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!
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
20 Steps to Building The Perfect Online Business
When starting a new business online, it can be quite challenging and rewarding at the same time. Sometimes, the whole process might look simple, but you need to try and narrow it down to a couple of steps to understand it better. The 20 steps highlighted below are very necessary for both online, and offline businesses (you can skip some part if it doesn’t relate). In general, these steps are all relevant and you should possibly take note on the ones that suits best to your kind of business. Related: 6 Online Businesses You Can Start Now. Be Motivated – This is the first step to becoming a successful entrepreneur. If you’re reading this article, there’s a great chance you’ll end up becoming one. Get the required skills – You absolutely do not need a university degree to start up a business, but you do need to equip yourself and be aware of the experiences and skills involved in owning a business. Come up with an idea – In this part, you need to brainstorm ideas that have the potential of becoming a full scale business. Research about this idea – Create questionnaires and surveys, ask questions. Heck, surf the internet to get the answers that you seek. Create a business plan – Now that you’re in full swing of launching your business, you need to create a business plan that includes all the relevant details, what your competitors are doing, your target audience etc. Scout for potential clients – Be on the look out for people and businesses that can buy from you or partner with you. Try to at least get prospective clients before spending any money. Register your business name – It’s a simple, yet necessary step. Establish a unique brand. Find out what makes your business unique, and develop a brand around it. This should be coherent on your website and on social media as well. Launch a website – As soon as you can, establish an online presence by launching a website for your brand. Develop a social media marketing plan – This is just as important as anything else. A solid social media marketing plan will drive your business to grow. Create a test product or service – Feel free to call it a prototype or a beta. By creating a sample, you are giving your audience a chance to test, you get insights before officially releasing the product. Establish key partnerships – Reach out to like-minded individuals, contractors, vendors and suppliers who will agree to work with you and help your business grow. Create company culture guidelines – Create some guidelines for your business, and employ people who will adhere to them. Start selling – Go all out and start selling your products in droves. Network online and offline – Make it a duty to meet people on social media and in person. You simply don’t know who will be a new customer or partner. Use a lead magnet to attract new customers – You want to get new customers as fast as possible and to do this, you need to come up with a lead magnet – a free item that will be attractive to potential customers. Invest in automation software – Make sure to improve and automate whatever you can, to give you more time to focus on growing your business and make your customers happier. Keep learning about your industry – Don’t stop learning and researching to stay ahead of the curve. Reach out to competitors, attend industry conferences, and embrace partnerships. Become a thought leader – Grow your own personal branding and establish yourself as an authority in your niche by speaking at events, hosting webinars and writing articles. Track and Evaluate your progress and keep tweaking – Keep track of your progress and evaluate your results at intervals. This is to determine where you are versus where you ought to be. Make necessary changes as your business grows and learn from your mistakes. What else would you add to this list?
10 Tricks to Help you Sell Better
A good sales person always has the room to grow and improve their selling skills. This is why businesses should also focus on investing on their sales team, motivating them to learn more and research about the selling industry. The ultimate goal will be to use all of the information gathered to get better at selling. I know salespeople are always looking for ways to learn, especially when there are set targets breathing down their throats. So we’ve decided to share these few tricks to help you become the best salesperson out there, Know your market You can’t be an effective salesperson if you do not know and understand who your customers are. Where do they live? What social media channels do they spend time on? What’s their favorite chilling spot? What problems are they facing? What’s the best way to solve them? Like really understanding what tickles their fancy. Understanding your market will give you the benefit of positioning your brand or service as the solution to their problems. Use data to your advantage Whether you’re a small company or a large one, data can add some tremendous efficiencies to the way you work. What should you do? Pay very close attention to your metrics and reports. That way, you have a clearer view on what’s working and what isn’t. What’s impacting your sales numbers? Why is your sales number declining? Data doesn’t lie, so checking your numbers is a critical component to your sales growth. Listen to your prospects For you to be really effective at selling, you need to listen more to your prospects. Focus on becoming customer-centric, and use social media to do just that. If you really want to sell like crazy, you need to care a lot about your prospects. Not just the surface type of care, but one that forms a stronger bond. That way, you’re having healthy conversations that helps build trust, loyalty and closes deals faster. Just build trust We get that building trust can be difficult, especially when you’re trying to sell a product or service to a customer for the first time. In today’s business world, it is very critical to create relationships and build trust with your prospect. And once trust has been established, you’re much more likely to win the relationship. Help more One truth is, features alone can’t help the customer. What the customer is really keen on hearing is, “How does product X solve Y for me?” They just want to know how what you’re selling will highlight and address their challenges. Know this differentiation and rather than focus on the features alone, you should really think about what the customers stands to benefit more. How is this product aimed at solving one or more of their pain points? Picking the right price One way to do this is to do a quick research on the prices your competitor is offering. If the price of your product is on a high side, make sure you over deliver quality to your buyers. Most times, prices can be determined by the perceived value of your product. Therefore, if you can make your product look superior to that of your customers, you can charge higher. Effective presentations sell Look, selling is great! But presenting your product in the most creative and compelling way will help you sell x3. This is easy to do on a PowerPoint presentation. Cold call, but do it sometimes We get that cold calling potential customers can sometimes be difficult. Doesn’t matter if you are doing it in person, or on the phone, just make sure you’re warming that potential customer with relatable discussions. Even if your product is new to the market, you might actually start to get some awareness by calling potential customers. Take advantage of social media Social media is like a world of endless possibilities. It provides so many creative ways to get your product across to your customers faster than ever before. Social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are all free. Use them to build relationships with your customers through creative content. Have a clear sales message Let your message be so clear, that it tells your customers exactly what your product will do for them. Don’t mince words, Be specific. If the product you’re trying to sell has multiple benefits, create different sales messages for different customers. What strategies have you implemented to increase your sales? Feel free to share them in the comments.
8 Facebook Advertising Goals and What They Actually Mean
Facebook has recently updated their entire layout, the user interface looks more friendly, and the best part is the Ad Center on Facebook pages. Now, advertisers have a concise range of choices when it comes to running ads. In this article, you’ll learn 8 Facebook advertising goals, what they mean, and how best to use them for your next campaign. 8 Facebook advertising campaign goals What is a campaign goal? This simply means what action you want people to take when they see your advert. Realizing what your campaign goals are, is the first step you must take when creating a new campaign. ALSO READ: 6 Online Businesses You Can Start Now Get more messages This ad goal aims at getting people to send you messages on messenger. Facebook shows your advert to prospects who are more likely to require further information before they convert. So when you’re trying to sell a product and you want customers to send you private messages to discuss about the price, quality, or delivery of the product, get more messages campaigns are ideal. Build Your Business If you want people to learn more about your business, this option is your best bet. Facebook will display your advert to people with the same or likely interest as your business and directs them to a landing page. E.g. Through the learn more button. Get More Website Visitors Want more traffic to your blog, website or app? This the the ad goal you should go for. Your advert would be charged based on link clicks. Remember to optimize your landing page for conversion results. Boost a Post This is one of the most popular advertisement goals on Facebook. If your goal for that advert you’re about to run is to get likes, comments or shares, Facebook will show your advert to the maximum audience each day. In less than 5 clicks, you’re good to go. Boost an Instagram Post This also works like the Boost a Post option, but the difference here is that you can boost an Instagram post right on your Facebook page. This works when you’ve linked your Instagram account to your Facebook page. Get More Leads I’m such a huge fan of the lead generation goal because it is so easy to use and can be really versatile. When you create a lead generation form, people interested in your advert can fill the form (capturing their contact details like email addresses and phone numbers). In essence, you can use this ad goal to build your email list, drive downloads, or give exclusive access to discounts. Promote Your Page This objective is super straightforward. Promote your page and get more likes. Simple! This is only available for your Facebook page (Not available for Instagram). With this goal, you can optimize your Facebook page likes but you may be charged for impression or likes depending on your bid. Get More Calls This advert goal is pretty self-explanatory and serves its purpose. Great for promoting your business to get more calls from prospects interested in what your selling or the services you’re rendering. Develop a habit of testing out different campaigns to determine what works and what doesn’t. What advert goal would you be testing first?
Top 10 High Paying Tech Jobs In-demand Now
With the disruption of the technology sector, joining the tech space has never been this timely. Of course, you’ll require certain skills, trainings, certifications and even experiences to take you to that next big tech role. Once you’ve got it all figured out, and decided you’re ready for the next big thing, things seem to be set in motion, then it is time to give it a shot. But first, what are those tech roles you really should look out for in 2021 and beyond? We’ve made a list of some of the highest paying tech jobs that are hot right now. Grab a seat my friend! RELATED: Top Digital Marketing Careers Tech jobs that are high-paying at the moment 10. Senior Web Developer The development of web-based applications, and management of web properties are usually carried out by the Senior Web Developer. In addition to providing technical support to website administrators, they also work with different kinds of content management systems. The average yearly salary for this role is $88,000. 9. Mobile Applications Developer Your smartphone is an indication of how mobile applications are pretty much in-demand. This profession requires the experience to develop applications on platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows etc. Experience in coding, mobile and development languages are essential skills. The average yearly salary for this role is $96,000. 8. DevOps Engineer This profession is the focal point for closing the gap between engineering and coding. They handle Artificial Intelligent initiatives within an organization, and also improve IT systems. As with most IT roles, DevOps engineers need to be familiar with coding languages, machine learning, neural networks and how other similar technologies work. Average yearly salary is about $99,000. 7. Product Marketing Manager The product manager role is very essential to the development and conceptualization of a product, from start to finish. Even after that, the product marketing manager is responsible for planning the launch of the product, using product management tools, building and managing product portfolio, as well as implementing other marketing activities. Average yearly salary is over $100,000. 6. Big Data Engineer This is one tech role that is really in-demand right now. Companies are actively seeking big data professionals who can transform raw data in large quantities into actionable information for setting strategy, decision making and innovative ideas. Big data engineers usually have skillsets in mathematics, analytics and databases. Average yearly salary for this role is $103,000. 5. Full Stack Developer This tech profession is so versatile, it is difficult to actually pin down what they actually do. Both front-end and back-end development, designing and building APIs, and making sure the code that has been created are intact, correct and responsive – these are just a few areas that are covered by a full stack developer. Average yearly salary for this profession is $106,000. 4. Cloud Engineer This tech profession are for people who are experts in cloud software and hardware. They are responsible for deploying and overseeing the day-to-day support of cloud services. Candidates with a strong background in security, server infrastructure, analytical and problem-solving skills are a plus. Average salary for a cloud engineer is $107,000 per year. 3. Data Scientist Undoubtedly one of the tech jobs in high demand today. In the last decade, there has been an unprecedented increase in data scientists, and this is just the beginning. 95% of businesses in the world needs a data scientist, which makes it one of the highest paying tech jobs at $113,000 salary per year. 2. Data Warehouse Architect What does a data warehouse architect do? They simply store information that a business acquires from internal and external sources to make wise business decisions. This person is also tasked with the responsibility for designing the storage capacity for that information to be securely stored. Average yearly salary for this role goes for $118,000. 1. Software Engineering Manager The highest-paying tech role goes to the Software engineering managers, and some cases, developers. They carry out and oversee new computer software while improving on existing computer programs. They constantly find solutions to any software issues that might pose a threat to businesses. This tech role gets an average salary of $131,000 every year. Did you find this article super useful? Share to your friends on social media! Follow us for more tech insights: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
DigiNext: The Marketing Experience Summit | Nov. 26th 2020
Are you ready to be part of a life-changing event? Join this visionary and actionable virtual summit to learn the latest highly-effective marketing strategies (through best practices and real-life scenarios) for driving and maximizing your marketing channels now and beyond. About DigiNext: This is a One-day free Marketing Event led by industry professionals with proven track record. Covering topics ranging from Digital Marketing, Content Creation, Growth, Brand Communications, Content Marketing Strategies and Digital Marketing Trends for 2021. Each panel session offers valuable advice to skyrocket your marketing initiatives and improve your existing marketing channels. At the end of this event, attendees will have loads of tactics they can implement to generate quality results. To register, you need to complete the form below. LIMITED SLOTS AVAILABLE! Loading… See you at #DiginextSummit
6 Online Businesses You Can Start Now
It is safe to say that you are keen on beginning an online business today? It might seem like an overwhelming task that you can’t do, however the internet has opened up a ton of alternatives for you to work for yourself. Here are a few online businesses that you can begin right away! Freelance Writing Freelance writing and different types of writing have become the foundation of the internet. In addition to the fact that readers want solid content, entrepreneurs are hoping to recruit writers like there’s no tomorrow. You can without much of a stretch find paid writing gigs just by searching out on the internet! Business & Strategy Coaching Is your strength in helping different organizations succeed? Business coaching may be your specialty. Where numerous entrepreneurs know about their industry, they may require some assistance with different parts of maintaining a business. Advertising, Sales, Web Strategy and that’s just the beginning. On the off chance that you have strong results and business experience, you can rake in some serious cash helping individuals land the business position they need. Virtual Assistant Everybody experiences difficulty completing the entirety of their work and monitoring what’s going on. A virtual assistant’s task can earn you a great deal of cash along these lines. With the expansion in online business entrepreneurs, as their businesses develop – they wind up requiring help! That is the place being a VA can come in. Responding to messages, assisting with client care, even social media. Working hours can be adaptable and you can without much of a stretch work from home. Selling E-books Regardless of whether you compose an eBook or sell another person’s you can rake in boatloads of cash doing so with the popularity of Kindle’s and different types. You can utilize online platforms like Lulu.com or even Canva.com to plan your own special digital book to sell. This is an extraordinary business to begin with low overhead since delivery of the program is totally digital! No compelling reason to print a book or have stock close by – or even stress over delivery. Social Media Manager In case you’re so in love with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter – why not get paid to play via social media? With software like Buffer, you can without much of a stress oversee clients social media accounts in 1 hour out of each month. In the event that you can make content individuals want to interact with and blend it with the perfect measure of business promotions – organizations wouldn’t imagine anything better than to outsource this work to an expert. You can work from home or even on your smart phone. ALSO READ: 5 Critical Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Business Graphic Designing Do you have an ability making everything graphic and visual? Digital craftsmanship that can be found over the web and on each site – which implies there’s a high demand for this kind of service. In the event that you need to share your creativity to the world, offering visual or graphic design services may be ideal for you. Would you be trying any of these online businesses? These various services can be run effectively from the internet. You simply need to build up a degree of skills sufficiently high to offer the support that individuals anticipate. Having samples of past work in the specialty that you are hoping to begin an online business in can be useful yet in some cases you have to take the jump and begin working before you can get samples.
Why Data and Creativity are Needed for Marketing Solutions
In the present business environment, digital marketers are taking enormous data and numerical analysis to consolidate it with creativity. Albeit taking each decision based on data and analytics, now, the time has come to mix some creativity into the dynamic cycle of decision making. Feed The Strategy with Data Utilizing data as a guide for business is critical particularly while figuring ROI simply like confiding in your instincts. Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer, marketing expert to be reckoned with and data god, Netflix, reports that 70% of the organization’s choices are made off of instincts. With regards to deciphering the data, understanding, creativity, taking risks and storytelling make the big difference. Keep Testing Everything An experimentation approach with a little experimental group provides a chance to understand what works or fails when an sample marketing plan is rolled out. It is the most ideal approach to make a point to examine and figure out what reverberates best. It is important to generally make profound deep-dive research on the intended target group of a property just as what they love and react to most. You should additionally compute the brand’s mainstream society currency, estimating online media impact, reach, social importance, and fan commitment (E.g shows, fan engagement, and so on.). Trust Your Instincts The data helps you to succeed bottom line, however it can’t bring the vision itself. Creative mind, emotions and gut instinct are needed to build up the best stories. Extraordinary visual marketing is undeniably more effective and significant than ones with bunches of duplicate, which requires stories that make motivation, inspiration and sympathy. This is the thing that no one but humans can do. To accomplish, you should be a keen and emotive storyteller, and data can assist marketers become better in storytelling. Ensure your marketing strategy is data and analytically driven with a team that can dissect the numbers and drive your story further. Each campaign needs the ideal mix of creativity and risk-taking, supported by data and knowledge.
New Google Meet tab on Gmail for iOS and Android
Google is stepping toward its Meet integration with Gmail today, bringing the videoconferencing platform straightforward into Gmail for iOS and Android. Individuals who use Gmail on mobile won’t need the devoted Google Meet application to join meetings, and Google has chosen to incorporate Meet as a different, and rather enormous, tab at the bottom of the main Gmail interface. Maybe you don’t want Google Meet to appear as a tab, at that point you’ll need to turn off the Meet integration in the settings menu. Google made Google Meet free for everyone towards the end of April, and it has quickly integrated the service into Gmail from that point onward. As at July ending, iOS and Android users of Gmail have now seen the new Meet tab on their Gmail accounts helping them to rapidly join meetings. ALSO READ: Free Google Ads for Small Businesses till September 2020 Google has truly been pushing Meet as a major aspect of Gmail, with huge blue buttons showing up inside new Google Calendar entries. This new mobile integration is the most recent endeavor to go head on with Zoom, the videoconferencing application that has taken off in fame during the stay at home period. Both Google and Microsoft have been pursuing Zoom’s prosperity, with new highlights and free services planned to win over Zoom clients.
