their own way of interacting with the follower base. Interpret those ways and reach different audiences in the format they prefer on the varied platforms.

For instance:

Ravi is a musician and opts for a platform which might increase his chances of getting a hike in his career. Opting Instagram won’t do any good as images and 1-minute videos won’t add up to his singing profile. Whereas, if considered, YouTube can be the perfect platform where he can showcase his full potential. It is the platform where he can post his videos and earn himself a huge followership.

Selecting the platform suitable for your business or brand needs can often be infuriating. Here, in the above instance due to lack of knowledge, if Ravi would have posted his performance videos on other platforms, the click-through rates would have been low as compared to Youtube.

Curating and designing appropriate content is as mandatory as are constructing catchy and suave headlines. Headlines attract the audience which in turn call for likes, share, comments or retweets. Compelling Headlines along with the dedicated content for different websites is mandatory to gain audiences from various backgrounds along with high engagement and Call to Action click-through rate.

As Copyblogger states,

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.”

Messier headlines are often overlooked by people whereas attractive headlines steal the show. Google disregards the content which isn’t read thereby reducing your chance of visibility.

People have a penchant for the content of value, stories which are relatable, and facts which may add essence to their lives. Touted for gaining popularity and huge fan following, social media content with effective headlines and higher involvement of audience can prove to be a boon.

“On the average, 5 times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.”

 – David Ogilvy

How To Level Up Your Game At Social Media Marketing By Writing Winning Headlines?

Some pointers which can help you keep intact your position on social media and gain viewership and loyalty from an audience as they come back for more.

#1 Numbers do the trick

Headlines are not meant to be more than 55 characters. Numbers in the headlines gives the basic idea to the readers of what they’re getting themselves into. Be predictable and readers won’t think twice before hopping on your post.

The list type headlines perform far better than the other ones. Be precise, use an odd number in your headline if possible. Also, make sure you use the number and not spell it in the headlines as it consumes less space.

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#2 Simplicity still rules

Keep your headlines simple and sweet. Make it more straightforward by mentioning it the way content is. Direct headlines send the message straight away without any explanation or play of words. It can be used to portray strong offers or benefits of the products and services being used or simply stating the facts about some services.

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#3 What’s in it for me

The readers always read posts which attribute to their personality and enhance their knowledge and skillset. State the bigger benefit the reader might get if he/she clicks on it. Know what your audience is and what can you do to help them.

Promise something to them which is genuine as well as believable. Add various flavors in the drama to highlight your promise without losing your credibility.

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#4 Quirky Myth Busters

As the title suggests, these headlines can be used to detonate a conception which no longer exists. Usually, misconceptions within an industry or at some other places can stagnate growth in those areas. However, if your headlines contain all those factors which clear the air then your post is more likely to be read.

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  • Common misconceptions about social media marketing that are keeping you from conversions

#5 The Frequently Asked Questions

These type of headlines can be used to answer questions which the readers always want to hear. With headlines generating curiosity, the engagement ratio of these posts is far more than those with normal heading and no social media marketing strategy.

Offer your reader solutions. Research and find out the commonly asked questions by the readers which can be the topic of your next post on social media.

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#6 Turn Negatives into Positives

A study showed that the average click-through rate on headlines which had negative headlines was better by 63% than the positive headlines. Positive poles repel each other and so does the positive headlines which use best, fastest, cheapest or any such superlatives seemingly perform slower than the negative ones.

The negative headlines carry more authenticity and genuineness which makes the reader curious to read the whole post. The words, ‘don’t’, ‘stop’, ‘destroy’ or ‘avoid’ cause insecurities in people and to find out the reason they go through the post.

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#7 Be Specific

Clarity of thoughts is necessary to bring in new readers and your already existing ones to stay in touch with your social media handle. After applying all the techniques of social media marketing, all you need to do is grab the attention of the reader just by being upfront about the post and its content.

The concrete facts and the specificity of the posts describe your article’s depth. It can be stated through anything – facts, figures, graph, examples, projections, or product descriptions, results etc.

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  • Apple releases his latest iPhone 10 with face lock as a primary feature

To Conclude

While trying these methods listed above, your content is going to be extensively read. However, after a certain time, the effect it had will start diminishing. The graph would gradually decrease thus hampering your profile.

In such cases, fret not! Try for another method which may work. Test it on your social media marketing campaign and reap results. Write as many headlines as you can and do not be afraid to test it to check what works best and what requires one more shot.

A quick tip: Revamp your already written post with some spice and salt of various headlines and see the magic. It will give your brand a boost and regain the interest of the audience.

Be ruthless while testing. Gauge the metrics of the social media marketing and plan your strategy accordingly.

What are your tactics to write headlines? How do you manage to turn up the audience on your social media handle?

Do write to us. We are all ears.

Happy Headlines!

March 14, 2018 0 comment
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Online Marketing

21 Online Businesses You Can Run From Home

written by Khushi Srivastava

Are you done with the circle of “Go to the office-come back home”?

If the answer is “Yes”, this article is a goldmine for you. Be your own boss while working from the comfort of your home. No more travels, tolerating your co-workers and boring meetings, freelancing helps you thrive and feel appreciated.

Important of all – earn as much or less (or whenever) you wish. Freelancing brings you freedom and opportunities.

The daily grind of office takes the toll on your health, family and mental health. Gone are the days when to meet your bill it was necessary to go to work, now you can maintain a better work-life balance. The Internet has revolutionized our lives and has bought the earning opportunities at our doorstep. With the minimum capital investment, you can start earning right from the couch you love so much.

21 Businesses, You Can Start Right Now From Home & Operate From Anywhere

Seeing the stat, as under, one thing is crystal-clear – Entrepreneurship is no more a scary world. Brilliant opportunities await you and your potential when you decide to say goodbye to the corporate.

Congratulations for your courage to kick that job and welcome to the brand new world of entrepreneurship from home.

Here are businesses, which could be handled easily from home:

1. Start Your Niche Website

Ask yourself a few things:

  • What would you like to tell the world through the website?
  • What’s your passion and expertise?
  • What is something no one can do better than you?
  • What interests you the most?

If you have got the answers to these questions, the niche of your website is finalized already. People these days are coming up with technology, medical, fashion, clothing, lifestyle and other niche sites. Try that. And when you find yourselves too busy due to increased traffic or want the experts to help you out. Hire the content creators to engage more and more readers. Through ads and other multiple ways, your website(s) can earn a lot of money and reputation for you.

2. Try Vlogging

Get started on Youtube or create your own video blog. Videos are the newest and most trending form of content, which makes video blogging a good online business. Good grasp of the niche of your channel or vlog can bring bulk traffic and therefore, money.

3. Run Surveys

Surveys are a perfect way to earn the amount that could earn the cash that pays off some of your bills. Sign up on sites that help you get lists of Surveys that you can run. No one doing only surveys made a story like Rags to Riches, but it will definitely give you some cash and confidence while you think about other ways to earn from home.

4. Earn with Graphic Designs

Are you creative and have an edge with the designing tools? Try being a freelance graphic designer. Businesses are in need of brilliant designers who would design visually astounding logos, posters, website images, Social media campaign images and more. Try your hand at it, it’s fairly easy and no one will ask your degrees and experience if your work is good.

All you need is signing up for a freelance website or connect with local businesses, a computer, and the creative edge.

5. Account handling

Good news for people from accounts background. Many small businesses are looking out for accounts knowing individuals who can professionally help them with bookkeeping. The businesses who just have online presence always want to outsource the work to freelancers. With a sound background, you can easily grab the opportunity to maintain the accounts of a company from your home.

Freelancing before retiring increases your confidence.

6. Makeup Artist

Transform the way people look and feel. Chisel your makeup skills, keep yourself up to date with latest developments from the makeup world and with the minimalistic capital you can start a makeup studio. People are tired of paying hefty amounts to the brands for doing the tasks that a well-trained makeup freelancer can do. It is one field that has no earning cap. Who knows you may become the most sought-after artist!!

7. Copywriting

Many medium-size organizations would not want to keep a Copywriter on permanent payroll. The task of a copywriter can easily be outsourced to the freelancers and this is a perfect opportunity for someone like you who has a skill in communication and promotional material creation. You can set up a team and handle the immense amount of work available for Copywriters in the freelancing market.

8. Virtual Assistant

As a virtual assistant, you can work with any business domain. These may be small tasks like data entry, assisting with some research, curating data or email management. Virtual assistants may not earn much but give you a sound platform to explore the kind of earning opportunities available around in the ecosystem.

9. Consultant

Your experience in corporate will help you earn even when you have taken a break. Whether you are from IT or marketing background and have experience of 10 plus years, startups would love to take your advice and you can charge them for your advice. All you need to do is connect with the ecosystem online and keep your knowledge up to date with the real world and the changes that are happening.

10. Web Designing

Even a small mom and pop shop owner wants a strong online presence today. With easy to set up websites with platforms like WordPress, you can easily learn to develop exceptional websites. You may not need any training, just train yourself from home and earn with the websites for small businesses. It is just a stepping stone; you may open a world of bigger opportunities with a little hard work.

11. Translation, Transcription, Voiceovers

Having a linguistic edge may help you earn with some quick to handle jobs. Translators, Tran scripters, and Voiceovers in various languages are required by businesses as well as individuals. If you have a niche expertise and know any regional language, you can end up associating with many freelance websites who offer linguistic services.

12. Blogging

The internet is your book. Setting up a blog and expressing your views, does it sound alluring? Today it is easy to do. The task needs some good writing skills that are engaging and consistency. Bloggers are making a lot of money, but only those who are ready to put in the hard work. Merely posting a 500 word write up will not do here. You need to create unique and engaging stuff, market it and bring in more traffic to earn more.

13. Bonsai creation

Does gardening seem like a meditation to you?  While it is very therapeutic in nature, you can earn from your masterpieces. Bonsai creation is an art, you can learn a few beginner step online, experiment with the plants and offer customized bonsai creations online. It is a unique opportunity and Bonsai really earn you the good amount of money and a recognition.

14. Baking

If baking was a childhood hobby, this is the right time to chisel your skills. Try your hand again at crafting beautiful cakes with a ting of personalization. People out their love to buy cakes that can be personalized and are a plethora of taste inside. The smell of a freshly baked cake and the cash it can earn for you sound like a good opportunity.

15. Mobile App Designer

Coming from an IT or non-IT background, but if you have an edge in programming languages, you can set up a small software development lab at the comfort of your home. Businesses want to beautiful mobile apps to be built to bring in more engagement. You can bring it to them with the experience you have and the learning you do on daily basis. Right from your home, you can be the entrepreneur you want to be.

16. Daycare operator

Love to be around kids, Daycare operator can be a good task to earn from. You might need a help with it, maybe a helper during the daytime. Being around kids could be fun while you make some cash to pay off the bills from the comfort of your home. Ensure you maintain the hygiene and standards to keep the parents coming back to you.

17. Nutritionist

Some people have a flare to plan meals and dig into the science behind it. Go for a certification and start offering meal plans to people who want to lose weight and maintain health. You can connect with people over social media if you do not want to invest in website right now. Once you build a reputation, you will be on the rolls.

18. Content Writing

Time to capitalize your knack for writing! Small businesses need content on the website, social media pages, LinkedIn profiles and more. For some, the need of content may not be regular so they may outsource the work. Grab this opportunity to earn by sitting at home and pouring out your creativity.

19. Party Organizer

Your love for organizing parties and seeing them materialize like a dream in front of you can be used to add some money to your piggy bank. People want to enjoy the events they host, this is how the opportunity for Party organizers pops in. All you need to do is link up with some party places and put in your creative and managing skills to the best use and earn out of it.

20. Digital or Affiliate Marketing

It’s time-consuming to maintain all the social media channels and that is why business is looking out for responsible associations who can help them handle and manage the digital marketing tasks. This may include posting on social media, managing reviews and more. It is a perfect way to earn the money that will help you pay off your bills. You can also sign up for affiliate programs of different products and promote them to earn money.

21. Tutoring

Being from an education background can be put to good use now. You can teach students at home. All you need to do is start teaching free a few students that can be a good marketing strategy. If you are a good teacher, the word will spread like the forest fire and your door will be lined up with students waiting to be tutored by you.

Bonus Tip for Future Entrepreneurs:

A single piece of advice that works like magic is: Try to understand the bigger picture. Try refining each detail you can pick up from understanding the workflow of any domain. This is where the opportunity for you lies. Never get hung up on a failure while you are freelancing, keep exploring and putting in best of your ability.

Conclusion

Earning from home was never so easy for professionals. With your skills and little free of cost social media marketing, you can be on your own. No longer do you need to be part of corporates to earn your living. Putting your hobbies to best use and earning out of them will surely help you make something big out of it as here the passion drives you.

Want to read the latest posts on social media? Then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn!

March 7, 2018 0 comment
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Online Marketing

7 Game-changing Video Marketing Trends For 2018

written by Khushi Srivastava

Do you know in 2017, 90% of all content shared by users on social media was video?

A video is the most effective way to connect with the audience. You got to acknowledge the fact that in this mobile-first culture; people scroll down through hundreds of important information leaving a very small window of time to grab user’s attention. In such a scenario, you ought to present your content in the format that your audience instantly resorts to.

Video content is increasing in popularity day by day. As useful and quick access to needed information becomes the basis of acquiring customer trust and building long-term relationships, video marketing comes to the forefront saving businesses’ marketing goals.

Check out the top 7 video marketing trends that will be useful for your general, social media and YouTube marketing in 2018.

Top 7 Trends

Final Words

2018 is definitely the year of video.

The video is a valuable marketing tool. Almost 50% of Internet users are looking for videos related to a product or service before going to the store. Leaving no stone unturned, invest your valuable effort in video marketing for enhanced ROI.

What video marketing tricks would you want to try for your business? Let us know in the comments below.

Want to read the latest posts on social media? Then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn!

February 7, 2018 0 comment
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Online Marketing

5 Ways Blockchain Will Transform Digital Marketing & Advertising

written by Khushi Srivastava

Say hello to the technology that is all set to disrupt every industry that deals with data transactions – Blockchain!

Adoption of blockchain technology will definitely make a big difference in the digital world as today no data stands safe online. Online purchases and trade securities are at stake with alarming cybercrime taking place every now and then. Thus technical advancement like blockchain can prove to be of great advantage for organizations as it helps in accomplishing a secure system.

Blockchain tries to solve the problem of cyber security by restructuring fundamental business monetary transactions and introducing new forms of digital interactions.

Owing to its encrypted and distributed database, blockchain doesn’t allow changes to the digital data (ledger) once it is written unless a consensus is achieved against it. Hence, it reduces the possibility of security breaches. When it comes to transparency, efficiency and security, you can totally rely on blockchain being a marketer or advertiser.

There is a lot more to blockchain that it brings to the table. Let’s dig deep.

What Is Blockchain?

Using the peer-to-peer network of computers to validate transactions, blockchain technology is a way to enable direct online payments between parties without the need of financial counterparties.

The blockchain is a digital ledger that allows people to record data securely. The recorded data is both verifiable and decentralized i.e. it allows users to make and verify transactions

immediately without a central authority.

Source: Economist

Are you familiar with Google Spreadsheets? If yes, you can totally understand the concept of blockchain technology. It can be maintained simultaneously by multiple people, without the need for the data to be stored at any single location, making it public and verifiable just like Google Sheets.

Being a reliable and efficient global network of value exchange, the data maintained on blockchain is virtually incorruptible. Its outstanding security features and its ability to generate value for its users have gained accolades from blockchain enthusiasts from all over the world.

The use of blockchain technology is predominant in finance and banking sector currently, but is said to affect digital marketing and advertising sector as well.

In this era of data, with blockchain, marketing and advertising industries can maintain data with utmost transparency, brand-safety and accountability.

Advertising organizations adopting blockchain technology are changing how online ads are purchased, delivered, measured, and valued.

5 Ways Blockchain Will Transform Marketing & Advertising

Here are 5 ways enlisted in which blockchain technology will transform marketing and advertising.

#1 – Online Ad Buying & Verification

In online advertising, the accuracy of stats is questionable. One doesn’t know whether the clicks coming on an ad are from true customers or the bots or hired clickers.

With blockchain technology for programmatic buying, an advertising company can easily find out if the people viewing their ads are the real target audience or not. This practice ensures that the advertising firm is charging only for genuine clicks.

Because the chain is transparent and encrypted, companies can make sure they get the advertising they pay for.

Another beneficial aspect of deploying blockchain by advertisers is ad verification. Proving extremely beneficial for marketers so far, blockchain provides a mechanism for brands to know where their ads have been placed. It offers the cost-effective alternative of decentralized ad auditing. It simply takes ad deliveries from an ad server and then releases them to the mining machines where they are analyzed for fraud. The frauds can then easily be identified and blacklisted in real time.

#2 – Demolition Of The Concept Of Middleman

With blockchain, say goodbye to middlemen.

The peer-to-peer nature of the blockchain eliminates the need for intermediaries and users interact directly with each other.

Blockchain allows the companies to pay their targeted audience directly to view their ads. Giving complete security to clients and contractors, a decentralized ad system on blockchain facilitates easy flow of money between the parties, skipping the ad buying process.

Not just companies and advertisers benefit from blockchain protocols, but artists and content creators also benefit enormously from automated royalty payments.

Competing for actual audience attention, the technology ensures smart spending and allows connecting with potential customers easily.

#3 – Targeting Audiences Better & Influencer Marketing

By resorting to blockchain technology, advertisers and marketers can build customer profile directly in one go using the information directly from the customer.

This helps them build a database of the target audience in the most efficient manner. The technology further allows the companies smartly advertise the product to those potential customers who are most likely to buy your product.

With the tremendous growth of digital media, influencers and influencer marketing plays a vital role in creating awareness for brands. Blockchain technology also helps with brand awareness. It helps in tracking the engagement criteria of an influencer contract (clicks, likes and views) ensuring the high level of accuracy and transparency.

#4 – Data Protection & Regulatory Compliance

Marketers can effectively leverage the blockchain technology to store large volumes of customer data securely. Being securely encrypted and decentralized, blockchain technology is a perfect alternative to traditional data storage methods.

Blockchain ensures the highest levels of privacy protection. It is focused on identity and protection of identity with regard to the data that’s associated with it.

In addition, regulatory compliance to GDPR that require marketers to take consent from their customers can also be managed through blockchain.

According to a new GDPR compliant usage model of blockchain, the customer permits the company to access a level of data for a limited time and limited use.

#5 – Improving Transparency

Blockchains can offer full transparency of the transactions carried out on the network. It is efficient in safeguarding the privacy of its users.

In an online business, blockchain’s digital ledger system facilitates tamper-proof transparency of every product’s move through the supply chain. The buyer can easily track every movement of the product. It enhances customer experience with utmost transparency.

Blockchain builds the brand and creates trust – what else a marketer or an advertising firm craves? Ensuring optimum support to the customer, the technology empowers customers with the facility to choose the markets they wish to hear from.

To Conclude

The concept of blockchain is here to stay. Over the period of time, blockchain will transform the marketing landscape with its associated and unexpected technologies.

Blockchain ensures enormous advantages for marketers in terms of security, transparency, efficiency, and performance. These are the steamy reasons why adoption of the technology is appraised globally.

Since there are many barriers to the above-listed ways, it will be years before we witness a substantial adoption of blockchain across various industries.

Do share your views and queries regarding the subject in the comment section below.

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January 24, 2018 0 comment
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Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2018
Online Marketing

8 Dreadful Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2018

written by Contentmart Team

A decade ago, the marketing team of most companies used to rely on print (magazines mostly, and some newspapers too), outdoor (hoardings, neon, and some branding done on structures and point-of-purchase) and of course television (then the star among media manager’s priorities). A few years later, most marketing teams started realizing the importance of digital marketing, and some portions of their budgets began to get allocated there. But it was still an exercise in me-too because a Facebook page of the company seemed a nice thing to have.

But, things are different now.

Today, enterprises have realized that digital marketing actually underpins everything else they do for the promotion of their brands, products or services. Attention spans are getting shorter, competition is growing fiercer, and budgets are getting tighter. Therefore, a marketing manager needs to stay sharp and play smart in 2018, in order to stay ahead of the game, using digital marketing as the core of his promotional philosophy and efforts. If you are one of them then you cannot afford to make some marketing mistakes that could be costly. Let us see what some of them are:

Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2018

1. Ignoring Content

The Content was king, and it still is. And by content, we do not just mean flowing prose only. The content should be relevant, continuously updated, and provide an interactive platform for keeping customers engaged. One of the mistakes that can reduce the impact of your content is to ignore video content. Work on improving the quality and relevance of your content.

ignore-your-content

2. Not Using Data Effectively

Marketers earlier used to use a one-size-fits-all strategy for their marketing, but of late have started scratching around the surface in terms of using data. Sadly, most marketers still use data simply because it is a cool thing to be seen using data before designing your marketing effort. That will not be enough. Find out why you want to use data, get that specific data (not hordes of data), and then use that data to fine-tune and personalize your campaigns.

Not Using Data Effectively

3. Leaving Out Mobile From The Mix

Social media as the lynchpin of your strategy is fine, but you would be making a big mistake if you leave out the ubiquitous mobile phone from the mix. Not just advertisements, even push notifications for installing your company’s app can be very effective, because almost every waking hour is spent using the mobile. Ignore at your own peril.

ignore Mobile optimization

4. Thinking in Compartments

Just because the world is obsessed with digital marketing, it doesn’t mean that you will ignore everything else. In fact, if you are strategizing separately for different media, it might not be a great idea. You must be thinking in a cohesive, all-encompassing way, and see how, for example, your outdoor media plans can be synced with your plan to release a video ad on youtube.

Think out of the box

5. Spending wildly

We are now in an era when customer choices are very volatile, and a fidget spinner which was all the rage a year back can be nowhere to be found in a matter of months. With the overload of opinions and promotions everywhere around us, things can change at the drop of a hat.

Spending wildly

One of the marketing mistakes that can haunt you till the end of the year is if you follow the current trends at the start of 2018 and dump all your budget into it now, only to find that it isn’t such a hot idea by the time the third quarter of the year begins. So space out our plans, and leave space (and money) for changes throughout the year.

6. Not choosing your influencers wisely

Big numbers get thrown at marketing managers which overshadow the main purpose of using influencers. Your photography accessory products might not get too many clicks if your insert is placed on a lifestyle blog with a big follower base, but the smaller blog (smaller in terms of followers) of a photography expert might get your website more visits, so he would be a more pertinent and relevant influencer for you. Don’t get blown away by big numbers, and choose to go with relevant influencers only.

choose right influencers

7. Underestimating the Power Of Automation

As soon as you chat with your college buddies about planning a trip together to a particular location, your Facebook page suggests feeds with the names of travel sites which can give you the best ticket and hotel deals. There is no one poring over your WhatsApp chats and deciding that, it is all automated. And it makes the advertising more relevant and comes with a high chance of customer responses. Do not make the mistake of planning only static promotional efforts in 2018, and use automation to personalize your promotion to hit the target client effectively.

Power Of Automation

8. Forgetting the Basics

This list of possible marketing mistakes that you could make would be incomplete if we didn’t reiterate the advice that whatever the age, the basics do not change. The year might be 2018, but what has not changed is that you still need to break ahead of all clamours and reach the customer’s eyes and ears, and once you have done that, you must convey a message that sounds intriguing enough for her to go check you out. And once you have a visit, the rest of your messaging must have enough to not only get her to choose you, but to keep coming back, and also generate further referrals to add to your pipeline.

Forgetting the Basics

Final Words

From our experience of hits and misses in 2017 and the massive changes that we see in the industry, these were some of the most common mistakes you would do well to avoid in 2018. But you need to also understand what worked and what didn’t (in the previous year). What you can derive comfort from is the fact that everyone else is also struggling to cope with the new rules of the game, so you are not alone. But that’s visibly not soothing. After all, you’re in business to stand out. So, recalibrate your strategy and market yourself better.

January 22, 2018 0 comment
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B2B-audience
Online Marketing

Business Guide: How To Know All About Your B2B Audience

written by Contentmart Team

Do you ever think about those 20,000 people in your email newsletter database? Who are they? Do they even fit in your criteria of an ideal client you really want to push in for?

Well, we all will admit that instead of getting an answer to such questions we always played safe by keeping the monotony of weekly newsletter distribution without knowing much about our B2B audience.

So those in-house content pieces, influencer articles, and few industry insights enough? If you still asking this question, then I’m pretty sure that your CTRs & open rates are really not shareable!

We were centered around satisfying the commitment to deliver the bulletin on time. Notwithstanding, before I beat myself up excessively about the nature of our substance, I understand now I ought to have pushed the delay catch and made a stride back to explore.

Were the open and navigate rates low because of faltering headlines and trashy duplicate or was our email database brimming with individuals who didn’t fit our optimal customer profile?

We had no clue in the event that we were squandering incredible substance on the wrong individuals.

Today, brilliant advertisers work like specialty media distributors, doing without a gigantic however lethargic email database for a potentially littler yet more drew in the audience.

In the event that your objective is a more significant audience, it bodes well to utilize demonstrated audience estimation techniques to better comprehend the size, organization, and inclinations of your crowd.

Learn The Basics about B2B Audience

Understanding Your Email List

To change the names in your database into an engaged audience, you initially should comprehend who is behind those names. You need to think about the statistic, “firmographic,” and behavioral elements in light of the fact that no single factor enlightens all concerning a man.

Segment by Socioeconomics and Firmographics

Separate your rundown by socioeconomics (individual attributes) and firmographics (organization qualities). Many picks in web frames catch the name and expert email address, as well as occupation title and industry, write. From this data, you can decide a considerable measure about the piece of your database. Make parameters for your characterizations – sex, work title, organization measure (income and worker numbers), and industry order, and so forth. At that point code and portion the records by those orders.

Bits of knowledge accessible could incorporate the arrangement of C-level officials versus non-administrative individual benefactors or the structure by the office (promoting versus IT versus deals).

Utilizing this arranging approach, expect to discover holes because of conflicting or lacking information gathering hones. For instance, names gathered from filters at public exhibitions throughout the years may shift in their profundity of data on account of the advancing innovative capacities.

You can investigate outsider “information attaching” administrations, which would offer extra insights about your database. While a solitary task can be costly, most suppliers offer rebates for yearly memberships to their administration. Then again, you could scan for extra points of interest on LinkedIn or in other online quests and physically refresh your database. Regardless of whether it’s your group’s chance or an agreement with an administration, the speculation to take in more about your database contacts is justified, despite all the trouble.

Segment by Conduct

While portioning by socioeconomics and firmographics is a critical initial step, it doesn’t give the profundity of understanding to enable you to program your substance to draw in your audience. You haven’t yet revealed insight into the wants and inspirations of your audience.

Incline toward behavioral division and your lead-scoring framework. On the off chance that you have a promoting computerization framework, you can track the web movement of individuals in your database and appoint lead scores in view of their activities. That gives basic knowledge into the sort of data individuals in your audience react to.

Advertising robotization programming is incredible at following the general population in your database who effectively connect with you. However, by and large, the absence of engagement is the issue you’re endeavoring to fathom. On the off chance that you concentrate just on the conduct of your connection with database individuals, you hazard missing the 10,000-foot view.

Furthermore, another proviso: Analyzing your own particular database constrains your knowledge to the qualities and practices of the general population who have associated with your organization. How would you know whether these individuals mirror the more extensive wanted audience? Is your rundown skewed or one-sided toward any path?

You have to accomplish more work to find the solutions. You can begin with socioeconomics, firmographics, and conduct information, however, the key is to discover how the attributes of your database contrast with the qualities of the market you’re following.

Examine Database Audience Profile As A More Extensive Market

To better comprehend your database in connection to the general market, you can apply audience assessment strategies utilized by the media business. Having this knowledge will help benchmark your present database (piece and esteem), comprehend the holes in your audience, and fabricate a speculation case to grow a crowd of people that will convey for your association.

To begin, obtain a page from media estimation powerhouse Nielsen. It breaks down its crowd estimation test synthesis in neighborhood showcases by delivering “in-tab” reports that contrast test bunches with “universe gauges” for the market. These reports are extraordinary at recognizing the holes of market infiltration or over/under audience portrayal.

How To Do B2B Audience Marketing?

Stage 1: Identify Your Intended Interest Group and Market

Settle on an intended interest group adjusted to your optimal customer profile. Your audience is in all probability made out of your best present and future buyers. At times, your objective could be clients you don’t have yet try to reach. Once you’ve chosen who you need as your optimal audience, you would then be able to build up a universe evaluate, all the more normally known as the aggregate addressable market.

Market estimating encourages you to decide the level of exertion and assets required to fabricate a crowd of people containing your optimal customers (more about this in Step 3). The objective is to decide the aggregate size of the intended interest group, which is utilized as the denominator for the piece of the pie estimations. Consider whether you need a solitary digit offer of an enormous market or profound entrance of a specialty showcase.

Case: Being at a very early stage in its development, Acme’s B2B showcasing group chooses to focus on all B2B medicinal advertisers as opposed to a subset of therapeutic advertisers.

Stage 2: Determine the Most Imperative Market Attributes to Track

With a firm handle on the personality of your aggregate potential audience, build up an arrangement of attributes to comprehend the creation of the audience in your objective market. Keep in mind, personas cover the open door for genuine accuracy in your audience understanding.

Which qualities – the statistic or firmographic – might be vital to think about your intended interest group? You’re hoping to make discrete sections to genuinely comprehend the profundity and measurement of your crowd. At that point, you can make a mixed draw or composite perspective of the intended interest group – the advantage you look for.

Illustration: The Acme advertising group perceives that “B2B medicinal advertisers” isn’t sufficiently unmistakable for its intended interest group. It fragments in view of sexual orientation, position, and friends estimate on the grounds that these are the most recognizable and dependable qualities now.

Stage 3: Build a table and populate the Universe Estimate (UE)/Total Addressable Market (TAM) and market trademark fields

For this stage, you should utilize solid industry assets to build up the most precise market size and audience structure checks conceivable. For instance, this report from Salesforce Research and LinkedIn give significant benchmarking information to educate the aggregate crowd profile for about six segments. LinkedIn can be an extraordinary asset for assessing the span of your intended interest group. Industry affiliations likewise more often than not have strong gauges on the aggregate tally and qualities of their industry.

Now, identifying your specialty market will be more workmanship than science for apprentices. In the B2B space, accessible information isn’t as immense as it is in the B2C space. While you won’t have each trademark populated, making some sensible suspicions on the include of the general population a market fragment is an incredible method to assemble rude awakenings to understanding estimating the audience opportunity and creation.

Case: The table outlines Acme’s intended interest group of B2B medicinal advertisers in contrast with the general crowd of therapeutic advertisers in light of information from the Salesforce Research report.

Stage 4: Analyze the Table

With the business information and figurings, you now can distinguish how your database audience mirrors the general audience, including chances to concentrate on and put resources into crowd improvement.

What’s next?

We’re extremely simply beginning by understanding the relative size and piece of who is in your audience and who isn’t. Utilize this technique as an apparatus to enable your administration to comprehend the present condition of your audience or email database and how many functions you need to do to build up the procedure and substance to enhance your structure by drawing in your optimal customers.

When you comprehend the holes in your database as it identifies with the market, all in all, you can choose how to contribute the assets to enhance your audience piece. On the off chance that you need to take the investigation to the following level, you can infer the aggregate resource estimation of the audience you at present have or­ – all the more vitally – the audience you need. To see how to do that, read Robert Rose’s current article The Audience Valuation Engine: A New Model for Calculating the Value Per Subscriber.

It’s chance you quit thrashing yourself about your open rates and engagement rates and consider that you could very well toss extraordinary substance at the wrong individual.

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January 15, 2018 0 comment
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Online Marketing

How To Plan The Marketing Budget For 2018

written by Contentmart Team

The festive & fall season is over but not in our spirits. After the beautiful transformation of festive dealing to serious business thinking, the first thing that strikes us is how to plan a new marketing budget for 2018.

Though the planning starts at the year-end itself, but if you’re amongst those festive lovers who make the most of it time, here’s a list of trends and considerations that you can keep a note of while planning your marketing budget for 2018 and if you’ve already done the smart work, here’s a sneak peek to some modifications in case you missed any of these important points.

Before planning future it always a preferred act to review last few year’s performance and plan a budget and strategy that allows the business to look ahead and judge the major trends that are affecting the related industry and reach & achieve new opportunities.

So without stretching the planning process any further, here is a quick rundown of 6 marketing trends that all marketing influencers should keep a note of while planning their marketing budget for 2018.

6 Marketing Trends To Help Make Marketing Budget For 2018

1. Need for Content Marketing Distribution is Supreme

Lately, almost every brand and marketer influencer is relying on Content Marketing as their major player in their marketing strategy and develop original content (that is a must), which makes it easier for a business to cut through the competitive crowd and grab the attention of your target audience.

content-marketing-distribution

The solution here is not to create content instantly. The solution can be to have a progressive approach towards content distribution which gets you a competitive edge over others in the related industry. Here distribution goes beyond social media’s reach which is dropping lately. This makes building an effective content distribution strategy more crucial than ever, to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.

2. PR is merging into Content Marketing – For Good

In the past, PR & Content Marketing has been separate departments with different budgets based on separate goals both were required to achieve. In recent studies, the influencers and scholars have found out that the business goals are somewhere between the two and thus they are making both these departments to club together and achieve the final objective i.e. business success.

The past trends have forced PR to evolve drastically in the present time. PR has started moving away from the brand-focused, self-serving methods of the past to embrace new tactics that build mutually beneficial relationships with media partners and shared audiences. The modern technique helps you reach out to the target audience faster and add a better focus on providing actual value to the readers and not just only to the brand alone.

When these messages are clubbed with engaging content developed by the company, you can easily achieve the goals for both PR & Content Marketing effectively. Thus, the two can and must work in collaboration with each other to achieve business goals effectively in 2018.

3. There’s a Rising Demand for Authenticity in Marketing

The need for human connection has never been more important, which means it’s crucial for marketers to enhance their personalization. This is one of the most effective ways to scale your connection to your audience.

And think outside the box here, too. Sure, personalized content is a good way to connect at scale, but if you can meet members of your audience in person at industry events and conferences, that’s another powerful way to connect.

So, whether you’re on stage as a conference speaker or in the crowd networking, focusing on face-to-face interactions and events can help you build stronger personal relationships, which you can then maintain with personalized content.

4. Chatbots are Emerging to Help Brands in all Industries

The great news about chatbots is they’re not directing users away from the social platforms they’re already on, such as Facebook Messenger. This enables marketers to meet their audience where they are already consuming content. In fact, brands in different spaces, from National Geographic to Whole Foods, are already implementing this.

chatbot

Plus, the barrier to entry here is low, so consider testing a chatbot on your own team. There are some free tools out there to help you get started, and you can obviously put some spend behind other tools for different experiences. This simple investment can help you quickly engage your audience and nurture a more personalized relationship that keeps them coming back.

5. Voice Search is on the Rise

Hey, Siri: Is it true that typing a search query is becoming a thing of the past? As a matter of fact, more consumers are going off-screen and relying on voice-activated personal assistants to search for information, with some analysts estimating that as much as 50 percent of all searches will be conducted through voice by 2020. Your marketing messages need to be crafted with voice search in mind, which means targeting long-tail keywords and featured snippets.

6. Video Content is Here to Stay

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times: Video isn’t going anywhere. Fifty-five percent of people consume video content thoroughly, and by 2020, online videos will account for more than 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic.

organic traffic Ecommerce

Bringing video content into your marketing strategy might seem like a big undertaking, but you can (and probably should) start small. It doesn’t have to be the sole focus of your budget or even the biggest portion of it to be valuable.

Final Words

As the menu of marketing tactics becomes longer and more diverse, marketers are challenged to consider their budget and strategy from every angle. With these trends in mind, there’s no doubt 2018 will be one of the most interesting years of marketing yet. So how have you planned your budget for 2018 or what new developments have affected your budget for 2018?

Let us know your thoughts on the trends that are on your radar in the comments and also add any other top trend that must be in this list or is a must consideration for a successful marketing budget for 2018.

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January 2, 2018 0 comment
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