4 Secrets to attract prospects to your brand online

For any budding entrepreneur, it is natural to feel overwhelmed about following the right marketing strategy to launch and highlight his company in the market.

Also considering the initial financial crunch, it is always better to take your business online and follow an inbound methodology.

Inbound marketing is the most effective way to promote your business online through quality content and pull the right audience towards your company. Of course, the content needs to be in tune with the interests of the target audience.

With the inbound methodology, earning the attention of your customers becomes easy.

To start off, the first step in the Inbound Marketing Technique is to Attract the relevant people and convert them into qualified prospects and ultimately into happy customers. 🙂

And with the availability of various online tools, this becomes an easy job!

Blogging:

“Content is always the king”- educating your visitors about your product or service is the best way to enhance their loyalty towards your brand. And if you have a quirky style of writing, you can keep your visitors glued and convert them into your subscribers!!! A total win-win!!

SEO:

Google being the major vendor to showcase your website and of course your company, your SEO strategy needs to be really strong.

And by this I mean REALLY STRONG! 😉

Pick the right set of relevant keywords, study your competitors thoroughly, create highly optimized pages, build highly searchable content and build links which are easily definable for your buyers. And while doing all this, DO NOT forget to keep your audience in your mind and try to answer their queries through your content in the best possible manner so that you appear prominently whenever they search for something they have questions about.

Website:

Start by developing a multi-page site. The content of the multi-page site needs to be well structured making it easy for visitors to understand. The UI of the website (home banner) should strike the emotional chord of the prospects – through catchy taglines or image or a video!

Add an online Live Chat widget such as Olark to the website. People who are more comfortable to chat and who are at their work desk but need quick answers to their questions without having a call will benefit immensely via the Live Chat Widget.

Another way of grabbing the eye balls will be to have a virtual number on the website. Virtual number helps in call tracking and recording which can be later referred to improve the product quality and customer experience.

And yes if you have more money to spend add a fancy animated video which explains the product very effectively.

Do not forget to make your website browser and device compatible so that a seamless experience is delivered to people who are willing to notice you.

In short, the website should be the welcoming door any visitor would like to enter after he gets familiarized with the brand, product or service through the content.

Social Media:

With the world going abuzz about the major social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, I bet you cannot ignore them. If the website is the face of your company, I am sure Facebook can be termed as the eyes of your company – the eyes with a sparkling vision!

Social Media lets you put important and valuable content related to your brand and helps engage with your audience.

Facebook for example provides the ocean of opportunities to showcase your brand, conduct live demos, events online, share important notifications across, helps you build an online store within the page and sells your product through beautiful, easy to understand adverts to your qualified prospects – a one stop solution for all your marketing needs.

To build a quality audience and have a good level of engagement, following a content calendar is always a best practice. The content calendar should humanize your brand by striking the emotional chord with the prospects. Your page should be able to entertain, provide vital information, engage and promote the brand and product.

To summarize, the real secret to attract the target audience is to publish the interesting content through various available tools.

The key is to make your content address the needs of your buyers and mind you if there is no “need” to address, you have to create one! 🙂

Wondering about how to create the need? Stay tuned for my next blog!

Meanwhile do drop your comments below….

(Image Courtesy: Google)

Is your organization social enough?

As I interact more and more with my clientele, I do get a feeling that entrepreneurs and brands are still skeptical about choosing Social Media as one of the marketing channel. Even if they do, they lack consistency and give up easily without exploring the power and reach of social media.

When a brand decides to go for social media, it faces multiple challenges. Right from the basic establishment on the social networking platform to lead generation, with an ever-evolving field like social media, keeping one abreast and churning out maximum ROI(Return of Investment) is a herculean task!

To begin with, at the inception point, the brands should create a unified approach. This strategy should include inputs from customer services, PR, marketing and other relevant departments of their business.

While devising the social media strategy, companies always face questions which seem easy but are rather difficult from the business point of view.

Few of them are listed below –

What different sites should a company target for their social media efforts?

It depends on the following factors –

The business segment of the company, whether it is B2B, B2C oriented or both?
Goals, visions and objectives a company stands for
Culture, location also plays a vital role

If B2B – the company ought to rely extensively on LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter. They should also pay attention to lesser known sites like Quora and Toolbox as they have few but targeted audiences.

If B2C – the company should place Facebook as its primary priority, followed by Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube etc. B2C business segment has a lot of options to choose as it is not limited to any major group of people and can avail lot of opportunities, various generic social media channels can offer.

If both – the company has to thoughtfully choose the social media channels and divide the work in proper steps with a time frame for each.

The steps can be –

Initial Buzz and Awareness
Branding Campaigns
Reach and Penetration
Nurturing the reach
Sales Based Campaigns etc.

The efforts should be well directed and focused towards building a robust brand presence online.

What are the biggest mistakes that companies make when it comes to social media?

With increased Internet usage, more and more companies are indulging in online marketing and promotional activities. But very few follow the correct path

Little Understanding of Social Media

Social media being dynamic and ever-evolving, very few companies actually take efforts to make the best possible use of the medium. Social media is often regarded as a place of leisure. Brands are very casual in their attitude towards social media and overlook it, thus ignoring the golden opportunity where the crowd is already buzzing! It is more about building your presence where your target audience is!

Vague Objectives

Often start-ups and small companies are unclear about the objectives which lead to inappropriate selection of social channels, unplanned efforts, investment and content.

Lack of knowledge about ROI

Investing time, efforts, man-power and money without proper knowledge about the actual ways of measurement and ROI (Return of Investment) is another big blunder companies do.

Being social and ignorant don’t go hand-in-hand

To maintain the loyalty of the customers, the brand should be prompt and polite in their response to the queries and concerns. One negative remark may cause havoc if gone viral and thus tarnish the brand’s image. Keeping in mind the “open to all” communication aspect of social media, the brand should ensure that they have swift customer care service.

What is the best social media software?

Judging the software can be entirely done based on one’s needs and requirements. A lot many options are available in the market from basic free tools to advance enterprise solutions.

With advancements in technology, every social networking site upgrades itself to a new level every day! Moreover new SNS with innovative concepts are jumping into the market. To gel up with the existing and incorporate the new ones, the social media tools need to improvise regularly. It needs to meet different requirements such as Social media postings scheduling, feeds aggregation based on keywords, CRM features, Customer Support, Conversation tracking, Sentiments analysis etc.

According to me, Hootsuite is one of the best social media software. It is a dashboard which helps you manage multiple Social Media Accounts of Multiple clients in a single interface. The ease in usage, user friendly interface, advance scheduling system, analytics, insights, reports, streaming is a lot a software offers.

Hootsuite is the only software which is being improved day by day. New social media channels are added and management work of all the networks is simplified in very few steps.

What questions should an entrepreneur ask before hiring someone to manage their social media for them?

Before asking the questions, it is the sole responsibility of the entrepreneur to explain his business segment, target demography, future plans, objective of the Social Media Marketing campaign, and expectations, to the Social Media Team.

Then the questions can be:

Which are the Social Media Channels that can be leveraged for my business segment?
How much amount of the efforts required meeting the goal?
Does the Social Media Team follow White Hat Techniques and support genuine and honest work efforts?
What is the cost estimation and the budget required? Can I also have the cost breakups?
How is the work process followed?
Who will be my point of communication for regular updates about the work? Will that person be available as per my time zones?
How frequently can I review the performance? Weekly? Monthly?

How does an entrepreneur know if he is getting a good service from his social media providers?

An Entrepreneur should have major focus on the ROI – Return of the Investment. ROI should not be misunderstood as ‘Profit’. ROI is actually the money and the efforts you put in the Social Media activities and the return you get in terms of Likes, Shares, Buzz, Branding, Traffic, Passive Sales etc based on the net profit of the business. He must ask for the ‘measurement matrix’ to the service providers, to understand on what grounds he can measure the success.

Also, an Entrepreneur should also give priority to the quality of work and service. The Social Media Providers should be independent enough to perform their work with perfection. Frequent performance reviews should be done after giving ample time to the provider to start and stabilize the work.

Basic measurement is done on two broad parameters as

Qualitative Measurement: in terms of Likes, Shares, Buzz, Branding (artwork, tone of content) and user engagement.
Quantitative: Number of fans/followers, increase in traffic/visitors etc.

What tips / advice can you give relating to social media campaigns?

Tips –

Be humans and remember there are humans at other end too.

A social media campaign needs to be User-oriented. The users must find the content valuable, only then they will perform some action on the page.

Know your desired actions

Prompting the users to take some action by using different Call to Action elements. It can be asking them to ‘tag friends’, share, fill the form and register for events etc.

Try to initiate conversation

The variety in content with a great visual appeal helps in getting the attention. Write stories, fun, humor, informative posts etc to initial conversation. Knowledge sharing is the great way to attract more users.

Asking questions, initiating debates and discussions is also a trendy way to increase user engagement.

Be Consistent

Consistent efforts are required to keep the page or accounts active and the engagement rate constant. Inconsistency may lead to low performance of the page.

Learn to Map the trends and keep talking about them

People will agree/disagree and will comment about their opinions. Its an easy way to build engagement.

Re-share the customer feedback, testimonials or brand related content shared by the customers. Customers love being treated as friends and they will respond in a very positive way.

Making the users take actions on the page or the accounts the way you want them to take is a knack. Triggering the right emotion in the minds of the audience should be done to sync the thinking process of the audience with the brand. If this happens, the customers will not limit themselves in showing their love for the brand.

So people, are you still apprehensive about social media?? I hope not….

Please feel free to drop your questions and opinions in the comments below.

Image Courtesy: Google

How to choose the right mix of social channels for your business?

With multiple social media platforms available, its obvious for one to get overwhelmed before choosing the right ones for his business.

Selecting the right mix of social media platforms is like building the foundation on which you plan to construct your brand image.

Once the platforms are chosen, devising the strategy becomes easy.

And for that, one must have a deep understanding about the features and offerings of major social media channels available in the online market.

To make it easy, the social media platforms can be categorized in following ways –

1. Must-haves for any business

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ fall in this category. As the name suggests, these three channels are essential for all and every type of business.

Facebook vanity URL has gained the equal status to that of the Website. Twitter is the new name for Customer Service Center. And after conquering the SEO kingdom, Google + has emerged as the new biggie.

You cannot afford to avoid any one of these.

2. Visual Marketing

Restaurants, Fashion, Beauty, Health and Fitness, Education, Clothing, Real Estate…phew!!!!!!

Visual appeal is the most important thread for all these segments to flourish on social media.

A single image speak thousand words and a video can provide the feel of a new world more stunning than simple plain text. Customers crave more for visual content and hence social media channels such as Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube are more popular.

Pinterest offers the facility of open online catalog where all the brand products can be categorically listed with their price tags. Instagram helps the customer understand WHATS TRENDING and pushes the customer to be a part of the trend through its glamour.

Youtube is on the other hand an Online TV where customers can be given the virtual feel of the brand through its ads and other informative videos.

3. Content Marketing

Every business has multiple facets. These facets need to be well projected and explained to the target audience. Here content marketing comes into the picture.

Sites like Tumblr, WordPress, Newsletters form the part of content marketing.

Content is always the king and the basic driving force in attracting the audience. Relevant content will help you gain trust and loyalty from your customers.

Sharing the information about the brand, its story, formative features, elements, the vision and achievements, current offerings, sales and discounts can be done through blogs.

Along with that, publishing blogs about How To’s, Brand’s take on the new relevant updates in the market, Educating the customers about things in which the brand is expert in also help to make your readers the regular visitors.

Newsletters are more about “Customer Relationship Nurturing”. They keep your customers connected with your brand and pursue them to participate in brand activities and developments.

Here the key is to offer maximum value to the users and keeping the promotional aspect moderate.

4. Location-based Marketing

Location based promotions is the new powerful method of attracting your audience. Business segments who have their retail outlets at different locations can make the best use of this method.

Sites like Foursquare, Yelp and Google Places are strong players in this category. Restaurants, Salons and Spas can explore these social media channels.

Features like Location-based recommendations, Reviews and Ratings, Check-ins, location based listings, Short-tips and messages are something to look out for.

5. Professional Marketing

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram are all Casual form of marketing. Here the tone, language and projection of the brand is friendly and casual.

But few businesses also need a professional tone, look and feel.

LinkedIn being the pro, followed by Google+ are the two major platforms in this category.

As the business builds up via professional networking, LinkedIn makes it easy for the companies and organizations to collaborate, build strong ties with each other and do business.

Various features such as Groups, Discussions, Showcase Page and Inmails help companies to project a professional image and network with like-minded individuals and businesses.

Recruitment and Staffing Agencies, Software and Mobile App Developments, Real Estate are few major business segment that fall in this category.

The five categories listed above do not cover the entire social media world but they do help the newcomer to categorically place his business and choose the channels.

With constant and continual upgrades and advancements, new social media platforms with different concepts and ideas will emerge, unique features, facilities will be integrated in the existing ones….Its easy for a new entrepreneur to get engulfed by the waves but the key is to ride the tide….

If one is accustomed to the basic definitions of the above five categories, I am sure selection of the right mix of social channels will be just a cake walk. 🙂

Social Media, mightier than a pen!

Do you have a query which you would like the concerned brand to answer? Are you thinking about writing them (with a pen and paper) on their postal address?

Somebody like me or for that matter anyone who understands the power of social media will be judgemental about you and will term you as “a stranger in a Strange Land” 😛

With the world being abuzz about the digital media, the term “Write to us” is so passé. Gone are the days where your letter was ignored by the brand.

Thanks to social media, the reins are in the hands of the common people like you and me…..your voice won’t get unheard! Let’s see how –

Just a few days back my cell phone service provider Vodafone India barred my outgoing service without any notice. After calling their customer service departments from my husband’s cell incessantly, I could finally connect to one executive who unfortunately kept transferring my call to multiple departments. With no output in hand, I decided to take the plunge.

I tweeted my issue mentioning the service provider and within no time, I got a call from customer care executive that restored my services within 2 days!

That’s the power of social media……..!!!!

With the emerging concept of Social Care – introduction of SOCIAL media as another medium for customer CARE, brands using the emergent platforms like Facebook and Twitter are making an effort to connect with each and every consumer.

With more and more brands building their presence on the HOT social media channels, they are bound to address the questions, reported satisfactions or complain from their consumers. Social media being open and vocal, they cannot afford to miss a single beat.

By widening the mediums for correspondence, brands – whether big or small, B2B or B2C are facing the real challenge to stay at par the consumer expectations which keep increasing with time.

Due to the fierce market competition, every brand tries to provide a seamless experience to its consumers leading to the overall rise of consumer expectations.

Strategies are implemented that communicate brand values and ideals. Brands are trying to listen to the consumer expectations, needs and requirements.

By creating a clear, comprehensive identity, brands try to ally the consumers with their values and ideals, thus trying to achieve the epitome of marketing!

Many of the leading companies such as Mahindra are launching campaigns (Mahindra Rise) seeking for new and innovative ideas from consumers to invent new products, services and possibilities. Others are coming up with solutions for problem areas. Besides these, brands always come up with free coupons, gift vouchers, discounts and offers to keep their consumers glued.

And if one fails, consumers are bound to bring it down with the help of vested power of social media.

Conclusion – more power to the consumers!

With the reins in the hand, I keep wondering are the consumers putting enough efforts to explore the power and make good for themselves as well as the society??

Are you speaking up for yourself? Are you loud enough to be heard among all the noise?

If not, add this into your To-do list for this New Years. Use your powers for good through social media and let your brand know what you feel.

And yes do share the experience with me….

Newsletters – A doorway to the treasure of knowledge.

Pregnancy is tough! Clogging of full spectrum of emotions – doubts, fear, and anxiety! It’s a hell of a ride. But all reduces to nothing when you hold your baby in your arms. That moment surpasses everything you went through.

Being a social media professional and an expecting mother, I always kept looking for answers to many stupid but mind wrecking questions online. And as soon as your family finds out they are having a baby, suggestions and advises start POURING and POUNDING in, making you confused, nervous and TIRED…yeah that’s the word!!!

Tips, precautions, milestones, symptoms, immunizations, medical tests, physical and mental well-being, maternity leave, birth plan…. phew!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Giving birth is hard!

I was saved and all the credit goes to BabyCenter LLC!

BabyCenter is an excellent example of a targeted pro-active Newsletter program. These newsletters are a fantastic resource that emails you at each and every milestone to help reassure, give you a ‘heads up’ on what is to come, and to answer your questions. From what your baby looks like at Week 16, to what to expect when he/she starts crawling, it is very informative and is a great example of a good, interactive newsletter.

Every user who subscribes, receives a tailor-made Newsletter as per her due date schedule and I feel that it’s an incredible way to keep an expecting mother on her toes and brace her up for a full throttle ride called Pregnancy!

Newsletter serves the most important tasks for a business which is to maintain contact with its customers. It is the most active way to target the customer based on his last visit/purchase or any inquiry done through the website, by directly landing up in his mailbox.

BabyCenter here grabbed the emotional thread of a pregnant woman who is always curious, confused and doubtful about her actions while carrying a baby. By sending a weekly newsletter giving a sneak peek of the developing baby inside her womb and answering all her stupid questions religiously, without asking, BabyCenter does create an everlasting bond with the mother.

With my constant rendezvous with BabyCenter Newsletters, I tried to figure out their secret to success –

1. To increase awareness – providing users with enough information and make them aware about your brand and its offerings. The information should be unique, exclusive and well presented compelling the user to navigate to your website to KNOW MORE!

2. Position your brand – Newsletter must create the best first impression about your business. Sharing the knowledge with the customers is the best way to position your brand as an expert in your domain.

3. Educating the prospects – Every expecting mother passes through different phases during her pregnancy. It’s bliss to find out that you have the same symptoms in your 25th week as listed in the newsletter. A newsletter which provides customers with valuable information, assists them in making better decisions, demonstrates your expertise and guides the customers to navigate to the right page of the website to get more information is appreciated more.

4. Increase traffic to your website – Newsletter can drive traffic to your website or blog. Thus it provides another in-direct way of generating traffic to your website.

5. Increase social media page visits – By placing the easy-to-notice social media links in your newsletter, traffic to your social media pages can be also increased.

6. To get more sales from a current client – A newsletter can be also utilized to let your existing clients know about your other services and guide them how they can benefit from those services, without being to “pushy”.

7. To generate more referrals through word-of-mouth – If your customers are happy with your newsletters, they will definitely forward it to few of their friends and relatives. Also the ancient marketing tool “word-of-mouth” will definitely play its part in your success story.

8. Cut the sales process short – People who respond to the Newsletters are more informed and by far already convinced enough to buy your products/services in contrast to the people who contact you via advertising.

9. Using it as a Networking tool – Newsletter can be also utilized to conduct a survey, to request a review or permission to add them to your mailing list. Thus it can help nurture your leads.

10. Advertisements – Brands whose products are relevant to your content can be also showcased in your Newsletters. Thus creating another channel for revenue generation.

Being an avid reader and a loyal BabyCenter fan, I was in love with their newsletters.

Managing mass email campaigns with high converting rate is hard. Continue reading →

Selfies: An exercise to enhance your personal brand

Selfie – A new phenomena, a trend sweeping the world. Popular across all ages.

The Wikipedia defines it as a type of self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held camera. It is often linked with the social networking website such as Instagram.

This six letter word is a rage now. Zillions of selfies are uploaded, shared and circulated on social media channels every passing day. Being a social media professional, I come across this so much that it makes me wonder the reason for its popularity. What’s making it so infectious?

The answer was – love for self expression!!

Social media has provided people yet another way of expressing their moods, behaviors, small joys and sorrows in a visually appealing way. Instead of uploading a textual status update, millennial can simply upload a photograph depicting their current mood, add #selfie tag and share it on their social networking sites. A simple and more outgoing way to communicate!

The global appeal of selfies has come from its ease of creation and sharing. Also the kind of control they provide an individual over how he/she can self-photograph and present themselves. It is a means of communicating and connecting with others.

As I was researching for this blog, I also came across few self-explanatory tweets about selfies. Few of them are as follows –

Secret Formula: more #selfies, more #followers. PS: for girls only! 🙂

#Selfies are well and truly in

Low self esteem and #selfies is a dangerous combo.

So apparently #selfies are also a trend with the royal families

Speaking about the royals, Oscars this year was more known for Ellen’s selfie rather than the Red Carpet entries and awards buzz. This image spoke a lot about how one can easily enhance one’s personal brand and I feel Ellen made the best possible use of selfies for her brand.

Ellen’s Selfie

Personal branding is all about expressing your brand while maintaining the ‘person’ behind it.

Expressing your work, routine, moods, talent and personality through selfies will personify your brand and help the audience to relate to you in a more friendly and humane way. Instead of a formal photo with a professional photographer and sophisticated lenses, Selfies are raw! They give the audience a reality check making them trust you and be loyal to your brand. Without the professional angle, selfies portray authenticity and humbleness with a “within reach” feel about the brand thus adding more credibility and respect in the minds of audience towards the brand.

Another reason for the immense popularity of Ellen’s selfie is she portrayed to the whole world that her fame and the celebrity status doesn’t make her any less human. Just like any other individual even she is carried away by the selfie storm and loves taking selfies with her friends.

Exploring and analyzing oneself is what people love to do both on Social Media and in real life. Experiments add variety and newness to the life. The thought that you can create an online profile and project the real you is exciting. Selfies provide you the ability to do that.

Having a personal image, a brand online is the need of the hour. Leveraging or diminishing its potential lies in our hands.

Making the best use of selfies, by expressing your real self (lies, faking and frauds are so passé) one can definitely manage as well as enhance his or her own brand according to one’s reputation.

So tell me, are your Selfie crazy? How do you use those selfies to enhance your personal image? Do let me know your views in the comments below.

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What different sites should a company target for their social media efforts?

What are the biggest mistakes that companies make when it comes to social media?

What is the best social media software?

What questions should an entrepreneur ask before hiring someone to manage their social media for them?

How does an entrepreneur know if he is getting a good service from his social media providers?

What tips / advice can you give relating to social media campaigns?

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