Customer service is something on which every business relies upon. The company is indirectly dependent on customer service for further development or for profit-making. “Customers are the real asset”. So, it is important to keep a good relationship with the customer in order to sustain the customer. Every one of us might have called customer service for some reason, and if the customer service person speaks rudely, or is unsupportive, we would have definitely felt not to continue with the same company, and if the customer service is good enough to satisfy our needs and are quick responsive, that would have made us happier and wanted us to continue with this company for a longer period. Customer satisfaction is directly proportional to the growth of the business. There are a lot of competitions in the market, so, how will you make your customer stay with you and not switch to some other company? It is purely because of the good customer service that your company should provide to the customers because that differentiates your company from others and is the secret for the business growth. To set the bar of your customer service high, stay tuned till the end and know the interesting ways to improve your customer service and fulfill the customer’s expectations. Table of contents: 6 things which customers expect from a customer serviceWhy is it important for the business to have good customer service? 6 things which customer expects from a customer service A customer doesn’t want to be felt like a stranger: A customer wants to be felt like known. you should be able to answer to their queries before they address their queries to you. Their preferences, orders, future needs, etc.… customer frustration increases when the customer service doesn’t know anything about the customer and makes the customer feel like a stranger. A customer wants their feedback to be taken seriously: It is obvious to know that nothing is perfect on any company, there are nooks and corners in every company, and if a customer complains about something, they want to know whether the action has been taken on that particular feedback or not. If not, they will turn into dissatisfied customers and switch to some other company. Customer wants quick solutions to their problems: We live in a fast technology world, where people hate waiting. Take this as an opportunity and make it happening. Immediate responses and finding answers for their questions can impress a lot of customers, but just giving immediate responses has become quite old, customers will expect you to be ahead of the time. So, predict the issues and solve them before they can happen. The customer wants you to listen to them: Every one of us wants to be listened to by someone, when it comes to consumers, it is not a different case. Even they want to listen to their queries and expect the customer services to act accordingly. A customer has a louder voice than anyone else. So, if you don’t listen to them, then someone else will. Always make sure to listen to your customer, “Really listen”. More than 80% of customers expect the customer service to provide the opportunity to provide their feedback. Customers love to be surprised: Who doesn’t like surprises? Human beings are designed to crave for the unexpected. Surprise is a spectacular tool to enhance the customer experience. This doesn’t mean that you’ve to spend a lot of money to surprise your customer. Small discounts on the products or a handwritten note or anything would do just great to surprise your customer and turn them into your loyal customers. Listening to their feedback and acting on them will be just like icing on the cake to impress them. Customers want to be felt important: It might be your personal life or professional life, unless you make the people around you feel valued they are not going to stay with you for a longer period. Always make sure to make your customers feel that they are very important for your company for the entire journey. The customers will return to your brand if you make them feel valued. Treat them in a way that their expectations get fulfilled. Loyal customers are not only like to purchase your product 5 times more but also will spend an average of 33%more. This will help you to maintain your relationship with customers for a longer period. Why is it important for a business to have good customer service? Increases value of the business: Good customer service will help the business to increase its value. Treating your customers well, quick responses to their solutions, and being proactive can help to exceed their expectations and the customer has a good impression on your company and will do the mouth-to-mouth marketing to their friends and family. This enables to build a stronger relationship with the customers. Retains customers: It is always said to keep the old customers than getting new ones because it is way more cheaper than getting new customers. Research says that it costs 5 times more to attract more customers than to retain the old ones. Satisfied buyers will buy more products from your company, and will also ensure to add up more customers from their references if they find the business trustworthy and the customer service is good. Prevents business failure: About 90% of the business shuts down before completing 10 years. One of the major problems is bad customer service. When a customer is dissatisfied, your company can no longer be in the long run. Business failure occurs when the customer’s queries are not properly addressed, late responses, no solution to their problem given, not making them feel valued, not acting on the feedback given by the customers. Overall a good consumer service can boost up your business and take them to the peak.
How to increase followers on Instagram ?
Have you ever wondered, what makes us connected socially, mentally, and financially? it is none other than our social media. In the world of social media, Instagram is much popular and widely used. Instagram is the best visual platform that makes data reach a wider audience. In the era of digitalization where you can get information of pin to ship in just a swipe away. More than 1.5 billion people use this platform as a source to reach their information to a wider audience. This platform has a wider reach in continents like Asia where they have maximum accounts and when we talk about nations like India where people have more than 180 million accounts and every few minutes people keep eye on the content published on Instagram. This platform which allows user to share photos, videos, reels and our brand around each corner of the world. let me take you to the amazing ride of Instagram where we can learn how to make our page more popular and get more followers. so before we start just keep in mind that being consistent and conscious of our activities will make you shine in any task you do. Organic follower’s V/S Paid followers. Organic followers are those who visit our page based on the content and valued information while paid followers are those who may come in huge numbers at starting but as days go on these unloyal followers get reduced and they are temporary. organic followers give us more opportunities for business and real people and followers. you may feel that Organic followers are taking little time to get popular while paid followers are more in numbers but trust me as days pass these organic followers will do regular visits and will be the reason to increase your traffic but in paid followers’ scenario is different. Let’s see 5 hacks to increase followers on Instagram. 1. Develop your BIO: Make sure you prepare based on the limit of 150 characters. our Instagram bio speaks about us at the first sight a viewer checks our profile. There is a saying “first impression is the last impression.” Make sure you make a powerful and amazing bio. Our Instagram bio must include: A clear description of what we doInsight about our characterThe main action (shop, read more, contact us, etc.)A link (which takes to our website for further details). By keeping these things in mind while preparing our bio on Instagram. I am pretty sure you have taken the first step towards increasing your followers. 2. Be consistent and keep monitoring: The 2021 study shows that the trade of many people has increased based on the share of more than five posts per week on average. It would show positive results if you keep posing one post at least a day. Brands that get regular flow with Instagram posts can be seen with the best results. According to research, profiles that post daily gain Instagram followers faster than those that post less frequently. As discussed at the very first, consistency will make your posts seen a wider audience. keep posting on a regular basis and this boosts our good engagement with the audience. It is obvious that quality is always more important than quantity. Posting more doesn’t mean higher engagement with the audience will increase. Do keep your Focus on creating content that will pull your target audience. This tip of posting the content regularly will definitely be in your favor. 3. Try on different content types: The usage of Instagram is more than posting photos. Every year, in fact in few months the app keeps on introducing many ways to share content on the platform. Combining it with different content types is one of the coolest ways to gain more followers on Instagram because it gives us the chance to reach and connect with a wider range of people and wide varieties. Each type of content has its own advantages. For example, Instagram Reels are in trend because they make the content coolest and fabulous to generate new and wider audience types, while Instagram has always pushed new features. Making reels on your products and content will give a better visual impact on your post and another way of increasing the followers. so what are you waiting for keep trying new features of IG and keep exploring? 4. Amazing caption -cherry to the cake: Wonderful pictures catch people’s attention—great Instagram captions keep it. Captions give us a chance to provide more context or details of the post we are sharing. Adding Advantage by choosing the correct keyword will boost our post. Instagram captions can be up to 2,100 characters. It is not necessary that caption can only be written in words.it can be a mixed form of emoji, symbols, and words. The caption makes users curious and takes our post to the interesting side. Keeping it short, crisp, or long is up to your post but make sure it engages the audience 5. Research varied hashtags: The hashtags play a vital role in reaching your audience wider. While posting the content based on that certain hashtag will make reach the audience which are not in our follower list and which adds new followers to your list, but make sure you don’t use the same tag every time because when we keep on using the same tag for every post, it may create spam for Instagram and admin team may reduce your post visibility. Start by finding hashtags that would be visible to your target audience. Free Instagram Tools like AutoHash help us to find relevant hashtags for Instagram posts. We’ve to explore a lot of new hashtags for better visibility, but it looks like nowhere on social media are important as on Instagram. The right hashtags can expose our image to a large and targeted audience, and Instagram users don’t seem to get hashtag fatigue By these 5 steps you can increase your traffic and you can increase your followers
How to create email newsletter that people actually want to read?
Did you experienced that once people start visiting your website the other day or few days later the same people never visit the site?.75% of people checking your site today will never find it again. It’s not your mistake, the internet is a huge and there are lot of content out there. When we start writing a newsletter, we can convert those visitors into Subscribers and once they join your newsletter you can bring them anytime at your site. Above all without newsletter you are losing your pool of contacts. Thoughts may arise that “why not social media for connecting with our customers? Will not that be sufficient way of reaching them? It will make you reach them and building a social media relation will be a good choice for the reach but you don’t own those platforms. These giant’s platform like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter limit your audience. People check their social post less compare to email newsletter every day and they always have turned their notification on in their personal assistant devices. So, start building a newsletter from day 1 because the late you start the more potential customer you are losing. By now you would have understood how important is writing newsletters through email. let’s see the ways you can create a better email newsletter which makes the subscriber more authentic and readable!!! Impact of subject line is the key We Always talk about design, content and other things but before that we must discuss about subject line.it is the first thing a reader reads before he opens the email. Subject line is the soul for your content inside the email. We always give our 80% to the body of the email and 20% to the subject line. why? Always give your priority and importance to the subject line than content and design. The best way is to make sticky notes and few prior subject catchy tags for your email. Do lot of research and customer strategy before writing and sending an email. Case studiesSuccess storiesAdvice from an industry expertFAQsBlog highlightsSurveysPR pieces or spotlight featuresUpcoming eventsSeasonal adviceGrowth and other statsResources or instructionsListsNote from the CEO, President or Owner or interview with industry peopleReviews As we have seen this let’s move on to the main content and designing part. Original and powerful content is the key: You may think,it is obvious but providing proper information with crisp and direct to point is the biggest factor and initial point in writing a newsletter. Do decide your content and points in before hand and set a time and plan for sending the email. Using of formal words is very important especially using of shorthand words should be avoided. Make a proper start before you go for the content. Make it presentable that once the viewer opens the email, he finds interesting and more insight about your company. The first mantra of making your newsletter more readable. Newsletter must be presentable. The very important part of newsletter is how effectively you have designed the newsletter, make sure it is readable in every format and in every device. while writing the newsletter catchy slogans, relatable pictures, emoji makes it more attractable and presentable. There are various ways by which you can make it readable but while making this keep in mind that you do little research in your field and do check with samples before sending to the customer Hot tip: more pictures of product with cool caption will increase your company market value. Market your newsletter A newsletter is generally for the customer Awareness but to make it more effective and popularize sometimes marketing about the newsletter becomes Important. When Marketing comes to mind, we must keep in mind that we circulate through our Social media handles as it creates impact in human brain and they easily find connected to the newsletter and brand once it is released. According to “New York publishers” they have mentioned that marketing your newsletter increases 20% of brand value. Consistency is always your charm. The one whose commitment and consistency for the work defines his and company value. Newsletter are categorized into various level such as weekly magazine, monthly magazine and festive magazine. we must be consistent on sending the newsletter which makes customer more loyal and real towards brand. RELEVANCY IS IMPORTANT THAN PROMOTIONAL Be a helpful resource to your audience by creating a newsletter with 90% educational content and only 10% promotional content. Our basic motto behind this letter is promotion but we must write in such a way that when customer reads that letter he feels that 5 min a satisfaction of learning or getting some new values from the post of that letter. Write your newsletter in font such as Open Sans, Verdana, Roboto, Helvetica, Georgia, Lato, Futura as these fonts gives good impression in email. Using lots of white space makes it more presentable. Usage of light shades and hues which focus the eye on the actual content and copy. Avoid picture such as Stock images which takes your uniqueness. Finally, we are at the end, I wish that these small tips would be very useful while writing the email newsletter.There is certain point which has been discussed for which you have to keep extra care while writing. Email newsletter can be the game changer step for your company if it is done with proper research and study, because when it comes to market there are lot of field and opportunities and keeping an eye on all will make you out of the box. Wishing you a great success in whichever field you are and I wish these tips helps you and your company in shaping and developing it in the market and throughout the globe with numerous subscribers and huge market. Do keep in mind while writing newsletter all the above-mentioned points. Happy writing!!!!!!!
Ways to improve your sales skills
The biggest survival skill a person can have is the skill of selling an object with his unique ideas and Innovation. According to 2021 Research, study says that sales skill is the biggest gift a person can have to change his life forever. Have you ever thought that thousand of products are launched in the market and after few months only a few survive after the great competition? For Instance, Amway the natural health product which was launched in the market with huge promotion but after few months that become totally out of the market. Companies will come and it gets shut down but their selling ideas decide for how many years they are going to survive. Mastering the Art of selling is not less than the boon from God. so what are we waiting for ?? let’s jump towards our today’s topic where we are going to learn the ways by which we can improve our sales skills and trust me by following these steps you are gonna be the Rockstar of the Market. 7 Important ways to improve your skills in sales. 1. Confidence -you are the savior You have the biggest responsibility that anybody can have because of you, customers get a solution for their problem. When a problem is solved by a product, it is the gift given to him which has changed his lifestyle. Confidence in the product and on you plays a major role. Start building your confidence by changing the attitude of seeing the challenges. start using affirmative words such as “I am the best, I am born to win, I am the savior” These will boost your confidence and your energy to sell a product. 2. Adaptability and Flexibility. The one who can adapt to the environment and change his attitude based on the pressure is flexible to the core. We find ourselves so pressurized that in some situations things go out of hand. The only way is that to stop getting tensed and start adapting to the changes. Markets keep changing every day with new problems but a good sales representative is the one who takes that problem has the opportunity to grow. The mantra of improving your skills is by changing the attitude of seeing the market. 3. Listening is an Art- Active listener is a master. Communication is the fundamental quality that makes a person more reliable, Accountable, and competitive. communication is not only about expressing our views and Ideas but it is to make ourselves Active Listener. There is a saying the Wise man always listens more than he speaks. The more you listen, the more you can understand the customer problem, and then you can act accordingly. There is a misconception by many graduates that in Group Discussion, the one who talks more is superior but the winner is the one who listens to everyone’s points and then he keeps his part. Listening is an Art and the one who masters it is the next biggest personality in the world. 4. Empathy – Shines your personality Polishing your personality is the biggest gift you can ever give yourself. empathy is a very important skill which you can add to this.it helps you to connect with people emotionally and understand their problems very easily. This factor connects you to the customer directly and emotionally. You start gaining the trust of customers and they become your loyal customer too. Start empathizing and see the magic your product will start selling like hotcakes. 5. Spirit of Entrepreneur. When it is about ideas and innovation the one who thinks from every angle is the entrepreneur. He is always ready to find a solution to every problem. when we have the spirit of an entrepreneur we are at the self-improving stage. The self-improvement stage keeps you alive and better than yesterday. Start introspecting about yourself and about the market. Research about the market Analytics and keep an eye on it. Self-growth starts when we analyze our good and bad based on the situation we behave in and how we react.SWOT(Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats)gives insight about yourself and if you are too conscious you will definitely work on your weakness and make it your strength. Get ready with the spirit to conquer the world. 6. Sell with purpose Keep your task pre-planned for every day. Make your day clear with targets and goals.it redefines your day into a productive one. The purpose of a particular task reminds us about the goal we want to achieve. Plan, act, execute. When you plan you get little confidence and when you act accordingly with clear intent mind and execution becomes simpler. The main focus is on customer needs, which generates profit and gains their trust easily. 7. Negotiating Wouldn’t be great if people get influenced by our words easily and when we crack a deal with ease then we have reached the skill of negotiation. You heard it right. Negotiating a product is very important for sales skills. It makes you impact and easily visible to your customer. Few important tips on Negotiating: you must have a close study about the product and deep study on market value and customer need. if customer need is at peak then your negotiating becomes easier. Always empathize with customers as it increases Accountability and trust for your company. sometimes some customer becomes like your family member. Start inheriting the negotiation with practicing on basic products. 8. Integrity: The very important factor is that being honest. You have to be honest to yourself as well as to your customer. The integrity is formed when you are loyal so that you get loyal customers too. Sometimes being honest is quite dangerous for you and the company as it may create a bad image but that is when certain details are not supposed to be disclosed to the customer, otherwise being honest is key to get real customers. Think about this and act accordingly. Here we are at the end where
Smart Insights about SEO
Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) is the savior of any business. No business can run successfully without SEO. It serves as a honey for the digital marketing and brings a lot of bees (traffic) to your websites. If you want to reach your customers successfully online, then there is nothing better than SEO. Search engine optimization is a part of Digital Marketing, where you can retain in the market only when you utilize it in an effective way. There are plenty of techniques exist in the SEO to increase your rankings, you have to optimize the keyword properly and make sure it can be recognized easily by the users. You might have heard from most of the people that SEO is a difficult task, but it is a very simple task if the metrics collected by you is right and the keywords optimized is right to target the relevant audiences to convert them into the potential customers. If you follow SEO, you must be aware about how fast the things change. It seems to be little difficult to keep up all the changes. SEO is important because it keeps the search results fair and makes the user to use them efficiently. Users trust search engines, and your website being at the top means that it is credible enough to rank in the top. So, do you want to make your website rank in the first page? If yes, then scroll down to know more about the insights of SEO and make your business successful. Page Title: The page title plays a vital role in SEO, because the page title is the deciding factor for the users to get inside website or not. Your keyword optimization is the game changer here. As much your keyword is good, the chances of coming into the first page increases. Always make sure that the page title of your blog or article should not exceed more than 70 characters, as it will reduce the chances of website to come to the first page. URL of the content: The Next SEO insight you must consider is the URL of the content. The URL of the website’s page must include the first keyword that you use in your title. But make sure the URL of your website page is include when the URL is separated with few dashes. Meta Description: Meta description is another important best SEO insight. Your Meta description highlights the power of the blog. Whatever is the purpose of your content, you can pen down under the meta description and make sure that the meta description is less than 150 characters And keyword should also be mentioned in meta description as well. Try to add keyword in a natural way, and it shouldn’t look like you are doing it purposely. As this will make users to come back to your site as they have found your content worthy enough already. Page Content: Page content is very important, because this will lead your site into the first page rankings and make your website a credible page for the users. and gain information what your site or business is all about, right. So, to make your content more considerable, use the keywords at least 4 to 5 times in the blog. You can also bold the keyword so that it could attract the user eyes. Heading Tags: After Meta description, heading of the content also plays a vital role.It is necessary for every page of the content to have at least one or two headings (H1) tags. And those tags must consist of the relevant keywords mentioned in the header tags. Like keywords in the Meta description, your tags should also be in the natural way, rather than a forced one.To, make sure that you have engaged the users in a proper way. Internal Links: Links play a very big role in the SEO strategy. Internal links are the links of different pages of your own website. When you add internal links of the site in your content, it will take you to the web page which you have linked it. By this, it makes sure that you’re on their website for a longer period of time. Always Make sure you add at least 2-3 internal links in your content. But don’t add any random link to your website, always insert the links which are relevant in the blog and connects to the other blog as well, This also increases the traffic to your website. Images: Images are the next important insight which everyone should concentrate upon, but this is always ignored by the people. You should realize that the images can be more powerful than you could ever think. The site performance depends upon the images you choose for the blog. So, it is mandatory to select only the relevant images for the blog. If you’re making some mistake in choosing the blog images you are committing the hazardous mistake, as it questions the credibility of the page and makes the user to bounce from your website to the other. While inserting the images in the blog, use image alt text as it is easier for the user to come to your website using the image. This is the reason behind using the apt images for the blog. Cross linking Page: Cross linking can also be said as linking one web page to the other. It is very profitable for you as it makes your work easier to be recognized easily with the cross-linking page. Because for the search engines, it gets very easy for them to rank, as when you have the different domains from the relevant keywords it makes the search engine to choose your website and make them appear in the first page, by doing so user get into your website and turn into your potential customer. These are the valuable insights that every SEO would definitely require to become successful in the marketing field. Without these insights it is impossible for any SEO to
Interesting list of corporates
Corporation The chick becomes the chicken or rooster and so does your startup grow into the corporation with the scaling and ramping up of operations. Legally, of course, both are companies, it’s just the particular stage of life cycle that is different. A corporation is a distinct legal entity, separate from its owners. Just like individuals, it has the power to borrow or loan money, enter into contracts with other parties, pay taxes or own assets, etc. An interesting feature of corporations is limited liability. Through this, while shareholders partake of the corporation’s profits from dividends or stock appreciation, they aren’t personally responsible or liable for its debts. Corporations may also exist without the sole purpose of making profit, like charities. The Creation of a Corporation Shareholders, by virtue of the stock they hold, are the owners of a corporation that is created for the purpose of achieving a common goal.Whilecorporations can exist for non-profit as well, mostly they strive to generate a return on the shareholders’ investment. There can be one shareholder or many for a corporation. Corporations can be private or public. For public corporations, there can be several thousands of shareholder owners. Just like individual citizens of a country, corporations have to abide by corporate laws prevalent in the country of their operation. Let’s look at some corporations of the world: Amazon Established in 1994, American corporation Amazon is an undoubted leader today in the world of e-commerce. Almost singlehandedly, it has rewritten the fate of physical stores (and not for the better) by making products appear at everyone’s doorstep. The variety of products on Amazon’s shopping site for any country is probably more than what the world’s largest mall or physical retail space could offer. It’s come a long way since inception and is now a blue-eyed, much favoured contender on stock exchanges. Microsoft Microsoft founded by Bill Gates in 1975 revolutionised the word Windows and the world of operating software for home and office computers. Office applications under MS Office followed with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and other software that made everyone’s life easier. These are used daily by billions of people all across the world whether they are professionals, homemakers or students. Today, Microsoft is under the leadership of Satya Nadella and doing extremely well generating revenues in hundreds of billions every year. Founder Bill Gates and his spouse Melinda Gates have stepped down from overseeing the company and focus more on philanthropy with their foundation called Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They are both involved in many social causes around the world to alleviate poverty, hunger, as well as health problems. Apple Steve Jobs, in 1976, founded the corporation Apple and today it is a venerable tech giant. The iPhone, Mac computers, iPad are some of their iconic products that have become status symbols among millions of people worldwide with queues awaiting new launches, both offline and online. Also in the hundreds of billions of dollars of annual revenue category, it keeps growing even bigger year after year. Google Google founded by students Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998 is known today for its powerful search engine and the multinational tech giant it is with worldwide offices. So popular, it is also commonly used as a verb. How many times have you heard the question – “Why don’t you Google this?” Google has since forayed into other internet services and has many apps like Gmail, Google maps, YouTube, etc. Today, it also provides advertising services, cloud computing, software solutions, etc. J.P. Morgan Chase Going way back to 1799, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is one of the oldest financial institutions still standing in the United States of America and one of the biggest financial corporations in the world. It has customers in diverse sectors like corporate banking, trading desks, investment management, underwriting, risk management, etc. 3M Based out of Minnesota and started in 1902, this corporation is known for its many innovative patents and products such as reflective materials, printer and mobile phone circuits, dental supplies, medical-related products, safety products, and industrial materials like tapes, adhesives, etc. Their products are known to deliver effective solutions for existing consumer needs. Domino’s Pizza Guess the name of that familiar pizza delivery shop you see, no matter where you are in the world. Which pizza lover hasn’t heard of Domino’s ? This global pizza chain corporation started off in 1960 in Michigan and today has over 8000 stores worldwide. With a brand value that runs into billions, it is clearly here to stay and possibly keep dominating the pizza world. Exxon Mobil One of the world’s largest oil companies in the world today, American corporation Exxon Mobil, headquartered in Texas, is involved in oil and gas. With its refineries supplying to over 100 countries, as well as other products, it is a ubiquitous presence at almost any gas station in the world with brands like Exxon, ESA and Mobil. General Motors Corporation The Chevy is a well-known brand of car instantly recognized almost anywhere in the world and it belongs to automobile giant, General Motors Corporation or GM. Founded in 1908, Detroit, this corporation is ranked among the top 10 Fortune 500 companies today with some of its popular brands being Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Holden, Isuzu and Opel among others. It has a presence in over 35 countries worldwide and has sold more than 10 million vehicles. All of these giant corporations of today were once startups. Among other factors that helped them grow manifold to the successes they are today is an innovative marketing strategy.
The Main differences between organic and paid marketing
We all have studied marketing in high school as “Marketing is the process of promoting your product or services to the customer and getting your products known to customers using different advertising tools”, but is it that everything we’ve to know about? Of course, not, marketing is a vast ocean in which digital marketing occupies 80 percent of the ocean. Anything which utilizes the internet or digital platforms to promote goods or services is known as digital marketing. We all are aware of digital marketing. You might have come across a lot of digital marketing strategies, but the whole digital marketing is all about only these two categories: Organic and paid marketing. Both marketing strategies are required in the business. Understanding the difference between organic and paid marketing can help you identify the reason behind the success or failure of the business. So, if you’re confused about which one to use you should consider using bit of both. Fortunately, both can be combined for the betterment of the business. To utilize the best strengths of organic and paid marketing, you should know to differentiate these two. Let’s get into more details about organic and paid marketing, and make your business reach a new height. Organic Marketing: We can simply define organic marketing as the “Act of getting your customers to come to you organically (Naturally).” Here, everything relies on continuous effort and high-quality content. “Content is the King” it takes time for the people to know about your product compared to the paid marketing. In case, if you’re well confident about the content you provide can gain you more customers, but that doesn’t mean that you can avoid paid marketing. Everything has its own place in digital marketing and so does the paid marketing too. Organic Marketing include: Maintaining your Social Media AccountsBuilding your E-mail listsImproving your SEOCreating “Evergreen” content Organic marketing is also known as inbound marketing. Which has the ability to pull the customers to your company and create a lasting relationship. 90 percent of organic marketing depends on quality content. Your content should have the ability to attract, engage, nurture and convert them into prospective customers. In simple words, organic marketing means, “The customer is ‘earned’ not bought”. Therefore, the focus of organic marketing should be placed on educating the consumers with the optimized high-quality content. Instances of Organic Marketing: Blog PostsSocial Media CampaignsSEO web pagesInfographicsE-books When your content is enough to impress the audiences out there, you’re all set to take your business to a new height. The only thing you should focus is on the considerable effort which has to be taken to set things right .try to get as much traffic on your website, as that will say how well is your on-page SEO working and find out the mistakes which have to be improved. Benefits of Organic Marketing: 1. Permanent traffic: A well-written blog or guest article has the power to attract traffic to the website and convert them into potential customers. 2. Low Cost: You can gain traffic free of cost or with a very low cost. 3. Builds trust with customers: content created for organic marketing is often educational for the audiences and helps them to learn something which has a very fewer sales initiate in the blog. Due to which, customer build the trust on the brand and be a potential and loyal customer. Paid Marketing: In simple words, paid marketing can be defined as “where marketers pay for the online traffic”. Paid marketing is a quick way to get eyes onto your product or services easily by just spending few bucks. The main goal of the paid marketing is to get website traffic by paying them and converting the viewers into customers immediately, rather than spending a lot of time and continuous effort on the same thing again and again. You can target specific audiences and pay them to view your posts. Paid Marketing includes: Achieving solid Return on investment (ROI) and Return on Ad spent (ROAS)Driving valuable impressionsObtaining quantifiable resultsHitting specific sales goalsOptimizing ads in real-time to achieve specific goals Paid marketing allows businesses to target, reach, engage, and convert their business directly and quickly. Instead of wishing someone to find your blog posts through organic search, here you can “push” the content to the customer and make it happening. It is done mainly in the form of ads to target specific audiences and create potential customers out of them. It’s more much of a sales-forward and is focused on driving specific actions for the customers to make a purchase. Instances of Paid Marketing are: 1. Pay per click (PPC): it is a marketing tool that shows the power of the precise keywords to work for you by giving you the targeted traffic from the keywords you choose. 2. Posting ads on social media like Facebook ads, Instagram ads. 3. Influencer marketing: here the business collaborates with an influential individual (with lots of followers on social media accounts) to promote their business or product. The main disadvantage of paid marketing is the website traffic that comes from the paid marketing isn’t stable. It will stop as soon as you stop running your ads. To maximize the return on investment, your ad campaign should go really well and satisfy the customers. You have to be well versed in these things to get the utmost results of paid marketing. This should not result in “All for nothing case” Benefits of Paid Marketing: 1. Quick results – As soon as the ad account is created and the ads are published, you’ll start getting a lot of website traffic in no time and engage the audiences in the content to turn them into the customer. 2. Direct Marketing – You can identify your specific group to be targeted and reach them through the special targeting tools available in the ad campaigns. 3. No-Limit – You can buy traffic as long as you have money in your pocket. If you’ve large advertising
How to accelerate your startup?
Acceleration – Scaling A startup cannot continue to stay a small entity. It must be made to grow. Once the decision is taken to make it grow, the next challenge is how. Scaling your business is what you have to think about. Even if you do manage to sell like crazy, you’ll soon have another problem if you don’t manage scaling, that is, how to deliver to all those new customers, not to mention being on time. So how does one manage scaling? It’s all about correctly estimating if you have the capability for a particular capacity. A question you must be ruthlessly honest and answer is whether your business does have a capacity to grow or not. And, if it does, then will your existing systems, in terms of infrastructure, processes and manpower be able to handle that growth. If an increase in orders causes chaos in your company due to lack of sufficient manpower, lack of clarity on processes, rampant breaks in communication, inadequate production capacity, or faulty delivery systems, then you are not scaled for growth and stand to lose face with customers. You have to ramp up from the short-chain process enough for small orders that are typical of a startup. If you don’t, it won’t be smooth sailing. There will be a lot of worries in trying to get orders to go through. And most of the time, you’re not likely to meet targets either. So, scaling a business essentially involves rearranging things to give more elasticity to grow bigger without stretching at the seams. You would need to do some general planning, set your financial channels, figure out manpower needs, and set all your technology and system processes to allow for expansion. You also need to set up logistics and delivery. Steps to scale your business Assess before planning Keeping aside all sentimental reasons, objectively and clinically look at your business inside out. Is it ready for expansion? Is there room for growth? If not, how would you make that room? For your planning to be fruitful, you’d have to gauge your correct baseline first and then build upwards. Ask and answer questions like, what if my sales increased 10X, how would it go? Are there enough resources and manpower to handle it? Will the current technical setup be enough for the increased numbers? Do some number crunching. Deliberate on market demand for the particular category. What is the sales forecast? What does it mean in terms of new customer numbers? How much sales revenue are you looking to generate? What does it translate to in monthly figures? How accurate your assessment is will determine how effective your planning will be. After this, work on the expenses forecasting, factoring in the added changes to infrastructure, technology, systems and manpower. Examine the profit & loss sheet in detail. Carefully estimate possible areas that expenses could increase and how it will impact the revenue forecast. Include worst-case or contingency expense scenarios as well in your assessment spreadsheet to bring about better planning. Money Matters Expanding the business by scaling it means expenses too. You’ll have to loosen those purse strings a bit. Hiring more people, upgrading technology, increasing facilities, investing in a better management information system (MIS), all cost money. So, if you don’t have it, how exactly do you score some cash for the business expansion, legitimately, of course? Here are some options: Bootstrapping means relying on yourself and improvising, but this obviously could take a very long time. You could find someone in your personal circle willing to fund you. Entering some kind of cash contest to support small business owners that is organised by your local chamber of commerce or private parties is another option. Partnering with some startup incubator program is a path taken by many. But you would have to examine the clauses as to how long they would incubate you. A line of credit from the bank or taking out a business loan is another path you could explore. Sales Team If you’re taking the pains to scale the business, it is obviously so that you can make more money by selling more. So, you would need to take a look at your existing sales channel. Can they generate more sales?What is the process in place to secure lead generation, tracking and managing those leads?Do you need to increase your sales force to collect and manage orders?Will the current invoicing system support the increased orders quickly and efficiently? Technology takes you there faster Investing in the right technology is one of the best investment decisions you can make. Automation and smart processes bring down costs and keep manual manpower requirements to a minimum. Integrating systems cohesively can cut costs significantly as well as making management of communication and processes through the organisation hindrance-free. Shop wisely for innovative solutions that will bring you savings on both the turnaround time as well as overheads as you expand capacity. Marketing automation, accounting, inventory, CRM, manufacturing, sales management, payroll are some areas where you can consider. Phase out unwieldy hardware in favour of more efficient ones where digitalisation is concerned. In other words, buy better computer systems, printers, servers, storage, etc. Managing manpower Having the best technology can only get you so far. At the end of the day, you also need to have the right people to manage it, and more. Check out competitor setups. How many people do they have managing their sales or customer service efforts? What about other processes such as inventory, manufacturing and delivery? What is the industry standard for each of these functions? HR recruiting, competitive pay and benefits need to be according to established industry benchmarks so that you can find the right kind of staff quickly and retain them. As your business grows, you can’t be the one-point contact for everything that you could have been when you were a fledgling startup. Managing the business might have to be delegated so that you can focus on the big
Common sense is the key for R&D!
Now what is the correlation between common sense and Research & Development? Common sense is the self-actualised, untaught ability to understand and weigh in on situations like most normal people would do with no high-level application of complex education. At the heart of every R&D exercise is a basic common sense approach to solving a problem or making something better than it was before. The particular technical innovation may require the complex education alright, but the core of it revolves from the common sense approach. For example, let’s look at a common staircase. The staircase itself is an innovation to get safely from one floor to another. But one brilliant mind thought, what if I can make the staircase move? Then people wouldn’t have to, but would still be able to get from one floor to another. So, the common sense approach is used. The technical complexities in executing involve specialized knowledge and R&D, of course. But the idea does not. It is purely common sense. Common sense does not always have to result in the cut and dry, brass tracks alone overview. It can also lead up to applications that build on imagination, provided you let curiosity play a little. This will slowly progress to a research mindset that, in turn, will produce the white papers. White papers are the internal blueprinting that any organised setup will come up with as a step-by-step documentation of what has to be done to achieve the goal set out with the product or service. And so, the process starts. Incubation in the context of startups is the process of maintaining favourable conditions for the development of the business idea to its final form. Just like a chick hatching from an egg in an incubator, which provides the necessary conditions for it to do so, a startup is thus born; a small entity, with the white-paper as their roadmap. The small entity can grow big or go bust from their initial first stages of operating. The determining factors will be market demand, effectiveness of solution in terms of the product or service offered and how cost-effectively the operations are managed. These must be assessed carefully by you, the entrepreneur. Do not be swayed by emotions here. Do your homework carefully. It is important to be able to ride the momentum that a new launch typically offers and use it to evolve into a sustainable model that will ensure a practical demand-supply for the startup to not go bust. There are no fixed rules as to when you graduate from a startup to mainstream as such, but mostly when you’re no longer flailing to stay afloat, have a steady supply of the product or service you’re offering and a stable revenue stream that is enough to continue the process you’ve established, you can safely say you’re there. A startup may not seem to be a big-boy contender, and you could feel like it’s not as glamorous a place to be in compared to big-spender launches with all the bells and whistles, fancy office spaces, thousands of square feet of production units, a big manpower team, etc., but know that you’re making an impact. You are playing a significant role in the economic growth of your city’s business & employment ecosystem, either way. Plus, your added advantage that the big guys don’t have is the easy maneuverability that you have, to change the whole market scenario overnight. With a typically small setup, startups are in a position for quick turnaround from ideation to implementation, and can bring in that one smart innovation quickly to the market. This means the startup has the power to stir up the market, change the dynamics overnight where competition may be concerned. Consumers would benefit too as providers scramble to one-up on the innovation. So, startups positively impact the economy, people of the towns or cities they set up in, as well as consumers. We only have to see the examples of once-startups like Infosys and how they almost singlehandedly changed the IT landscape of Bengaluru, how Alibaba brought Hangzhou onto the economic world map, how Microsoft changed the fortunes of Redmond and the way Google completely transformed Mountain View, California. While they were small when they started, eventually, they transformed the places their operations were based out of. Work opportunities were created both for those starting out in their careers as well as experienced professionals. More people came in for the employment opportunities and other sectors such as housing and local businesses boomed as well.
The role and power of obstacles
Obstacles are not the blockers. Every block in life has the potential to become a giant corporation. Microsoft, Google, Face book, and Instagram became giants as someone did notice the block and used their common sense to take a hammer around that problem to get a solution. Giving some undivided attention to what is around us can help to spot the obstacles. Sometimes, it can be very difficult to spot the obstacle like the rock we talked about in the previous section. Once the obstacle is noticed, all we need is guts and common sense to remove the block. Bigger the problem, bigger the opportunity. How big a corporate can grow depends upon how much of a problem we solve and for how many people. The evolution of the search engine concept is nothing but a pragmatic solution to a major obstacle in the digital technology revolution, how to make information available instantly anywhere in the world. With it, the right information could be made available to the right people and at the right time. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google search engine are examples of people who saw opportunity in an obstacle. Once Google was born in the dorm rooms of these PhD students, it attracted the attention of not only the academic community worldwide but also investors who could take it to place it deserved. And the rest, as they say, is history. So, if you have that one idea, or that one innovation, but don’t have the capital, worry not. If it’s a good idea, the investors will queue up for you. So to clue you in on the secret to success where obstacles are concerned; do not fear obstacles. Welcome them. Hidden in them lie various opportunities. All you need to do is perhaps alter your view point or perspective just like in the story and you will suddenly glimpse that opportunity. After that it is about perseverance in pursuing your goal with a dedicated single-mindedness.