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Marketing

Adobe CEO on Magento, Marketo deals: ‘We’re now the only comprehensive platform’ for enterprise-level marketing

by Loknath Das December 14, 2018

written by Loknath Das

Adobe CEO on Magento, Marketo deals 8 Hours Ago | 01:12

With its acquisitions of Magento Commerce and Marketo, Adobe has officially become the “only” one-stop shop for both consumer- and business-facing enterprises, CEO Shantanu Narayen told CNBC on Thursday.

“When you think about what Magento does, it really completely closes the loop with respect to everything we’ve been doing for [business-to-consumer] companies in terms of having the leading commerce solution, and that’s off to a great start,” Narayen told Jim Cramer in an exclusive “Mad Money” interview after earnings.

In its fiscal fourth quarter, the software giant generated year-over-year revenue growth of more than 20 percent for its digital media and digital experience segments and delivered slightly higher-than-expected top- and bottom-line results.

Magento, an open-source e-commerce platform on which businesses can build online marketplaces, exceeded Adobe’s internal revenue expectations in the few months since the deal closed, Narayen said.

Now, with the addition of Marketo, a software company that specializes in digital marketing automation, Adobe has become a “comprehensive platform” for all businesses to control their marketing streams, he told Cramer.

“When you think about Marketo and what it does with respect to [business-to-business], we’re now the only comprehensive platform that can help every single enterprise with … high-volume email campaigns, personalization across all channels, and driving, basically, from leads to revenue across B2B and B2C,” the CEO said.

On Thursday, Adobe raised its fiscal full-year guidance for 2019, adding to its initial boost from October. The company, which offers end-to-end creative and marketing solutions for both consumers and businesses, expects its digital media segment to grow by 20 percent year over year and its digital experience segment to grow by 34 percent.

According to Adobe, digital media refers largely to its Creative Cloud segment, which includes popular paid programs like Photoshop and Premiere Pro. Digital experience refers to its marketing and data services ecosystem, which Adobe is enhancing with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

Adobe’s stock rose 1 percent to $248.08 a share on Thursday before falling 1.24 percent in after-hours trading.

[“source=cnbc”]

December 14, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

Online marketing on a budget: A guide for home service providers

by Loknath Das November 26, 2018

written by Loknath Das

Accessibility is one of the reasons why digital marketing is so popular among small and medium businesses. You don’t need a large marketing budget to run an effective digital marketing campaign. As long as you are willing to invest some time, digital marketing is the perfect instrument for reaching your small business’s potential customers.

Depending on how you approach digital marketing, the return on investment, or ROI, will be different. Fortunately, you can also take active steps towards optimizing your online marketing efforts and gaining a higher ROI. These tips and tricks we are about to discuss in this article will help you fine-tune different parts of your campaign right away.

Use Facebook’s Power Editor

Facebook Ads can be the perfect tool to help your business gain the traction it needs, but only when you use the advertising network optimally. You can achieve a lot with a limited advertising budget, especially with the many optimization tools offered by Facebook.

To better access those tools, it is time to give Facebook’s Power Editor a try. Power Editor is an advanced ad management tool designed for businesses who want to run a better advertising campaign and reach the right target audience. The tool works best in Google Chrome, and it really makes managing even the most complex advertising campaign easy.

There is another benefit offered by Power Editor, and that is the ability to customize reporting. Keep in mind that evaluating your marketing efforts is a fantastic way to gain more insights and further refine the campaign. With the custom reporting tool, you can learn a lot about each campaign and apply the knowledge to future ones.

[“source=forbes]

November 26, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

Next Billion-Dollar Startups: How Two Young Entrepreneurs Used Relentless Online Marketing To Build Away Into A $700M Luggage Brand

by Loknath Das November 21, 2018

written by Loknath Das

en Rubio was rushing through the Zurich airport when her suitcase broke. She stuffed her clothes back inside and duct-taped the mess. Then she asked her 2,600 Facebook friends for advice on what suitcase to buy. No one had a good answer.

Rubio was an early employee of Warby Parker, the company that upended eyeglass retailing by cutting out the middleman. “I started thinking, How do we do what Warby Parker did for glasses?” she says. “How do we take something really simple, and make people care about it?” If a direct-to-consumer business can displace opticians, surely it can displace luggage stores.

And so was born Away (formally known as JRSK Inc., for Rubio and Korey), a firm that has carry-ons manufactured in China and sells them via the internet and in six company-owned stores. Rubio’s airport mishap was less than four years ago; this year the privately held firm is on target to do $150 million in revenue.

Rubio, Away’s president and chief brand officer, and Steph Korey, its chief executive officer, met at Warby in 2011 when that company was just getting started. Both alumni of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and both now 31, they launched Away in 2015. The company’s roughly $700 million venture-capital valuation—Accel, Comcast Ventures and Forerunner Ventures are investors—makes the two founders’ stakes worth more than $80 million each. Away, based in New York City, earned a spot on our Next Billion-Dollar Startups list this year.

The November 30, 2018 issue of Forbes featuring Away’s Steph Korey.

Its first product, a four-roller hard-shell bag that can be squeezed into an overhead rack, comes in ten colors and costs $225, including standard shipping in the U.S.; a similar item from Tumi goes for $525.

Away turned profitable in 2017, a year after it launched its first product. How did Rubio and Korey pull that off while offering low prices?

For one thing, they are not splitting the revenue with high-overhead department stores. Away does the vast majority of its volume online, while stores in high-traffic locations serve as marketing billboards to drum up online sales. The stores, open until 7 p.m. or later on weeknights, host low-budget events like palmistry and tarot readings. Away puts its marketing effort into things that deliver a lot of mileage for the money spent. Its digital presence includes a custom travel magazine. There are 1,000 influencers who push it on Instagram.

Away’s success comes at a time when the luggage market, which the analysts at NPD Group estimate at nearly $3 billion in the U.S. and which may be as large as $35 billion globally when defined more broadly, has been in flux as companies scramble to sell direct to consumers amid consolidation. LVMH acquired the German luxury brand Rimowa in 2016 and has been giving it a makeover under the leadership of 26-year-old Alexandre Arnault, the son of LVMH’s billionaire chairman. Industry leader Samsonite paid $1.8 billion for high-end Tumi, now one of its fastest-growing brands, with sales last year of $678 million.

Selling wanderlust: Away’s half-dozen stores, including its flagship in New York’s NoHo neighborhood, feature travel books and tarot readings.

Other so-called smart luggage startups have come and gone—while Away, focused more on brand than on technology, gained a foothold. “Away is definitely making an impression on the market,” says Beth Goldstein, an analyst at NPD. “They are taking share away from established players.”

Rubio—born in Quezon City, Philippines, raised in Branchburg, New Jersey, and living in London until Away’s launch—once thought she would become a lawyer. But at Penn State she studied supply-chain management. A talkative extrovert who dyes her short hair blonde, she spent her college’s co-op program at Johnson & Johnson, extending the program multiple times rather than return to campus.

At 20, Rubio was working for J&J’s Neutrogena division in Los Angeles. Realizing she wouldn’t get into the marketing department without an M.B.A., she quit and started going to meet-ups, presenting herself as a social-media consultant. “It was fake it till you make it,” says Rubio, an early adopter of Twitter and Facebook. She made it, talking her way into a digital agency in New York, where she worked with Ford, Disney and Estée Lauder.

Korey grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, the daughter of immigrants from Romania and Lebanon. She studied international relations at Brown and assumed she would work in nonprofits. But after a short stint writing research reports about Middle East conflict resolution at the Carter Center in Atlanta, she went to work for Kate Spade in New York as an assistant buyer.

Korey and Rubio joined Warby Parker on the same day, when Warby had but a few dozen employees. When Korey met cofounder Dave Gilboa, she asked how the company was analyzing its sales data to make product purchase decisions. “He said, ‘I’m pretty sure we’re not doing that, so why don’t you come work here for a month?’ ” says Korey, who became head of supply chain. Rubio was hired as Warby’s first social-media manager. The two became friends. By the time they left two years later, Warby Parker had raised more than $110 million at a valuation of $500 million.

Rubio moved to London to work for the fashion retailer AllSaints; Korey left to get an M.B.A. at Columbia. When Rubio’s suitcase broke, she called Korey. Luggage had become staid—wasn’t there an opportunity to create a brand consumers would love? Korey, who consulted for bed-in-a-box startup Casper, realized that luggage was a lot like mattresses: Markups were high and shopping was frustrating. “You the consumer are being failed at every angle,” Korey says. “There is no reason at all that nobody is doing this better.”

[“source=ndtv”]

November 21, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

10 Reasons why your business is starving for digital marketing

by Loknath Das October 30, 2018

written by Loknath Das

PlayStation VR

Digital marketing has become a dominant part of marketing activities and the people who know about its importance will never count it out as an additional expense or activity because it is in the modern world the core of your business and without it, the competitors will never let you survive in the market.

Your business activities should be present online in a reputable manner and people should know what work you are doing and what is the nature of your business. The more people know about you and your company the more your business will grow and develop a goodwill in the market. For this, you have to take benefits out of the new age technologies which are easily accessible and very common in use and the utilization of the internet in this department is essential. So, there are many reasons to apply digital marketing in your business and we are here to discuss 10 from it which are as follows:

1. Monitoring

Physically marketing the product is not that easy for an entrepreneur but digital marketing is a lot easier to monitor as it is just a few clicks away. You can watch its activities online regardless of who is working on it whether these tasks are assigned to your own employees or you have outsourced these tasks to an agency.

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Monitoring Now, this activity is crucial because you can measure your benefits in numbers and compare whether a certain digital activity is beneficial for your business or it is just an additional expense which is being incurred for no reason.

2. Easy access of public

These days people are not fond of reaching outside and perform market research physically and judge a certain product to opt from which company. They rather want to research online and want their product on their doorstep. They will know almost everything about your company if you post your business activities online in a detailed manner and you can attract people by posting different offers which many people cannot refuse.

3. Economical

Economical If you compare marketing physically and digitally you will know that the digital marketing agency greatly reduces the expense incurred in marketing activities and the work procedure is not hectic at all. However, you need to be proactive online to develop business in an orderly manner. It helps a lot in making a budget for marketing activities and will ultimately have a good effect on your income because of the reduction in expense as you digitally market your company and products.

4. Mobile Phones

Almost everyone in this world own a mobile phone which they use for research, social networking, browsing, and many other activities and they are always online with their phones and in this scenario digital marketing lets you reach them instantly with the help of emails, advertisements, Google apps, SMS, social media sites or blogs etc. People tend to use the internet on mobile phones more than they use on PCs or laptops.

5. Feedback

Posting your business online helps you a great deal because you can also be advised from people in a discussion platform that what changes should be made to improve your business or what more activities can be added to the list to develop a unique reputation in the market. The common individuals are the ones who buy your product it is he who can sincerely advise which will be helpful for you and him as well.

6. Visual Experience

Visual Content You can also upload promotional photos and video clips on your website or blog and draw a great deal of attention from people which can really boost your viewership and sales. This is becoming very common in the market and almost every well-mannered company advertise their products visually.

7. Content writing

Writing good and attractive thoughts and your positive point of view and experience can also attract many people and this is how people are made brand conscious as they develop a trust on your company and they even tend to buy your product even at the times of recession.

8. Traditional Marketing

Many people think that if you digitally market your product then you cannot keep the old traditional marketing in business which not true. If your company is famous online then it will definitely help in marketing your product physically as well. People will have interest in your banner ads, newspaper ads etc.

9. Connection with customers

Customer Connection In digital marketing, you can provide personal attention to your customers through live chat or emails because people like talking about products before purchasing it at different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc. This builds a trust and a healthy relationship with customers and they like to refer your company to other people too.

10. Competitors

To be in the competition you have to adopt modern techniques to market your product and digital marketing is the hub of those techniques and these days no business can survive in the market without it. You have to analyze successful businessmen on what they are doing and hence making a big difference between you and them. Almost every entrepreneur is extracting benefits out of digital marketing and if you do not keep up with this need then you will be thrown out from the competition.

There are too many reasons which cannot be denied by any business owner that digital marketing is essential for any business whether its selling a product or service and it also helps to know our customers and their needs and you can launch products according to their need and if it really helps them then you’re in for the competition in the market.

It is a faster and quicker approach and as compared to the traditional marketing strategies it is very cost-effective as well. Over the years, many new technologies have been introduced for digital marketing and more techniques will be introduced within a short span of time and every business would have to keep up with modern technologies to ensure their business security and flourish freely in the market.

[“source=TimeOFIndia”]

October 30, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

How to build your ecommerce business with digital marketing

by Loknath Das October 28, 2018

written by Loknath Das

Digital marketing has emerged as a frontier where ecommerce brands have engraved their success stories. A subset of marketing that relies on electronic technologies for its promotion, digital marketing has many facets as its tools constantly evolve. Digital is a fast-paced platform where one has the space to grow their brand’s share-of-voice and industry presence as well as increase consumer engagement using tried and tested strategies. As more and more people hop on to the digital wagon, ‘markets’ have become specific with niche consumer segments catching the eyes of businesses, especially e-commerce platforms which, today, offer a diverse range of products and services.

Ecommerce brands rely on the increasing smartphone and internet penetration to boost their sales. At the same time, they also rely on digital marketing to generate revenue by increasing brand value.

Digital marketing has the flexibility to adapt to shifting trends and utilise them to create opportunities. It offers the best solutions to the problems faced by online businesses. It’s all on the internet and digital marketing tools specifically target the potential of cyberspace to allow for sustainable growth of ecommerce businesses.

Role of digital marketing tools for ecommerce brands:

Today, there are innumerable tools available to a digital marketer to draw out different plans to achieve their targets. Using an innovative amalgamation of these tools, an ecommerce brand can boost its growth quickly with maximum return on investment. For ecommerce startups, this makes digital marketing an unbeatable method to achieve success in a short amount of time. However, before deciding which digital marketing tool to use, one should be doubly clear about the objective of the plan.

Nested Bean Inc. is a success story on how digital marketing tools are used to propel the brand value in an organic manner. Today, it is one of the fastest growing ecommerce startups in a niche industry of baby products. With the objective of increasing traffic without compromising the conversion rate, the company decided to boost their pages that provide learning on baby care. They went back to the basics of digital marketing and started with a basic hygiene check, going over the blog tags, alt texts, link texts, canonicalisation, keyword cannibalisation, etc.

Barnacle SEO approach was the second step in the implementation of the digital marketing strategy. Through this method, the ranking/content/traffic of credible websites is leveraged to boost the traffic on one’s own website. Nested Bean focused on making their homepage powerful with authored posts on trustworthy websites such as ThriveGlobal, today.com, etc.

Google is a key driver of digital marketing strategies as it provides most of the tools that the new-age digital marketers bank upon. Hence, it is essential to adhere to the guidelines and limits set by the tech giant. Google indexes websites into rankings that are decided based on the amount and kind of content the website hosts. To gain more favour with Google’s web-crawlers, Nested Bean invested in many infographics and videos for their website as well as external platforms. This added to the credibility of their content, another feather in the cap for the business.

The need for customer engagement

A market is built upon the demand of its customers. A brand that is out of touch with its customers cannot achieve any remarkable growth. Apart from the official blog of the company, Nested Bean decided to invest in building communities for their consumers, which ultimately boosted the company’s engagement with their target audience as well as aided their SEO finalisations.

Nested Bean used these simple digital marketing tools dedicatedly and systematically for a designated period of time. Towards the end, the statistics of the ecommerce website had improved significantly with increase in traffic on the website by 168 percent, organic traffic up by 69 percent and increase in transactions by 57 percent; the bounce rate also improved by 8.30 percent.

These numbers are proof that digital marketing tools when utilised in an efficient and creative manner can give ecommerce startups the space they need to grow in the market.

There are plenty of other digital marketing tools such as SEM, SMM, Google keywords, Ahrefs, Audience Insights, Analytics, and even email marketing. Based on the objective of the digital marketing plan, their strategical usage is decided.

In today’s world, whether one is offline or online, there are a million things vying for the attention of the consumer. This makes it tough for any ecommerce startup to grow on its own in a short amount of time. Digital marketing helps a brand to grab the maximum slice of a consumer’s attention, with the intention to increase brand value as well as sales.

Digital is no longer the future; it is the present. As the purchasing patterns of people evolve, the ecommerce space is poised for another digital revolution.

[“source=gsmarena”]

October 28, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

How Digital Marketing Can Take Your Startup To A Higher Level

by Loknath Das September 6, 2018

written by Loknath Das

Running a startup and surviving the cut-throat competition is an achievement. There are myriad of things that need attention like finances, managing the product, building relationships with clients, and more. Everything requires exhaustive research and an eye for detail. Luckily, digital marketing can help with some of these challenges.

If you follow suitable strategies and techniques, digital marketing can be a blessing to your business. It can eventually grow your consumer base and expedite sales. Below are some of the techniques we successfully practice and implement in our agency’s digital marketing campaigns that can work for any startup:

SEO

SEO plays a leading role in the digital marketing world. It boosts and optimizes a piece of content’s technical setup so that the pages are more likely to appear at the top of a search engine result. Our team follows a market analysis methodology, which includes talking to the client to understand their needs and researching their competitors. We then research and use keywords and write meta descriptions, which ultimately optimizes a website and improves performance.

To help gauge your client’s needs, prepare a questionnaire form to be filled out by clients. Ours includes the details related to their industry, services or products they offer, their target audience, minimum and maximum budget and their goals in terms of revenue.

Intensive research and interactive meetings with clients helps us to find relevant keywords using the Keyword Planner tool. For competitive analysis, we use audit tools like SEMrush and Moz, which helps us in tracking the most effective keywords responsible for generating maximum traffic on competitors’ websites. The on-page and off-page optimization then makes ranking more effective. Following this approach can be advantageous for startups.

PPC

Pay-per-click advertising is basically an online marketing technique where you only pay for the ad when a consumer clicks on it. What adds a feather to the cap is that you can customize ads to appear when particular search terms are entered, developing ads targeted to a particular audience. Using this customization feature in our search campaigns and display advertisements has shown beneficial results for our clients.

Content Marketing

Content is ruling the world, and original and unique content is pivotal for the growth of every business. It incites and encourages digital marketing activities and acts as a pillar of SEO, which is not possible without quality content. Make sure content provides relevant information to the user, and make sure your content management team focuses on writing extraordinary and exclusive content with proper keywords.

Social Media Marketing

Essentially, every single person these days relies on social media to gather information either about a product or an organization. Because of that, social media has become an indispensable part of marketing. Branding your organization on social media platforms helps users have comprehensive knowledge of your brand.

Depending on your audience, use tools like Pinterest and LinkedIn, and communicate knowledgeable information to your brand’s users through blogs and articles. This technique can boost traffic and convert potential clients into customers.

The Importance Of Digital Marketing For Startups

There are diverse reasons why startups should opt for a powerful digital marketing strategy:

Foundation Of Brand Identity

Brand identity refers to the components of a business like logo, font, tagline and other elements that vary it from its competitors. To reach clients, traditional marketing is definitely one option, but that requires hefty amounts of money, which is not feasible for startups. Online promotion and marketing establish brand identity in an effective and budget-friendly way. For online branding, use various channels like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to communicate with your audience and spread the word.

Augmented Lead Generation

It is mandatory for a startup to convert potential clients into leads, a task that can be fulfilled by marketing experts. The best ways to generate leads include social media marketing, email marketing and content marketing. There are various sources, like e-books, webinars and newsletters, that convey the most appropriate information to clients and enhance lead generation.

E-books are a way to generate traffic using gated content. This strategy is basically putting your content behind a form that includes details like name, address and email, which helps in capturing information about the reader. Internet visitors won’t mind filling out the information in exchange for value, and the required information can be used for additional promotions such as email marketing.

Webinars allow for seamless interaction with the audience, building harmony and loyalty. Webinars are a way to engage prospects without being restricted to a particular location. The presentation should be carefully organized and managed for better results, which directly affects the number of leads.

Also, startups can make use of a call-to-action button on a social networking site like Facebook that directs visitors to their newsletter. It is important to write an enticing newsletter subject line. Having a goal in mind, like the number of recipients you want to respond, can generate maximum revenue for startups and can build good relations with prospective clients.

Conversion Rate Development

It is simple to evaluate digital analytics and strategies. We use Google Analytics, which can measure the amount of traffic, different regions of traffic and the number of visitors to your site pages. This can help you understand your bounce or exit rate and site speed, and also provides information about your conversion goals.

The contemporary world is all about technology and digital marketing. Developing and expanding your startup must go hand-in-hand with branding, and online marketing is imperative.

[“Source-forbes”]

September 6, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

Where Will Digital Marketing Be 5 Years From Now?

by Loknath Das September 6, 2018

written by Loknath Das

Image result for Where,Will,Digital,Marketing,Be,5,Years,From,Now?

Before the internet, marketing was very different from what it is today. Print advertising, direct mail, and traditional media were the only options companies had for getting the word out. Today, of course, things are much different. In 2018, spending on digital ads was projected to surpass traditional advertising for the first time, with digital media spend reaching $100.8 billion.

We all know that things are changing quickly, and digital marketing has rapidly adapted to new mediums and customer demands over the years. With that in mind, what does the future hold? Where will digital marketing go in the next five years? While it’s impossible to say for sure, here are a few projections for what will be important in the coming years.

Voice Search

Although the mobile revolution has shown no signs of slowing down, one thing is absolutely true: it’s much harder to type on a phone or tablet than a keyboard. It also takes more time to type something than to say it. Enter: voice search.

Smart devices equipped with “personal assistants” who respond to voice commands like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are on the rise for good reason. People love the convenience of being able to place an order, check the weather, or set a reminder.

As Barry Schwartz notes in a recent expert round-up on the future of digital marketing, “Expect voice search to be a huge area in the near future.” Some estimates suggest that by 2020, more than half of searches will be conducted using voice search.

Marketers will need to adapt to this new search method by writing in a conversational tone and anticipating the kinds of keywords people will search for using their voice. It won’t so much affect the marketing itself as the way content is considered and written.

Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality

People love novelty and quickly get used to new mediums. Video is now a staple, but virtual reality (VR) is a rising star in marketing that will really come into its own in the next few years. Immersive experiences help people connect on an emotional level, which is key for increasing brand loyalty and sales.

Recommended for YouWebcast, September 27th: Stand Out in the Crowd: Top D.I.Y. PR Tactics for Growing Your Business

Artificial intelligence (AI) will also play a larger role in the future of marketing. It can be used in many different applications including image recognition, personalization, chatbots, and enhanced pay-per-click campaigns. Smart marketers will begin to invest in this technology now, in order to stay competitive in the future.

Brand PR Will Become Essential

Generation Z, which will soon control much of the spending power in the United States, is a socially-conscious generation that demands more from brands than just great products and services. They want to purchase from companies that are ethical and care about improving society and the world at large.

Customers are acutely aware of issues like climate change, social justice, poverty, and income inequality, which is becoming a larger issue in the United States every year, with just 1% of the population controlling 40% of the nation’s wealth. Younger buyers are concerned about these issues, and will direct their dollars to companies that pledge to help find solutions.

In order to cater to these buyers, companies will need to focus on brand PR and get involved with a social or environmental cause to help their local and global communities. Some of the world’s richest people are already getting involved with these kinds of initiatives, such as The Giving Pledge, which people take to signal that they plan to give away the majority of their wealth to benefit current and future generations.

Continual Focus on Consumer’s Wants & Values

Marketing is always about what the customer wants, needs, and values. That’s not going to change in the next five years. You can’t sell products if you don’t know what your customers want or what their problems are. Marketers will need to understand their audiences on a deep level so they can serve those needs.

Even More Targeted Advertising

Online advertising is an uphill battle, because we’re less tolerant than ever of popups and other types of digital advertising. Marketers will continue to focus on creating more targeted advertising to create the kinds of emotional reactions that sell products. Emotion-based campaigns, like the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign and Google’s “Friends Furever” were some of the most successful online ad campaigns because they were created to elicit an emotional response in their target audiences.

Storytelling is a Constant in Marketing

No matter where digital marketing goes in the next few years, good storytelling will always be a key component of effective marketing. Marketers need to keep on top of trends as they change, but keeping the audience’s needs top of mind and creating content that speaks to that audience’s emotions are always key. Digital marketing is an ever-changing landscape that requires creativity, curiosity, patience, and a willingness to try new tactics.

[“Source-business2community”]

September 6, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

SIX WAYS BIG DATA CAN REFINE YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING EFFORTS

by Loknath Das September 6, 2018

written by Loknath Das

Image result for SIX WAYS BIG DATA CAN REFINE YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING EFFORTS

What’s the one thing that all digital marketers must know? The fact that data is king on today’s marketing landscape. Having comprehensive and accurate data is essential for making effective marketing decisions. It can help executives identify industry trends and discover potential customers, making big data analysis important for optimizing your marketing strategies.

Enterprise leaders want to monetize their digital assets, promote an information-driven culture and leverage the full potential of their big data systems. However, most marketers fail to achieve these objectives because they deploy their data scientists poorly. In addition, they don’t devote enough attention to their data-driven initiatives and cast their data science specialists in ineffective, mismatched roles.

Other executives view the innovative resource from the wrong perspective; they mistakenly believe big data projects are solely a technical, administrative organizational feature — rather than a mission-critical operational undertaking. Still, others, fail to recognize that veteran executives may be resistant to change and neglect to position their unwitting data science team for a successful big data project launch.

The Numbers Reveal the Strength of Big Data

According to management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, core offerings generate 75-percent of most enterprises’ revenues — of which marketing executives undervalue and underprice at a rate of 30-percent. To understand how this impacts overall revenues, realize that a 1-percent across-the-board price hike would generate 8.7-percent in increased gross profits with no impact on sales volume.

44-percent of enterprises use data analytics and mining to boost consumer response rates and generate insights that guide executives in developing relationship-driven strategies, according to marketing consulting firm Forrester Research. Furthermore, according to a report released by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 58-percent of chief marketing officers (CMOs) believe that search engine optimization (SEO), as well as email and mobile communications, are the areas where big data systems are having the largest impact on their organizations.

Here are six ways that big data can help enterprise leaders avoid these mistakes and position themselves to refine and improve their marketing efforts.

Use the Right Keywords With the Help of Big Data

If you don’t understand your customers’ behaviour, then how can you effectively market your products? The use of big data can help identify how visitors are finding your website and what keywords they used to get there. Understanding this information will allow you to explore related keywords and focus on the ones that drive the most traffic.

Big data can also help you optimize your website so that when potential customers arrive, they see the products that interest them most. With this in-depth understanding, you can select which products to show different segments of your consumer base and effectively optimize sales.

How Successful Was Your Last Campaign?

Big data can help you identify the success of your last marketing campaign. The online marketing landscape has changed relatively recently, and the number of businesses participating in this change has never been greater.

Each year over 5.3 trillion display ads are served to internet users. In order to stand out, your advertising initiatives need to pop. Using big data will help you to streamline your campaigns and target customers who are most likely to respond so that you can make the most out of your marketing budget.

Use Data to Load Your Content with Statistics

Content can serve as an initial touch point that funnels consumers toward a desired action. When creating content, you need to know what your customers might look for and what they might find interesting.

Using data, you can discover key insights into customer behaviour that helps you to create quality content and increase audience engagement. For instance, if your audience consists of a younger demographic, you want to use language that appeals to that generation.

Use Data Analysis to Choose Marketing Channels

Americans look at their phones an average of 47 times a day. Potential customers shop differently when they are on a mobile device rather than a desktop. Analyzing mobile user data will help refine your customer acquisition process and increase your mobile shopper conversions.

Technology and big data have changed the process of finding new customers. Business leaders who understand how to use data analysis will be able to stay on top of technological trends such as mobile marketing.

Uncover New or Potential Target Audiences

In order to grow your enterprise, you need to do more than keep your existing customers happy — you need to find new business. Big data can help you find new audiences and determine which groups are more likely to buy.

When evaluating new potential audiences, it’s important to know their intent. Understanding this will help you to develop relevant content. For example, are they using your app to relax or are they actively looking to buy a product or service? Using big data can help you to customize your content accordingly.

Real-time data is extremely valuable and can provide you with insights that further your understanding of the intent and mindset of your audience. Using tools like Quantcast can help business owners find relevant target audiences and grow that asset to create a larger customer base.

Better Analytics Lead to Optimal Design

With big data providing key insights into user preferences, business owners are now able to create optimal designs at a lower cost. This improves their ability to influence consumers.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, as well as access to volumes of data about consumer preferences now, allow you to discover how to optimize branded items, such as customized logos with colours and font styles that boost consumer engagement. With data analytics optimization you can lower design costs and increase revenues.

By utilizing these six methods, you can be sure to refine your marketing efforts and optimize your current campaigns. But don’t think that the job is done there. Once optimized, be sure to continue analyzing the data and making continual tweaks.

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

September 6, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

Alexa, What Is Long-Tail Marketing And Why Does It Matter?

by Loknath Das August 8, 2018

written by Loknath Das

PexelsPEXELS

Long-tail search and keywording are not new. In fact, I first heard about this online marketing strategy 13 years ago when I was leading marketing for none other than a small search company called LookSmart.

A lot has changed since then, including the way in which people search in today’s world. With advances in tech, the age-old long-tail keyword approach is becoming more of a must than a should when it comes to marketing. This is because search is changing due to voice-activated products entering the home en masse.

Enter the smart speaker, where speaking your search out loud is the new online activity.

Explore the power of word of mouth.

It wasn’t that long ago, that if we had a question about a product, service or the best local sushi restaurant, we would ask a friend or neighbor. Still today, word of mouth is regarded as one of the most effective forms of marketing, be it online or off.

From Amazon Echo to Google Home, products enabling voice-activated search are now sitting on our counters, forever changing the search experience for both consumers and marketers.

In the report,“Top Strategic Predictions for 2017 and Beyond: Surviving the Storm-Winds of Digital Disruption,” Gartner predicts that 30% of searches will be done without a screen by 2020. So, marketers need to change how they view search — it’s now moving toward voice-activated assists versus typing into a search engine. Given this, if you’re selling a good or service and are not applying long-tail search to your marketing program, you’d better act fast.

What is long-tail marketing and why does it matter?

Long-tail keywords are those three-, four- and even five-word phrases that are very specific to whatever you are selling or promoting. Most of the time, when customers use highly specific search phrases, they tend to be looking for exactly what they want to buy and have typically already done their research.

There is certainly no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing, but there are underlying principles that make all the difference. As the way we search changes, some of those principles are also expectedly shifting. Below are some general guidelines to help you think about how to craft the most effective long-tail marketing campaign, keeping voice search in mind.

Carefully consider how the spoken word is different than what is typed.

The trick to long-tail keywording success involves rolling back to times before we ever even searched online, as so many of us talk to these voice-activated devices more like people. For example, you might say, “Alexa, what’s the best sushi restaurant near me?” This is instead of typing “sushi San Francisco” into Google.

The beauty of voice search is how simple it is for consumers, and we naturally seem to treat these voice-activated products more like people — speaking in a conversational way, sometimes even including “please” and “thank you” as part of our orders. Amazon speakers even recently rolled out a magic word feature, thanking kids for saying “please” when they ask a question. It pays to be polite, even to technology!

Think about the consumer’s journey.

Where might they start if the end is to reach your product or service? If we stick with the sushi example, the start of the journey will be the consumer deciding they want sushi. But, perhaps, they want to make sure they go to a restaurant that only uses sustainable ingredients or a place that specializes in unagi preparations. Including all of this information on your site is going to help the search return your restaurant as an option that meets these very specific criteria.

In this example, long-tail keywording is the difference between “sushi restaurants” and “sushi restaurants using local, sustainable fish.” It might seem like a subtle tweak, but this is how your restaurant will rise to the top in what could be hundreds of returned results.

Frame your content to answer users’ questions.

As mentioned above, consumers tend to ask questions of voice-activated speakers the same way we talk to each other. Draft your marketing messages to answer questions instead of “telling” the information you want to share.

One way to think of this is to answer customer pain points — if a common search is “why is my cable bill so high,” and you have a product that offers an alternative to cable, consider writing a blog titled “Why Cable Bills Are So High And What You Can Do About It.”

A simple (and free!) way to see what people are searching for is to use Google’s auto-search feature, where you type in one or two words related to your product or service and see what autopopulates. From there, use those questions to write blog posts, FAQs for your site or even draft messaging for your home page that specifically answers the most commonly searched questions, including the keywords used in the searches. Do this frequently and refresh or add to your content as often as necessary to ensure you are among the first results returned in a related search.

Optimize the content with descriptors and complementary offerings.

Consider optimizing your content to include add-on keywords for complementary offerings. For example, if you are selling TVs, include information about accessories a person is also likely to purchase, such as HDMI cables for 4K Ultra HD TVs. You may even link to reviews of accessories that you don’t sell but that are compatible with what you do offer.

In the era of the smart speaker, marketing professionals need to evolve our thinking to craft consistent stories that answer the questions a customer asks when searching for, or considering to purchase, your product or service. With that in mind, the single-most important thing to consider as search habits shift to voice-enabled devices is that it’s moved from clinical to conversational, and it’s critical that your online marketing efforts evolve as well.

[“Source-forbes”]

August 8, 2018 0 comment

Online Marketing

The impact of blockchain technology in digital marketing

by Loknath Das August 8, 2018

written by Loknath Das

Digital marketing is a very important part of any business. To make a brand more visible in this diverse society, a business must be able to use various online platforms effectively to advertise. One of these online platforms is social media. Nowadays digital marketing is growing rapidly. But another technology that is advancing rapidly is blockchain, which is set to change the world of digital marketing in a new way.

Understanding blockchain technology

The blockchain is a digital, decentralized technology that is growing and making a mark in different industries such as digital marketing. Blockchain keeps a record of the transactions that take place on the peer-to-peer networks. The list of records continuously grows. These records are stored securely in numerous decentralized systems that are interconnected. As the blockchain doesn’t have a centralized point, it doesn’t have a single point of vulnerability, and hence is less vulnerable.

Now it is also growing in the digital marketing industry, adding a new revolution to the relationship between consumers and businesses. Blockchain aims to increase transparency in all sectors of a business as the information is stored digitally. This information can’t be tampered or deleted. This enables the companies to see the exact use of the funds and if the audience receives them or not. To get more idea about blockchain, one can always refer to several online blockchain tutorials to get a good grip in this area.

Affecting data privacy

Blockchain can affect digital marketing in many ways, and one of the predicted changes is in the sharing of consumer’s data. One of the most serious issues in online activities is privacy. Companies have profiles for every customer based on visited sites, searches made, products purchased, and various other things.

Hacking and leakage of personal data online are commonplace. But these could all be prevented through the use of blockchain technology. When a person uses an app or visits a site, then the company can no longer access the data, and all the personal information remains with the consumer. Due to blockchain technology, all the personal data of consumers remain safe.

Through this, the users will have control over the data and can determine how much data to share. This also means companies will also have to rely on different ways to collect data from consumers. Previously they automatically received data from consumers – now they will have to rely on consumers for receiving their data.

Changes in digital advertising

Digital marketing is a type of marketing that still has a ways to go. Consumers always have one irritating issue faced by them – ad overloads. Companies always show and send users a load of advertisements instead of sending fewer advertisements. The main reason behind this is the lack of understanding of companies about their audience.

As they don’t know the taste of their audience, they just send numerous ads hoping one will catch their interest. Most of the time, these companies annoy users by popping ads on a page that consumers visit which takes up most of the screen, which can be extremely frustrating and intrusive for the consumers.

Not only are they annoying but these large ads can also drain the battery life of devices and take up bandwidth. Blockchain-based companies are introducing apps such as Basic Attention Token (BAT) that bring changes to the interaction between advertisers, users, and publishers. The steps involved in this are:

Advertisers can buy advertisements using the app on the brave platform.
Users will be able to decide the type of ads they want to see. Rather than dealing with an unwanted and unnecessary number of ads, they will be able to see the ads that peak their interest most. If a user sees an ad, then they will be paid with a certain small portion of what was paid to buy the ad by the advertiser.
As consumers receive a commission from BAT, the publishers are also paid, but the amount they receive is larger than what consumers receive.

As blockchain is a decentralized technology, it assures the digital marketers that their transactions are secure by improving cybersecurity. Also, it is not controlled centrally – in simple words, nobody owns or controls the blockchain. With this, companies or businesses will be able to avail of the numerous advantages provided by blockchain.

What about using cryptocurrencies? These are the new digital currencies that work based on blockchain technology. These are not physical or actual coins or cash but are used in the digital world, where these are stored in a digital wallet a person as coins. Just like in the real world, the values of these digital currencies are also affected by supply and demand and many other things.

No intermediaries

Beyond cryptocurrencies, blockchain offers a world of opportunities. It can affect the digital marketing industry greatly. One of this is the elimination of depending upon a middleman or intermediary in digital marketing, such as social media sites or Google. This can add more value to the ad campaigns of the companies.

Traditionally, marketers depend on these middlemen for the transactions made and also for the launch of ad campaigns, but with blockchain, there is no need to depend upon them. Blockchain eliminates the need for companies to communicate with website owners through a medium whenever an ad is going to be published.

Previously this job was done by sites like Facebook or Google to make the communication between site owners and digital marketers. But with blockchain, there is no need for intermediaries when users sign a contract related to advertising. This ensures a significant increase in the income of digital marketers due to the cutting of cost that went to intermediaries previously.

Transparency

Previously advertisers knew very fewer details about the use of ads by publishers, which led to high expenses for publishing ads and also in some cases ad fraud. But, with blockchain, the process is more transparent – also they can learn who is seeing their ads and know if it is marketed to the right audience or not.

Clearly, blockchain is a very useful technology that is revolutionizing various industries, and it can also have a great positive impact on the digital marketing industry.

Saurabh Hooda is the Co-founder of Hackr.

[“Source-yourstory”]

August 8, 2018 0 comment