Why You Need to Invest in Marketing: Read Our Top 5 Reasons.
“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” Milan Kundera As a business owner or aspiring business owner, there’s a good chance you come in contact with marketing-related content every day. More people, especially entrepreneurs like you, are realizing the importance of marketing and grabbing the bulls by the horn. The reason is that marketing helps businesses in various ways. With in-depth knowledge of marketing, you’d be able to cut costs, determine the trajectory of your products, create strategies that target your customers, etc. Facebook says we only spend 1.7 seconds looking at a magazine ad, 1.5 seconds looking at a poster, and 1 second looking at a digital banner ad. With this short attention span, do you think your product can market itself? I bet not. But with marketing, consumers will tilt in the direction of irrationality. For example, while Aquafina table water and Bigi table water are identical, people would rather spend more on Aquafina than on Bigi. This is because people have come to build associations with these brands. It could be the experiences during the different stages before purchasing the product. It could also be through who they see using the brand. Give people brandless table water and they will tell you it tastes the same. The moment you brand it, their preferences change. Do you know why? Because they have formed opinions from their experience with the brand and what the brand stands for. ALSO SEE: CAN A GOOD PRODUCT MARKET ITSELF As a growing business, marketing has a favorable impact on your company’s bottom line. Deciding not to keep spending money on marketing, could mean sowing the seeds of that business’s demise. The negative impact of this may not be immediate or obvious but it will tell eventually. So the future success of a business is dependent on marketing. Make a commitment to spend on marketing each month whether your business is booming or your phone is silent. So if you need to persuade someone, whether it’s a member of your team, your boss, your business partner, or yourself to start investing in marketing, here are five reasons you may use. Marketing Increases Brand Awareness More people especially those outside your network will get to know about your brand. It’s futile to pump money into a company you do not have plans to promote. Making yourself visible is one approach to making an impact and developing the framing effect if you want to grow big. Invest in marketing to target the “right” audience and get them to know about the values they stand to gain once they come across your product or service. Marketing can facilitate the development of an emotional bond with your audience. Marketing creates culture, status, affiliation, and people like us. Businesses have a lot better chance of their clients (or community) remembering the brand, and mentioning it to others. Consumers develop loyalty to a brand if they can emotionally connect with its product and services. Ever heard of storytelling in marketing? Consumers can choose you above your competition with the help of marketing. The more people get to see and understand a brand’s message, the easier it will be to make better-informed decisions. What makes you unique? Why should they pick you over your competitors? These important messages can be clearly communicated with the use of marketing. Marketing helps in boosting sales. There is no small business that doesn’t want to increase sales. Market your products and services and watch how the sales will rise. Reach a larger audience and automatically increase sales. Marketing is interesting. You get to connect the dots and become more creative. Who wouldn’t want to spend time coming up with concepts that bring in paying clients? When you see a marketing campaign succeed, when your ad campaigns successfully convert into online sales, you get an adrenaline rush. Imagine creating campaigns or coming up with innovative ideas, sharing them with the public, and seeing different positive (even the negative ones spark something at least) reactions from consumers resonating with your brand. The feeling is almost as elating as seeing your name on a Coca-cola bottle during the share a coke campaign. What were the odds of that happening? You can send us a message to help you strengthen your marketing efforts. We would love to be a part of your brand story!
5 Tips For Building Stronger Client Relationships.
Building a strong relationship with your clients goes beyond good marketing. Without a solid client base to support your efforts, you’ll find it hard to make money and keep growing – and that can be devastating for any small business owner who’s trying to start off on the right foot. When you have a loyal group of customers, they are much more likely to buy from you again, refer others, or even become advocates. Whether it’s through email newsletters, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, or speaking engagements at your local church/organization – building a relationship with your client or customer makes all your efforts worthwhile. Building relationships also gives you opportunities to learn how to improve on what you already do best. We have put together 5 easy to understand tips to implement in your day-to-day activities. These tips can help you build stronger and more meaningful business relationships with your customers. Be Human “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou Learn to keep things simple. Create emotional connections through storytelling. There are various benefits of storytelling for your small business. The storytelling can be in the short form via Linkedin or Twitter and even as a blog, or it could be in visual form as on Instagram or TikTok. This is not about B2C (Business to Consumer) or B2B (Business to Business). It’s more about H2H (Human to Human). You are selling to individuals and these humans decide on whether to buy from you or not. Communicating relevant information and utilizing personalized messages will help your customers better understand what your products and offerings are instead of the technical terms used by many companies. Get to know your customers, listen to them, and understand their pain points. When people feel heard, they will like you and eventually get to trust you. People will do business with people they like and trust. Forge deep connections with your customers. Provide Value- Share Industry Knowledge and your Expertise Have you ever needed information on something you had previously seen somewhere and just automatically know whose page to visit or where to go to find related answers to that thought other than Google? Like how you are thinking of where to get the news with solid facts and brutal questions in Nigeria and ARISE TV automatically crosses your mind? Yes, you should be an excellent source of relevant information. Give people the ability to find information relating to your industry from your content, your page, and your website. Create a knowledge-sharing culture for people to find, share and collaborate with. Provide long-term value for your clients. Share information that will make the client understand what you do and why you do it. ALSO READ: WHY SMES SHOULD FOCUS ON BUILDING COMMUNITIES Comment, Reshare, and Interact. When you consistently respond to comments on your content post, it could be a positive or negative comment, ensure you make the client feel heard. Make them know there’s a human behind the business that understands and is readily available to answer their inquiries. Get your platforms active. Don’t create a social profile where you’ll be inactive. Especially if it’s one where many clients are likely to interact with you and your brand. The idea of creating a social media profile is to make your brand more accessible to your clients. Interact with them, listen to and address their complaints, ask for their suggestions and opinions on new products, etc. Seek Feedback— And Respond Quickly. As a small business owner, you should strive to offer the best possible services to your customers. But just collecting feedback will not help you build a long-lasting relationship unless you actually take that feedback and use it to improve. Ask your clients how better you can serve them and act on it. It shows that you listen to them, respect them and you want them to remember your business for providing the utmost customer satisfaction. Show Up Everday The consistency that comes with showing up every day, providing value, and showing your work is one of the best ways to build a strong relationship with your audience. Showing up every day is the best thing you can do for your business and your platform. 80% of success is just showing up and there are different ways to show up as a small business owner on social media. It shows that you have passion and focus. Use these 5 tips to build strong client relationships for your business. Finding a new client is an important factor for any small business owner. But you also need to focus on managing and maintaining your existing clients if you want your small business to thrive long-term. Whether you just met them or they were your customers years ago, building a lasting, trusting relationship with your client is one of the most important parts of success in business. Do you or your brand need help with managing client relationships? You can send us a message to help foster your online engagement.
5 Branding Tips Your SME Needs
By Victoria Oladipo 5 Branding Tips Your SME needs When it comes to branding, what many people believe is that it should be left to only big brands. What they do not know is that branding is what makes brands go from small to being the big names they now bear. At the end of the day, you need your small business to gain visibility and to grow beyond what you expect, so how is this going to happen? By branding. Orbelo explains branding as the process of combining elements such as logos, designs, mission statements, and consistent themes throughout marketing communications to create a strong positive awareness of the company, its products or services in the minds of its customers. For small businesses, getting your branding right will help you gain trust from your customers and also help you differentiate your brand from other brands even if the same products are being sold. ALSO READ: 5 THINGS TO AVOID IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Let’s look at five branding tips your SME needs Define your brand identity: By defining your brand identity, you are able to tell a target group who and what you represent. Your brand identity should answer questions like what the core vision of your business is, what describes your business, and what value does your business bring? Building a Community; SMEs have opportunities to build a community on their social media platforms, business blogs, emails list that give their customers interesting offers and “gist” about their products. Focus on Building Great Products or Service: Do not forget that the reason you have your customers is because of your products. Improve and innovate and watch your customers do the brand talking for you Show Consistency: The secret to building a great brand is by showing up consistently. Consistency leads to familiarity and familiarity leads to trust. Customers will only stick with brands they trust and are very familiar with. Deliver Value: Value is not defined by reducing the amount a product is worth. Instead, it can be defined by excellence, product leadership or even great customer service. Ensure that your brand is doing amazing in delivering values. It gives a higher competitive advantage in the market. Branding is just as important as the product itself. Work on your branding and see how your SME grows. Send us a message to get value for your social media and marketing branding.
Facebook Reels: How SMEs can Maximize Video Content for Their Businesses
By Victoria Oladipo There is a current rise in the use of video content for content creation and for sales. Several statistics have been made for video content. 87% of marketers have said that Video content has helped them increase traffic and generate more users to their products Creating video content is a form of marketing that uses videos to promote and inform people about your product or service which is a good idea. It boosts engagement on your digital and social channels, educates your audience, and gives you a new way to reach out to them. Tiktok and Instagram reels have a bigger push for video content recently. Meta introduced reels to Instagram and it acted as a competition to TikTok. According to TechCrunch, Meta introducing reels to Instagram has been one of the fastest growing content formats so far and has been one of the huge contributors to Instagram and is now growing rapidly on Facebook. ALSO READ: Is Digital Marketing Excusable For Tech Start-Ups? The introduction of Facebook reels will help more SMEs and content creators reach a new audience, drive traffic and build amazing communities. Reels will also show in the users bar and people will get to see your videos whether they follow you or not. Facebook also introduced reels with a play bonus to reward the biggest creators with a play value. Although this Bonus Program is currently available to creators in the US, Facebook has promised to release it to other countries in the coming months. Another big advantage of the Facebook reels is that it gives your brand more personality than it has shown formerly. You become more creative and give life to what you’re promoting. The opportunities reels give your brand is very endless, like the use of AR shots, fun promotions, or sharing the behind the scenes of your product packaging or product process. All those are what gives life to your brand. Finally, the ROI for video marketing is great for conversion and sales which is built from trust. If pictures already bring conversion and sales, imagine what motion pictures will do for your brand. Video content is likely to ignite and provoke emotions for your audience. The best part of it is the traffic your brand gets to have and the sales it converts to for you. You can send us a message to provide quality marketing services for your businesses.
How Digital Marketers Can Leverage on The Rise of NFTs
For marketers, it is important to see the rise of NFTs as an avenue to build their marketing strategies around web 3 projects.
Video Marketing: An Important Part of SEO
Videos have always played an important role in Google ranking and visibility. For such a long time, organic search results have been showing video thumbnails and this means a higher brand visibility and more website clicks. So how does video Help SEO? Now that we are talking about organic visibility for Google rankings, building a strong video marketing strategy is now more important than ever before. When you search for something on Google, videos now appear all over the search result pages. You can find rich video elements and even video carousels for every Google search these days. Apart from increasing your organic visibility, videos have been found to also boost engagement on your site. This has been found to be a powerful ranking factor because Google wants its users to visit and like each page that is returned in search results and to continue engaging with the site instead of just leaving immediately. In other words, if you put a useful video on your site this can indirectly help your Google ranking and get users to like and trust your site. Some ideas for video content to increase your organic SEO These actionable ideas will help you to create meaningful video content for your business that would help with everything that we have discussed above. Collaboration videos: These can be interviews webinars Q&A sessions or even video reviews. For every time you feature someone, that person could be an influencer on your video, you are tapping into their existing community and trust. The beauty of collaborating with people for creating video content is that you can use their authority and thought leadership to generate views and conversations. Customer videos: Tap into your loyal existing customers by setting up an easy competition, encouraging them to submit unboxing videos, video testimonials, video reviews and offer the rewards to the best efforts. You can also spotlight your customers and recognize their efforts by giving them a shout out. Host events or webinars: Every business out there is trying to actively engage their users by hosting webinars or events. These can make great long-form video content that can boost your brand’s SEO ranking and engage potential customers. You can record, organize, monetize and publicize your event. Related: Follows these secrets to make viral videos. Key takeaways: Videos will give you a great deal of visibility on Google’s organic search results. By creating useful video content, you can boost brand awareness. Videos can also improve your site engagement and increase your organic rankings. Examples of video content to add to your content strategy are interviews event and customer videos.
How to Build a Social Media Strategy in 2021
We’ve seen so many businesses going into social media abruptly. They have a basic idea on what to do on social media, but they simply do not understand how to begin or where to even start from. Some businesses just employ an intern and give them access to the company’s social media accounts for them to do whatever they want, because they are young and perceived to be social media savvy. However, we’ve gone past that stage of posting on social media and hoping it gets attention. Every business must have a well-detailed social media marketing strategy that creates a pathway for growth that’s inevitable. Because if you don’t, your competitors will prey on your weaknesses and garner more traction and engagement than you. Here is our 5-step social media strategy for businesses in 2021. 1. Set a realistic social media goals A problem most businesses face on social media is that they spend so much time setting unrealistic targets. Today, they’ll like to hit 1,000,000 views on YouTube, tomorrow they want to get 100,000 followers on Instagram While this may be possible, does this fit well into your business planning as a whole? Ideally, you should set strategic goals that can complement your overall business objectives. Make sure your goals are: – Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Time-bound The SMARTer your goals are, the more easy it will be for to meet them. 2. Decide your social media target audience One common mistake made by businesses on social media is that businesses often think everyone is their target audience and everyone will like them. False. Social media isn’t a merry-go-round where it’s all fun and stuff. Look back at the goals you set in step 1. There is no point having an audience who can’t engage with your content or help you meet your business goals. Most times, you want your social media followers to be prospective customers. So you need to have a target group (age, location, gender, interest, etc) Check how competitors are using social media A lot of businesses don’t just operate on their own. Of course, there will be competitors who have the same or similar business with yours who also use social media. You’ll need to know what they are doing. What are their content types? Whom are they targeting? What social media platform are they trying to dominate? Feel free to conduct a competitor analysis to help you get a better understanding of their strengths and weakness. By doing this, you’ll be able to understand what potential customers expect from business in your niche. Tools like sprout social and SEMRush can be used to spy on your competitors and find out their best performing content. This will inspire you to create and share similar, but better content. Plan the types of content you will share To be successful on social media, you definitely need high-quality content. Content that organically gets traction and engagement. One mistake business make is that they always thing it’s appropriate to share excessive sales content. Nobody likes being sold to, remember that. People are on social media to have great conversations from content that inspires them. People are on social media to be social – they never intended to be bamboozled with promotional content. Therefore, you need to strike a balance with the content you share on social media. Let there be a mixture of entertaining and educative content, with a very little percentage of sales content included. You can also share user-generated content, so that your audience feels more in tune with your business. By doing all of these things, you start to understand the types of content that works best for your target audience. Create a social media budget Let’s be factual. You need a realistic budget to grow your social media accounts. Because as with other forms of marketing, social media marketing is quite essential for most organizations. Therefore, you should allocate a budget to it. There’s absolutely no way the success of your social media will happen without having some some of budget to run promotions. It is all part of the social media strategy. What you should not is that you don’t need to spend more than your business earns. Make sure you have a KPI for each social media account, and calculate your return on investment (ROI), bearing in mind the goals you set out earlier in your strategy. Just make sure you consider how much you intend to spend on all your digital marketing channels. Then ask yourself how much of that budget you are prepared to devote to social media. ALSO READ: 8 Facebook Advertising Goals and What They Actually Mean
Product Marketing vs Product Management: Pros and Cons
Product marketing and product management are two distinct roles that often get people so confused. From starting raging debates, to mixing up roles and asking “Who’s job is this?” Some organizations have done a great job in differentiating the job duties and reducing friction between both job titles. Let’s clarify the roles Product marketing is focused on the current products while working on the next products. Think of it as a building mindset – product marketers are either trying to figure out how to sell more of what’s available in the portfolio of current products, or planning to launch new products into the market. This paints the true picture of job responsibility for the product marketer. Product management is focused on developing new products and future products. They work together with product marketing to plan and launch products. They are also researching and keeping up with trends on what the future will bring. This also paints the big picture of responsibility for the product manager. Product managers focuses on tomorrow. They create and deliver the idea behind future products. Product marketers focuses on achieving the business goals for current products and give guidance for launching next products. ALSO READ: Effective strategies that can help boost your career Pros of product marketers One of the primary advantages of product marketing is that you can focus on what the consumer needs. The products you produce are very likely to be what your business is passionate about. Product marketers can focus on making the best product at the best possible price and and consumers will be literally happy. Another advantage of this is that product marketers can develop a solid reputation for providing quality products in the marketplace. As product markers launch and promote new products, they can create loyalty among customers because of the high quality of the product. Cons of product marketers One of the disadvantages of product marketing is that your customers can feel alienated – When product markers focus only on the product and do not pay attention to the customer, they can leave some customers behind. Not only do product marketers need to create quality products, they also need to match it up to a target market. Product marketers who do not spend time catering to their target market, will be leaving sales on the table. Pros of product managers One of the best things about being a product manager is that you get to exercise your creativity and stay ahead of competitors with content and value. As a product manager, you get to align your unique personality with your team to execute a common goal. Here, you will understand difficult customer problems and create the perfect solutions to these problems. Product managers enjoy driving product strategies and marketing specifications. Enjoy the process of balancing new, practical and profitable ideas. Cons of product managers Overcoming the limitations on budget is one of the worse things about being a product manager. As a product manager, learning soft skills to work with everyone requires a lot of time. Learning the art of communication comes with the role. One aspect you’ll certainly not enjoy is the expectations that product managers are also technical and shouldn’t just focus on the bigger picture and market needs, but the product alone. Accountability – product managers need to get used to being accountable for things out of their control. In summary, let us be mindful that product marketing isn’t the same as product management and vice versa.
Follow These Secrets to Make Viral Video Content
What if there’s some special formula that can help you create a viral video that surprises your audience? *Stares into the open space* What if you could discover that special recipe that gets your videos trending over and over again? I can say for a fact that content creators as well as small business owners have been searching high and low for that magic formula that will cause a transformative change to the way they create and publish videos. First off, what exactly is a viral video? Have you come across that video from doggface that went viral on TikTok, and made its way to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook? It was short, sweet and quite creative! His success today is really paying off and we can all agree that viral video changed his life. Viral videos tend to get attention so very fast and are shared so many times on social media, reaching a massive audience who may never have seen your content before. In some cases, international publications pick up these viral videos and that is when it starts to spread like wildfire. So, how can you make a viral video? Okay! This is the hard but interesting part. Some videos go viral organically, others take a lot of work and planning. Creating a viral video is like painting. Having the right colors, making the right strokes are like the important elements to getting it right – but you’ll struggle a few times when starting out. As you move along, you get better at using your equipment and master it’s uniqueness – the painting starts to come alive till you make a masterpiece. ALSO READ: 8 Content Ideas for Instagram Reels #Know your audience This goes further to say that you should also know what your audience wants. In most cases, businesses create videos to educate their viewers about new launches and features. What matters is the concept of the video and how it relates to the everyday human. When you create relatable videos, that resonates so deeply with your audience, you can guarantee the success of that video. #Focus on one message Make it simple, clear and concise. These are the kind of videos that works wonders. Because when it comes to creating highly sharable content, your message must be clear from the onset. So before starting, define what your video is all about and focus on getting that message across as distinct as possible. #User powerful storytelling Use the power of storytelling to create strong emotional connection. Your video can portray a challenge you’re facing and how you overcame them and got successful. Viewers can see how you fall, but you stand up and try again. Through powerful storytelling, it gives viewers the affirmation to keep watching every second. In summary, your video can present a problem and then showcase a quick solution. #Keep it short and sweet You know how they say people on social media have very short attention span? In fact, this study by Microsoft corporation says that the human attention is now less than that of a goldfish. So this means our attention is increasingly in demand. Literally everyone on the internet is fighting for their share of the human attention. Just like social media, viral videos are disruptive. Nobody ever goes looking for viral videos on social media. They simply appear on your feed and grabs your attention. This is why short videos are highly effective. #Offer value You need to focus on giving something valuable to your audience. Ensure that every content you put out there is geared towards “giving”. In everything you share with your audience, go with an attitude to give value, not with an attitude of just getting. This is the right attitude, right mindset. Videos with potential to go viral are intrinsically useful to your audience. So whether you’re entertaining, educating or informing, just make sure your videos are super helpful to those who watch it. Summary Use these secrets to create evergreen video contents. With serious work, creativity and a dash of luck, you’ll go viral soon and very soon! Share this article if you found it useful 🙂
Easy Ways to Monetize Your Instagram Account
Over the past one year, we’ve seen Instagram make exciting changes to its platform. From being able to invite multiple persons to a live session, to launching reels, Instagram shopping and a few other things. So, here are 3 easy ways to grow and monetize your Instagram account. #1 – Become an Instagram Influencer Your unique brand preposition, content type, audience, and niche can really determine if you’ll succeed at influencing. As an influencer, you’ve become a person that naturally drives conversations around topics. You’ve got the backing of your community, by building trust and increasing engagement. No brand can really compete with that. This is why brands partner with influencers to tap into that trust and engagement influencers have with their audiences. Becoming an influencer means that you can work with brands and create sponsored content for them. Share reviews on products or services, drive engagement through contest, or any other creative activity you can put forward. Because these types of partnerships with brands are obviously sponsored, make sure you’re not over doing it, otherwise you will lose you audience trust. How do you plan to charge as an influencer? – Well that will depend on the deliverables you’ve set out to achieve with the brand. #2 – Create Your Own Instagram Shop Instagram has attracted all kinds of creators to its platform – so you’re not just going to see pictures of people on vacation or at parties, you’ll also stumble on pictures that display items for sale. Products? Services? Merch? All of these can be sold on Instagram. If your plan is to sell several things, I strongly suggest that you set up an Instagram shop. It’s an easy integration that allows you add product tags to your Instagram stories and posts so that people can easily shop for those items right there on Instagram. Remember, this only works on an Instagram business account. Make sure you have an approved Facebook shop, link your Facebook page to your Instagram account and have it all set up for free. #3 – Become a Coach Coaching is one of the most profitable business idea on Instagram. Having a beautifully laid out Instagram feed gives you the leverage to attract more followers, increase your audience size and even reach more potential clients. Coaching has so many positive effects for people. Once you portray yourself as someone with valuable skills, knowledge and experience in a particular niche, you can help others identify and develop their own skills. As an Instagram coach, you’ll create paid coaching sessions and work with people closely. ALSO READ: How to influence other people successfully.
