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Breaking Bad Online Marketing Habits to Get More ROI

by Loknath Das April 5, 2024

written by Loknath Das

Online marketing is necessary. Word of mouth isn’t dead, but it’s morphed into “word of mouse and keyboard.” There are common trends between bad online marketing habits and lack of ROI. Below are the most common offenders.

Bad Habit #1: “I’ll Do It Myself to Save Money”

Many local business owners believe running their own online marketing campaigns can help them save money. But, the reality is that online marketing is extremely complex and time-consuming. Because you are an expert in running your business, you likely don’t have the time to teach yourself how to run your campaigns while keeping up with the ever-changing best practices that go into managing your online marketing. Working with an online marketing company can save you time, resources, and a lot of headaches in the long run by providing expert campaign management and reporting so you don’t have to worry about the minutiae of your campaigns. When you work with an online marketing company, you can spend more time focusing on your business while your campaign experts focus on getting you more business online.

The “it won’t work” mentality can cost you ROI in the long run. Why? Well, every campaign, just like every business, runs completely different. There are no two campaigns that will run exactly the same, because somewhere along the way, something is different: goals, products/services offered or focused on, offers, conversion rates, reviews, social media presence, brand recognition, etc., thus rendering it impossible to know if something works or doesn’t work until you try. Every new marketing tactic out there has a different lifecycle to understand if it’s actually working or not. The most important thing to keep in mind before starting is: what does “work” mean to you? Make sure you know exactly what the expectations are for the online marketing tactic you want to try. Is the goal to drive awareness about your business? Is it to capture people searching for what you do? Is it to drive traffic to your site? Once you understand the expectations, then set goals and timelines so you can measure performance.

Bad Habit #3: “I’ll Just Try it for a Month”

Many local business owners don’t give online marketing strategies the proper time they need to start working. It’s important not to start a campaign with the mindset of “let’s throw $1,000 for one month and see what it does.” If you are serious about testing out a new online marketing tactic, then go all in. For example, if you are going to try SEO, you need to run it for at least 12 months. SEO is a long-term strategy that takes a while to start taking shape, but the ROI payoff is worth every penny invested. Talk with your online marketing partner about a realistic timeline for new online marketing strategies because they do vary, and you want to make sure you’re giving each strategy a chance to work for you.

In order to get more ROI, it’s important to make informed decisions about online marketing and your campaigns. You don’t have to know everything about online marketing, but you do have to make sure you understand what your goals are, know what your timeline and expectations are for the life of the campaign, and define how you are going to measure your results.

[“Source-ndtv”]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Education

Schools fear business rate rise will be ‘breaking point’

by Rajdeep April 5, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Child with abacus

A sharp rise in schools’ business rates could push some budgets beyond breaking point, say head teachers’ leaders.

Business rates, charged on property in England, are due to change in April for the first time in seven years.

Calculations by consultancy Gerald Eve suggest changes to the rateable value of schools mean some will face 40% bill increases.

The government said its own figures suggested state schools overall would see a 2% fall in rates.

Public money

Andrew Altman, a specialist schools partner at Gerald Eve, said the firm estimates that the total rates bill for schools in England is about £791m.

But it estimates that this could rise by £131m to about £922m by 2021-22 as the revaluation changes work through.

The figures amount to a rise of about 17% by 2021, said Mr Altman, but this “hides the fact that about a quarter of schools could see actual rate increases of about 40% in the first year”.

Mr Altman said he feared that council-run schools would be particularly badly hit as academies have their costs, including rates, met fully, directly from Whitehall.

He said that he expected many schools to appeal against their new business rate rises and questioned why public sector properties were subjected to business rates at all.

“It’s circular. It’s all public money. It’s a very expensive tax to collect and appeal,” he added.

National Association of Head Teachers’ general secretary Russell Hobby said a sharp increase in business rates would “add to the perfect storm school leaders are experiencing.

“It cannot be right that more and more of the money to schools is being taken back to central and local government.”

Mr Hobby said schools were already having to find money, which would otherwise be spent on pupils, to fund the Apprenticeship Levy which also comes into force from April, as well as staff insurance contributions and pension costs.

“The burden on schools is becoming too much,” he added, urging the chancellor to “act in next month’s Budget to ensure schools have the resources they need”.

‘Fall of 2%’

In a statement, the Department for Communities and Local Government said it did not recognise the Gerald Eve figures and state schools would see a 2% fall in their bills – equivalent to £16m a year.

“The revaluation of business rates means nearly three-quarters of properties will see no change or a fall in their bills,” said a spokesman.

The National Day Nurseries Association said its members, who operate as small businesses, feared their business rates could double.

Research late last year by the Lambert Smith Hampton commercial property consultancy estimated rises of 45%, or higher in more affluent areas.

NDNA chief executive Purnima Tanuku said these rises would be “a huge burden” when nurseries were already facing “severe financial pressure” due to the national living wage and uncertainty surrounding the financial viability of the government’s plan to double the number of free childcare hours for working families.

[Source:- BBC]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Education

Headteacher who sent home 50 pupils for breaking school uniform rules vows to continue with strict policy

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

The headteacher who sent home 50 children for breaking school uniform rules has vowed to continue.

Matthew Tate, headmaster at Hatsdown Academy in Margate, Kent, defended his actions in an interview.

Mr Tate reaffirmed the school’s policy and said he and his staff will not be changing their uniform policy.

“We’ve had an overwhelming number of people bullied in year 7 for wearing the wrong uniform, and we won’t move from our stance,” he said on ITV’s This Morning.

“The fact is, I care far too much about the children in this school to allow them to do what they like and the reality is, if we’re ensuring those tough standards and ensuring our children are behaving, they will do well.”

The headmaster argued the rules were needed to improve the school.

“For too long, this school has been known for being a bit scruffy, and something’s got to change,” he argued.

The news should not come as surprise as Mr Tate said parents had been warned this would happen in a letter earlier this year, according to Kent Online.

“We wrote to parents to say we would be ensuring our uniform policy is adhered to and that if children were not in perfect uniform today they would be sent home. The majority of our parents are pleased with that.”

[Source:- independent]

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Gadgets News

GIONEE MARATHON M5: Affordable Smartphone with record-breaking battery life

by admin April 4, 2024

written by admin

INTRODUCTION:

Gionee is a consumer electronics giant in China. Headquartered at China, Gionee has the majority of its customer base in China. Only a few years ago did it decide to expand its market to the rest of the world. And amongst many of its foreign targets, India was seen as a potential revenue generator by Gionee. This made the company produce a Made in India series of Gionee launched one of its best mobiles, the Gionee Marathon M5 in India at Bangalore. This smartphone was available for sale exclusively on Flipkart at the time of release. One unique marketing fact about this phone is that it did not promote its phone through any sort of pre-registration openings or flash sale offers. The most talked about feature and undoubtedly the best too was the magnificent 6020 mAh battery capacity it offered. And for the price at which this phone offers this battery specification is surely a reasonable bargain. So, now let us discuss in more depth in this Gionee Marathon M5’s detailed review about its pros and cons.

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LAUNCH PRICE & DATE:

Gionee Marathon M5 was brought into light with its announcement during the month of June 2015. And, finally, it was released in November 2015. At the time of its release, the Price of Gionee Marathon M5 is INR 17,999/-.

DESIGN & DIMENSIONS:

Gionee Marathon M5 comes with an outer casing made of a really durable and sturdy material which has both plastic and metal proportionately. This gives it a very solid look and another point to be noticed is that it has carefully made sure the phone is not too bulky by making it pretty slim and sleek. The smartphone has a thickness of just 8.55 mm. It has a length of 152 mm and a breadth of 76 mm. But the most problematic part of this smartphone is its weight. Because it has really enormous battery it is forced to weigh a good 211g. This can be quite a hindrance for carrying around. It comes in three different colours White, Gold and Black.

DISPLAY:

This Smartphone is made of AMOLED display. It comes in a phablet size of 5.5 inches. It has a capacitive type touch screen which functions smoothly with the multi-touch feature. The resolution of the display is 720 x 1280 pixels. It has an approximate screen to body ratio of 72 %. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. Also, the touch interface is supported by Amigo 3.1. It has a pixel density of 267 ppi.

OS & PROCESSOR:

This Smartphone uses the Android OS v 5.1 (Lollipop). Also, it is supported by the Amigo 3.1 interface. This interface gives it a quicker and smoother functioning. The chipset used in this Smartphone is the MediaTek MT6735. The processing is carried out by a Quad Core processor functioning at an average speed of 1.3 GHz.

STORAGE SPECS:

This Smartphone comes with a 32 GB internal storage capacity. The storage can be extended with the aid of a microSD card up to 128 GB. For any average user, the internal storage that this smartphone offers is more than enough. But for the extremely heavy user, it still provides an option to expand its storage. It also comes with a pretty good RAM memory of around 3 GB. So, it is an ideal phone for all gamers out there.

BATTERY CAPACITY:

The most highlighting feature of this phone is its extraordinary battery life. This Smartphone comes with a 6020 mAh battery capacity. This not – removable Li – Po battery is the best amongst all Smartphone batteries currently. This battery provides a stand by time of up to 684 h while on 2G mode and up to 557 h on 3G mode. Its talk time extends up to a maximum of 62 h while on 2G and up to 28 h on 3G. In layman terms, this phone is predicted to last up to 4 days at a stretch.

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MULTIMEDIA:

Camera: This Smartphone has a back camera with 13MP clarity and a front camera of around 5 MP clarity. The back camera is enhanced by technical features like an aperture of f/2.0 and an LED flash. Other supportive features are Geo-tagging, smile detection, HDR, autofocus and panorama.

Audio: It supports various ringtone and audio formats like MP3, WAV, Vibration and MIDI. It comes with below average speakers. It comes with a fully compatible FM radio option too.

Video: The back camera records good quality videos at a resolution of 1080p. These videos are captured at 30 fps. The various video formats supported are MP4, H.263 and H.264.

CONNECTIVITY:

This phone comes with compatibility for two sim cards. Both the sim cards are of the micro sim type. One of them has both GSM and CDMA connectivity feature. While the other sim works only on GSM network. Both the sims are compatible with 3G, 4G and also 4G in India (band 40). It also other standard wireless connectivity features like the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It operates on Bluetooth v4.0.

QUICK OVERVIEW:

Score: Gionee Marathon M5 has earned a feature score of 86 on Pricejugaad.com. This is a pretty good score and easily one of the better phones in this price range.

Features: The major advantages of this Smartphone are amazing battery life, good RAM memory and reasonable built. The disadvantages though are its weight, low display quality.

April 4, 2024 0 comment