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Digital Branding

Ways Social Media listening can help your Business

on July 13, 2018

With the use of a shared count, it is possible to see how much your target audience are in tune with your content, but you can always do more.

Social media listening is simply about searching the internet and specifically the social media space to see what is being said about your business or brand, your competitors and other topics of interest, and with a little time and creativity, you can go beyond just monitoring your brand. You can employ the use of social listening to enhance content marketing, business development, product management, human resources and customer support.

If you are thinking of trying out social media listening, here are 5 ways in which this technique can be beneficial to your business:

Improved customer service

Today, more people are starting to use social media as the place to make public complaints, find solutions to their problems, and commend brands on good service.

Instead of relying on onsite calls or physically waiting for customers to show up in your workspace, social media as the go-to tool for responding and reacting to customers who encounter problems. Social media monitoring can improve the quality of your customer service through digital channels so that people no longer have to wait to receive a response.

Discover where your community is

Social listening enables you to find out where your potential and current community members carry on important conversations, for example, the hashtags on Twitter can lead you towards their areas of interests and what they often enjoy doing.

It is a good technique for identifying a target audience that would befit your brand, but more so for better niching your messages to befit their interests and reach out to their circles as well.

Track down the comments and shares on social media to lead you to the places they like to visit and the kind of content they would rather consume.

Build links with advocates and influencers

Influencer marketing is growing huge today and has continued to draw attention. The importance is that the influencer marketers ensure that people are talking about you and your brand, and when you are a conversation on social media, search engines and other users will definitely know who you are.

After a big product launch or update, track the link to or the title for press release you shared to see who else is sharing it. This information will help you identify influencers in your industry. Reach out to them to start building relationships.

Focus not only on the users with a big following, but also on the important fans of your brand that may not necessarily have a huge following, but are likely to convert to your advocates more than influencers can.

Interact with users

Largely, social media exists to foster relationship building, which is the one thing social media listening can help your brand with. For a business or brand, it can be overwhelming to track down comments and posts that might be relevant to you unless through social media listening.

Once you are keen on what your target audience is discussing and the trending issues in your industry, it is much easier to interact with your users then.

Be sure to keep your response times, intelligent, and humorous yet consistent with your brand image.

Actionable insights for brand improvement

Blindly running a business on social media can be detrimental to the productivity and success of your brand, which is the key reason you require to gather actionable insights for your brand management.

Since social media allows for open feedback, it is quite easy to receive negativity and criticism that might threaten the successful running of your brand, but with proper management, can scale your brand to greater heights.

Consider the feedback you receive as insights to help you in adjusting your business.

Social media is such a powerful tool, and with a little keenness in social listening, watch your business bloom this year!

Promote your workplace brand
Digital Branding

5 Tips to Branding Your Workspace

on July 12, 2018

With the right presentation, you can make any business successful. The way you keep your office says a lot about you and your business. The moment someone enters your office, they’re going to notice everything: the color of the walls, the furniture, the way you arrange your furniture, the whole ambiance of the place makes the first impression. Branding is not an easy task. You might need some professional advice sometimes. If you have decided to do this all on your own, here are some tips that you will require to get everything just right.

Choose clean, functional design

Tips For Branding Your Workspace

1. Get Opinions  

Branding your workspace is a big step. It can either make your company more prominent, or it will take it down. Never make this decision single-handedly.  One-person shows are not advisable when planning office layout; ask other people that you trust about their opinions and suggestions. Seek help from the people from various departments who might have a better vision than you since they know the workflow better than you . Remember that your target involves the public too. You are not going to impress every person that walks in these doors by just using your ideas. Check the ambiance of other offices also. Look for new furniture options. Choose unique designs of office chairs, tables, sofas, etc.  An outsider should remember it for a long time.

2. Focus On Advertisement

Advertising is the key. Sometimes even if your product is not good enough, you can still make it look worthy with the right representation. Focus on the whole look of your website. When people are searching it, they should be able to easily find what they want.. Your site should have a separate opportunity for every service that you provide.

Have a distinctive logo

3. Logo

No matter what your business=, always try to maintain your individuality. Logos do this work for you. Make your logo so unique and impressive that if a person looks at it, he should know what about your company. Take the example of the Apple iPhone where their company logo in such a way, that no matter where you are from, you will recognize the company at a glance.

The same goes for the mottos and signs. Your office should be an accurate depiction of what your company does, your goals, your work, current projects you are working on. Let’s suppose; you are a commercial builder. Your office should contain the detail of what kind of work you have already done, your achievements, etc. If you have been a part of a major project or have been awarded some distinction, get the certificates framed and hang them up on the wall.

Maintain great office organization

4. Organization  

It is not essential to have extraordinary furniture; if you have a small budget, you can still make your place stand out from the rest. Place the ordinary things in an extraordinary way. The whole theme of the site usually depends on the type of work your company is doing. If you are doing creative works, you have a wide range of things that you can do with your place as you have more latitude than an accounting firm or bank..You have to maintain the decorum of the whole place.You should also keep the place well-lit and ventilated.

5. The Color Schemes

Again, if you are doing creative works, you can quickly get away with vibrant colors but if your office does more traditional professional look, you will have to go with light colors like grey or merely white will do. It is not recommended to go with vibrant colors as it might not correctly promote your brand.

Choose pleasing color and style

Legal Branding

5 Ways Product Labels Can Help Your Branding

on July 9, 2018

Labelling is an essential part of your business process. In fact, it is a part of your product and brand. Labelling pronounces a host of conveniences during a number of core business activities such as logistics, warehousing, and showroom displaying. Not only the efforts of your staff reduce, but also the cost and time involved in the management and sorting the products repress considerably with right labelling practices.

Did you know, that more than 60% of consumers make buying decision-based on the packaging and labelling of a product?

Did you also know that 65% of products go unseen in supermarkets owing to the chaos in shelves and sections?

These facts make enough sense why a business should be focusing on adding more elements to the visual appeal of their product, packaging and labels. How to build his brand’s recognition in the market is one of the first strategies a forward-looking entrepreneur develops. When it comes to branding, quality is not the only factor that a business should be looking at. Quality without a doubt should be the focal point of any success-hungry brand. It is something that you never have to compromise on. It helps you retain your customers.

But, your packaging and labelling are two key add-ons that support your brand building efforts among your audience. If your product looks good and your label shows useful and valuable information, the customer will most likely see it, pick it, read it, and might give it a try.

Spread the word

The consumer base of an infant brand solidifies swiftly with word-of-mouth marketing done by its first-time consumers. The WOM marketing is effectively free of cost and a brand does not have to invest a single penny on this. However, there certainly are some investments required to add quality to your product and some appeal to your labelling.

Quality in your product will give you returning customers. They will then spread the word about your quality and suggest their loved ones to use your product. Here comes the application of your product packaging and labelling. Your logo or your unique label will help the ones convinced through word of the mouth find or demand your product.

Almost all brands, whether emerging or established, invest in quality and look of their product, just to ascertain that their products catch the attention of consumers at the very first glance. It is, in reality, one of their core strategies.

Increase on-shelf visibility

Not seen not bought. To be seen in the market, your product needs to look good and most importantly, “unique”.

There is a direct connection between your sales and visibility! The more you are seen, the more you are sold. There is no denying that shelf placement also plays a crucial role in your sales.

For a newly-established business, gaining visibility in the market which already is packed with countless similar brands, is among the top challenges. However, if you have got your labels designed and printed by a professional service for custom labels, things will be easier for you.

For better visibility, it is imperative that you design your product’s appeal rigorously; get the first draft printed and quality checked; and then, the final draft printed and distributed.

Display brand information

How would a customer know it is your product if there will be no information about you on your product’s label? Almost every brand makes an effective use of labelling for this very purpose.

You are trying to establish yourself in the market. The best way is to advertise on different media. Another great way is to do it through your uniquely designed labels. You can write about the brand message, in addition to your promise regarding the quality of your product, your post-sale service, or anything persuasive.

The logo also gets a place on your label, and that is how your product gets your identity. It would now become easier for your customers to find and recognize your products.

Promote your offers

What else you can do through labels is to let your audience know about your ongoing promotional offers. This is a very common practice in stores, where each shelf or section has its own label displaying the very offer applicable for that particular shelf or section.

You can get custom labels designed and printed in bulk for each of your upcoming discount-offering deals. And as per the strategically chosen time, paste or distribute those labels in the store to avoid delays.

Promoting your seasonal offers is a great way to promote your brand. Giving your customers freebies such as coffee mugs with a custom printed message along with your logo or brand name can help you establish your brand.

Product Information

So, we have talked about how labelling speeds up the effectiveness of your promotional offers, promotional messages, brand information, on-shelf visibility and consumer base. But, here is something unavoidable.

In many states and countries, the law abides businesses to give all relevant and necessary information about the product on its label. Pertinent inputs including ingredients, how to and how not to use the product, conditions, and other ins and outs about the product should get a mention of the packaging label.

Additionally, the date of manufacturing, the date of expiry, production batch number, weight, and rate should be there on the label. All such pieces of information can be codified into a barcode pattern, which has become a trend these days; plus it brings your customers to your website.

So, never ever miss giving product information on your packaging. Without that, your product might be rejected authoritatively.

Here is an informative piece that explains the step-by-step process of creating product labels.

Bottom Line

There you go. Labelling delivers noteworthy benefits. It helps you establish your brand in multiple ways. Effectively-designed and timely-distributed labels allow you to gain momentum in the market influenced by brands of the same nature. However, what is essential is putting the right label on the right product (at the right time, if it is a part of your seasonal promotional event).

Not just your products, but also your labels and packaging – everything needs to be tested for quality stepwise. It is vital because you would never want your labels to have misleading or textually or grammatically incorrect information. One single misrepresentation can put a mark on your brand image. If you are making efforts to establish your brand, then such blunders can toughen your way significantly.

To transform into a real professional, consider Amazon FBA courses to get the best training available.

SaaS Branding

5 SaaS Product Trial Strategies to Put in Place

on July 6, 2018

Guest author: Molly Gibson Kirby

You know your SaaS company has a really good free trial, but are enough people converting to paying customers after the trial?

Probably not.

Typical trial conversion rates from a visitor to a customer in SaaS are 2%. This means if you have 10,000 web visitors, 200 will become free trial users and 30 of those users will become paying customers. Increasing these numbers are one of the biggest pain points for SaaS marketing departments.

In order to get your trial users to become paying customers, you need to make your free demo something these prospects can’t live without.

If you want to better your SaaS free trial, you need to change your strategy. It is possible to upgrade your conversion rate from 2% and that’s where this article comes into play.

In this article, we’re sharing 5 effective SaaS product trial strategies you can start using today to acquire more paying customers.

Two Types of SaaS Trials

For the majority of software products, the question isn’t – should I have a free trial? The question is – what sort of free trial should I have?

When creating a SaaS product trial, it’s important to note which type of trial your company is offering. Below are the two different types to decide between.

Opt-out Free

Opt-out trials are the free trials that require a credit card to begin. The free trial will turn over into a subscription at the end of the trial if the prospect does not opt-out.  If a free trial requires a credit card, the average visitor to retained customer conversion rate is around 0.6%.

This type of trial needs to have hard work behind it in order to get people to give out their credit card information before the trial even begins.

Opt-in Free

The Opt-in trials are the free trials that can be started without a credit card. Prospects will need to opt-in to a subscription by providing payment details during or after the trial is finished.

According to Totango, if a credit card is not required, the visitor to retained customer conversion rate increases to approximately 1.2%.

This type of trial needs to have hard work behind it to get people to become customers once the trial is up.

Now that you understand the types of free SaaS product trials, let’s get started on the strategies we know that help boost product trial ROI.

Make Sign Up Simple

The fewer barriers that you put in the way, the more likely it is that people will sign up and opt-in for your SaaS trial.

Consider what information your SaaS company needs for the free trial. This goes back to the two types of trial sign-ups. Are you going to do an opt-in or an opt-out free demo? This will determine if credit card information is needed in the form.

Keep the signup short, don’t ask for a separate username, simply use their email as a username.

Also, consider using social logins for account creation. This has become a popular feature for many SaaS companies and makes it easier for people to get started on their free trial without wasting time inputting all their information.

Create Engaging Content

In addition to having a free trial, creating content that relates to the SaaS demo is pivotal.

Users may have questions or concerns about the trial. Having the content that answers these questions will allow them to feel like your SaaS company is credible and authoritative. Start by creating a landing page for your free trial. Include an FAQ section on this page and a how-to guide on using the software, so people see it right when they sign up. Then make sure you have content regarding the free trial and how it can solve a customer’s problem on your blog.

Once you have these key pieces of content, get creative and begin to think of other ways to add valuable and educational content where it fits.

Show Your Value

However good your SaaS product is, the simple truth is that no-one will buy it if they don’t believe they need it. You need to show people what your product can do for them.

Articulate your value proposition on your website, landing page, content and in all marketing campaigns. Once you do that, any visitor should be able to tell what you offer, who needs it, what they will gain having it and finally, why they should choose your company.

Take Salesforce for example.

On their 30-day free trial landing page, they provide everything we just mentioned above.

Value Proposition: Sell Faster. Sell Smarter. Sell the way you want.

What’s offered: Sales Cloud

Who needs it: Canadian companies with a focus on sales managers

What they gain: lead management, opportunity management, sales forecasting and a mobile sales office.

Why choose Salesforce: Trusted by thousands of Canadian customers.

Salesforce does an incredible job at showing their value without sounding too preachy. When creating your SaaS free trial landing page, be sure to include these five sections we just mentioned.

Fix Your CTA

The effectiveness of your Call to Action (CTA) can make or break your marketing. It is the one piece that actually gets your visitors to take action – hence the name. A CTA should make visitors want your product, it should create an urgency for signing up and it should be an easy-to-use form!

Make your CTA visible on the homepage. This allows new visitors to see the CTA, hook them into thinking they need to try the free trial and have them easily sign up right then and there.

Exit Survey

On the same note as engagement, it’s imperative that you conduct an exit survey once someone is finished their free SaaS trial. If a user doesn’t move to a paid plan, it’s valuable to know why. After a week of not upgrading, an email should be sent out to ask why they cancelled.

Sometimes they leave because it wasn’t what they were looking for, but sometimes they’re not fans of a specific part of the trial/software. The latter reason usually can be fixed with needed changes or upgrades to the software.

As you may have noticed, user feedback is key when bettering your SaaS trial.

In the End

In the end, if you apply these strategies and tips, your SaaS trial should perform better. It’s possible for the conversion rate from a trial user to a paying customer to increase from 2%. It will just take time, commitment, user feedback and a handful of a/b tests.

Are you ready to better your SaaS product Trial ROI?

 

Author’s Bio 

Molly Gibson Kirby is a writer and marketing strategist at Roketto, an inbound marketing agency in British Columbia. She dives deep into the world of inbound marketing on a daily basis and writes about this fundamental shift in business on Roketto’s blog. When not writing, she’s either on her yoga mat or getting lost in a new book.

Local Branding

How to manage Your Rebranding

on June 25, 2018

Rebranding your company can be a very important but very stressful process. If you are currently going through this process, then you have probably spent the last few months in the planning stage, trying to figure out how to go about it in the best way. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the amounts of things that need to be done during the rebranding process which is why we have written this article to give you some tips on how to manage it. Keep reading if you’d like to find out more about this.

Plan Carefully

Before you get started on your rebrand, you need to plan carefully. You need to know why you are rebranding and what you are trying to change. If you don’t do your research properly then you might find that your rebrand will be a waste of time and you would have been better off sticking with the same branding. Plan accordingly and establish a clear strategy of how you want everything to happen. Don’t let yourself get carried away with rebranding before thinking through the consequences of your decision.

Manage Tasks

If you are rebranding a large company, you might find that there are a lot of things that need to be changed and a lot of things that need to be organized. For a company with a large team of people, it can be difficult to ensure that all tasks have been completed in time for the rebranding launch date. This is why you should consider making use of a workflow system like a Kanban board. So, what is a Kanban board? Well, a Kanban board uses different columns to organize tasks into things that need to be done, things that are in progress and others that have been completed. Make sure to do some more research about how a Kanban board works before getting started.

Create A Timeline

If you are going to rebrand your company, then you need to make sure that you create a timeline of how you want everything to go. You’ll need to make sure that you get all of your tasks completed on time and creating a timeline will help you to organize your tasks. Make to create a realistic timeline as if you try to rush things you might find that your rebranding does not go as well as you’d like. If you need some extra help with this, you could download some software that can take you through the steps in order to complete a good timeline that is easy to follow. Make sure to share your timeline with everyone who needs it in order to keep everyone on the same page with what needs to be done first.

Market Research

Before your rebranding gets underway, you should ensure that you are going in the right direction. If you are able to do extensive market research before the process begins, you can trust that you will have a successful project. You should also ensure that you conduct more research as the process goes on. Talk to your clients, find out if they will continue to use your services after the rebrand and find a good middle ground. Working with others on the rebrand will ensure that you are happy with your end result and you won’t have to do it all over again anytime soon. If you do your research properly then you’ll be able to manage your rebrand a lot easier.

Establish A Clear Budget

If you don’t set yourself a budget before the rebrand then you might find that you spend a lot more than you need to on the project. You need to set yourself a budget and try to stick to it where you can. This will help you to manage the whole project a lot easier and you can ensure that you will be happy with the process that you have undergone. When you are setting yourself a budget you should also remember that not everything goes to plan,and you should account for any issues that might arise in the rebranding process. Try your best to stick to the budget to ensure that you don’t end up spending more than you’ll make back over this whole process.

Final Thoughts

Deciding to rebrand your company is not a something which should be taken lightly. You need to make sure that you know exactly what you are getting yourself in to and you need to know what you need to change about your company. Don’t let yourself get carried away with the whole process, stick to your timeline and you’ll soon have your company back up and run. Organise yourself and your team effectively and your rebranding will be a success.

Local Branding

5 Business Risks You Take When You Become a Sole Proprietor

on June 22, 2018

As a sole proprietor, you take on many inherent risks alone. There is nobody else to share the responsibilities, and any results of economic rewards or challenges would be only yours. It’s not easy to run a solo enterprise, but Gov Doc Filing makes it easier by providing the forms needed to apply for an entity and offer fast, simple, and secure processing through their simplified sole proprietor, S-Corp, C-Corp, and LLC forms online. They also provide forms to apply for an Employer Identification Number if needed.

Top Risks of a Sole Proprietor

  1. Limited Earnings – There are only you and a limited number of hours in a day. You also need to eat and rest. Even with hired help, the majority of the work lands on you. Your earnings are limited on how much you are able to accomplish each day. It is common for people with financial problems not to be clear about what they are pursuing (absence of goals) and, if they have them, they are vague, unrealistic or incompatible with their budget. What is not measured is not controlled.
  2. Poor Credit – When deciding to extend credit as a sole proprietor, lenders take your personal finances into account. All your personal spending habits have an impact on your ability to gain credit. It is important that you maintain an excellent credit rating as a sole business owner. It is associated with the possibility of defaults occurring in the established time and manner, which may involve loss of principal and interest, a decrease of cash flow, generation of expenses associated with the recovery processes, etc.
  3. Financial Errors – In addition to completing work for your business, you must also carefully monitor your finances. As a sole proprietor, managing your own books can be risky. Consider hiring an accountant or make it a habit to enter your income and expenses in a daily log or spreadsheet.
  4. Being Sued – A great benefit of incorporating your business is the layer of protection it provides. It is possible to lose all your personal property if you are sued.
  5. High Tax Bills – Although most expenses related to your business can be deducted on your income taxes, your tax burden may be increased from the self-employment taxes you must pay. Your habit of saving is deficient or nonexistent, you do not pay your credit cards, pay loans, understand how normal to acquire everything on credit, as well as paying delinquencies for overdrafts and late payments.

Before wanting to make any comment about it, it is necessary to know the variable and the risk concept with which we live in a day-to-day in a financial institution. In very simple terms there is risk in any situation where we do not know exactly what will happen in the future. Elsewhere Risk is synonymous with Uncertainty, it is the difficulty of being able to predict what will happen. Risk is part of life itself, it is up to us to manage it by becoming aware of the situations that lead us to it and applying the corrective measures to avoid them, as long as it is within our reach.

Digital Branding

Warehouse Rental: A Comprehensive Market Place

on June 7, 2018

As you launch a business, announce plans for celebrations or plan an event for religious ceremonies, you’d naturally be concerned about space. Even if you’ve been in this business for some time but did not need much space during the initial period, you will find yourself in need of larger spaces once your operation expands. This is why having a convenient way to browse and choose the warehouse suited to your needs is a convenient and practical facility, especially if you also include the usage of a real estate virtual tour. Your warehouse rental doesn’t have to be permanent and you can search through a variety of warehouses with rentals varying in the length of time (usually based on hours or days) and prices.

A flourishing business involves clients, services, faculty, machines and equipment, goods, paperwork, and inventory at a much larger scale than that of individual or home based businesses. In fact, not just businesses alone but events like wedding ceremonies, graduation parties, religious ceremonies etc. all require space and what better way to accommodate yourselves than that of renting a warehouse? Warehouse rental is the ultimate deal for individuals and business owners. Warehouses entail a wide variety; manufacturing buildings, industrial premises, event venues, and multi-use spaces are all considered warehouses that serve as space properties. These spaces can be used for various purposes such as production, parties, corporate events, storage, distribution etc.

The nature of your purpose primarily determines the type of space, property or venue is best suited for you. This factor also determines your space leasing needs with regards to the rental period. For example if you are targeting an audience in a particular city like LA, you’d want to choose the most suitable venue and duration that enhance your access to them.

Space warehouse generally covers the following subsets:

– Party
– Meeting
– Workshop
– Film shoot
– Photo shoot
– Wedding
– Performance
– Storage
– Fitness Class
– Dinner

Navigation 

Warehouse rental Los Angeles is an exciting and a happening prospect. If you are one of those who aspire to showcase their exhibitions before the elegant yet rowdy and hedonist society of LA, you can use platforms that compile all available and vacant venues displaying rental charges, and date availability in just a few clicks. These platforms are designed to filter out the best options, while at the same time, allow you to enjoy features like price comparison, immediate connection with the hosts and booking facilities all in just one navigation. This is a relief in itself as you all know how frustrating traditional search engines can be. At times, it is troubling to find exactly what you’re looking without exhausting yourself completely.

With legit marketplace platforms that feature searches over a wide variety of warehouse you can look forward to planning a number of events in your life. One of the best things about such platforms is that they have prices quoted upfront for you to explore. You can imagine how exhausting it is to send emails for rental inquiries to various sites just to be ignored by some and receive negative or unsatisfying responses from the others.

Vicinity 

Another particular feature about a warehouse marketplace is that it compiles all positive venues from a particular vicinity. This means you don’t have to worry about missing out on venues that may offer you the right deal. You get to enjoy a comprehensive search result from all the available warehouses in the LA vicinity.

Digital Branding

How to Instil Your Brand With Remote Teams

on May 23, 2018

Guest post by Gemma Church 

Flexible working is a wonderful thing. Research reveals it gives staff a better work/life balance and attracts the best talent into your business – but how can you ensure your company culture is retained when your staff are scattered to the four winds?

It’s not an easy task – but it is a necessary one as 75% of the US labour force is predicted to be remote by 2020.

Company culture is also a vital component for any successful business. It will provide your staff with a great employee experience and this directly affects your bottom line – as the below graph from Great Place to Work demonstrates. It is also one of the top job benefits for employees and helps you to retain your staff.

So, how can you create and maintain a company culture when some or all of your workforce use flexible working practices?

  1. Find the right tools for your staff

Every employee is an individual and it’s important to match different preferred ways of working with the right tools to foster communication and collaboration. For example, you could use Slack for text communications, Zoom for voice and video chat and, if you have a particularly valuable employee, you could even fork out for a robot virtual presence.

Whatever you decide, make sure you offer a range of solutions and attempt to combine both your digital and social tools to encourage camaraderie. You don’t have to be in the same room to socialize and make sure you encourage your staff to communicate on a range of topics.

But make it clear to your staff that they need to be available on these communication channels when they are working. Just because they’re working remotely does not mean they can go AWOL.

  1. Organise incentivized meetups

Face-to-face meetings are a rarity (or, sometimes, an impossibility) for remote teams. However, you should try to organize at least one group meeting each year.

You could also informally base your business out of a coworking space, which provides your staff with the flexibility to use such a space as and when you need it. Lucas Seyhun, founder of centrally located co-working space in NYC The Farm, said: “Our space attracts many different flexible workers. Some remote workers use our space nearly every day because they want to escape the home office. Others will simply book a meeting room for a couple of hours on an ad hoc basis. We also have corporates that regularly book dedicated offices. That’s the beauty of coworking – it matches the flexibility of remote work perfectly.”

As Lucas mentioned, many big businesses are now embracing coworking spaces for their remote workers. It allows such companies to connect, collaborate and innovate with the startup space.

Some businesses find coworking is a better option altogether. For example, the company behind WordPress, called Automattic, recently closed its San Francisco main office because its staff were finding different places and means to work.

You could also consider creating “work buddies” where a small number of nearby staff members could meet up regularly for a chat or a more formal meeting. Again, coworking spaces provide the perfect backdrop for such meetups.

  1. Reinforce your values

You must be clear on your company’s mission and communicate that message with every single member of your staff. Do this regularly to keep your staff focused on your goals.

There are many ways you can reach out with your company’s mission. You could use your internal communication tools to demonstrate how your work impacts your customers to keep your staff on point, for example. Videos and images are also impactful ways to achieve this and will keep remote staff focused on what’s important.

You can also demonstrate your values and show your presence with local community sponsorship. This tip comes from web app automation company Zapier, whose workforce is 100% remote. The company has sponsored developer meetups, startup weekends and donated its time to non-profit organizations. And if someone on in their workforce wants to do something similar in their city, they’ll sponsor it.

“By doing this, team members feel more like there is a local presence in their hometown,” according to Zapier.

In essence, it is important to offer your remote teams a variety of ways to communicate, collaborate and encourage your corporate values. This will help you create and build your company culture, no matter where your staff are.

About the author

Gemma Church is “the freelance writer who gets tech”. She’s a specialist freelance science writer, journalist, and blogger. Her USP is that she’s worked in the science and technology sectors she writes about, bringing a unique level of understanding and experience most writers cannot offer.

Digital Branding

Wikigains Shows 10 Ways To Use Vouchers To Encourage Repeat Business and Build a Brand

on May 21, 2018

Today customers have more options online than they had ten years ago. According to WikiGains, customers’ buying pattern has changed from purchasing at their preferred physical store to visiting different online stores, comparing prices, searching for deals and discounts before adding a product to a virtual shopping cart. As a result, every online merchant, at some time or the other will be faced with the decision of offering deals, coupons, and discounts.

While offering good deals frequently can encourage repeat business and drive customer loyalty, using them haphazardly can harm your brand image. Here are 10 effective ways you can use to drive customer loyalty, conversions and acquisitions.

1. Weekly or monthly discounts

These are traditional ways to offer discounts and they are often used at the end of a week or month to meet specific business goals.

2. Cart abandonment email

A study showed that nearly 70% of online customers abandon their carts for some reason or the other. Sending a tactically-crafted abandoned cart email can encourage people to come back and complete their checkout. There are many sites like Shopify and Klaviyo that offer easy to customize abandoned cart emails.

3. Special holiday or season deals

While Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and other holiday seasons are big occasions to offer attractive discounts, you can use other opportunities throughout the year like the onset of winter, summer or autumn to share appropriate discounts and offers.

4. Prelaunch coupons

Your business may be in the prelaunch stage or you have just launched a new product. The pre-launch offers enable you to create a sense of inquisitiveness among customers regarding the product. They help in driving more traffic and turning new customers into loyal ones.

5. Minimum value to get discount

In coupons sites like Wikigains, you can find deals that require customers to spend a minimum value to get a discount. This is a good tactic to encourage customers to spend more.

6. Special discount for sharing on social media

When you start a new online store, the biggest challenge is to reach out to more people and attract customers. So, offering an incentive on every Like on Facebook or sharing on other social media platforms can be a good way to raise the visibility of your brand.

7. Refer-a-friend

The referral programs work even today because people tend to rely on a brand if it is referred by a friend or relative. Wikigains says you can use this to your advantage and encourage more referrals by offering a good discount to both – the person referring and the one being referred.

8. Welcome discount for new customers.

This is a ‘feel good offer’ that gives first-time customers a positive experience with your brand. They are likely to remember you, refer friends, and even come back again to convert into a paying customer.   

9. Create an email or subscription offer

Building an email list is extremely important for the success of online retailers. When you offer a coupon or discount in exchange for a visitor’s email address, it increases your chances of conversion. This is a win-win situation where the visitor receives a good discount and you get their email address. This can be used to create customer loyalty, build a solid relationship, or send promotional materials to them in the future.

10. Special incentives to influential people

Offering discounts to famous bloggers or celebrities that have a huge fan following can be an effective way to promote your brand. So, if a blogger writes positively about your products or a celebrity talks about your excellent service, your brand value increases tremendously.    

Wikigains.com is a voucher site that has been operating in the UK since 2012. Alex Papaconstantinou, the founder of Wikigains, and his team, have accumulated a wealth of experience in the industry as they have seen it through several ups and downs in the last few years.

Local Branding

How To Hire The Perfect Candidate

on May 2, 2018

The U.S. unemployment rate has plummeted to right around 4 percent in recent weeks. And while that’s great news for the economy, it’s definitely not ideal if you’re trying to find the perfect candidate to fill a job at your company.

Whether you’re looking for someone to serve as a receptionist and greet visitors at the entrance to your office or you’re in search of a CEO with the right personality traits to be the face of your company, you’re likely finding it more difficult than ever to fill open jobs. Obtaining the right business skills is never an easy task, but when done properly they can really make a difference. There’s plenty of quality resources online like Businessstudynotes where you can get free exam material and see where you stand.

If you need a hand, here are some tips that will help you track down the perfect candidate for any position.

Create a Detailed Job Listing

The first thing you’ll need to do when trying to fill a position at your company is to create a job listing and post it on job sites. This job listing should serve two purposes:

  1. It should clearly outline the skills you want the perfect candidate to possess
  2. It should give all candidates a rundown on what your company is all about and what you have to offer to those seeking a job

This job listing should be as detailed as it can possibly be so that you only attract the right candidates for the position.

If you want candidates to have X amount of years working in your specific industry, you should include that. If you want them to have X amount of years of college education, you should include that, too. You should lay out exactly who you want your ideal candidate to be.

Additionally, you should provide interested candidates with what you’ll be looking for from the person who earns the job. You don’t want there to be any confusion in the future about what the job entails.

Avoid Setting Up Standard Job Interviews

Is there anything more boring than sitting down with a candidate and asking them a bunch of stock questions about their education and work experience? They’ll likely provide you with the same answers over and over again. It won’t give you a chance to find your perfect candidate if you take this approach.

Instead of going the standard route, how about taking a more creative approach to the interview process? You can:

  • Provide the best candidates for a job with a tour of your office or facility and ask them questions along the way
  • Invite the best candidates to lunch or dinner and pick their brains as you enjoy a meal together
  • Take a walk around the block and see how the best candidates interact with the outside world to give you a better idea of what kind of people they really are

While you will obviously need to get down to business at some point and ask the perfect candidates questions about themselves, that doesn’t mean it has to be done in your average interview setting. It also doesn’t mean you have to ask the same old interview questions.

Get as creative as you can with your questions and really get to know candidates before you narrow down your search. You will be doing yourself and your company a favor by going all out with your interview questions.

Place Candidates Into Real-World Scenarios

In addition to asking job candidates questions about themselves and their work experience, you should also try and put them into real-world scenarios and ask them how they would react to certain situations if they were hired by your company.

Role-playing is a great way to find out more about a person who has applied for a job. For example, if you’re trying to hire someone to be a magazine editor, you might ask them something like:

  • “You just got a big scoop from an anonymous source. The source told you that a famous celebrity is pregnant and ready to give birth any day. One of your coworkers tells you that you should write a story about it immediately and publish it on the magazine’s website. What do you do?”

The candidate won’t actually have to sit down at the computer and decide whether or not to write the story. But their answer will tell you a lot about what you can expect from them if and when they start working for you.

Give Candidates Optional Homework

There are more and more companies who are keeping the interview process open long after the actual interview ends.

If you really want to find out what a candidate is made of, send them home with a homework assignment and ask them to send it to you when they’re finished.

This will show how committed candidates are to a job, as many people will opt against doing additional work after an interview. These are the kinds of people you probably don’t want working at your company in the first place.

Ask Colleagues for Second Opinions

Once you have done all of your interviews and sifted through the choices you have, it will be time to narrow down your search.

Usually, there will be a handful of people who will stand out to you. Whether you liked the answers they gave during their interviews or they blew you away with the response they gave to your hypothetical workplace scenario, you’ll have a few favorites.

At that point, you should ask your colleagues to share their thoughts on specific candidates. You shouldn’t be trying to find the perfect candidate alone. Instead, you should trust those who work with you to lend a hand.

Sit down with a few colleagues and tell them about the best candidates. You might even want to bring those candidates in for second and third interviews with others in your company.

Your colleagues will be able to pick up on certain things you might have missed. It will be well worth your time to include them in the decision when searching for a perfect candidate.

Make Diversity a Priority in Your Hiring Practices

While you shouldn’t hire candidates based solely on gender or race, you do want to keep diversity in mind when trying to find the perfect candidate. You want to have people of all backgrounds working in your office or facility to make it the best it can be.

Diversity should be something you strive for, and it should also be something that is discussed at the highest levels of your company.

Always Check References Provided by Candidates

All employers ask candidates to include references when applying for a job. The majority of them then follow through and use those references during the hiring process.

But it’s kind of surprising to hear that not all employers check references. References can be an invaluable resource for companies hiring new employees.

Before you offer a job to someone who seems like the perfect candidate, you should call at least one of their professional references and ask questions like:

  • What was it like working with this person?
  • What did they bring to the job when you worked with them?
  • Did you have a pleasant experience working alongside them?
  • How did they improve your company’s culture?
  • Would you recommend them to another company looking to hire the perfect candidate for a job?

The answers you get when checking a person’s references will tell you just about everything you need to know about them. If the references hesitate to give a person a glowing review, you probably have a cause for concern.

Trust Your Gut Before Offering Someone a Job

There are going to be times when you interview someone and they look and sound like the perfect candidate.

They have the right education to do the job you need them to do. They have plenty of experience in your field. They might even have great references from their past employers.

Yet, for whatever reason, you still have this nagging suspicion that they just wouldn’t be the right person for the job.

While you obviously don’t want to overthink your decision and spend weeks and weeks trying to make it, you also don’t want to ignore any gut feelings you might have.

If you think someone might not be right for a position at the end of the interview process, try your best to confirm your suspicions. Go back and interview another reference or use social media to see what you can find about a candidate.

In 2018, there are so many ways that you can do extensive background checks on people to see if they’re definitely the best fit for a job. Use everything you have at your disposal to decide if you’ve found the perfect candidate. While not every company can follow these tips, many of them can be adopted. The sooner you implement these interview tips into your hiring process, the sooner you’ll be able to make sure you’re making the right hire for years to come.

And if you’re not convinced that’s the case, then keep looking until you find someone who is perfect for the position.

About the author:

Friddy Hoegener is the Co-Founder of SCOPE Recruiting a boutique Supply Chain, Operations, and Executive recruiting firm. Friddy holds a Master of Social Entrepreneurship from HULT international business school in London, UK. He started his career in Supply Chain Management with ABB Germany before moving to the United States where he worked for Thomas and Betts as well as Kohler where he left a successful career in the supply chain to join the recruiting world. Today, Friddy and his team utilize their networks and knowledge to match some of the best supply chain and operations talent with exciting opportunities from Start-ups to Fortune500 companies.

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