Month: March 2021

Digital Branding

5 Best Digital Ideas To Increase Your Brand Presence

on March 11, 2021

Businesses need to be conspicuous for them to grow and thrive. This means that they must invest in brand awareness and recognition. As such, one needs to initiate necessary steps to achieve such a goal. Fortunately, some simple tricks and tips can help any business grow to a level where they increase their brand awareness with ease.

Consider the five suggestions below as a great starting point.

Consider Website Optimization

A primary reason you should prioritize hiring one of the best salesforce consulting companies is to help you with web management. It is not enough to have a company website. Any company working online should have a well-optimized website. Invest in the right SEO strategies such as keyword use, lead creation, and link building. Note that most people today begin their search for products and services online.

All you need to do is start. Ensure that the process is simple and not fancy. Your website should simply show your work in the most straightforward way possible. Ensure it is easy to load and navigate. These can be easily achieved by optimization. Make the website visually appealing and useful for those searching online. If funds allow, consider making a mobile app, especially if your services match the mobile platform use.

Start a Business Blog

Focus on getting people to know more about your business. Ensuring that there is enough credible information about the business out there can easily achieve this. Starting a blog is one of the safest and surest ways to inform your potential and repeat clients about your products and services. You can document all your progress in your blogs as long as your post’s content is useful to the reader.

Having a dedicated blog that addresses most, if not all, the issues customers may have, helps businesses attract new customers and maintain the earlier ones. However, before posting any content on the blog, it must be perfectly-written without numerous errors.

You also need to update the content on your website regularly, more so if things change. Whenever readers realize that you post outdated content, they are likely to trust you less. Let people know when to expect your new content. This will help you achieve excellent traffic and boost your SEO ranking. In case your goal is the growth and expansion of your brand’s presence, you must positively use your blog.

Focus on Social Media Presence

While social media is great for business growth and brand awareness, you need to be careful when choosing the right channels. Your excellent research skills should be used at this point. Find out the best social media channels that will help your media presence.

Do not ignore social media because this is an opportunity to grow your brand and bring in more potential customers. It is easier for more people to find out about you on your social media pages than they will on your website. Once you decide which social media channel is excellent for you, create useful content for the page. Keep it busy and continue to engage your viewers.

Most importantly, ensure that you are relevant. Everything you post, from the videos, pictures, and blog posts, should match your brand’s identity. Besides that, have your employees join in this journey. Please encourage them to continually share the content on their personal social media spaces to expand the brand’s reach. Focus on extending your reach and building trust, as this goes a long way in bringing the right people your way.

Have a Few Guest Posts and Invest in Email Marketing

One of the fastest and easiest ways to build brand awareness is having a strong email presence. Email marketing works most of the time and is even more effective than social media because you deal and interact with people directly. When using email marketing as a strategy, make sure your approach is segmented to be more effective.

Create customized messages and send emails at the right time. You have to analyze data and know what works for you regularly. On the other hand, guest blogging also works in branding because of the targeted exposure, which helps your brand earn credibility. When done right, this can be a magnet that attracts customers to your website.

Once people love your content on the guest blogs, they are likely to go to the main website and read through your other content. This helps you build traffic and can contribute to the conversion rates and business increase.

Use Visuals to Engage Customers

A visual brand is immediately noticeable. Customers want compelling content that makes them love your brand. Take time to build content that attracts your customers. Use imagery and other visual aids that put your brand out there.

The aim is to tap into the consciousness of the reader or potential customer. Once they are hooked, they will search for your content on official channels and possibly convert into loyal customers. The bottom line is to ensure that the content you create is appealing and exciting for them to continue searching for you.

Final Thoughts

Brand awareness is easy. However, it needs one to use available resources. Choose wisely and follow a path that works for your business. Different strategies may work for other businesses, while some may need a combination of several strategies. So, choose wisely.

Digital Branding

Marketing for the Digital Age: Steps to Stand Out

on March 8, 2021

Marketing has changed significantly in the digital age, and it continues to evolve. There are quite a few methods that every company in the digital economy needs to learn in order to stand out from the rest. The internet is saturated and the number of products and services available is unparalleled to any other time in human history. Luckily there are ways to promote your business and market ads to your target demographics. Below are a few tips that will help your company market itself in the digital age.

Master SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for any business that wants to land on Google, Bing, and others. SEO is essential to any company that needs to market itself digitally. It is the process of using keywords, hyperlinks, metadata, and more to ensure that the web page lands on search engines. If you do your best to hire people who understand SEO and keep learning about it on a continual basis you’ll have the chance to market your company successfully online.

Utilize Technical Writing Software

The use of technical writing software won’t just facilitate your SEO, it is a great resource for content web developers in general. Whether it’s technical code writing or video content, taking advantage of all the tools you have at your disposal will improve your online presence when it comes to digital marketing. From importing to authoring new content to publishing and analytics, tools like technical writing software will give you the power to effectively target ads and use digital marketing in a whole new way.

Stay Active on Social Media

Social media is not just necessary to promote your products or services to consumers, it is also integral for your online strategy. You’ll need to target ads while using analytics, hashtags, and other methods to market the business on social media. If you don’t already have social media employees, it’s a good idea to get started. When you don’t have a social media presence, it will be difficult for many people to find about your company.

Invest in Data

As a company involved in the digital space of technology, it has become imperative to gather data. Whether you’re getting data from your own site, online service, or buying it from another company, data is now extremely valuable. When you sign up for a social media platform, you agree to the terms and conditions to allow the company to sell your data. 

These businesses deal primarily in data. This is because it has become as valuable of a resource as oil. While the moral issues surrounding the buying and selling of data are dubious, it is a main-stay of the digital economy that isn’t going anywhere any time soon. If you want to expand and make it big with your start-up, you’ll need to deal with data as well.

Use Analytics & Spreadsheets

When you are handling a lot of data, your company will need to store and manage it. You can either store it on a Cloud service yourself, pay someone else to do it, or have full control over the data by keeping it on your own private server. Each method has its own workload and benefits. Depending on the security of the data and how much you want to have access to it, you can choose the storage and management method that works best for you.

Then once you have your data properly stored and organized, you’ll be able to use analytics and spreadsheets to determine the best ways to use particular sets of data. Some of it can be used in tandem with other sets, but some will need to be scrutinized individually. However you look at it, your digital business can use data to market more effectively to the target demographics that can be discovered and analyzed to expose new opportunities and ad potential.

Marketing has become much more complex in the digital age. The internet is complex and it takes a lot to stand out from the saturated crowd. But if you put in the effort to learn SEO, social media, data management, and technical writing software, your company will be able to market your product or service.

Ryan Beitler is a writer, journalist, and blogger who has written for AI Time Journal, Paste Magazine, The Slovenia Times, Addiction Now, and more.

Digital Branding

Nine Online Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make

on March 6, 2021

Good marketing is a crucial element for every business’s survival and success. A well-planned marketing strategy can do wonders for your small business. Not only will it attract a considerable number of potential customers, but it will also give your business an immense opportunity for growth.

Online marketing is rapidly taking the lead among all other forms of marketing. While traditional marketing channels like TV commercials and billboard advertisements are still widely employed, their effect is no longer dominant in the digital era. With social media and e-commerce websites taking over the world by storm, marketers are making a paradigm shift towards digital marketing.

However, digital marketing is still an evolving concept. Hence, many businesses face issues when trying to market their product through an online platform. These marketing mistakes can create plenty of problems, and might even cost you your business. Therefore, identifying and avoiding them is essential. Below, we have pointed out a few online marketing mistakes small businesses often tend to make.

1. Not having a pre-planned strategy

Like any other business strategy, online marketing also needs a tremendous amount of planning. Without a well-thought-out marketing strategy, your marketing goals will lack structure and direction. You will be unable to reach your established objective, and your competitors might put you at a disadvantage.

To develop a marketing strategy, start by identifying your audience, and set a long-term vision and goals for your business. Most importantly, decide the online platform(s) you want to use for marketing purposes. You can implore the different techniques used for market research to devise a conclusive strategy for your business.

On the other hand, hiring a digital marketing agency can make your job easier. You can get assistance from qualified professionals and build an efficient and effective strategy for your business.

2. No social media presence

In this day and age, where social media is the “king” of marketing channels, not having a social media presence can put your business at a considerable disadvantage.

A social media page can help popularize your business and attract more potential customers. Social media is also an excellent avenue for you to interact with your customers and build long-lasting relationships. You can improve your services and quality by getting their feedback. You can also get an insight into consumers’ consumption patterns and develop a marketing plan tailored to specific groups.

Social media handles like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram also allow you to run advertisements for your business. While everything else is free-of-cost, these advertisements are not. However, these costs are scalable depending on your objectives. They are a great way to attract traffic to your page and increase your followers.

3. Entirely depending on paid advertisements

While paid advertisements can be immensely beneficial for your business, you should avoid solely relying on them. One reason for this is that these advertisements may not necessarily yield any long-term benefits. Also, back-to-back paid advertisements tend to have diminishing returns and can burn a hole in your business wallet.

Consider investing your time, money, and energy in other long-term and effective strategies like inbound marketing. Inbound marketing includes social media, SEO, and email. Inbound marketing promises long-term benefits and improves ROI.

4. Neglecting your social media account

It’s one thing not to have social media presence at all (we talked about that above), and entirely another to have one and neglect it. And believe it or not, small business owners are more likely to make the second mistake.

Some common mistakes marketing teams make are inconsistency with posting and replying late to queries. If you don’t post regularly, you might start losing followers, eventually dipping your engagement and traffic figures. Delayed responses to queries and an inactive social media account reflect poorly on the business’s ability to address customer concerns and create a bad reputation.

5. Not using videos

Studies report that 85% of the audience prefers watching videos over engaging with text and image-based content. Facebook and YouTube saw a massive increase in video content last year. Fun, humorous, and engaging videos attract a lot of customers. Video content is more memorable than text. It can drive immense traffic and is slowly becoming the preferred medium of many marketers.

6. Not marketing your website

If your business is new, then remember to market your website well. If you don’t invest in marketing your website, you will fail to attract even the smallest amount of traffic, leading to a tremendous loss in ROI. Think about it, many people don’t know about you, and you do not even market your website. Then, how do you expect visitors to your site? It’s a no-brainer!

It’s a very competitive digital world that we are talking about here. There are millions of websites up on the web. The chances of a person reaching your website are little to none if you don’t market it properly, which brings us to the next mistake.

7. Not investing in SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your ratings on different search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. SEO makes it possible for customers to easily find your business and the products/services you offer while surfing the internet.

The problem here is that most business owners do not realize the full potential of SEO. They consider it to be useless and time-consuming. However, it is one of the most effective marketing tactics. If you can learn certain tricks of the trade like keyword research, keyword optimization, URL creation, you will realize the true potential that SEO carries. Yes, it is time-consuming, but the long-term results are worth the wait.

8. Spamming your customers

Being bombarded with an odd number of emails, texts, and messages is something none of us like. Customers hate spam! Spamming your customers can annoy them to the point that they might block you.  The last thing you want is to lose your customers for good!

Try and make your emails and messages relevant. Irrelevant and unnecessary spam emails can worsen the case. The best way to go about it is to communicate with your customers and only send them as few emails as they wish to receive.

9.      Marketing exclusively

Marketers often make the mistake of focusing on quantity over quality, i.e., they assume the higher the ad frequency, the higher the website’s traffic. However, it would be best to remember that your goal is to attract the right traffic and not all the traffic. Visitors who are genuinely interested in your business should be your primary focus. Others might waste your time and money, and will eventually leave. Define your target audience and focus on marketing to a niche rather than everyone.

Conclusion

Your marketing tactics will be of no use if you are not able to reach your goal. Small businesses often make the mistake of marketing their businesses without putting any thought into it first. Careful marketing is vital. It can make or break your business. Investing time, energy, and money in digital marketing is a valuable and valuable idea, but correctly investing those three resources is the key to success.

If you are a new business owner, make sure to surf through the above-given points to not make any marketing mistakes in the future.

Uncategorized

How to Build an Award-Winning Sales Team

on March 5, 2021

There’s little doubt that most of us, at some point, have experienced that uncomfortable feeling of being “pressured” by an overly aggressive salesperson into buying a product or service.

Most often, we usually thank them and abruptly walk away, even though we may have initially been interested in the product or service being offered. All too often, it’s a simple matter of timing, allowing the customer to reach their own “comfort zone” by allowing them the time to assess the product or service.

Moreover, knowing when to engage the buyer and hopefully close the sale, and that’s where teaching the basic skills needed to sell becomes essential in keeping and maintaining a viable customer base within an ever-changing high-tech environment.

However, where do we begin in developing a sales team?    

Today the landscape has changed dramatically. Businesses more than ever need to rely on targeted sales training programs specifically designed to the company’s individual needs.

Nevertheless, you may choose to “go it alone,” perhaps thinking it’s no big deal in assembling a sales team, and perhaps that was true a decade or so ago. However, the marketplace has changed dramatically.

Within the retail industry alone, online sales this holiday season skyrocketed to over 50% in global online sales, to over $1.1 trillion dollars, with over 58% coming just a week before Christmas.  

Moreover, total U.S. online sales reached $236 billion, compared to $165 billion in 2019. This trend will no doubt continue well into the future.

The competition from online sales where customers simply log on to their favorite website and push a button presents a real challenge; the question is, how do we navigate forward when the salesperson is taken out of the equation?

“Going it alone” shouldn’t be an option, rather recruit a professional sales training firm, one that provides a total sales methodology, one that benefits every salesperson, no matter how experienced they are within your company.

Moreover, recruit a firm that utilizes core sales training techniques such as:

In-Person Workshops

This allows for invaluable person-to-person interaction between individuals, which in turn builds a dedicated sales force.  

Online Courses

This is an excellent way of sharing sales training techniques with others on the team and a great way of keeping track of their progress.

Internal Team Testing

This is another great way of calculating the strength and weakness of your sales force by reviewing past sales cycles.

Do your due diligence in choosing a sales training company. Also, make sure you do your due diligence before you contract a sales training company, check their success rate, their client base, and most importantly, can they meet your specific needs? 

Trial and Error

Moreover, the most important aspect of any sales training program is what occurs in the field. In that, most sales techniques are developed by trial and error. Feedback by the client thus becomes extremely important within the development of any sales force.

However, perhaps just as important in crafting a successful sales training program is how the buyer preserves the salesperson who is tasked with the “art-of-persuasion” in which he or she must put themselves in the buyer’s shoes. The salesperson should be able to understand and, more importantly, solve any problem that might arise.

A Well-Defined Script

Crafting a well-defined script is also an essential part of sales and should become second nature when speaking with a customer; it should sound natural, not rehearsed.

Most likely, if you’ve never spoken in public, this can be a daunting task. However, with practice, the fear factor will slowly diminish. That’s not to suggest that you won’t feel a bit uneasy during the first few encounters. However, as you become more comfortable with yourself along with the product or service you’re selling, you’ll develop a certain cadence to your presentation, you’ll be able to emphasize certain aspects of the product or service, perhaps highlighting a special feature.

If you’re selling in-person to a customer and not on the phone, it’s a good idea to practice your presentation standing in front of a mirror; remember, this is a performance. The more comfortable you are with yourself, the easier the sale.

Digital Branding

Test Automation: Building the Right Automation Strategy

on March 1, 2021

Whether it is a startup or an enterprise, all businesses are implementing test automation. But still, there is a higher rate of failure, and the underlying reason is the wrong implementation. Businesses cannot afford to go wrong with their test automation strategy in this fierce competition. A test automation company can help enterprises build the right strategy when moving from manual to automated tests. 

Let’s see how businesses can build a good test automation strategy:

The road to quality software development is full of hurdles but the right choices make businesses succeeded eventually, if not at the first attempt. Development teams begin a project with great enthusiasm and seem to meet their deadlines too. But when moving towards automation testing, things start to fall apart and teams start to lag behind their schedule. In the rush to reduce the time to market, companies often fail to achieve quality products. So this is where the real challenge begins. 

How to Get Started with Test Automation?

In the software development industry, one of the main factors for failure is bug fixing, which causes delays in projects. This is why a test automation company needs to get things straight right from the beginning. According to the world quality report, 61% of respondents stated that they have difficulties in automating their QA, which results in higher costs. It breaks the conventional pattern of detecting bugs and fixes them by running regression tests.  

A Good Automation Strategy

Following are the key ingredients for a good automation strategy:

  • Defining goals– So that you are clear which tests need to be automated.
  • Planning a test approach – It is important to determine and list down various levels of testing, along with the roles and responsibilities of the team members. All types of testing that would be required in a project should be listed. 
  • Selecting a test automation framework – It is a set of detailed guidelines that one needs to follow when writing and running tests. It includes coding standards, procedures, test-data reporting, etc. 
  • Selecting tools – Development teams should select testing tools that they will be using during their project. 
  • Creation of tests and running them – Once test managers have created a test automation strategy and selected the right testing tools; it is time to write and execute scripts.
  • Maintaining scripts – It includes scrutinizing the testing parameters. For instance, if a new feature is added to an application, regression tests need to be carried out. 

Conclusion

CIOs think that test automation can save time and get things back on track. Development teams begin with the process only to find out it’s not as simple as it looks. Since they don’t know which tools to use or don’t have the right automation strategy in place. Towards the end, they realize how much technical debt they may have to pay. This is why implementing test automation is the ultimate solution. A good test automation company can help enterprises in achieving full potential from test automation efforts. 

1 2