3 Reasons why knowing your audience is important

With the people they serve, every company begins and ends. It’s easy to forget, but you need to keep asking yourself, “Why are you in business to market effectively The response is not “making a lot of money.” Honestly, that’s not why you’re in business. One of the first things I learned from my teacher was that because they solve a problem, people are in company. This is not understood by most men.

Your company starts with the issue you must solve, and your target is the people with this problem. Therefore, being crystal clear about who your target is will give you more success in order to be effective in business and marketing. I’m going to give you three examples over the next few paragraphs why it’s important to know your audience looking through Feedonomics ‘ eyes, a business I’ve been working with before.

Reason #1

You’re going to create better products and services As described above, the customer has an issue you’re trying to solve. You will be able to create good products and services by understanding your audience.

For example, Feedonomics was initially a SEM agency called Internet Marketing Dot Net, and we had a secret weapon we developed a data feed platform that allowed us to replace Merchant Advantage by pushing out Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, and other shopping feeds, thereby increasing our cost of delivering a vital eCommerce merchant service. So we’ve solved our own problem. But not only have we solved our problem; we have been able to improve it. It was evident in a few months that there was interest outside our little company alone.

Feedonomics is split into its own business and now supports with its network some of the world’s largest companies. Some companies accept evolution while others do not; those who do not face the cost of failure, loss, and opportunity. Feedonomics was better able to solve the problem than anyone else because they knew their audience us, when we were the company better than anybody else in their room, like GoDataFeed, Channel Advisor, Data Feed Watch, and many more.

Reason #2

It will be much easier to find customers because Feedonomics understood their market that they could also meet their target audience in order to get traffic, and ultimately better customers. We solved problems that could have an agency and many ecommerce vendors, so they had to go to where experts from agencies and ecommerce marketers were to find and interact with them.

Where is that going to be?

There weren’t many places to be frank, but we’ve tried a number of different strategies, including reddit posting on some SEM and PPC-related subreddits. Finding them on LinkedIn was the one that performed the best. We would locate organizations using LinkedIn, classify decision-makers, and reach out to them. This is what every business has to do when you sell water, you have to find people who are thirsty and get them to get your watering hole.

Reason #3:

Better marketing resources will be developed.

I helped create the first website of Feedonomics along with some of their marketing materials, and let me tell you that since those first few months they have improved significantly. It was a struggle in the early days that they really wanted this; departments thought it was a cool tool, but eventually it wasn’t necessary. The first marketing message for Feedonomics was, “Shopping Feeds Made Simple: Unlimited SKUs Unlimited Feeds As often as you want,” because that was what their consumers thought was important to them.

When they continued to develop to better understand their audience, they were able to develop content that would better resonate with their customers and increase the number of companies using their service. Now their message goes, “The #1 Shopping Feed Platform: Optimized Consumer Feeds Work Better.” Besides creating better advertising, their website has dramatically improved with better navigational links and content that really matters to consumers.

For example, most organizations don’t even know they have a problem with data feed, so Feedonomics laid out the problem on their home page very clearly. It helps tourists to understand, they have a problem, and there is a solution to help them do business better. If they hadn’t produced a much stronger message that resonates well with their audience, their audience might have continued to think they didn’t even need it.

Conclusion:

One of the most underrated aspects of internet marketing is getting to know your audience. I see a lot of poor product development and digital marketing resources have been wasted. When businesses consider their target and stick to the dilemma they set out to solve, this can be avoided. Organizations that do this are going to make better products and services, recognize and connect with their customers, and perform better.

If you haven’t created people buyer for your target audience, go to our post about creating people buyer!

How to create natural & organic branded content

As the digital world progresses, customers are increasingly capable of tuning marketing campaigns with stock images and unnecessarily advertising messages. Certainly, authentic content is one of the most effective marketing techniques that can be used by brands to connect emotionally and trustworthily with customers. If done correctly, influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways for brands to enter the public.

Social-media-on-computer According to a recent study, 33% of users think that marketing material is misleading and fraudulent, a feeling that is steadily increasing. The survey found that marketing is not trusted by 84 percent of millennials. Organizations must be directed towards fresh approaches to content marketing.

So what’s quality content?

Content marketing is a powerful tool used by companies to communicate with potential consumers. The tone of the content must be sincere and clear in order for a campaign to be successful. This lays the groundwork for a positive and engaging relationship with customers. As the online advertising competition increases, marketers often forget that there may be misleading advertising strategies. Every day, with online customers becoming savvier, they are becoming more prone to canned messages and tend to avoid “ad-like content” altogether. For the best results, businesses must emphasize authenticity.

What is influencer strategy?

Influencer marketing is when brands partner on social media with “influencers,” or influential people with a following that can include traditional social media stars as well. Brands are working with these influencers to create marketing campaigns with branded custom content. The influencer will promote the brand on their website in return for their fee or other reward. While most influencer marketing includes larger stars, many marketers have also found success with smaller influencers, also known as “microinfluencers,” which can be a more accessible way to test audiences and gain feedback before moving on to larger influencer campaigns.

Points for creating quality content:

USP : Find and draw on your special point of sale (USP). It’s going to be the gap that distinguishes you from the competition.

Uniformity : Stick to it once you focus on a campaign theme. Keeping consistent is key to avoid misleading your target audience and deciding the identity of your product.

KYC : Know your client (KYC) and where they’re interested. Try to stick to a particular target market and become an expert to get them to engage with your product.

Hold the brand real?there’s no better way to build an authentic campaign than by being refreshingly different. Don’t mix in, just hold out! A less traveled path could just help you drive the growth of your brand and separate you from the competition.

Act Natural : Branded content should be more than just a brand-related influencer. It should flow with its content and be presented to that individual in a manner that is instinctive.

Constructively take feedback?pay close attention to the sort of comments that the advertised material gets. Is that positive? Do they ask questions? Are they tagging for a look at their friends?

Advantages:

To ensure that the content of the influencer is straightforward and relevant, you must first understand the advantages it will bring to your campaign and why it is important. Regardless of the types of marketing channels you’re using, if your content is consistent across the board, and if you’re using some of the tips mentioned above, you’re much more likely to turn a viewer into a customer.

Engagement builds : Using real content can allow you to focus more reliably on your demographic target. You will maximize their desire and willingness to engage if the material speaks directly to your focus group.

Sales : By concentrating on educating customers, you can explain how your products or services are good, growing conversions.

Memorability : This distinguishes itself from the run of the mill marketing campaigns that customers disregard because they don’t trust them when advertised content is not fake but real.

Reliability improves : As long as buyers know that the product adds value, they will be inspired to stick with your brand and not jump ship. Including only organic data in your content marketing strategy will exponentially increase the brand’s reputation, as will transparent marketing ploys of power.

Loyalty ? As long as the content’s inherent validity does not shift, consumers will become more focused on your product or service, resulting in brand loyalty. Moreover, with today’s fast-paced social media climate, consumers who believe in your mission will most likely bring more traffic through user-generated content and rave reviews to your digital doorway.

How to authenticate branded content

Personalized content : Ensure that your content marketing strategy contains screenshots, your industry experience, or your own research. It leads to building authority. And may even be one of the most effective marketing influencer tips to be followed by your influencer. This establishes the collaboration’s validity.

Employ factual information : There is no better way to prove your brand’s credibility than by receiving positive feedback, publishing testimonials from consumers, and sharing content created by users. Including credible statistics and facts from reputable sources, including influencers, branded content is more authentic. When it is backed up by realistic and empirical evidence, material is strong, which can not be contested.

Emphasis on improving interaction : Complementary to each other are social media marketing, content marketing and influencer marketing. You need to develop awareness across all marketing channels to maximize the value of your brand in order to drive a successful campaign. Another of the most powerful influencer marketing tips is for your partner to post user-generated content on their social platform, helping to dramatically speed up the level of interaction of your target demographic.

Figure out what your consumers need : Do your homework by performing a market study and keyword research prior to creating branded content that will help you uncover issues facing your customers and the topics they are searching for. Once you have the relevant information, your content can then address the problems with detailed approaches that will help create interest and educate your user base, spiking your conversion rates further.

Reveal the relationship properly : Brand partners are required to disclose their relationships with a brand in several countries around the world. Such standards are especially important when it comes to children-oriented product advertising. While this can sometimes be a gray area on what exactly is a “right” disclosure, you can visit the site of the FTC to learn more and keep up to date with the new guidelines.

Subscribers vs Engagement : Interestingly, what marketers may not know is that while an influencer may have a large number of followers, the amount of people actually engaging with their content is small. This may be an indication that the influencer has no desire to communicate with their audience, their content is no longer as entertaining as it used to be, or even buying followers! Be sure to consider how many contributions (likes, reviews, views, etc.) are getting on average to really see how much they have achieved. Look at previous branded content they’ve done to see how they’ve worked to take it one step further.

When customers are approached frankly and relatably, they are more likely to establish a connection with your brand. To be efficient in influencer marketing, you need to do your due diligence and use effective strategies. Authentic, organic content can bridge the growing gap between how marketing campaigns are perceived by customers today and, in effect, sales increase.

The 7 issues that keep you from the success of digital media

You don’t think you can afford that.

There is still a misunderstanding that digital media campaigns are actually massive undertakings that require large marketing budgets and creative development for many hours. The fact is that with very small advertising budgets, most places can run campaigns, and the original content can be generated quickly and efficiently. The technology growth allows small companies, non-profits, and community organizations to dip their toes into the waters of digital media through limited test promotions and lobbying for special events.

You do not think you can measure it.

“What do I know about my campaign taking customers to my store?”For example, when discussing digital media strategies with clients running a brick and mortar retail business, this is a common question we hear. It’s hard to shake the feeling that our industry is dumping ads online and hoping for real-world results. The fact is that we can monitor any activity a person performs throughout the purchasing lifecycle with today’s technology. Current operations must monitor (and optimize) any interaction to show that digital media promotions drive real-world success, from first seeing / hearing an ad, to a subsequent visit to the website, to a final in-store purchase delivery.

Targeted poor media.

Too many digital media campaigns waste views and dollars simply by pumping out commercials with little or no consideration about how important the people they get are to the company. Clearly it is never going to work to show ads to someone who is not the target of your product or service, but what is sometimes ignored is the need to reach a relevant person at the right time. It is just as important to know what your audience is thinking and what they need to hear at that time to move them down the path of conversion as to know who they are. Digital media campaigns are doomed to fail without smart thinking about who you want to meet and when you want to reach them.

Creative, not relevant to the target audience.

Showing ads to people that don’t relate to who they are or what they think is a good way to fail a campaign at that moment. You’re not going to try to sell beach hiking boots, are you? The goal is to take in all available data on consumer demographics, lifestyle, and attitude, explicitly to adapt the creative you’re showing someone to who they are and what they’re thinking / feeling at that moment.

Showing the same creatives throughout all devices.

Two issues here: if you show people the same ad on each phone, they will almost certainly get burned out and maybe establish a negative association with your product.

Showing the same ad across all devices of a person means the plan doesn’t take into account when someone is on a phone.

The software of today is capable of targeting people, not just phones. An successful digital media campaign should target creative people at that particular moment to communicate a specific message personalized to them.

Asking people to do the wrong action.

A common mistake made in digital media campaigns is to ask people to take an action they are not willing to take. It is probably not a good idea to ask any person to sign up immediately when offering a life insurance policy. A more effective strategy would include segmenting people into different groups and asking them to take various actions based on their current thought. Every party may need to be asked to read an article about the value of parents ‘ life insurance. It might be possible to ask another team to arrange a phone call with an official. You are setting up your strategies for success by tailoring your application to your target audience and their attitude.

The landing page that does not convert.

You can run the best creative ad for the most relevant people, but if you send people to a landing page man, your campaign will fail. Looking at the results of your campaign will tell you whether the issue is the landing page. Diving further into the analysis will tell you if your message does not suit the attitude of the customer, the call for action is off, you provide a poor user experience, or any number of other issues. It’s just a matter of fixing the problem from there!

BONUS: The expectations are incorrect.

Every effective marketing campaign starts with setting goals and KPIs correctly, including digital media. A mattress store advertising a holiday sale will have aims that are unique from a non-profit group circulating a petition. If your goals are set right, you intend to succeed.

The growing importance of marketing influencer

According to the top hit on The Urban Dictionary, being #instafamous is”… a pretty girl who posts a thousand pictures of her face or whatever food she eats. This may also include pictures of the food of other people.

Since this definition may seem nonchalant (and somewhat ridiculous), #instafamous Influencer Marketing is a sensation that continues to boom in 2019 and beyond. Influencer Marketing is the first full-blown marketing platform powered by customers. They’re real people talking to other real people and that’s why they’ve got such a powerful pull.

Brands are becoming harder and harder to’ hear’ on social media, including all the clutter of poorly written ads and tacky advertising (and, of course, with the recent news feed algorithm changes!). Influencers typically act as authentic advocates for a brand, and at the same time they are super talented content producers / art directors / photographers / videographers and models (goosh what they can’t do!?). As a result, influencer content will result in so many marketers hoping to reach the cut-through.

So how do you incorporate #instafame into your approach as a marketer? We have three important ways to make sure you have this year’s Influencer Marketing brush!

1. Try to achieve a strong return on investment before you buy Influencer Marketing. Not only do you reach new audiences when influencers post your branded content to their socials, but you can analyze the organic results without committing to any media spending. A brand can choose and select the best performing posts from here and improve on the platforms of the brands. The 2017 benchmark study from Facebook UGC reported that user-generated content on Facebook generates 6.9X more interaction than branded content.

2. Big Things Come In Small Packages If people think of influencers in general, they think of the world’s Kylie Jenners. HUGE costs come with these influencers of tier 1 (macro-influencers). Instead, micro-influencers are used by smart brands?classified as someone with fewer than 100 K followers. We seem to have a strong and genuine influence on their followers with a smaller community. In reality, the engagement rate of micro-influencers with 3-10 K followers is 338 percent higher (Tribe Data from 2017). Smart brands are now using their marketing budget by engaging with micro-influencers to get a variety of happy snaps, improve incremental reach, and check the creative for results.

3. hotcontent So now you’ve got a #hotcontent that saved you thousands of $$$in videographer, photographer and art director fees. Furthermore, in an authentic way you have reached new audiences. What’s next, then? In your wider marketing plan, you can actually use the beautiful content of the influencer, which you know has driven strong results, for a small fee. Think about OOH, coding, website for EDM… to name a few. It’s a great way not only to highlight new, innovative imagery, but also to develop your brand from the perspective of the UGC (community). Your customers are on the planet’s fastest-growing creative solution, it’s the smart brands like Dan Murphy and Swisse who tap into it.

We at The Wired Agency recognize the growing importance of Influencer Marketing in the world of social media. Through the Tribe network we engage micro-influencers. We’re taking the hassle out of the two-ing and fro-ing and doing the hard work. For a free consultation, please contact us

5 Simple ways of optimizing the speed of your website

The speed of a company website sets the first impression for customers in the fast-paced online world. It is unacceptable to load slowly. Consumers today have no patience to wait, no matter how great your service or site is. Organizations have 2 seconds or less before frustration sets in (ideally less) and customers take their quest elsewhere. When users are on the move, this is exacerbated on the phone?more hurried= less patience.

As discussed earlier, there may be a variety of factors that cause slow page load times, including design, images, or links; all of which will result in Google’s algorithms pushing your site down on the search engine ranking page?making you invisible, as well as slow. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Online success is about keeping your customers happy. What are they going to want? A pleasant experience. This begins with fast loading times.

Optimizing the load time of your website While optimization can be a little complex and confusing, some simple steps can be taken by businesses to improve loading times and enhance customer experience.

1. Optimise images

Quality images improve interaction, but websites are slowed down by large files. Fortunately, image sizes can be reduced by using software such as ImageOptim, JPEGmini, or Kraken without compromising quality.

2. Reduce plugins

The more plugins that are available on a page, the more resources needed to run them. In order to see which plugins slow down the website, companies can run a performance test. Evite plugins loading lots of scripts and styles or generating lots of queries from databases.

3. Website caching

Caching temporarily stores data on the computer of a visitor. Implementing caching allows visitors to reload the same data whenever they visit the site, thereby improving speed. For each platform, the approach to website caching is different. Companies can get in touch with their host to see their options.

4. Avoid redirects

Redirects of the website create additional requests for HTTP. This has a negative effect on the performance of the website. We recommend avoiding them if they are not necessary. By running a site scan with tools such as Screaming Frog, you can identify redirects.

5. Use compression

Compression reduces the size of the page drastically, which in turn increases its speed. It’s like a zip file for your website. The compression process depends on the web server and its settings. In order to see what they can do, businesses need to contact their hosting company.

You’re not going to have a second chance to offer a positive user experience. High-performance websites get high return visits, lower bounce rates, higher conversions, better engagement, higher organic search ranks, and better user experience; the optimal results every business is looking for.

Starting with these five simple steps, companies will take a long way to cut down on loading times. Not only will it help win their site visitors ‘ very short attention span, but it will also help put the SEO sites in favor of Google’s algorithms; deliver more visitors to the site, ready to be wowed by a smooth user experience and move quickly through the sales cycle.

Companies can test their site using Google’s PageSpeed insights. If a fine tuning is required, it is time to implement the above steps or contact Vridhii.

Our team here at Vridhii, as a website design company specializes in page speed optimization and search engine optimization in Hyderabad. If you’re looking for a Hyderabad SEO company that can speed up your loading time and boost your results online, you’ve been covered by Vridhii.

Advertising your Business on LinkedIn

Advertising on social media these days is a given for companies in all sectors. We’re talking a lot about advertising on consumer-focused platforms, such as Facebook, but LinkedIn is a lesser-discussed platform that offers tremendous value to your ad spending.

Created to provide professionals with a digital platform to network with peers, LinkedIn has long been a gathering place for professionals. It has had its ups and downs with identity over the years and what it really offers, but today, dear readers, LinkedIn is now a platform with over 500 million users that should not be overlooked.

Like other social platforms, LinkedIn offers a solution for self-service to create targeted campaigns based on a set budget, desired clicks or impressions, and the ability to stop your ads at any time. For self-service accounts, sponsored content, sponsored inmail and text ads are included in their ad formats. They offer Dynamic Ads in the premium range that are available through their account-managed advertising solutions, requiring you to partner with a member of the LinkedIn team to create exclusively placed, highly visible ads for premium audiences.

#Your key to B2B success for B2B businesses can be tough on social media advertising. When you’re relying on sites like Snapchat, Twitter, or Facebook, you’re marketing to people on a site that they associate with their personal lives, rather than promoting them when they’re in business mode. LinkedIn thrives here.

LinkedIn advertising is responsible for 80 per cent of all B2B leads coming from social media. Facebook produces a measurable 6.73 percent to put that into perspective. It also produces three times as many conversations as Twitter or Facebook. LinkedIn is essentially the savior of social media for the B2B sector. It not only offers great advertising solutions, but it is also a fantastic place to invest in your content marketing, as more and more professionals use the news feed from LinkedIn as a place to learn about topics and trends relevant to their business or job.

The clencher More great news to advocate for LinkedIn Advertising is that as long as your focus is on B2B, it doesn’t really matter what industry you’re in. IT, Marketing and Advertising, HR, Technology, and Financial Services are the top five main sectors on LinkedIn. But being a well-represented industry does not mean better or worse outcomes. Yes, if you belong to a smaller segment of the industry on LinkedIn, reaching the targeted market is simpler for you.

LinkedIn has comprehensive targeting options to reach your perfect audience when it comes to targeting the audience. Thanks to the function that LinkedIn offers to business professionals, LinkedIn has impressively accurate audience information that members themselves keep up to date, enabling you to accurately target your advertising.

LinkedIn targeting audience uses real, member-generated demographic data including job title, business, industry, seniority, and much more within the primary categories of business, experience, education, interests, and identity. Signing into your campaign manager, creating an ad, choosing your preferred advertising method? Sponsored Content, Text Ads, or Sponsored InMail ? is as simple as building your target audience, publishing your ad, and watching the leads roll in.

Vridhii is a social media advertising agency with a team of specialists working with LinkedIn Advertising to help businesses succeed. If you are a B2B company that wants to optimize its LinkedIn app leads, please contact us today.

Targeting Your Customers on Facebook 2020

It’s January 2020 right now, and we’re feeling a little whiplashed about how quickly the years seem to be late. We don’t seem to be the only ones to think that way, as this statement can be heard this month in most cafes or streams on social media. While we believe this is a shared feeling, we also suspect that those of us who work with advertising on social media may feel it a little more intensely.

As the #10yearch challenge is currently circulating among all your Facebook friends, it seems fitting for us to do a short #thenvsnow on social media advertising capabilities, which shows how quickly things are moving.

#then you may or may not be surprised to learn that Facebook was only three years old in 2009 when it launched Facebook ads as a service on its website, leading as the first to do so in the social media bundle. Twitter was following suit in 2010. Instagram and Pinterest joined the group in 2013, and in 2014, Snapchat bit the bullet.

It is worth noting that there were not only two sites on the market in 2009 that took over our world, Instagram and Snapchat.

#Now Over the past decade, the data collected on social media has helped marketers recognize consumers who are most likely to enjoy their products or services, and provided you advanced technology to communicate with this audience in a more focused and targeted manner; delivering far more effective results.

Today, it is common knowledge among users that if you use social media, you will be promoted and all the data you have entered into your profile will allow the site in question to profile you better, thereby providing more precise targeting to consumers, and most users love it!

Targeting your ideal customers Today, social media is an all-powerful force that gives you more insight into your audience, enabling you to interact with your customers in a more meaningful way.

Here are our best tips for targeting your ideal social media customers:

1. Knowing your audience Understanding your audience is having awareness of the characteristics of the people to whom you are going to advertise. If you don’t have this already, you’ll need to create it before you can start your ad. You should brainstorm your ideal customer in order to do this. What are their challenges, what are their demographic, age, place, sex or interests? All of this will help you build the persona.

2. Every good salesman knows how to search for “low hanging fruit.” Think of remarketing as your strategy for low-hanging fruit. The best goals are the ones that you already know have been browsing what you have to offer. Remarketing allows you to target promotions to users who have previously visited the website of your company.

3. Look-a-like audiences Lookalike Audiences is a great strategy if you are familiar with your audience but want to widen it and reach people with very similar profiles. This is accomplished by creating audiences that look like your current goals.

You can create a Lookalike Audience using a tracking pixel to create a Website Custom Audience to mirror if you do not have an existing list or enough Facebook fans. You can make your audience smaller or larger, more or less specific to narrow or expand your reach from here.

Vridhii is a social media advertising agency based in Hyderabad that helps clients find their target audience, increase traffic, and convert customer targets. Call us today to discuss how we can help you approach the right customers and convert them.

Statics and Trends in digital marketing to help you plan for 2020

We at Vridhii recognize that the industry is changing ALWAYS as a digital marketing agency that specializes in all things digital. After all, we’re known in the realm of marketing trends as a top digital agency that knows they’re coming and going like a rotating door to, well, trends. Whether it’s an innovation that turns the advertising world on its head, or an evolving search algorithm which messes up the well-planned plans of many marketers, digital marketing is chaotic.

Luckily, there are a few things we can do to make it much easier: go over the facts and stats of digital marketing so that we can know what is to come. In other words, we should be looking at concrete facts and data-backed forecasts instead of relying on guesswork to formulate our plans, which make everything much simpler. For today, we will look at the 2019 digital marketing statistics and trends to determine which marketing trends and data we should focus on in 2020.

20 Digital Marketing Growth Statistics to Help You Prepare 2020 As we’ve just discussed, our goal for today is to cover 2019 marketing statistics so we know what the 2020 digital marketing trends are in store for us. Although we can cover many possible topics, we will focus on particularly pressing topics such as advertising, social media, eCommerce, AI and marketing automation, and even privacy regulations. Let’s start with it!

1. Total global spending on ads is set to reach $1.3 trillion by 2020. This includes everything from administration of public relations and data investment to sponsorship and direct marketing.

3. Narrowing on a specific marketing facet that is particularly relevant today ? mobile advertising? it is predicted to account for 30.5% of global ad spending in 2020, up from 19.2% in 2017.

3. In total, mobile advertising spending is projected to reach $187 billion in 2020. This is more than twice as much as mobile spending ($88 billion) and about $5 billion ($192 billion) behind television! As more and more users choose their phones than desktops, it is clear that advertising budgets will make the switch and reflect this changing trend.

4. What else is impressive, do you know? The fact that consumers of digital media spend more time watching videos online than they do before a TV and that by 2020, the average online viewing time in the world will reach 84 minutes. In other words, expect mobile advertising to be spent on television soon.

5. Here’s the kicker: by 2023, users are expected to watch 20 percent fewer minutes of video ads per day than they do today. How are brands going to respond, you ask? By using short-form videos that are engaging and capable of keeping the attention of their viewer.

6. Browsing social media is one of the most popular activities people do while on the web when talking about online things. How popular is that? So much so that users of social media around the world are expected to reach 3.1 billion by 2021, up from 2.65 billion by 2018.

7. If we are precise, the worldwide penetration of social media is always on the rise and in January 2019 stood at 45 percent. As less developed nations move forward, this number is expected to increase even more. This is particularly true given the availability of cheap smartphones, which has traditionally spurred social media use.

8. For example, Eastern Asia, known to be especially mobile-first, was at the top of the global penetration ranking of mobile social networking (70%). Founded digital powerhouses like the Americas and Northern Europe follow them.

9. So you know, the penetration of social media in North America is 61%. So you’re even more conscious the international penetration in social media is 42% lower.

10. Combining our social media interaction with something else that people do online ? shop? referral traffic to eCommerce sites has a huge social dimension. Facebook takes the cake, as you may have guessed, delivering 80.4 percent of social media referral traffic.

11. That’s right. As we touched on earlier, the waist is tied to phone and personal. This means you’ll probably see a large portion of social referral traffic created there when it comes to referral traffic. As it happens, during the first quarter of 2019, 70.5% of U.S. social referral traffic was generated from smartphones!

12. 12. Though referral traffic is definitely important, social media is not really good at influencing buying decisions. You know what it’s like? Reviews of the item. For example, 88 percent of survey respondents agreed that product reviews were an influential factor in the purchasing of home electronics.

13. If you have a physical store in combination with your online store, that means focusing on what people say about your items. After all, 80 percent of consumers on their smartphones are looking for information, reviews and prices while shopping in a brick and mortar location.

14. 14. Take another turn and focus on other issues. This time, it is the privacy legislation that we have recently seen in the media (e.g. GDPR). By 2023, by reducing the use of cookies, e-privacy regulations are expected to increase online costs. This is likely to cripple the online ad market in turn.

Fifteen. With consent (rightly) becoming even more relevant, consumers will have greater control over the information they provide to the brands with which they communicate. It is expected that the brands that give users more of this power will minimize customer turnover by 40% and increase the lifetime value by 25%! It makes sense when considering the element of loyalty that makes a one-time shopper a repeat shopper.

16. And now we’re going to close this article by addressing AI and marketing automation, which will certainly be a big part of the 2020 plan for content marketing trends. As a matter of fact, with the aid of AI, content creators can create more than 30% of their digital content.

17. Knowing how strong AI is, 44 percent of executives agree that “automated interactions providing data that can be used to make decisions” is their most important benefit. In addition, autonomous marketing systems will issue 55% of multi-channel marketing messages based on actionable real-time consumer behavior by 2023, resulting in a 25% increase in response rates.

19. Another thing that AI can do is power chatbots that can act as representatives of 24/7 customer service who take care of your userswhen you can’t. Okay, 85% of online customer interactions are expected to be handled by 2020 without a person.

20. Twenty-five. Last but not least, let’s go back a little and get mobile back into the fray: by 2020, smart agents will take care of 40 percent of mobile interactions.

Why is Cyber Security a Top Digital Marketing priority?

Protecting your data is incredibly important, but it’s not as easy as putting a sticky note over your laptop camera! It’s no lie that as a complete digital transformation phase, the time we’re living in will go down in history. In the age of digital transformation, cyber security is something that has the ability to ruin your life or business if not closely monitored. Heck, you might even know people saved on their mobile holding their social security number and credit card number! Total red security flag.

Cyber Security and Mobile Users

Cyber Security protects the computers, personal data, and any other digital information for those who may not know. With such broad use of the internet, ensuring that your data is secure and not used against you or in ways you don’t approve of it is very important. Cyber security has been an ongoing issue and should be taken more seriously than ever before.

Mobile advertising figures for 2019, for instance, have shown us that smartphones and mobile devices produce 52.2 percent of all website traffic. In addition, approximately 5 billion mobile users are projected to be around the world by the end of this year. With so many people streaming the web on mobile devices, you can see why protecting the information you import into the internet is so important. This also means that it is important not only for individuals, but also for businesses and marketers to protect your data with cyber security.

Why should information protection for marketers be a top priority?

Many marketers are wondering: why do we need cyber security? Why is learning about cyber security important? What is a threat to cyber security? Okay, if you’ve found yourself asking these questions to yourself or your colleagues, you’re just like most online marketers and business owners throughout industries. Hiscox’s survey found that 7 out of 10 were not prepared for a cyberattack at all.

While cyber security wasn’t as big of an issue back in the day, living in 2019 means making sure you give it more priority than ever before. It is best to talk about cyber transformations and figure out how to implement one to ensure that your business is protected from these types of attacks.

What is a transformation of the cyber?

A cyber transformation takes information that has been gathered and makes changes within your company to transform your security, well, for those who are not aware. As well as improving your cyber agenda, performing a transformation helps with risk management. A cyber transition will also help reassure workers that they are safe and take the right cyber security measures. Every business wants its transformation to be successful, but to be cost-effective and successful, you have to make a plan.

Technology and digital media are all fantastic, but because of the rapidly evolving digital era we are in, they bring a lot of challenges and scares. In your business, there is a huge security problem to worry about in the form of data breaches. For clarify exactly what a data breach is, it’s when people on the internet access information that you didn’t give them access, AKA when a hacker gets into your network. If people think this might happen to them or not, it’s a very dangerous and terrifying occurrence that advertisers should do anything and everything to stop it.

Top 5 Hacks Marketers Should Follow To Avoid Breaches

There’s so much you can do to prevent and potentially remove all infringements of information within your business and personal life. Whether it’s updating your passwords every few months or making sure all of your systems are up-to-date, there’s no limit to the options to protect your data. Let’s look at some hacks that you can introduce to lower the chances of running into a data breach: while it may take a few more seconds to log into your email and shared drive accounts, it’s vital to enforce double protection on your important business accounts to avoid hacking or stolen your information.

Implement Two-Step Verification

Just log into your company’s computers and not any other device using a shared drive. You never know what kind of viruses or individuals have access to computers that are not yours!

Keep Your Security Systems Up- To-Date

Keep up-to-date the security systems and work properly. In a previous version, there may have been glitches or problems that have been taken care of in the upgrade, so delaying the update will only prove to be a mistake.

Regularly Change Your Passwords

Make sure your passwords are updated every few months or so to make sure your account information does not get out. Emails are hacked all the time, and many people everywhere use the same passwords. Changing your passwords would ensure that your other passwords are safe even if an email gets hacked.

Encrypt Your Files

What’s so great about encrypting your files is that you can read and understand the message using specific software only by the specific people you send the file. This way, your encrypted data will be secure even if you or your receiver gets hacked.

Top 5 Digital Assistant Predictions and Marketing Impact

Let’s start this post by getting out of the way the obvious: AI is changing the experience of digital and user. Whether it’s automation that supports business processes, flexibility that knows who you are and what you want, or chatbots that take care of your users when you can’t, AI is a game changer. That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about, as it happens. Well, we’re not going to talk about automation, customization, or chatbots. Instead, we’re going to focus on another facet of AI that makes a big splash as well. If you haven’t already figured it out by reading the very title of this post (which you’re probably doing right now), today’s discussion revolves around Alexa and Siri’s likes and how virtual assistants affect the customer experience.

The Rise of Intelligent Digital Assistants: Marketing in the Age of Alexa and Siri Many of us were introduced to the wonder of the digital assistant when the world went mobile. The truth is, back then we didn’t really see them as utilitarian. No, most of the time we played with them and had our fun. Then things were changing. We realized that we could do more with them than ask for jokes; we realized that as digital assistants we could use them literally. That was then; their usefulness has only increased in the years since. We can do so much with them today that there are literally endless possibilities. And a myriad of predictions about what the world will be with them come from these possibilities. More specifically, what will look like the marketing world.

And so for today we come to our main topic: top 5 digital assistant predictions and their effect on marketing.

1. Nearly 8 trillion digital voice assistants will be in use by 2023

Yes, you read that right? an incredible 8 billion digital assistants are predicted to be in use by 2023, reflecting an annual compound growth rate of over 25%. It’s not hard to imagine why this is with the amount of help we get from these AI-backed assistants. After all, if, thanks to these digital assistants, we can control our appliances, search and do A LOT more with our voices, it makes sense that more and more of us will start using them each year.

This indicates, as today’s marketers (hopefully) already realize, that big changes are coming to almost all marketing efforts. Whether you’re putting ads or trying to raise your online ratings, the rise of digital assistants leads to things like optimizing voice search, which is already a must-have tool for top digital marketing companies that have been smart enough to change over time and add it to their arsenal.

2. By 2020, 30% of Web browsing sessions will be completed without a screen

Leading off the previous forecast is this one, which states that by 2020, nearly a third of online browsing sessions will take place without a computer. Wait a second, it doesn’t seem okay, do you? How can we browse without a screen on the internet? Simple ? because searching doesn’t mean looking at anything; it’s more like being perused. That’s why we’re surfing the internet every time we ask Siri to guide us to the nearest coffee shop, or Alexa what the latest movies are.

As it happens, one of the biggest impacts brought by digital assistants is right there. By eliminating the need to use our hands or eyes to browse, we are opening the door to vocal interactions that can do the same even when the former is inadvisable, such as driving or crossing a busy street. As far as advertising is concerned, it means getting into the mind of your client to find out how they will use this software in their daily lives, which you can use to maintain your tactics.

3. By 2020, the average person will have more talks with Bots than with their spouse

As the technology behind smart digital assistants is improving, it makes sense that as it does, we will use them more. And if we begin using them often, it makes sense to talk to them more often than our spouses at some point. For some, it might not be a happy thought, but it is the truth. Look at it this way, realistically, today’s average worker spends most of his time without his spouse (sleeping doesn’t count). Maybe it’s because they’re working or doing who knows what, more people than their partner are spending more time on their mobile. And as we’ve just seen from the forecasts above, they’re going to use more digital assistants as they do that. It’s your job as a marketer to figure out how to capitalize on it and get the most out of it.

4. Voice shopping will increase by 2022 to $40 trillion

Jumping to $40 billion in voice shopping by 2022? Now that’s a forecast that most marketers and business owners can back up, especially considering that today’s leap will be $2 billion. It’s really beautiful, isn’t it? Back in the early 2010s, we had digital assistants like Siri, but we weren’t shopping with them. Today, things are very different. With the proliferation of other personalities such as Alexa and the Google Assistant coming with their own “skills” and “actions,” we’re seeing a GREAT jump in their abilities, which just happens to include buying this or that. In other words, digital assistants, as a definite big disruptive force in retail, make it easier to do almost everything, including shop.

5. By 2021, 25% of Digital Employees will be using Virtual Employee Assistants (VEAs) everyday.

Finally, the last estimate arising from the growth of smart virtual assistants is that by 2021, 25% of digital staff are projected to hire them weekly, up from a measly 2% today. As Gartner’s Senior Director Annette Jump had to say, “we expect VEAs to be used by a growing number of organizations over the next three years… Companies such as insurance and financial services show a strong interest in internally piloting VEAs. We have also witnessed the use of VAs in IT, customer service and queries of information.

How to settle for the greatest return on an advertising budget

Living in 2020 means that it’s almost all digital. Digital is your market, digital is your audience, and digital is your strategy. Likewise, this digital ecosystem means more cutthroat than ever before owning a business in 2020. Why? Because we are living in a time where new competitors will not only be able to, but will certainly pop up left and right, up and down, and almost everywhere. In other words, as digital technologies promote the steps needed to actually start a business, you need to put much more work into finding and hearing your efforts. In english, this means that marketing is no longer an option, it is a requirement, particularly ads.

We see that marketing is greater than ever with AI and automation, personalization, cross-channel advertising and a number of other 20 advertisement patterns. In fact, it is expected that digital ad spending will represent a majority of all US ad spending, rising from $105.44 billion (46.56 percent) in 2019 to $129.26 billion (51.31 percent) by 2021. The thing is, it’s expensive to market, especially advertising. Regardless of what you plan to do, the real results are higher costs.

That’s why you need to make sure you get the most out of your efforts in digital advertising. Key here is to know how much to spend and where you don’t end up putting all your eggs in the wrong basket metaphorically. You don’t want to divide the funds equally across all platforms along a similar vein, which just happens to be a good example of what you shouldn’t do in the advertising budget. This is because dividing the budget equally implies that all outlets work the same way and produce comparable results, far from the reality. In reality, there may be more of your viewers on channel A than on channel B, meaning your returns there are likely to be higher.

And so we’re going back to our point to make sure you get the most out of your ads. For this purpose, you will need a breakdown of the marketing budget to determine what you can actually afford to spend on advertising, and then an analysis to determine how much you can spend on each channel.

Your Advertising Budget Allocation Guide

Our aim for today is to provide a guide to advertising budget allocation and different advertising budget approaches to assess a small business’ best advertising budget. More specifically, we’re going to go through a three-step process to narrow down how much you’re supposed to spend on advertising for the biggest return.

Phase 1 of the marketing budget process: decide what you can spend

Whenever you have to allocate a budget to something ? it doesn’t matter what it is ? you first have to determine how much you can actually afford to invest. Economists recommend using a percentage revenue strategy in which you dedicate a portion of your total gross sales to your marketing efforts for our discussion today. Although there are many factors affecting an advertising budget, such as your industry, size and growth stage, this approach works well across the board because the budget is not actually fixed; it is set to wax or decrease with your revenue so you can increase as you grow or decrease to maintain long-term profitability.

For newer companies that are trying to grow, spending between 10 percent and 20 percent is recommended so you can really brand yourself, with a minimum of 12 percent if you are trying to grow fast. If you are more mature and still want to increase profitability, 5-12 percent is going to be a good aim as you should have loyal customers and a defined marketing strategy to take you through. When, on the other hand, you either make it marginally or work at a loss, allocating 5% may not even be feasible. You must note, then again, that advertising is a must for growth. You have to spend money to make money, as people always say.

Phase 2 of the marketing budget process: pick the channels to target and consider the costs

It’s time to select the platforms you want to approach with a marketing budget on hand. Keep in mind that all the marketing efforts are protected by this, not just ads. With that in mind, you’ll have to do some research to figure out the preferred channels for your audience, which is where you’ll focus. Some popular channels, for instance, include:

• Content marketing

• Email marketing

• Search engines

• Social media marketing

You need to be as specific as possible as part of this move. In other words, don’t just say’ social media’ or’ internet marketing,’ but define specific channels such as Facebook and Instagram, as well as content marketing activities such as blog writing and video production. The potential costs and returns of each channel must also be considered, as some may have high costs and equally high returns, while others may have high costs with average returns. You should also look at hidden costs that will impact your overall ROI, such as hiring a PPC agency or purchasing analytics tools to track your progress.

Phase 3 of the advertising budget process: split your budget

Now, it’s time for all your outlets to break your budget. Rest assured that as you begin the allocation process, realizing that this will be simpler than you may have previously thought because you have already completed most of the research in the previous steps. Use your allocated marketing budget in conjunction with your channel list and their expected costs (including the hidden ones) to determine which has the greatest return potential.

What is real time digital marketing?

Real-time marketing is a subset of Digital marketing. These two concepts are interrelated and are proven to be effective marketing method for organizations these days to improve their brand image.
Real-time marketing is a concept of capturing information and data of online users, which includes their purchase history & personal trends, and provide them with a customized set of targeted advertisements. This concept has the ability in helping the brands to engage with their customer based on real-time information, such as behaviour on a website, changes in their data, or any breaking events news. Online data collection provides the organizations with the power to offer spontaneous online ads in response to individuals activities such as searching and purchase of products/services online. This strategy can be used for both technological and marketing aspects. When a user undergoes some online activity, the data is stored, and ads are designed based on the information received through the data. It is essential to stay relevant with the changing trends in the external market environment. As expectations and needs of customers keeps changing every day, it makes harder in staying relative. Increased marketing tactics have given the customers, the power to choose in giving their attention to specific brands. To surpass and maintain a competitive advantage, you need to level up your game.
Whereas, digital marketing is a concept of marketing your brand through digital channels. Channels include Social media, mobile applications, website, email, search engines and any other related digital mediums.? In digital marketing, as a business, you will be having endless opportunities in promoting your brand and get to constantly interact with your target audience, by providing them with a personalized or customized service. Also, it helps in improving the value for user experience in relation to the brand. Whereas, the impact of digital strategies on each online medium has provided marketers like us, with a distinctive set of marketing techniques that will enable in reaching global audience, identification of untapped targeted groups and obtaining long term loyal customer base for the brand. The whole world has gone digital, and Digital marketing allows marketer in seeing business from the user?s perspective and of the business.
Why is real-time marketing important
This marketing strategy has gained humongous importance just in recent times with the help of digital marketing. You might be wondering how are these two concepts of Real-time marketing (RTM) and Digital marketing are related. So, let us decipher the answer to your queries. RTM in the digital marketing context is referred to as the on-the-fly mode of marketing. With the development of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram the method has been revolutionized. Digital marketers today can quickly know about any situation around the world thru real-time marketing social media help and can use these platforms in implementing the real time marketing strategy successfully.

5 Real-Time marketing tactics for Digital marketers

Be attentive
The most common tactic to conduct real-time marketing would be, always having an attentive listening to the trends as they happen. Because, in this digital world anything can gain fame overnight, it might be a small video clipping or a malfunction by known celebrity or brand. News on internet spread like a wildfire, it happens in few minutes. Here are four ways that can help you in keeping track of the trending events online:
Turn on Google alerts for the trends specific to your industry, or maybe not it all depends on your companys preference. For instance, if you are in a hotel business, then automation would a huge topic. So you can insert the keyword hotel automation into your Google alerts, keep yourself updated few times a week and have constant knowledge on whats trending.
Keep a tab on all the events thats been happening in your industry sector, such as competitors events, their RTM strategies, and their target audience reach. These elements can give you an idea in setting benchmark for your RTM activities.
Stay updates with publications, newsletters, current trends, common questions and concerns closely related to your industry.
The most important one is to follow online influencers who advertise somethings thats closely related to your industry products or services. Through them your brand can expand target audience reach, advocate the followers of your brand, and help in publicizing your RTM efforts when applicable.
Be original
Originality makes your brand stand out from your competition. Repetition of similar concepts too many times can make people lose interest in it. For instance, if you have copied or slightly changed a joke that has been made by your competitor based on real-time events, then it will stop being funny and users are not willing to share the same thing anymore. The internet is already overloaded with a lot of data, which makes it difficult to distinguish yours from your competitors. Oreo company had a stood out to be the most creative with their cleverly composed tweet. During Superbowl 2013, New Orleans faced a huge power out issue. Oreos real-time marketing team were quick enough in seizing the opportunity to market their brand on Twitter. They tweeted an image of the cookie in the dark with a tagline You can still dunk in the dark and captioned their photo as - Power out. No problem. It was an instant and massive hit among the twitter user base. The ad had an impact on social media advertising and the company was praised for their sheer minimalistic charm. Positive press of Oreo made many other brands working towards receiving same sort of attention. The product did not just win our hearts, it also had set an excellent example for real time marketing.
Plan your RTM activities
Being receptive doesnt mean you cannot plan your real-time marketing activities well in advance. It is true that majority of the events cannot be foreseen, like the Super Bowl event which was unexpected, and nobody expected as it is one of the huge events in American history. However, there are many other events that can be scheduled prior, like for example a royal family baby birth can be exactly estimated and predicted. Nowadays, many companies tend to employ this strategy and accordingly plan their marketing activities in advance. A clear example for this concept would the most well know HBO company, they couldnt rightly predict the exact outcome of Emmy ward winner, so their social media team had prepared content for all the possible outcomes. This marketing tactic had been a success, as they were able to release instant and accurate responses that were consistent with the general marketing strategy of the company.
Be consistent
Above we have seen that HBO made it possible to align their real-time marketing with their general marketing strategy. This type of consistency should be sincerely followed and maintained by every company out to adopt this marketing technique. If an advertising message thats based on real-time marketing doesnt align with the companys image then it might lead to miscommunication and downfall for the brand. Always, remember to maintain consistency through delivery time and content quality.
Be right on time
As said earlier, word on internet spreads like a wildfire. So, the online community does not wait for your company to devise and implement the real-time marketing plan. It should be done quick and with consistency. Everything happens so fast, and every competitor company is waiting to grab the opportunity. If you do not reach faster and seal the opportunity than you will lose the chance of gaining a comparative advantage over your competition. That means you should constantly keep yourself updated with the information related to events thats been trending online, take immediate actions on using it to your marketing advantage, be responsive in planning either a campaign or single post, and publish it on online platforms before the trend dies down. In short, speak up when the news is hot in the market, before it fades away.
Listening to your customers can help the brand big time irrespective of its organization size. In 2014, there was an online user named Brandon from UK, who was confused with car purchase decision among the three established brands Audi, Jaguar and Mercedes. So, he tagged these three companies twitter accounts and asked for suggestions. Jaguar UKs social media team was immediately responsive with a tweet back within an hour with an image of the car, followed by the second tweet to send a personal message with his location and contact details to stay in touch. Brandon had finally purchased their car, and with their responsive service they have gained a loyal customer for their brand. This is a perfect example of using social listening. The internet is filled with users asking for suggestions, you as a brand needs to know when to respond and where. In this scenario, Jaguar grabbed the opportunity and gained a brand ambassador for their brand, also improving their brand image on social media platforms ultimately increasing their social media reach.

How does a real time data show effect on your digital marketing strategy?

These days, many websites are providing 24*7 customer live chat service with the help of artificial intelligence. Through this service, customers can contact the company with any issue at any time. These chatbots will be responding to customers instantly and resolve issues without any delay. By this instant problem-solving technique, you can favor yourself with the customers. It can help you go through the whole process of conversation with your customers, react accordingly at each touchpoint and collect real-time data. This data can be used further in improving your business performance. Whereas, the method of historical data analysis works towards shaping the future interactions, in this process, there are high chances of customers being lost. By the time it is historically analyzed, with real-time data you can analyze and utilize it in practise. It is all about delivering relevant information at the right time through a personalized experience for your customers. Through these interaction procedures, you can receive information on what and where is your service going wrong, and instantly respond to the issues before its too late. Both customer efficiency and customer satisfaction can be achieved through this process.

Real-time data can tell you, if your business is actually meeting the customer expectations. You need not put yourself on the field conducting research, collecting customer feedback, analyzing it and making a report. You can actually give a keen consideration to these real-time data and instantly know customers’ responses. With the increase of online platforms, users tend to get more vocal about their feedback and opinion on products/services of a business. Take these forms of data into consideration, you can instantly know if your product/service is meeting the mark or just brutally failing to meet the expectations of customers. At least, it will help in saving both your time & money. It will save you from damaging the brand image and avoid running your business into losses. For any business, meeting customer expectations or exceeding it, is a new level of achievement. It means that your business had succeeded in the market. To achieve this level of success, you need to consider the real-time data as your all-time weapon and use it to modify your marketing decisions. The use of wrong words can deliver a totally different message on social media platforms, so constantly you need to be careful of your surroundings. For example, real-time data will tell you when to use the word ?pop? or ?soda? when you make any cold drink-based ad in the regional streams. Wrong words will communicate a totally different message that can cause bad press for the company.
Also, when you conduct real-time marketing, it will enable you in enhancing your ability to find new customer base. Many social media platforms have these hashtags and filters, heavily used by the online users these days. With the help of these elements, you can track and discover your potential customers. You can have a clear picture on who are purchasing your products/services and you can court them as your customers. Similar method can be used in knowing the issues with competitor?s products/services.
The data received from these tools, can help in determining the performance of your brand?s product/service. Based on this information, you can make required modifications to your marketing strategy or resolve problems. You can actually stop the damage before it gets worse. In simple words, real time marketing data will help you in knowing if your products/service is meeting the expectation of the existing customers and also helps in finding new leads for the business. Overall, it helps in bridging the gap between customer expectation and business performance.

Here are some Real-time marketing examples implemented by famous brands, using digital marketing technology:
AMUL
We cannot get thru brand examples, without discussing the Amul brand, the king of Real time Marketing
Many of you have had their famous scoop ice cream in your childhood or at least had encountered with the brand once in your lifetime, right
Amul, is said to be Indias largest dairy brand and one of the sponsors for Olympic India. They have extended their support in encouraging our athletes at Rio 2016. Their poster designs have always stayed true to its tradition of publishing witty posters of real-time events. All the designs have a constant base character of Amul’s utterly butterfly girl in pun-filled visuals. Their topicals are a brilliant example of timely content, either be it a billboard or digital channels they never fail to impress with real-time take on trending current affairs.
PEPSI
During Fashion Week in 2011, Pepsi had launched their new product Diet Pepsi skinny. The most common stereotype thought of Fashion week would be that they have to be skinny to be a model. Pepsi had taken this base stereotype as an opportunity in marketing their new product. Rather than general advertising, the product was actually integrated into the event. Also Pepsi had hired a journalist with full press credentials to the event, where she was supposed to cover the whole story and publish the content on all social channels. They have also used Twitter and Foursquare to flag notable events. Their positioning statement was get the skinny on fashion and pop culture.

ASOS

ASOS is an online fashion and cosmetic retailer. They have gained enough reputation and has a well-established brand image in the market. Surprising thing about this brand is, they have not adopted a real time marketing strategy. Instead created one to stop the brand from receiving negative publicity. Wondering how is that possible. In March 2018, the company had misspelled the word ?online? on 17,000 of their packaging bags. To avoid backlash, instantly they have responded with a tweet saying ? ?Ok, so we *may* have printed 17,000 bags with a typo. We?re calling it a limited edition?, with an image linked to the tweet. This brilliant approach had left people humoured, instead of causing any disaster for the brand. They actually took a step forward, acknowledged their mistake and took ownership of it. Through this they have actually gained free publicity for the brand. If seen from the perspective of Real-time marketing, unlike the others, ASOS unknowingly had created a real-time event.

Above three brand examples, have shown the way real-time data can be used in growing brand image. If we see in Amuls example, the brand had based their whole advertising strategy on the real-time data received. Whereas, Pepsi had taken an event as an opportunity in introducing their new product into the market. Lastly, ASOS had utilized the real-time method to save themselves from incurring a huge backlash from their customer base. It clearly shows that, real-time content is very crucial to the success of a strategy and gives brands an opportunity to experiment in different ways to reach out to their target audience. Nowadays, it is crucial for success of brand engagement and if your content is not engaging enough then your marketing strategy is likely to fail in producing desired result.

Final Thoughts

Nowadays, Real-time marketing proves to be one of the best ways to market your brands’ products or services online. In order to be successful, it is required to do a constant market research to keep up with the ongoing trends in the market. Innovation in implementation of the strategy can help your business in getting the required attention from your target audience. Now is the perfect time to take advantage of RTM data, as there are many ongoing situations happen all over the internet and most of the people tend to spend their time on online platforms. Grab the opportunity and engage in conversations with your customers, know their needs, satisfy their requirements, build emotional connection, and increase customer loyalty for the brand.

7 Ways to Promote Your Mobile App for Free

Research shows that, people actually spend 87 percent of their time on mobile apps, making mobile app development a must for businesses.

Mobile app is a software application designed to run on mobile devices, such as phones, smartwatch, tablet etc. They are originally developed for the purpose of productivity assistance, such as calendar, contact database and email. Gradually, increased demand has been observed for apps in other industry lines like location-based services, mobile games, social media, online retail, order tracking, ticket purchase, etc.
The word app will subconsciously redirect our mind towards the two giant hubs for these applications the Google Play store and Apple App store. These two applications are a hub for all the mobile device owners, to download applications. The mobile apps available in these stores have distinctive array of categories, ranging from books to social media networks. Right now, you have at least one of them on your device and are totally aware of its functionality. An estimation of 2 million apps are available on the Google Play store and around 1.83 million apps are available on the Apple App store. The data clearly illustrates the level of influence applications have on users mobile usage. Again, there are two categories of apps in here the ones that are free to download and the others require purchase. This division has been done, to distribute the profits between, the app creator and platform distributer. It has become a colossal point for both businesses and individuals, because of its incredible features and the opportunities that are being offered additional to their usage. They are observed to be a great strategy in keeping customers engaged with the brand, by offering unique selling features that drives more engagement than Web and give the company a competitive edge over their competition. Mobile applications are able to prompt both current and potential customers in interacting with the business. To be precise, any brand is right in the palm of customers hand. These applications are helpful in providing customers with easy access to businesses anytime and from anywhere. The steady usage of apps can aid in development of the brand and business. These apps help customers to browse, purchase, make payment, retain information and communicate with the company officials at any given point in time. Also, mobile apps have been increasingly becoming mandated mobile app marketing tools for businesses.

What makes mobile apps a smarter choice for businesses? How to market an app? and Why mobile app marketing plan?

Well, the answer is pretty simple. Its all about the pocket end-to-end user experience that counts and makes it easier for businesses in engaging and retaining their customer interests. You can strengthen your technology infrastructure and try developing complimenting services with cutting edge technologies, with just one mobile app. Every mobile app developer knows the power digital marketing campaigns have on the target audience.

Mobile app marketing is a process of creating app marketing ideas or campaigns to reach your users at every stage of the marketing funnel. This process of engaging your app users throughout their entire experience with your app, such as discovering it, going through the requirements, and downloading it. They are key digital marketing channels, which enables businesses in connecting with their target audience all the time, and also provide digital marketers a direct medium of interaction with the customers. Many creative marketing apps are being developed for the purpose of conducting online campaigns and to encourage brand engagement. Continual evolvement of consumer behaviour had made businesses adapting to strategies that are based on a core point of where their customers are. As a result, companies are moving rapidly towards making mobile apps commonplace for business marketing tools and assets. These marketing of mobile app works effectively in communicating with defined target audience, also helps in driving customer engagement, and loyal advocates for the brands products or services. Also, apps provide a sense of personalized service to the customers, it helps in building customer value. Long-term customer loyalty can help in achieving higher customer retainment. Achieving both brand value and visibility are needed for a business to sustain in this competitive environment. Apps have the power in generating visibility to your business by making it available for many users online. If the app satisfies the user requirements then it will ultimately enhance the brand value.

What if there are ways in promoting your mobile app for free. Did the word ‘'free’' got your attention?
If yes, then read the article further, to know our top recommendations for increasing your app download rates, promote, and helping you in standing out from the competition in a busy and competitive mobile app marketplace.

Here are some best ways to promote a mobile app:

Divulge into cross promotion communities

Ads on online platforms have proven to be effective in acquiring new leads for the mobile app business. If your business does not have the enough financial budget in investing into promotional ad networks, you should explore various cross-promotional communities which are available for free of cost.

A network or community of app developers tend to exchange users or ads for free, this strategy can benefit everyone. It doesnt matter if you are just a new developer or a part of large industry of mobile apps. Many established mobile app development companies use this strategy of using cross promotions as a primary means in increasing the download rate when bringing new apps into the market. Integration of cross-promotional ad strategy on mobile has some powerful benefits, such as, developers can conduct highly targeted ads with options to choose specific geographic across various industry sectors. Once the developers have activated a cross promotional ad campaigns, then they will be able to evaluate their campaign data, like the click through rates and gauge impressions. In order to deliver best results, you need to conduct intense testing and analysis for delivery of best results.

App Store Optimization (ASO)

The process of optimizing a mobile apps marketing copy, involving title, icon, keywords, description, screenshots, and customer reviews, to rank higher on app store search results. The higher the rank, the higher possibility in getting more visibility for your app. The aim of App Store Optimization (ASO) is to drive traffic to the app by increasing the number of downloads. When you are creating a title for the app, conduct research on the keyword search. Include the keyword that had higher search volume. Do not rush into things, take time in creating a title that satisfies both keyword search and able to attract users attention. Also, once the title is published it would be damaging for the brand image to change it after getting viral. Be considerate before fixing onto a title. Second comes the description, make sure to include all the details of the app and try to detail the solutions and benefits provided by the app through the use of keywords. Provide a visual idea of the app working to the users through screenshots.

It is often described as SEO for app store. With over 2 million apps on app stores, getting to view your app by the user is one of the major issues mobile app developers face these days. The goal of ASO is to drive intense traffic to your apps page in the app store, so user searching can take a specific action like downloading the app. But, it is crucial for you to understand your target user base, and keywords they use to find similar apps to yours. In short, you need to have a better understanding of language of your potential customers.

Social Media platforms

Facebook alone has 1.62 billion visits each day. So never under-estimate the influence these platforms have on the users. Organic or non-paid marketing activities are slightly time consuming processes in this fast pacing competitive environment. In that manner it will be easy in narrowing down the platforms to be used for marketing activities and have a clear view on where to concentrate marketing efforts in. To maintain a prominent presence on social media, you should not just be one in the crowd, as there are over 2 million mobile apps on app store, which are waiting to be viewed by the user. If you feel that your mobile needs to stand out, then you need to start fine-tuning your social media strategy and experiment with your content. Because content is something that adds value to readers life, and the primary purpose of it, is to establish a connection between the audience and the brand. In our defence, social media isnt something that is just used for catching up with your connections, it gives your mobile app a platform and opportunity in reaching a large segment of target audience who are more curious to know about what your app offers. There is no restriction of using a single platform for promoting your app, you have a varied set of digital channels that helps you in gaining visibility. Besides, making your users aware of the app, you can also have the opportunity in conducting customer engagement and build good relationship with them.

Most of the app development companies utilize social media for promotion, conduct a research on online users opinions, track the consumer behaviour and reviews to the apps online. These research insights will help them in improving the quality of the app and develop new additional benefits. Trust and customer loyalty are the core benefits a company obtain from interacting with the users. As we all are aware that anything spreads like a wildfire on social media, so these platforms covers the aspect of public relations promotion of the app. Also, the responses received may not always be positive, so be prepared to respond in a quick and efficient manner to the user responses related to the app.

For example, take Facebook, everyone is familiar with this social media app, most of our mornings start with checking updates on this app. It has become a daily routine for users life these days. From marketers perspective, it is easy to stay connected and share information with your target audience.

Some of the additional benefits are:

User friendly
Easy to communicate with customers
Reach huge user base
Conduct campaigns, share posts, publish content

Develop a website

Create a website for your mobile app, as it is considered to be major source for app installs. The website is considered to be the common destination for all your companys stakeholders. They can be either the consumers waiting to be notified about latest app updates, or businesses researching your recent blog content, or publicity. Developing and creating a website landing page has become a standardized practise for app launchers these days. If you have created a video for your website representing the purpose of the company, then it can also be recycled by putting it in the app stores, social networking channels, and on other free advertising channels. Launching a website can be hectic, but it was proven effective in generating some early Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by building domain authority. The set-up process should be accompanied with collection of email lists, in order to inform your subscribers on the recent updates on features and let them know about the mobile app launch dates. Also, in addition five star reviews can also be displayed in the site, generating more traffic and authenticity for the brand. Make sure to provide the users with app store download options on the site, for a quick conversion rate.

Optimize logo and overall design of the app

Your app logo is something that identifies your business from competition. Ensure to have your app store icon clear, eye-catching, understandable, creative and succinct in its design. To get more insights on the design approach, research more on what your competitors are delivering something out-of-the-box for their potential new leads and accordingly make required changes in presenting yourself. Do not limit your creative boundaries, test possible logo options through testing, and see what delivers the best possible results.

When any user finds your app, then the next step would be they will be checking the descriptions and screenshot images accompanied with the app download link. This is the place, where you can do most and put all your creativity in both content and visual graphic aspects and present yourselves highlighting the unique selling propositions of your app. Regardless of the actual functionality of the app, this step is where you will be converting leads into customers. So make sure to execute each category with finesse. Besides, highlighting the unique selling points the provides compared to other similar apps, always give information on additional benefits received to increase the value for both user experience, and their opinion towards the app. Top recommendations from our side in this category would be, use video content if relevant to your mobile app, as they have the potentiality in communicating the key benefits of your app within few seconds of time.

Blog

Content is an essential part for any business. Right content delivery can establish solid foundation for an app before its actual launch. Many customers build a long-term loyal relationship with their brand based on reliable content they receive in reverse. Be ready with blogs content, months in advance to the app launch. Start with writing content for the launch post, the content should focus more on boosting app features, accompanied with relevant videos and images. Benefits received by writing quality content for your app includes:

Helps in being expert in your niche groups and creates a brand image for the app prior to the launch
Drive organic traffic and increase conversion rates
Build brand awareness
Develop a connection with customers through reliable content
Similar content can be used for strategies like promotions on social media and email marketing

Also, the content for the blog can be related to your experiences while creating the app. Taking the customers through a ride with a story can create an emotional connection for the users. They will feel the valued through the experience, and at times provide feedback through interaction on the blog posts. Quality content always creates a sense of curiosity in the customers regarding the app launch and its workings.

Implement PR strategy

A public relations strategy will help in organizing your PR activities and make strategic decisions in communicating the best way possible. It also helps in using the stories in your business to draw your target audiences, and increase your profile by building brand awareness for your mobile app. When you are involved with the development process of your app, then it qualifies you in promoting it across all target media outlets, through influencers, blogs, and social media platforms. We have already covered the concepts of blogs and social media in the above elements, lets us give you a brief into influencers marketing. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving product placement or endorsements done by influencers, people and companies who have an expert level of social influence on the online user base. This marketing strategy has become a popular trend, and many businesses are actually adopting it as an essential component in their marketing mix. Find an existing influencer in your specific industry whose activities could complement your mobile app. Make use of their network in promoting your brand. The influencers can be either in real time or social media celebrities with huge user following on all of their digital media channels. All these people have a level of influential power over their audience. Most of the top app development companies are indulging themselves into this process, to gain following and app visibility in shorter time. So, you can choose people through your connections who have huge following on social media for help in promoting your app for free.

Some of the other techniques of PR strategy includes, interviews with the lead app developers, inviting journalists to your development studio, providing insights, and recommendations to your community. Because, nurturing an inspiring and engaged community is a great feedback source for the app, also you can receive many insights that can be helpful in further development. Besides from all these, you need to be responsive to user and medias queries, opinions, reviews, etc. Because, if these small elements arent handled right then it can cause a serious issue, as any news spreads like a wildfire in the marketplace. For instance, if any negative comment on the app is not received and required changes are made then the news might spread and sometimes lead to downfall of the app.

Final Thoughts
Mobile apps are quicker and are a key enabler in generating brand recognition and at the end it all comes to the end-to-end user experience that makes it simpler for businesses in engaging with their customers interests and retaining them. There are many free methods in promoting your mobile app, but it is your responsibility to choose the online mediums which are actually viable to your app. Choosing a platform, just for the sake of saving on finances can lead to lower download and conversation rates. Our suggestion would be, first analyze your target audience, then plan a promotional campaign, and stick to it. Irrespective of what method you choose, make sure to test the content on smaller target audience, and measure the results of the campaign. No strategy is a failure, know what works for you, and develop further activities based on the experience and feedback received.

Is real-time attitude in digital marketing worth the interest?

On average, 68 percent of marketers respond to real-time trends and specific current events in social media.

Using these two elements of data in a companys marketing communication strategy is what we call real-time marketing nowadays. In book terms, Real-time marketing is a marketing method performed on-the-fly to determine an appropriate or optimal approach to a particular customer at a particular time and place. Whereas, Real-time data is the information that is delivered immediately after collection, there is no delay in the timelines of the information provided. According to Golin Harris study – the real time marketing not only makes an impact on standard marketing objectives like word of mouth, purchase behaviour, consumer attention etc. It also boosts up other marketing initiatives either paid or owned by the business-like web, social media etc. So, to be precise, real time marketing is all about you being aware of whats going in the world and structure your business accordingly.

As a business, you are required to be responsive, sophisticated, smart, creative, and manage to implement all these together in very short time frame. Thats when real time data comes into picture, it helps in making your marketing activities faster and simpler. Online data collection provides the organizations an ability to offer spontaneous online ads in response to individuals activities such as searching and purchase of products/services online. It is often utilized for tracking and navigation and is processed with real-time computing although it can be stored for later analysis use. This method of marketing can gain more and more fame for the companies, by driving huge user traffic, with the help of rapid technology development and social media. Recent marketing trends have clearly shown that real-time marketing has been one of the most efficient ways of gaining the race to the preferred user behaviour and gain their loyalty. This strategy can be used for both technological and marketing aspects. When a user undergoes some online activity, the data is stored, and ads are designed based on the information received through the data. It is essential to stay relevant with the changing trends in the external market environment. As expectations and needs of customers keeps changing every day, it makes harder in staying relative. Increased marketing tactics have given the customers, the power to choose in giving their attention to specific brands. To surpass and maintain a competitive advantage, you need to level up your game. Also, this technique can be understood in two-ways. Firstly, instant digital marketing response to events happening in real life. If its well strategized and implemented, then it might increase brand or product awareness among its target audience. Whereas, the second approach would be the automated responses to customer behaviour, offering them with personalized and contextually relevant offers that helps in gaining customers attention and loyalty.

Speaking of Digital marketing, it is a concept that can defined as - A process of advertising through digital channels. Channels include - Social media, mobile applications, website, email, search engines and any other related digital mediums. Digital marketing is a technology that enables people in maintaining rich connections with large number of people. marketing is an integrated process that businesses use in value creation for the customers and build solid customer relationships in return for a reciprocation of value from their customers. The internet plays an essential role within this process, thats where the concept of digital marketing arises. Therefore, it is defined as - The process where the businesses and potential customers use the internet for value creation and products, as well as interchange them. So, in simple terms it can be described as a sub-process of marketing. You might have heard many terms like online marketing, internet marketing and e-marketing. All these terms are just synonyms for Digital marketing. . Digital marketing involves important elements such as content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), e-commerce, campaign marketing, social media marketing, pay-per click advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing, affiliate marketing etc. Digital technologies had revolutionized the way marketing is being done. Any type of information around the globe, can be accessed through distinctive mediums available online with just a click on compact devices like mobile phones, tablets.

Real-time can be the future of digital marketing, and it can be defined in many different ways from one marketer to the next. In truth, the basis of real-time digital marketing involved a highly personalized digital marketing strategy that is tailored in real-time according to customers mindset and needs. Heres an example, where real-time attitude in digital marketing had made many other brands working towards receiving same sort of attention. How many of you are aware of Oreo cookies I am guessing, everyone had at least one in their lifetime. The product did not just win our hearts, it also had set an excellent example for real time marketing. During Superbowl 2013, New Orleans faced a huge power out issue. Oreos marketing team were quick enough in seizing the opportunity to market their brand on Twitter. They tweeted an image of the cookie in the dark with a tagline You can still dunk in the dark and captioned their photo as - Power out No problem. It was an instant and massive hit among the twitter user base. The ad had an impact on social media advertising and the company was praised for their sheer minimalistic charm. This instant marketing technique had put them on the top of the list for their creativity.

Why is real time marketing important

When you conduct real time marketing, it will enable you in enhancing your ability to find new customer base. Many social media platforms have these hashtags and filters, heavily used by the online users these days. With the help of these elements, you can track and discover your potential customers. You can have a clear picture on who are purchasing your products/services and you can court them as your customers. Similar method can be used in knowing the issues with competitors products/services. The data received from these tools, can help in determining the performance of your brands product/service. Based on this information, you can make required modifications to your marketing strategy or resolve problems. You can actually stop the damage before it gets worse. In simple words, real time marketing data will help you in knowing if your products/service is meeting the expectation of the existing customers and also helps in finding new leads for the business. Overall, it helps in bridging the gap between customer expectation and business performance.

Another aspect will be the art of providing personalized service to the customers. Personalization has become very essential these days. Through real time data, you can provide unique personalized experienced for everyone based on their online activities. Once a customer is treated in a different manner, they value the personal service received and there are high chances of them remembering your brand. Utilize the real time data, such as – the purchase & search history of a customer and provide him/her with personalized emails, messages of information related to their previous product/service search. This can instil some value for the customer towards the brand. Unique experience can help in building loyal customer groups for any organization.

How is real time marketing plan developed and implemented

To develop a real time marketing plan, the marketing team needs to decide their parameters of their users, such as keyword search, demographics, products/services purchased or placed in the cart, average time spent on a website, discussion regarding the products/services on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Based on the information received through these parameters, instant marketing messages are designed and sent to the users in the form of ads, text messages, email offers etc. Another approach would be creating social media presence for the business and encouraging users to like and follow the platforms. Once the users are on board, customized messages can be created and posted. Lastly, part of real time marketing can also include an opt-in option on the companys official website and ask customers to sign in for the membership, and members who have joined will be receiving text messages, latest news offers, exclusive information etc.

 Real-time marketing in practise

All the customers are emotional beings looking for context, relevance and connection through the brands they choose. One of the effective examples in using real-time data marketing would be utilization of dynamic banners within a viewed website, depending on customers behavioural activities online. The data received from geo locations, what the customer downloads, views and purchases online can facilitate in matching the company message to the current situation in which the customer is in.

Another type of real-time data marketing would involve push notifications, which helps in increasing the users involvement and encourage the user in making a purchase. Even in B2B sector, real-time marketing can take place, such as alerts for the sales department turns out to be exceptionally practical, and when a lead who has lost interest enters your website again to reviews the price list can be provided with new customized offers.

Here are some real-time examples of famous brands adopting real-time marketing

ASOS is an online fashion and cosmetic retailer. They have gained enough reputation and has a well-established brand image in the market. Surprising thing about this brand is, they have not adopted a real time marketing strategy. Instead created one to stop the brand from receiving negative publicity. Wondering how is that possible In March 2018, the company had misspelled the word online on 17,000 of their packaging bags. To avoid backlash, instantly they have responded with a tweet saying - Ok, so we *may* have printed 17,000 bags with a typo. We’re calling it a limited edition, with an image linked to the tweet. This brilliant approach had left people humoured, instead of causing any disaster for the brand. They actually took a step forward, acknowledged their mistake and took ownership of it. Through this they have actually gained free publicity for the brand. If seen from the perspective of Real-time marketing, unlike the others, ASOS unknowingly had created a real-time event.

The second example would be SNICKERS chocolate. During 2014 World Cup in Brazil, one of the Uruguayan players had bit an Italian player. Snickers had taken this unusual situation as an opportunity to conduct their marketing activities and published a campaign with a visual on half bitten snickers chocolate, with a tagline saying, More satisfying than Italian and the Uruguayan players name as their hashtag. This post had made it big on Twitter as it had referred to the current situation at that time and emotions of its recipients.

An effective marketing strategy in real-time translates into increased interest in the brand and its offer. It helps in building the customer reach at a global level and acquire new customers. Above examples prove that, this method has the ability to strengthens the brand image, reduce the gap between the brand and the customer. Online users start to connect the event with a specific brand because of the advertising, after some time these two elements become inseparable. This is a great technique in both promoting your own business and increase its popularity at a relatively lower cost.

Benefits of real-time approach in digital marketing

Proactive approach

With traditional process of collecting the data, analysis and reporting is done to know where the issue has started. This can cut down the enormity of the issue in the first place. In order to overcome that, the businesses are required to be more proactive in problem solving as they are faced with unpredictable events majority of the times. Real time data can help in knowing the cause of the problem and can give us time in reacting and resolving the situation instantly.

Competitor strategy

It is very essential to keep par with your competitor businesses to maintain a stability in the market. Through real time data, you can have complete knowledge on how your competitors are operating in the marketing, get to know new updates on your competitors change of strategy or what the customers feel about their product/service compared to yours. This information can help in improving your performance standards by identifying the gaps and utilizing them as a business opportunity.

Multiple data sources

This system of analysis in real time can help in aggregating all the information related to a company into a single system. In this manner, accessibility of information becomes simpler and the time spent in gathering data is reduced.

Saving on costs

Through real time data – time spent on gathering data, analysing and reporting can be minimized. Problems occurred on customers end can be resolved immediately, saving both time and money for the business. Cutting down on few steps in a process or few unwanted procedures can ultimately lead to decrease in the money spent by the company. Not only it helps in cost cuttings, but also increase the productivity of the business.

Agile processes

In earlier days, there used to be extensive reporting to analyze the condensed information. Whereas, with real time information management programs analyzing process has been made easier, giving the employees more time in concentrating on other important tasks, which will ultimately lead to increase in the productivity of a business. Also, all the information will be condensed and stored at one place making the analytical processes more effective and agile.

360 degrees customer view

You can get 360 degrees view of customers perceived expectations and feedback on your product or service. This view can help for the development of new product/service of the business, also re-modify the existing one to accommodate their needs. A happy customer is a greatest advertisement for the business. Keeping them satisfied can increase your chances of gaining competitive edge over your competition.

Internal performance motivation

Employee performance can be improved if they receive a proper feedback and are aware where they are going wrong. With the help of real time data, employees can track their mistakes and have the chance to make on-the-spot corrections, in order to better their performance standards. They can check their performance levels and what is expected out of them. This data helps in depicting where personalized attention is needs and where do the basic requirements needed to be met.

Final thoughts

Yes, Real-time attitude in digital marketing is worth the interest. As it offers a solution, enabling marketers to adapt their messages to a specific context. Real-time marketing has the ability to cut through the noise and provides a space for businesses to contact with people in the right place at the right time. Through all the above campaigns, theres a lesson for everyone of us to learn that real-time provides a platform for organizations in communicating with the customers and increase their satisfaction levels, which ultimately leads to increase in both awareness and visibility for the brand.

What is digital marketing (SEO)?

There are more than 3.9 billion internet users, 1.3 billion websites, and 2.1 billion Facebook users in the world and the numbers are still counting?

Are you aware, whatever activity you do on the internet, it might be from browsing websites to signing up for a newsletter, each click, search, and view gets recorded in a parameter which is absolutely beyond analytics of Google or any other webmaster in the marketplace. These statistics clearly shows us the level of effect, digital technology has on both – Marketing methods and User base.

Digital marketing definition - The process where the businesses and potential customers use the internet for value creation and products, as well as interchange them. Its a process of advertising through digital channels. Types of channels include Social media, mobile applications, website, email, search engines and any other related digital mediums. Digital marketing can be defined as a subset of Marketing. It utilizes internet and online based technologies like mobile phones, computers, tablets and other digital media platforms in promoting a product or service of a business, through implementation of strategies such as content marketing, social media management, search engine optimization (SEO) etc. The evolution of digital marketing has taken place during the years 1990s and 2000s, completely changing the process of using technology for marketing by various brands and businesses. It enables people in maintaining rich connections with large number of people. marketing is an integrated process that businesses use in value creation for the customers and build solid customer relationships in return for a reciprocation of value from their customers.

Digital technologies had revolutionized the way marketing is being done. Any type of information around the globe, can be accessed through distinctive mediums available online with just a click on compact devices like mobile phones, tablets. The share of people spending time on electronic devices is showing a steady rise each day. For example, Digital marketing strategies plays an essential role in the gaming sector, as companies invest millions in developing their products and marketing them. In 2019, the gaming industry has spent approximately $152.1 billion, illustrating an increase of 9.6 percent year on year. That is a huge amount to invest, as there are about 2.5 billion gamers globally, it is the responsibility of the gaming businesses to convince them in purchasing the products.

Let us clear this once and for all, traditional marketing approaches like print ads, cold calls, billboards, radio, newspaper etc, are tangible in nature and are considered to be one-way communication. Whereas, digital marketing takes place electronically and has the ability to have wide reach of audience through various online channels, enabling two-way communication. So, when both these mediums are compared in terms of impact, In traditional marketing, the probability of targeting specific audience groups is comparatively less and there is no instant feedback received. Whereas, in digital marketing, as a business you will be having endless opportunities in promoting your brand and get to constantly communicate with your customers, providing them with a personalized service. This helps in improving the value for the customers in relation to the brand. Speaking of digital strategies impact, each online medium has distinctive marketing techniques for implementing, this will enable you in reaching global audience, identification of untapped targeted groups and obtaining long term & loyal customer base for the brand. The share of people spending time on electronic devices is showing a steady rise each day. In this stream, you will be implementing strategies, you can predict the result in reaching certain groups of target audience, but you can never define the exact result in financial terms. You can never really tell how many of these people will approach your company, turn into potential customers and generate sales.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO can be defined as Process of increasing online visibility of a business from non- paid organic keyword search, through search engines like Google, Bing etc. You might have heard of the term SEO a lot of times and might have a basic understanding of what it entails. To have a solid grip on this complex and multifaced concept, you need to understand the different elements and concepts that supports the concept. Its a process of making a web page easy to find, and easy to categorize online. It is made up of multiple elements and plays major role in generating organic and non-paid user traffic for a brand online. To be on constant radar, when customer searches for some product/service that your brand offers then you need to make sure that, your brand shows up on the top-result of users search engine result page (USERP). This can be achieved by putting right content incorporated with most searched keywords in either your companys website, blogs, social media, or any other online platforms.

Before detailing into the concept of SEO marketing method in detail, lets have a quick glance over the other types of digital marketing techniques apart from SEO, that are commonly used and proven to be effective:

Content marketing: Delivering quality piece of content through online platforms, for the purpose of generating sales and new leads to the business.

Social Media Marketing: Accommodates interaction with potential customers and helps in receiving instant feedback and online user outreach for a product or service.

Affiliate Marketing: Process of a business rewarding the affiliate (Ex: Blogger) in getting customers to their website, by affiliates own marketing efforts. Its more of performance based marketing and both the parties benefit in this process.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Paid user traffic from search engines like Google AdWords, Bing etc. In here, the business purchases an advertising space to make their ad appear on users search engine web results page.

Influencer marketing: Businesses hire people online, with enormous customer reach in promoting the product and service of the company through these influencers posts and blogs.

Email Marketing: Businesses send in information through emails to subscribed users list by fostering a relationship with potential customers.

Mobile Marketing: Providing customers with new updates, coupons, offers etc through mobile app notifications, SMS, MMS etc., which could count as local marketing efforts of the business.

Viral Marketing: Posting a video, photo or GIF that is either trendy, out-of-the box or never-seen-before, by businesses, to garner attention of online base and increase the followers list for the business.

Among all of these, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing is found to be very effective, non-paid, and beneficial technique for any business in conducting their marketing activities online. The reason for all the What, Why and How regarding this topic, will be explained further.

What is the role of SEO in digital marketing

For suppose, there are two companies - Company A and Company B, working under similar industry. Company A doesnt have any specific name or product images, whereas the other company does. Which one do you think customers go to or are curious to know more about it Obviously, it would be Company B. Because, when you have something that identifies you from others, then customers are inclined towards learning more about your organization and the products or services you sell. Also, at time some of these customers would start spreading word-of-mouth to other potential targets about their purchase or service experience with your company.

You might be wondering, why have I discussed a whole paragraph about the importance of having specific name and image for a company. Well, they act as essential keywords in the SEO process of representing and making your business easy to be found online by users. They will be identified by the search algorithms when searched online. If the search keyword and your company keywords (Name, product image, content, etc.) are found to be similar, then it puts your organizations website or social media platforms on the first page whenever someone searches for your company, product, service or something similar to it. Its the most powerful form of digital marketing that will help your business for long-term growth. It is the first form of digital marketing technique, that allows your business in passing your message to the target audience without any extra costs. Businesses optimizing SEO to appear on top of the search engine list have relatively more clicks, compared to the ones who ignore the importance of this strategy. Unlike other channel strategies, this one stands out to be long-term and reliable. Though it is observed to be time consuming, it really pays off, with web marketing specialists ensuring that there are high chances of getting brand name to the top of the list, ahead of your competition. Even social networks have a search engine component as one of their specialities of internal system. Users utilize social media networks for various purposes, such as for research of products or services they are interested in, surveying information on certain brands, etc. To drive high organic search results, your business can create social profiles and make regular postings with high-quality content & visuals that allows you to interact with your potential customers. If managed regularly and properly, there are high chances for your business’s social media pages listed among the top result in the search listings.

Crucial elements of SEO

Keywords

A Keyword can be defined as a word or concept of great significance. They are considered crucial for forming an SEO strategy. In todays trend, keywords must be well-researched, cautiously selected, and to be wisely used in your online platforms content, in order for them to be effective. In simple terms, keywords are the words used by potential prospects to find online content, and organizations can use to connect with prospects who are looking for similar content or their products and services. When your company is using keywords as a part of the strategy, then it is important to look for the ones that have search and engagement rates. You can use keywords to work into your website, social media content, or optimize all your titles, URLs, and other on-page SEO elements. . SEO keywords can achieve brand awareness by specifically targeting people looking for what you do. Once you have managed to reach on Page 1 of google search, then it is easier to stay there. SEO uses various methods, such as link building, content marketing, social marketing, etc. to help your business in getting better positioning online.

Content

Content is considered to be the backbone for online marketing. It is said to answer your audiences queries, builds consumer trust and generate new leads. In todays age, users expect consistent and high-quality content from their favoured companies, as it creates a sense of reliability for the user in the process of building connection with the company. It is considered both essential online marketing channel on its own, and one that supports many other online digital marketing channels present for a brand. It has the power to blend the concepts of social media with more traditional digital marketing mediums like online publications, blogs, etc. in order to encourage engagement with both potential and existing customers. For instance, if a user has some queries regarding a topic, and is looking for more information or solutions regarding specific product or service online, and your blog comes up on search based on the similar keywords search. With your content, you will be building relationship with that specific prospect by providing valuable information. When the actual time arrives for the prospect to make a purchase, then you would be the first one to strike in their mind. Todays content come in various forms, such as website content, infographics, video, podcasts, social media posts, blogs, etc.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM in digital marketing is said to be SEOs paid sibling. Many of you while searching on Google might have seen this feature of top resulted search queries with a small box Ad placed next to them or in the right hand column of the result page. In this marketing technique, we will be placing relevant keyword text, graphic or video ads on their favourite websites, while the users are browsing online. . In here, the business purchases an advertising space to make their ad appear on users search engine web results page. It is a form of internet marketing that includes promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results page primarily through paid advertising. Your ads will only be presented to your best prospects and customers, the target demographics to whom the ad will be visible can be selected, and the ads are most likely to be displayed only during the times when your target audience are most likely to be looking online.

Local SEO

More and more people use mobile devices for browsing online, and half of these searched have local intent. For suppose, if you owned a hotel, then local SEO would make sure that when prospects in your area went looking for the best hotels in town, they will come across your website. Along with utilization of local keywords, other practises like claiming directory listings, creating location-specific pages for your website, and creating pages for your business on Google maps, Google+, and Google My Business.

Off-page SEO

This process involves external optimization, that occurs away from your website rather than on it. The main elements used in here is the backlinks building. Because, backlinks to your site from external sites tells the search engines like Google, Bing, etc. that your website is both high-quality and valuable, ultimately building website authority. There are various similar techniques to backlink building and some of them are:

Guest blogging: doing a guest post of posting your brands refined content on other persons blog to gain more leads to your business. When your guest publishing then the content should define your brand and create a memorable impression, as you will be introduced to new audiences and make a lasting impression.

Infographics: Graphical representations of information, or data intended to present information clearly and quickly. These contents are easily sharable online, also they create a sense of customer engagement. If your brands infographics stands out to be unique from the designs available online then there are high chances of it being shared across all social media networks, by reaching millions of users worldwide along with your branding.

Influencer marketing: Company pays an influencer (person with huge following on social media channels) to get out the word. Influencers are expected to promote on all their social channels with viable content. The content is either provided by the company or created by the influencer itself, it all depends on the creative freedom of the company.

Why is SEO important in this modern business era

Increased visibility is the simplest answer that could be provided for this question. SEO makes it easier for users in finding your company online when they search for something that is similar to that you have to offer. Fun fact, visibility is directly related to search engine ranking. The higher your website ranks on a search engine result page (SERP), the more likely users are to see your business and click through to your website. Some of the other reasons that builds foundation for SEO importance are as follows:

Authority

It is very important for any users online, that the website they are entering is trustworthy, high in quality, relevant, and has something to offer them in return. Though this concept has been an increasing addition in recent times, it has become more important to web users. Your authority defines, your ranking on the search engine results page, and customers will come to trust your business.

Better user experience

SEO is critical, as it puts into generating quality content and optimizing your website with on-page SEO, which ultimately improves both usability and visibility, by creating a positive user experience for the customers online. Take for instance, when you optimize your website according to both desktop and mobile users an increase in the page load speed can reduce your overall bounce rate and encourage more organic traffic into your site. Almost half of your user base, will expect the pages to load in just 2 seconds, the patience level of users online is very low, and you need to make sure cater to their needs and requirements and provide them with a valuable user experience. This process can help in gaining loyal and long-term customers for the business, resulting in word-of-mouth marketing.

Organic Traffic for Website

Its free traffic and is obtained from the appearance of a site in the results of a search that users perform in search engines. Increased organic traffic is one of the main goals of SEO, and traffic is automatically achieved with increase in visibility and website rankings. Nearly 33 percent of the clicks, go to first ranking page, and the first five listings get over 75 percent of all clicks. It helps the website in functioning correctly and can increase the popularity of the site, if your business ought to sell varied products or services then organic traffic helps in producing more visibility and sales for the business.

Final thoughts

Throughout this article, we have discussed the What, Why and How of the concept of SEO. As you can see, this concept is slightly complex in nature, that involves many different techniques in practise. All these practises keep on evolving based on the user behaviour, external changes in market trends and invention of new technologies. The plus point in this strategy is that it generated non-paid traffic and gives a business outmost visibility for long-term. Apart from the above mentioned tips, it also helps in accomplishing goals, such as - web traffic, conversion rates, brand awareness, customer experience, and so on. Only advice in utilizing strategy for your business would be, to get a solid grasp on the elements, process and tools used while implementing, so that your efforts would be worth it in the end.

8 Great Ideas for Better Mobile App Marketing

There has been continuous increase in the mobile users, and by default mobile app users across the globe tend to raise too. With this, the mobile marketing strategies have taken a different and more effective course. In-app offers and more other promotional opportunities through mobile apps can keep a customer engaged and inclined towards using them more. When it comes to their utilization in everyday activities then the possibilities are undeniably unending. It is because of the ongoing transmission of huge amounts of information, which ordinary communication devices could not do.

Mobile is not just a device for calling anymore, it has revolutionized the way business is being done. This medium can broader your communication channels globally. Mobile phones have turned from luxury to need. The device has been integrated into activities of our everyday lives. Majority, of the population has been relying on smartphones to get through simple tasks in their daily routine. According to Pew Research Centre – developed country like United State accounted to 96 percent of its population, having access to mobile phones. Whereas, developing country such as, India alone contributed up to 64 percent of its population, having ownership of the device.

Whereas, Mobile app is a software application designed to run on mobile devices, such as phones, smartwatch, tablet etc. They are originally developed for the purpose of productivity assistance, such as calendar, contact database and email. Gradually, increased demand has been observed for apps in other industry lines like location-based services, mobile games, social media, online retail, order tracking, ticket purchase, etc. Apps are generally available to download from platforms which are operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as Google Play store and Apple App store. Again, there are two categories of apps in here the ones that are free to download and the others require purchase. This division has been done, to distribute the profits between, the app creator and platform distributer. It has become a colossal point for both businesses and individuals, because of its incredible features and the opportunities that are being offered additional to their usage. They are observed to be a great strategy in keeping customers engaged with the brand, by offering unique selling features that drives more engagement than Web and give the company a competitive edge over their competition. Mobile applications are able to prompt both current and potential customers in interacting with the business. To be precise, any brand is right in the palm of customers hand. These applications are helpful in providing customers with easy access to businesses anytime and from anywhere. The steady usage of apps can aid in development of the brand and business. These apps help customers to browse, purchase, make payment, retain information and communicate with the company officials at any given point in time. Also, mobile apps have been increasingly becoming mandated mobile app marketing tools for businesses.

However, Mobile app marketing is a process of creating mobile app marketing campaigns to reach your users at every stage of the marketing funnel. This process of engaging your app users throughout their entire experience with your app, such as discovering it, going through the requirements, and downloading it. They are key digital marketing channels, which enables businesses in connecting with their target audience all the time, and also provide digital marketers a direct medium of interaction with the customers. Many creative marketing apps are being developed for the purpose of conducting online campaigns and to encourage brand engagement. Continual evolvement of consumer behaviour had made businesses adapting to strategies that are based on a core point of where their customers are. As a result, companies are moving rapidly towards making mobile apps commonplace for business marketing tools and assets. These marketing of mobile app works effectively in communicating with defined target audience, also helps in driving customer engagement, and loyal advocates for the brands products or services. Also, apps provide a sense of personalized service to the customers, it helps in building customer value. Long-term customer loyalty can help in achieving higher customer retainment. Achieving both brand value and visibility are needed for a business to sustain in this competitive environment. Apps have the power in generating visibility to your business by making it available for many users online. If the app satisfies the user requirements then it will ultimately enhance the brand value.

Why mobile app marketing Whats the difference between mobile app marketing and mobile marketing?

As discussed earlier, mobile app marketing guide is about creating marketing campaigns that interacts with your users at every stage of their life cycle, from their first download to becoming a regular user and brand advocate who makes many in-app purchases. The main focus lies in the effective performance of marketing activities designed specifically to attract new potential users, improve retention rates, and lower the churn rates. Whereas, Mobile marketing is any marketing activity that occurs on a mobile device, it need not be specific to certain app. It includes marketing from mobile display ads, to email marketing.

Also, the major difference between the mobile app and traditional marketing funnel is the utilization of marketing strategies in each stage, such as awareness, consideration, conversion, customer relationship, and retention. Irrespective of your business marketing a product/service, it is easy for customers to reach out when your business has an application of its own. Including mobile app, alongside website in your marketing mix can make it much easier for customers to communicate and voice out their concerns or opinions.

In this digital era, you need to build a long-term marketing plan for your Mobile app and create your own prominence in the mobile app market. To do that, here is a list of 8 great ideas for a better mobile app marketing:

For a clear direction, break down your promotional method into pre-launch and post-launch strategies:

 Start promoting before the app actual launch

As soon as the concepts and mechanism of the app has been finalized, you can start marketing it. Early marketing approach will provide you with the time in figuring out who your ideal users are, also giving the users an opportunity to learn about your app and the benefits they will be receiving in return. Marketing of an app before the launch needs some initiatives to be taken, in order to create a buzz in the market and increase the anticipation of the users. Some of the activities, that are needed to be done include contacting publications, influencers, and bloggers in securing the backlinks and provide honest reviews.

According to Google reports, only 40 percent of mobile users tend to search for apps through the app store. Whereas, the rest will be discovering the apps through third-party promotional content like YouTube videos, podcasts, blogs, influencer posts, online tutorials, and many other possible online platforms. Any brand is observed to resonate with the customers through companys personalized message and positioning. Making customers aware of your app feasibility prior to the launch through solid mobile app launch marketing plan with better positioning, that can give the customers a chance to connect at a deeper level. Users always tend to prefer things that are newest and trending in the market. You need to take this opportunity in promoting your app in such a way that it grabs the attention of the users and make then curious to know more about the app functionalities.

 An in-depth analysis of the market can give you valuable insights about your competition, such as their strategies, weakness and strengths. This will help your company in not committing any errors and being more conscious in your dealings. Also, it is suggested to research and identify more on influential blogs, websites, groups, and forums that generates information on target users visits, and influencers the users follow on social media.

 Engage with potential customers

Communication plays a vital role in influencing customers perceptions regarding certain product. Their user experience can make them stay loyal to the company for long-term and also provide with insights that will help for further development of the app. For any app development company, the goal should be to solve the concerns and queries of desired customers. Customer engagement can provide you with instant feedback right through the development proves from your intended groups.

 Interaction with customers can be initiated through any channels, such as website, social media, etc. There are tools available to help you in recognizing and connecting with the industry leaders and approach them for feedback. Majority of the app failures are due to lack of prior customer feedback. Important players are to be identified in each specific app category. No matter how good your app and the marketing plan is, if your app does not address the points of concern, then there is high probability for failure in the market. Customer engagement, is crucial for the success of your app, based on the information received through interaction you can make better and viable decisions about design, development, and marketing strategies of your apps business.

Blog

Content is an essential part for any business. Right content delivery can establish solid foundation for an app before its actual launch. Many customers build a long-term loyal relationship with their brand based on reliable content they receive in reverse. Be ready with blogs content, months in advance to the app launch. Start with writing content for the launch post, the content should focus more on boosting app features, accompanied with relevant videos and images. Benefits received by writing quality content for your app includes:

• Helps in being expert in your niche groups and creates a brand image for the app prior to the launch

• Drive organic traffic and increase conversion rates

• Build brand awareness

• Develop a connection with customers through reliable content

• Similar content can be used for strategies like promotions on social media and email marketing

 Also, the content for the blog can be related to your experiences while creating the app. Taking the customers through a ride with a story can create an emotional connection for the users. They will feel the valued through the experience, and at times provide feedback through interaction on the blog posts. Quality content always creates a sense of curiosity in the customers regarding the app launch and its workings.

 Launch a sneak-peak of the App

 Before the app launch, curiosity will be the most powerful thing you will be owning. Building curiosity around your mobile app before launch, will be your growing point. Have you ever watched a movie teaser, got excited, spoke about it with people and made numerous researches on getting more sneak-peak of the movie before its launch.

 If the answer is a yes, then thats how we want the customers to feel about the app. Promotional methodology for an app before its launch or after should always focus on highlighting the points which helps in building their curiosity levels. By using this method, you can push the customers from being interested to excited. Visual aspects play a key role in the online marketing activities, specifically in the mobile apps. These teaser promotions help the users in seeing a visual sneak-peak of the app, instead of reading or hearing about it. These short clip videos should be posted on all the social networks of the company, and enable sharing option to increase user visibility for the app. Also, you may develop an email rundown of clients interested in your mobile app.

 Be prepared with Press Kit and Launch materials

 A press-kit is a one-stop source, that contains all the information, images and context for why your app deserved a good review. A complete press kit will streamline the writing process, making sure you have everything needed. It includes the following:

• Review guide - Highlighting the features like - pricing, frequently asked queries, release information, and your contact database

• Lifestyle images - Photos that features your app in natural scenarios that highlights its use and value

• Videos - Video content that helps in enhancing the customer reach and impact of your marketing, for best compatibility upload them on most-used platforms like Vimeo or YouTube.

• Screenshots - As publications will be using these images in their write up, show the best features of your app through these images

• Icons, logos, banners - For print publications include .eps and for images for digital posts use .png

 Before the launch, make sure to have your website fully equipped with video promos highlighting the key features and functionality of the app, accompanied with content in the form of blog post or press release. Narrow down the list of contacts to critics who are relevant to your industry and are inclined towards writing and reviewing the app. Pitch to these people needs to be concise and link that re-directs them to the landing page. If they are interested in writing about your app, then they know where to find you.

Get more feedback from customers

The more the feedback, the better the end product.

 An estimation of 2 million apps are available on the Google Play store and around 1.83 million apps are available on the Apple App store. It is important to stand out from the crowd, for the app to be successful. For further downloads, you need to collect more and more feedback from the customers by the rating and review system of the app, or through any other social networking platforms. Also, you can include customer support contact details on your mobile app specifications, so that customers can personally interact with queries or comments that contribute towards both value creation to the user experience, and learning more insights/improvements that can be made to the functionality of the app. Receiving the feedback is just not the end point, respond and make changes in relation to it. Customer loyalty can be achieved when the customers are provided with personalized experience. Respond to their issues or queries immediately and resolve them. User retention in app can be influenced through in-app notifications or messages sent, in order to communicate with the users. It is always suggested to maintain a two way communication with the users, to know any gaps in the service, or insights for further development.

 Get reviews for the app

 Do you look for app reviews before downloading it

 With easy availability of online information, most of the customers final decision is based on the reviews of other customers regarding the similar product. More reviews, can influence the SEO activity of the app. You can submit your app for reviews on online influencers blogs, video channels, social platforms, etc. Besides to that you can run your own YouTube channel, create and publish videos on demonstrating how to use the app while dealing with specific issues. When your app answers the most asked customer queries, then people who are looking for solutions to their problems online, can view your videos and convert into potential leads for the app.

 If the procedure of the apps looks simpler and useful, then there are high chances in users downloading the applications and are much likely to give it a try. Make sure, to never go overboard with information thats been explained or demonstrated online, because it can make a simple app, complicated to understand for some people. Demonstrate it in a simpler way, capturing the customers interest in downloading and using the app.

 App Store Optimization (ASO)

 With over 2 million apps on app stores, getting to view your app by the user is one of the major issues mobile app developers face these days. The goal of ASO is to drive intense traffic to your apps page in the app store, so user searching can take a specific action like downloading the app. According to Forrester, 63 percent of apps are discovered through app store searches. If you are not using ASO to increase your apps ranking, then you are ought to be missing out on opportunities available to your app.

 ASO is a process of optimizing a mobile apps marketing copy, involving title, icon, keywords, description, screenshots, and customer reviews, to rank higher on app store search results. It is often described as SEO for app store. Always, place right keywords or the most searched keywords in the title and description for your users to easily find you. If your app is ranked highly in search for certain keyword, then trust us it will continue to rank that way for months after. For an added bonus to your users, place screenshots and videos of your app operations, giving a quick glance of what they are about to experience, and also piquing their interests.

The main goals of your mobile app marketing mix must be, making sure your mobile app stand out from millions of apps available on the app market. Standing out and building a community for yourself is essential for the survival of your app in this cutthroat market. Mobiles, by their nature, allow you to create a long-term relationship between you and your customers. In mobile app marketing, you impose the rules. And with evolution of app stores, you need app marketing more than ever, to reach your target audience.

Digital Marketing is the Future of Brand Recognition

Did you know, colour has the power to improve brand recognition by up to 80 percent.

According to Forbes, cultivating a brand image is comparatively simpler. Constant use of one colour palette on your brand logo, products, digital content, and promotional material can drive brand recognition up by as much as 80 percent.

Brand recognition is the extent to which a consumer is able to correctly identify a particular product or service just by the product or services logo, packaging, tagline or marketing campaigns. For this to happen, the company must repeatedly expose customers to the visual or auditory content experience consistently. This concept is developed on the basis of frequency, audience reach, and consistency. An ad that can make a long-lasting impression on customers subconscious related to a brand can be done by developing a campaign around a concept or a character. Lets consider the Dunkin Donuts example, if you give a close consideration to their logo, you can observe that the letters are in pink and orange colour, so whenever u see the ad campaign or logo, before even making out the words, you can automatically recognize it as Dunkin Donuts. Thats the level of influential power brand recognition has on customer minds.

You might ask - Whats the difference between brand recognition and brand awareness? Are they both same?

Brand recognition is all about identifying your brand products or services through their logo and any other visual or audio representation. Whereas, Brand awareness marketing is a concept that goes a step further to the point where the public can recall information, emotions and general impressions related to your brand. It’s the level of consumer consciousness of a certain company, by pin-pointing what makes your company different, and using those differences to show the inherent value of your company. Implementation of strategies that further increase brand awareness, can drive consumers’ decisions when differentiating between competing companies, and encourages repeat purchase, increase in market share, and lastly rise in incremental sales. In short, recognition focuses on highlighting the unique aspects of the brand in terms of voice, image, and strategy, awareness focuses on the heart and soul of your company. Both of them come together in convincing your customers in choosing you over anyone else. As we can clearly see that both these concepts go hand-in-hand, so lets concentrate on how you can achieve them both with the help of digital marketing.

Digital marketing is a technology that enables people in maintaining rich connections with large number of people. marketing is an integrated process that businesses use in value creation for the customers and build solid customer relationships in return for a reciprocation of value from their customers. The internet plays an essential role within this process, thats where the concept of digital marketing arises. Therefore, it is defined as The process where the businesses and potential customers use the internet for value creation and products, as well as interchange them. So, in simple terms it can be described as a sub-process of marketing. You might have heard many terms like online marketing, internet marketing and e-marketing. All these terms are just synonyms for Digital marketing. . Digital marketing involves important elements such as content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), e-commerce, campaign marketing, social media marketing, pay-per click advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing, affiliate marketing etc.

Digital technologies had revolutionized the way marketing is being done. Any type of information around the globe, can be accessed through distinctive mediums available online with just a click on compact devices like mobile phones, tablets. We belonged to a generation where ads or information has been broadcasted on selected mediums like television, billboards, radio or newspaper, with communication being only one-sided. There was no possible way to receive instant feedback on what each customer of yours feel about your brand or the marketing approach. All these gaps were resolved through integration of digital strategies into marketing. These days, the count of people glued to their mobile devices when stuck in a traffic is higher, than the ones looking at the advertising on billboards. The share of people spending time on electronic devices is showing a steady rise each day. In this stream of career, while you implement strategies you can predict the result in reaching certain groups of target audience, but you can never define the exact result in financial terms. You can never really tell how many of these people will approach your company, turn into potential customers and generate sales. New and budding entrepreneurs are putting their focus more on digital marketing in order to boost up their productivity. Therefore, this career path is both challenging and interesting at the same time.

When it comes to customers, majority of them are conducting online research before purchasing. There is availability for many digital marketing tools that can help in better positioning of your website, products and services. In total, there are three categories you should be aware of:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

• Social Media Marketing (SMM)

The goal of SEO is to get search engine users to the website through organic search results, whereas, SEM includes SEO and paid search, where the paid ads can be seen on the top of Google search results. Lastly, SMM includes paid Twitter, Facebook and Instagram ads in combination with non-paid social media marketing efforts. All these three abbreviations are commonly used when discussing digital marketing. Successful website engagement can be achieved through this combination of these three marketing channels.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 Did you know, around 93 percent of all online experiences begin with a search engine 88 percent of population who search will only review the first 3-5 listings displayed on the search engine result page.

 Yes, thats absolutely true. Google, alone processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. Its considered to be the go-to search engine for global users for most of the search queries. SEO as a digital marketing channel, plays major role in generating organic and non-paid user traffic for a brand online. To be on constant radar, when customer searches for some product/service that your brand offers then you need to make sure that, your brand shows up on the top-result of users search engine result page (USERP). This can be achieved by putting right content incorporated with most searched keywords in either your companys website, blogs or other social media platforms. These keywords will be identified by the search algorithms, if they are found to be similar and puts your brands website or social media platforms on the first page whenever someone searches for your product/service or something similar to it.

Unlike other channel strategies, this one stands out to be long-term and reliable. Though it is observed to be time consuming, it really pays off, with web marketing specialists ensuring that there are high chances of getting brand name to the top of the list, ahead of your competition. SEO keywords can achieve brand awareness by specifically targeting people looking for what you do. Once you have managed to reach on Page 1 of google search, then it is easier to stay there. SEO uses various methods, such as link building, content marketing, social marketing, etc. to help your business in getting better positioning online.

 Social SEO

Social networks have a search engine component as one of their specialities of the internal system. Users utilize social media networks for various purposes, such as - for research of products or services they are interested in, surveying information on certain brands, etc. To drive high organic search results, your business can create social profiles and make regular postings with high-quality content & visuals that allows you to interact with your potential customers. If managed regularly and properly, there are high chances for your businesses social media pages listed among the top result in the search listings.

 Content marketing

 A strategic marketing approach focused on creating, distributing and publishing relevant and valuable content to attract and retain online target audience. Content is considered to be the backbone for online marketing of the brand. It is said to answer your audience’s queries, build consumer trust and generate new leads. In today’s age, users expect consistent and high-quality content from their favoured brands, as it creates a sense of reliability for the user in the process of building connection with the brand. It is considered both essential online marketing channel on its own, and one that supports many other online digital marketing channels present for a brand.

 Non-intrusive marketing, where you interact with your potential customers in a conversational manner, instead of pitching a product or service, you provide them with the information they need. In return you gain the appreciation and credibility as a thought-leader. It has the power to blend the concepts of social media with more traditional digital marketing mediums like online publications, blogs, etc. in order to encourage engagement with both potential and existing customers. In short, the larger the footprint you create online, the higher the search engines will rank your website on organic search results.

 Directory SEO

 Online directories play a key vital role in the SEO ranking system, Search engines like Bing, Google are referred as modern phonebook, but only on a much larger scale. The volume of information available in these directories can h substantial power to drive organic traffic. Most importantly, by having your business listed in these directories can all link back to your website. Backlinks are also known as inbound or incoming links, that can redirect you from one website to a page on another website. Major search engines consider backlinks votes for a specific page. The pages with higher number of backlinks have the highest organic search engine ranking, making it easy for your customers in finding your business.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Paid user traffic from search engines like Google AdWords, Bing etc. In here, the business purchases an advertising space to make their ad appear on user?s search engine web results page. It is a form of internet marketing that includes promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results page primarily through paid advertising. SEM is said to be SEO?s paid sibling. Both of these, digital marketing channels are focused on gaining visibility in the search engine, whereas SEO is more inclined towards generating organic results, and SEM is more focused on showing up in paid results. Many of you while searching on Google might have seen this feature of top resulted search queries with a small box ‘'Ad’ placed next to them or in the right hand column of the result page. Well thats what is said to be PPC advertising and it dominates organic search results, requiring the users to scroll all the way down to see the organic results.

 In this marketing technique, we will be placing relevant keyword text, graphic or video ads on their favourite websites, while the users are browsing online. Your ads will only be presented to your best prospects and customers, the target demographics to whom the ad will be visible can be selected, and the ads are most likely to be displayed only during the times when your target audience are most likely to be looking online.

 Pay-per-click ads

The main goal of this model is to drive traffic to websites, in which the advertiser is paid by the publisher when the ad is clicked. It is mostly associated with the first tier search engines. In SEO, the traffic generated is organic, whereas in here we rather attempt to buy visits to the website or any other online platforms of the brand. PPC tends to earn brand awareness a lot faster compared SEO. Brands always have a choice of being listed in the top page of Google results from the first day of marketing by running ads. Also, these PPC campaigns will enable power to the advertiser in specifically showing the ads to selected target audience based on certain elements, such as consumer behaviour, demographics and geography.

 Video marketing

 The process of using videos in promoting and marketing your products or service, to increase customer engagement on your digital and social networks, educate your consumers, and reach your target audience with a new medium. It’s said to be one of the fastest growing digital marketing tools, as people do not have much time to read. They would rather prefer to get information in a short entertaining and informative video than a long paragraph. Videos have been very effective in influencing prospects in making the final purchase.

 Retargeting

 This method of remarketing is a form of online advertising that helps your business in keeping your brand in front of bounced traffic after they leave your website. Most of the websites, only 2 percent of web traffic converts on their first visit. Retargeting will help in staying top of mind and compel users in coming back and reconsider the purchase decision. Pay-Per-Click is one of the ways in focusing on your potential prospects through remarketing.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

 Method of using social media networks and websites in promoting a product or service. In the recent years, this method has shown a popular demand for both practitioners and researchers. The aim is to produce content that users will share within their social networks and help the company in increase their brand exposure and broaden their customer reach. According to Pew research reports, around 67 percent of internet users are now using social networking sites to drive traffic for the business. The average daily time spent by users on social media sites is estimated to be around 142 minutes per day. It has become a huge part in majority of people’s lives around the world.

 Blogs and Content marketing

 High-quality content with relevant keywords on blogs, website and social media platform of the brand can help in generating SEO organic traffic. Content presented can be either, descriptive, narrative or conversational. It all depends on the brand, and how they want to engage with their customers. Updating the content constantly based on external trends in the market can help in increase brand engagement and keeps your companys website fresh, to which Google algorithm tends to respond positively. It gives other websites a reason to link with you, which is the essential ranking factor for search engines.

You might ask, why blogs and content are important to digital marketing

Here’s why - Search engines rewards businesses that publish consistent and quality content, and content tends to drive inbound traffic that redirects users directly to your website when they have viewed your content.

You can reach and influence your consumers through blogging, where you answer most searched online queries, or queries that are specifically asked regarding your brand product/service. It gives a chance for the company, to reach their prospects with useful content that can play a role in purchase decision of the customer. You can consider it as a first touch point, for brand awareness and work on building trust for the customers, because this process unconsciously makes customers think of your brand when they are about to make a purchase decision later.

LinkedIn

 LinkedIn is a great source, in reaching to the B2B audience through digital marketing techniques. You can build a professional business network and connect with businesses professionals of similar industry. This platform allows users to write, edit, and share articles on LinkedIn. All the members of this social network can have access to the tool. One of the effective social methods in spreading your brands name across the web. If your published posts get enough visibility and attention from the members then it could be seen on the LinkedIn home stream for many users. Having posts attached to your LinkedIn account can actually help in establishing brand recognition. Make sure to promote and share the posts, after publishing, as much as possible around your network to speed up the process.

Social media marketing

 Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, etc. are channels that are used and found to be extremely effective in social media marketing. Through these two-way online communication platforms, customers are able to approach the organizations, and have the freedom to speak out their opinions freely, regarding the companys products or services. All these positive/negative reviews provided by the customers can actually help the brands in offering a better re-structured product/service, that caters to the needs of the consumers.

 If you have just entered the social media platforms to increase your brand awareness through digital marketing channels then your content might only be viewed by users who follow your handles. To gain more visibility and followers, you can use the help of bloggers and influencers who provide information similar to your brand products/service, to promote your product/service on their social media handles to generate new leads for your business and increase brand awareness in untapped markets. By building tie-up with other similar brands, bloggers and influencers there are high chancers in gaining new follower base, which is considered to be crucial for building brand awareness.

 Throughout the article we have covered the concepts of brand recognition, branding through digital marketing, and most effective digital strategies to increase brand awareness. We can positively say that, digital marketing will remain as the most powerful tool for brand recognition in the future. As the dynamics of digital marketing keep changing every day, its is important as a digital marketer to be alert, smart, agile and adapt to latest changes. SEO, SEM, and SMM are the effective core components of digital marketing, that are a sure shot way in getting your brand recognised by the target audience.

Top 6 Digital Marketing Strategies to Promote your Mobile App

Did you know that 49 per cent of the mobile user population open an app approximately 11+ times every day.

It is as fascinating, as it sounds!

According to Pew research centre, about a 5% increase in internet usage by adults have been observed in the last three years. People tend to purchase products on online platforms more, compared to offline stores. , Marketing is all about connecting and communicating with your targeted audience at any place and time. Nowadays, people tend to spend a lot of time on their digital devices, which means as a business – it is efficient, effective and easy to reach them through digital channels.

Digital marketing definition - “ It’s a process of advertising through digital channels. Do channels include - Social media, mobile applications, websites, email, search engines and any other related digital mediums.” In digital marketing, as a business, you will be having endless opportunities in promoting your brand and get to constantly interact with your target audience, by providing them with a personalized or customized service. Also, it helps in improving the value for user experience in relation to the brand. Whereas, the impact of digital strategies on each online medium has provided marketers like us, with a distinctive set of marketing techniques that will enable in reaching global audience, identification of untapped targeted groups and obtaining long term loyal customer base for the brand. The whole world has gone digital, and Digital marketing allows marketer in seeing business from the user’s perspective and of the business.

The word app will subconsciously redirect our mind towards the two giant hubs for these applications the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. These two applications are a hub for all the mobile device owners, to download applications. The mobile apps available in these stores have a distinctive array of categories, ranging from books to social media networks. Right now, you have at least one of them on your device and are totally aware of its functionality. An estimation of 2 million apps are available on the Google Play store and around 1.83 million apps are available on the Apple App Store. The data clearly illustrates the level of influence applications have on users’ mobile usage.

As a digital marketer, it’s your responsibility in enhancing your unique selling points in multiple segments and mobile apps have made it easier for businesses to respond and identify the opportunities more effectively. to, win the competition the marketer should constantly update their digital marketing strategies as innovation remains to develop. To create an effective strategy, it is essential to be aware of changing trends in the external environment. In general, digital marketing strategies includes? email marketing, content marketing, social media, search engine optimization, public relations, pay-per-click advertising, mobile marketing etc. But when it comes to mobile applications, all the strategies might not be applicable, they need to be personalized accordingly. Because, a mobile app is something that provides users with personalized, short, customized, and instant information. Also, through apps, the company can reach their targeted audience directly. So, it is essential to adopt a proper strategy for app promotions.

The most asked question ‘'How to market an app’

Firstly, as a digital marketer, you need to develop strategies for your mobile app based on the digital channel’s adequacy. Each platform approach differs for each industry line, it is your responsibility to identify the mediums in which the majority of your target audience lies. The development of distinctive digital marketing strategies for mobile apps has shown a steady increase, simultaneously, enhancing the demand for mobile device purchases. For instance, you have already developed a mobile application that meets the requirements of your targeted audience, launched it on the app store and waiting for it to make it to the top. That approach would just be an utter failure. To make it a success, you need to build a brand image for the app. This can be done by the development and implementation of digital marketing strategies that will aid in positioning yourself, among millions of applications available.

Every new mobile app marketer needs a mobile app marketing guide, to mark their way into the digital world. Here is a list of the top 6 digital marketing strategies in promoting your Mobile App:

1. Smart App Store Optimization (ASO)

The process of optimizing a mobile apps marketing copy, involving title, icon, keywords, description, screenshots, and customer reviews, to rank higher on app store search results. The higher the rank, the higher possibility of getting more visibility for your app. The aim of App Store Optimization (ASO) is to drive traffic to the app by increasing the number of downloads. When you are creating a title for the app, conduct research on the keyword search. Include the keyword that had a higher search volume. Do not rush into things, take time in creating a title that satisfies both keyword search and is able to attract users’ attention. Also, once the title is published it would be damaging for the brand image to change it after getting viral. Be considerate before fixing onto a title. Second, comes the description, make sure to include all the details of the app and try to detail the solutions and benefits provided by the app through the use of keywords. Provide a visual idea of the app working to the users through screenshots.

It is often described as SEO for app store. With over 2 million apps on app stores, getting to view your app by the user is one of the major issues mobile app developers face these days. The goal of ASO is to drive intense traffic to your apps page in the app store, so user searching can take a specific action like downloading the app. But, it is crucial for you to understand your target user base, and keywords they use to find similar apps to yours. In short, you need to have a better understanding of language of your potential customers.

1. Behavioural Targeting

It is also referred as behavioural advertising, a method that allows advertisers and publishers in displaying relevant ads and marketing messages to users, based on their web-browsing behaviour. The targeting typically relies on data in relation to users behaviour, such as ads clicked, most searched keywords, viewed pages, amount of time spent on a website landing page, latest dates of website visits, etc. All the information is based on the customer interaction with the website. The data gathered in here, is used to target the anticipated results towards the user expressed interest.

There are around 2.6 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter 2020, 500 million tweets per day on twitter, and Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. All this information is stored in the server with the search preferences of every user. The data is a combined set of different sorts of targeting, like demographics, geography, behavioural etc. This digital marketing strategy is a powerful tool for marketers or advertisers in targeting their audience.

1. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving product placement or endorsements done by influencers, people and companies who have an expert level of social influence on the online user base. This marketing strategy has become a popular trend, and many businesses are actually adopting it as an essential component in their marketing mix. Find an existing influencer in your specific industry whose activities could complement your mobile app. Make use of their network in promoting your brand.

The influencers can be either in real time or social media celebrities with the huge user following on all of their digital media channels. All these people have a level of influential power over their audience. Most of the top app development companies are indulging themselves in this process, to gain following and app visibility in a shorter time. If your mobile app answers the customer queries and provides them with additional benefits, there are high chances of it being downloaded when it is promoted to them. Also, in this marketing, the followers tend to create an emotional connection with the influencer, this point can be used at our advantage and message can be delivered accordingly. Never underestimate this digital marketing technique, as most of the businesses these days are making it a mandatory part of their promotional mix. Actually, you will be quite surprised to see how much visibility your app will be getting from one influencer.

Are you aware, that Visa Checkout and Taco bell has teamed up to offer a limited time promotion which helped drive downloads and 20 per cent increase in Click-through-rate (CTR), all this through influencer marketing.

Did not expect these two brands in one sentence right. But it did happen, Visa and their online payment product VISA Checkout had teamed up with Taco bell and came up with a marketing campaign plan for the mobile app, by identifying an influencer that could leverage humour in driving views and shares. After a through research, they ended up partnering with BigDawsTV, the YouTube prankster. It was important that his video remain authentic and be similar to his normal unbranded content in order to drive the best possible user engagement. The core focus in here is, the video made by the influencer needs to be funny and shareable, but also tie into the brand goals of driving downloads. Visas promotional offering was half off your Taco bell app order(when using VISA Checkout).

This example shows that influencer marketing has relevant power on the digital marketing strategies of mobile apps these days.

1. Leverage Machine learning

In the mobile app marketing sector, machine learning technology was found to be an effective game changer. It has the power to enhance the mobile app marketing ideas by streamlining information, unseal solid user insights, and moreover encourages user engagement in a more interactive manner. It helps in solving complex problems, such as processing large amounts of data and creating personalized content flow for users.

When it comes to content marketing, you need to create and design content in such a way that users find it interesting. Developing a rich content strategy in order to engage users in your app plays a vital role. Your content is what drives the online users in hitting that download button of your app. For the content to be truly effective, it is important for you to concentrate on audience relevance, engaging and compelling storytelling, and the ability to trigger an action or response.

That’s where machine learning comes into play. It helps digital marketers in uncovering and understand the data better. By tracking the consumer trends and producing actionable insights. Also, it focuses on allowing you to spend time on streamlining your tasks and reach more leads with your content.

Here are three key advantages of using these tools:

Customer value: Machine learning makes it easier for digital marketers in discovering and getting in potential leads to the business. Its core focus is on your business outcome, for instance, it initiates the search for similar users at scale who are willing to make in-app purchases and are probably going to finish such activities, from among the ones who do not. Its more like searching for leads in places you might tend to miss at times.

Personalization: It enables you in empowering the right message to the right user at right time. Once the strategy is adopted, you will find it critical in providing users with a personalized experience.

Data mining: In digital marketing, it is always hard to understand how to get the best possible profit for return on investment, with a lot of data accessibility. Machine learning can enhance the performance of the business and helps in simplifying the marketing processes.

2. Social media

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter help the brands in getting heard by potential customers. Since these platforms have huge network of user base, you cannot miss in targeting the audience. To maintain a prominent presence on social media, you should not just be one in the crowd, as there are over 2 million mobile apps on app store, which are waiting to be viewed by the user. If you feel that your mobile needs to stand out, then you need to start fine-tuning your social media strategy and experiment with your content. Because content is something that adds value to readers life, and the primary purpose of it, is to establish a connection between the audience and the brand. In our defence, social media isnt something that is just used for catching up with your connections, it gives your mobile app a platform and opportunity in reaching a large segment of the target audience who are more curious to know about what your app offers. There is no restriction of using a single platform for promoting your app, you have a varied set of digital channels that helps you in gaining visibility. Besides, making your users aware of the app, you can also have the opportunity in conducting customer engagement and build good relationship with them. Both Facebook and Instagram will allow you to advertise your app with customization so that you can reach your potential targeted customers. Also, paid ads will allow you to know more insights on interests of the user. To get a better result for your digital marketing efforts, mix up different ad types and platforms. There a lot of affordable ads that are found to be effective, some of them are listed below:

• Social media ads: Ads on Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accommodates advanced targeting options for paid and sponsored ads.

• In-app ads: Most popular form of mobile advertising, where you promote your app as an ad in other apps. As majority of the users spend their time in mobile apps instead of web, it is easy to approach the target audience.

• Search ads: Pay your ad to be listed on the top of search engine results page. For apps targeting niche groups, this method is found to be very effective.

Trust and customer loyalty are the core benefits a company obtain from interacting with the users. As we all are aware that anything spreads like a wildfire on social media, so these platforms covers the aspect of public relations promotion of the app.

3.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO as a digital marketing channel, plays major role in generating organic and non-paid user traffic for a brand online. To be on constant radar, when customer searches for some product/service that your brand offers then you need to make sure that, your brand shows up on the top-result of users search engine result page (USERP). This can be achieved by putting right content incorporated with most searched keywords in either your company’s website, blogs or other social media platforms. These keywords will be identified by the search algorithms, if they are found to be similar and puts your mobile app on the first page whenever someone searches for your product/service or something similar to it.

Its a most powerful form of digital marketing that will help your business for long-term growth. It is the first form of digital marketing technique, that allows your business in passing your message to the target audience without any extra costs. Research have shown that, around 93 percent of all online experiences begin with a search engine, and Google alone processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. Its considered to be the go-to search engine for global users for most of the search queries. This shows that businesses optimizing SEO to appear on top of the search engine list have relatively more clicks, compared to the ones who ignore the importance of this Digital Marketing Strategies.Majority of the top app development companies invest in content marketing and build websites around in order to promote their mobile apps. These websites are optimized on search engines to generate larger audience base in viewing their mobile app. Whereas, on mobile app, building backlinks to the mobile apps microsite is an essential SEO strategy in increasing the search ranking. The more authoritative website link to your apps landing page, the higher possibility of ranking in the search listings. App Store Optimization (ASO), the process of optimizing a mobile apps marketing copy, involving title, icon, keywords, description, screenshots, and customer reviews, to rank higher on app store search results. It is often described as SEO for app store.

All these above-mentioned digital strategies when combined as one mobile app marketing plan, can help your business in gaining higher range of user visibility.

In conclusion, the mobile development economy keeps on advancing in many possible ways and the whole world is shifting towards mobile app usage compared to desktop websites. App development companies can consider this as a huge opportunity in getting more potential leads on board with the business. It is your responsibility, to make sure the app is valuable to the user experience. Utilize these strategies wisely in understanding and approaching the target audience.

How to Increase Brand Awareness

According to survey reports, 52 percent of consumers expect brands to know when the right moments are to communicate.

When more than 50 percent of the consumers expect this from the marketers, then it is the branding agency's responsibility as businesses, to accordingly design the branding strategy. Also, take it from the expert marketers, it is found that – around 85 percent of marketers say that the primary reason for creating content is to build the brand and positive perceptions of the company. The main benefit of branding tools, and the reason to employ them, is to boost profits.

Before detailing the concepts of how to increase brand awareness, let’s get into the basics first. The brand is a personality that identifies a product, service, or company, involving a term, name, sign, logo, or design. Also, a brand tends to represent the relationship between employees, customers, investors, partners, and so forth. It is not something that exists within a company or an organization. Coming to the main topic, Brand awareness is the level of consumer consciousness of a company, it helps in measuring the potential customer’s ability to not only recognize a brand image but also associate it with a certain product and service of the company. It is often seen as the first stage of the marketing funnel. By creating it, you can cast a wide net across your audience of potential buyers. From there, you can start funneling new leads towards the research and decision-making processes, and eventually the buying process.

Inbound and Outbound marketing is found to be most effective for the brand awareness spread. With intense competition in the marketplace these days, brand awareness is found to be a business’s greatest asset. When customers are encountered with different products, there are high chances that their decision would be more inclined towards choosing a product of the brand name they are familiar with than an unfamiliar one. Creating a brand awareness strategy is an important step while promoting a new product/service or reviving an older brand. The qualities are what distinguish the brand from its competition. Implementation of strategies that further increase brand awareness, can drive consumers’ decisions when differentiating between competing companies, and encourages repeat purchase.

What is the difference between brand recognition and brand awareness?

Brand recognition is all about identifying your brand products or services through their logo and any other visual or audio representation. Whereas, Branding agency is a concept that goes a step further to the point where the public can recall information, emotions, and general impressions related to your brand. It’s the level of consumer consciousness of a certain company, by pinpointing what makes your company different and using those differences to show the inherent value of your company. Implementation of strategies that further increase brand awareness, can drive consumers’ decisions when differentiating between competing companies, encourages repeat purchase, increase in market share, and lastly rise in incremental sales. In short, recognition focuses on highlighting the unique aspects of the brand in terms of voice, image, and strategy, awareness focuses on the heart and soul of your company. Both of them come together in convincing your customers in choosing you over anyone else. As we can clearly see that both these concepts go hand-in-hand, so let’s concentrate on how you can achieve them both with the help of digital marketing.

Why is brand awareness important in marketing?

As we live in an era of constant advancements in technology, the concept of brand awareness is very essential for every business. That’s because people always have some of the other devices available to them, whether it’s a tablet, mobile phone, laptop, or desktop, which means they are able to quickly communicate with others in a matter of no time. It is your responsibility as a marketer, to use it in favor of your business. Being proactive in brand building will lead to a better brand experience for both existing customers and new prospective leads into loyal brand followers. It drive consumers decisions when differentiating between the competing companies. Also, encourages repeat purchases and leads to an increase in market share and incremental sales of the business.

For instance, if you are planning to purchase a laptop and search for the available options in the marketplace, then you will be exposed to varied product options from the most known brand to a new one. This differentiation of brand perception in your mind is what distinguishes the concept of brand awareness. The more you are aware of the brand, the higher the brand has succeeded in increasing brand awareness in the entire marketplace.

You might have many questions like -  how to increase brand awareness for a service. What are brand awareness campaigns? What is suitable to increase brand awareness strategy for a business?

All these queries will be answered further in the article, through a list of brand awareness campaign ideas. These ideas can be used either as an individual branding strategy or as an integrated strategy, based on the availability of resources for your organization.

First, identify the situations where there is more possibility for a customer to engage with the brand. These instances can be used as an opportunity in implementing your branding strategies. Here are some everyday common situations a person encounters with a brand, where the brand awareness strategies can be concentrated:

• Window shopping in a mall

• Discussion among friend groups

• Actually purchasing the products

• Find merchandise with the brand logo on it, worn by close community groups

• Exposed to the advertisements in either television, newspaper, or online platforms

These are the most common situations where a customer engages with a brand. You need to identify these situations and create strategies that cater to the customer's requirements.

How to Increase brand awareness

Influencer Marketing

This marketing strategy has become a popular trend, and many businesses are actually adopting it as an essential component in their marketing mix. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving product placement or endorsements are done by influencers, people, and companies who have an expert level of social influence on the online user base. Rather than marketing it directly to a large group of customers, the company pays an influencer (person with a huge following on social media channels) to get out the word. Influencers are expected to promote on all their social channels with viable content. The content is either provided by the company or created by the influencer itself, it all depends on the creative freedom of the company.

 The process is simpler than it sounds, finds an existing influencer in your specific industry whose activities could complement your brand’s products/service. Make use of their network in promoting your brand. With this marketing trick, you will be a star in no time. Influencers tend to maintain a quasi-personal relationship with their followers, if they recommend a product then there are higher chances for their followers to feel as if a friend is recommending it to them. Use this effective strategy in boosting your brand visibility and maintaining long-term partnerships.

For example, TIMEX is a well-known watch brand company. You never expected a traditional brand like this in the same sentence as influence marketing right. But, it is true! The company has conducted an online campaign - Take Time. They have leveraged around 22 influencers with an average of 85,000 followers each. By implementing this strategy, they had gained a huge audience reach and have successfully achieved an engagement rate of 7.5 percent in total. Timex has taught us a lesson on, doing our research well on the influencers that can help in making a better decision, even if it goes against popular opinions.

Podcasts

Podcasts are usually defined as an episodic series of spoken word digital audio files that a user can download to their digital device for easy listening. According to Neilsen reports, around 69 percent of podcast listeners agree to the fact podcast ads made them aware of new products and services. Also, recent studies at Interactive Advertising Bureau and Edison Research found that podcast listeners are highly likely to take action when they hear ads during their favorite shows are running. Taking this as an opportunity, you can start your own industry podcast where you could interview the industry experts or people who will complement your business activities. It’s a smart way to build brand awareness, while also developing long-term relationships with other companies of the same field and growing your network.

Many marketing-based industries have already launched their thousands of podcasts and are competing to make a spot for themselves. If your brand comes under a niche industry, where there isn’t much podcast marketing happening then you could take this gap as an opportunity and make your brand recognized.

Use branded packaging

Have you ever wondered why big brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, etc. spend a lot of consideration into their brand packaging?

 This is their way of increasing brand awareness. This strategy of brand packaging gives a unique identity to a product and differentiates it from other products in the market. Also, it makes you feel like you are receiving a special gift. It offers an additional touchpoint to the value your brand gives to each customer experience. Product experience does not start at the first trial, but rather at the unboxing stage. The way company presents their brand and the story they narrate through their design and graphics, can create an emotional bond with the customers, that may seem to last even than the product itself.

Maximize your organic social media presence

 Social networks have tons of user base in one place and as a brand, it gives you the opportunity to be seen by more and more potential users. Many online marketers have said that their top priority is to build and increase brand awareness. We are living in the world of social marketing trends and every business is aware of its level of impact and influence on its customer base. It depends on the business, whether they would want to conduct their social media brand awareness campaigns through referral, influencers, or by providing quality content.

in the end, all these aspects prove that social networking is the key element in building brand awareness. Most people get to know brands, because of the mentions by a friend/celebrity on social media sites. The idea of increasing customer engagement is interesting for any business, especially when you know that there are different ways in measuring the results across all the social platforms. For example, some brands may look into tracking shares and comments on their posts as a sign of customer engagement, whereas, others might look into conversion rates. Here are some ways to increase brand awareness using social media:

Content speaks for itself. The primary purpose of it is to establish a connection between the audience and the brand. If you are ought to create quality content, then you will probably want to share it across all social media platforms. As we all know, the number of shares is based on the content provided. So, without valuable content, your brand’s social media posts will not get the attention it deserves.

• Social media advertising can be a tremendous strategy. These targeted ads based on demographics, geographic, and other characteristics can aid in reaching the exact audience you need. It has been proved to be highly effective in putting your brand in front of those who you already know. These paid social ads if used wisely can be a great addition to your overall brand awareness strategy.

• Share all about your CSR activities, support, and efforts across all your social media platforms. People are more inclined and tend to form a positive image of companies that give back to the community.

• The majority of the time, the same user base might follow you on social media channels, and repetitive content can just bore them and create an impression that the brand is not creative enough in delivering its message. The key point to be observed here is, the base idea of the content can remain the same, but the message delivery should vary within the platforms.

• Running an online contest is a great way of increasing your brand visibility. Make sure that whatever contest you plan to conduct must involve customer participation like sharing their photos or videos on your brand’s page and motivating into providing them with a reward, if their image or video gets more likes. This might increase sharing of your brand’s site links to third-party users and help in boosting brand awareness and getting more user traffic to the site.

• Use hashtags in the content posted online and increase brand awareness to great extents. The hashtag is represented by a hash symbol ‘'#’ it is a type of metadata tag used on social media networks to identify messages on a specific topic. They have become the new social trend to get your post across a larger user base. The plus point is they can be used for free. This small tactic can actually put your posts in front of a number of different users and can help your brand in vastly expanding the audience reach on social media.

• Any social media post, experiences comments, likes, and shares. These comments can provide a lot of insightful information for the business to grow further. All the data can help in knowing your customer’s interests, opinions, and can help in developing a strategy for the future. Always give close consideration to the feedback received on social channels. Word travels faster, so if the negative comments aren’t dealt with immediately then there are high chances of them spreading all over the web. Also, replying to positive comments will add value to customers’ experience and encourage more customer engagement

Referral Marketing

Did you know that 92 percent of the customers trust recommendations from family and friends Whereas, only 8 percent trust brands today.

 Without any doubt, you need more people talking about your brand, and now it is upon you to encourage word-of-mouth recommendations by running one or more referral programs. Here, you can increase both brand awareness and your consumer base without having to invest a lot into building the strategy.

 A referral program is an organized process of customers being rewarded for spreading the word out. You might be wondering, why would a customer do whole marketing on your behalf, such as getting more potential leads to your business and increasing brand awareness. Well, here is the actual trick. Customers would gladly want to spread out the word if they knew they will be receiving a reward in return, such as coupons or discounts in the form of an added perk.

The referral process consists of setting your goals straight, like being super clear about what are you expecting to get out of the program, is your goal to retain customers or build trust. Once you have decided your end goals, then list out the possible referral sources, such as past or present customers of your business. Make a plan in reaching out to them and decide on incentives you ought to provide each customer segment as the requirements of people are not always similar. Create resources, such as newsletters, Blogs, Product updates, etc., in reaching out to your customers. Once the strategy is put into action, keep track of the performance as in who is referring whom and how is the chain spreading forward. In between all of this, never forget to thank the customers for the efforts they have put in and invested their time into implementing your idea. Showing gratitude may lead to building long-term loyal customers for the brand. This whole chain process, in the end ultimately leads to increase in brand awareness for the company.

Give your brand a personality

 When you are branding on social platforms, you need to make sure that your brand should stand out from the crowd and stop being one among them. Create a personality for your brand, by developing a voice that speaks out and reflect your opinions. People are more likely to engage and connect with the brand when the tone is more casual and matches with their interests or opinions. Being yourself, is actually attractive and can gain more users excited about what the brand could offer more and what would be their next step. These opinions are actual foundation of consumers trust.

Also, you can create a personality by telling a story for your brand. Do you want your customers to remember your brand as a memorable one. Then start by telling a great story. The core drive for any business would be is the bond it creates with the customers. In order to nurture brand awareness, we need to connect with the customers, and storytelling gives that opportunity in doing so. A brand story is more than a tale, and make it look like what you tell them is, what they believe about you. Create your story with a mix of elements like facts, analysis, and feelings. Make sure to be real, and the story told should instantly click in their minds, whenever they see your brand logo, website, or products. Engaging narrative can make your company stand out from the competition. Make sure to be original and interesting in order to capture your audience’s attention, it should motivate them in voluntary brand engagement. The core drive for any business would be is the bond it creates with the customers. Make sure to be original and interesting in order to capture your audience’s attention, it should motivate them in voluntary brand engagement. Having a charismatic personality could be a plus point in gaining more followers.

For example, Nike has an active lifestyle, inspiration, exciting, cool personality. Nike, as a person would be exciting, spirited, proactive, cool, innovative, and into health and fitness. Since 1980s, they have been endorsing the very best athletes across a wide variety of sports.

How to increase brand awareness for small businesses?

Running a small business requires a lot of time and effort. Adding brand awareness campaigns, might seem to be a huge responsibility, but for the long-term benefit every small business owner needs to make this as their top priority. Previously discussed strategies like - social media, hashtags, and influencer marketing can be a good start for the brand awareness activities. Also, you can utilize help from a marketing agency in determining the right media for running brand awareness, the most beneficial tools, and the right message. Even if your business is taking baby steps in implementing brand awareness strategy, make sure to highlight your brands unique selling points on all chosen medias to create a long lasting impression for the customers. In short, using right strategies and creativity can help you in reaching your target audience with the same way as big brands do.

Midori

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.