BlogTechnology

Boost student recruitment with Marketing Automation

By Shashank kaushik
December 6, 2017

Automation is a process that pretty much took the marketing world by storm. Though there were enough changes taking place in the marketing segment, no one expected that automation would be something that had the potential to completely change the status-quo. But now, if you happen to ask the marketers of today about this, they’ll tell you about the sheer importance of marketing automation in today’s competitive world. This brings us to our topic of why marketing automation is essential for the education industry. Marketing automation provides people with the much-sought solutions of many long-lasting marketing problems that have been plaguing the industry since time immemorial. Unlike the traditional forms of marketing, automation enables marketers to streamline and automate certain tasks that were quite troublesome when done manually. Let’s understand why and how marketing automation is helpful for education industry:

#1. Quicker turnaround with less expenditure

Marketing automation lives up to the name when it comes to providing a much-needed level of ease to marketers. With proper marketing automation tools, professionals can save valuable time and resources while completing their tasks more efficiently. For example, by using marketing automation tools, an institute can create and schedule e-mails according to the consumer's feedback, and provide them with timely information to create a positive impact in the minds of users. Using automation tools for e-mails has way more than just one benefit for educational institutes; they help one analyze the persona of the individual and allows an organization to connect at a time when consumers are available. This improves the open rate for these emails, which in turn helps the organization to boost their business prospects. There are many other processes which can be initiated with a simple click of a button by using such automation tools, which saves efforts and resources of an institute that can be utilized in other areas.

#2. Personalised solution

One of the greatest advantages of an automation tool is that an educational institute can dig deep into an individual’s personality to gather relevant data and provide more personalized solutions to them. Most of the marketing tools available in the market have a feature ingrained in them to map and understand the needs of every student and provide insightful data to universities. Such information is useful for an institute to provide personalized solutions to every student, and attract them towards their school. For instance, if a student is looking at the placement records and the alumni page on a website, then these automation tools can map and analyze this information and provide the relevant data to institutes. Leveraging this data, universities can produce and send personalised information to a prospective student to get their attention. Once this is done, there’s certainly a higher likelihood of that particular student visiting the website for more relevant information/solution, ultimately giving the educational institutes a chance to convert that student into a successful enrolment.

#3. Focused targeting

Marketing automation, unlike traditional marketing strategies, has the ability to track and create a list of potential consumers that are likely to be converted into successful enrolment. While automation helps institutes to manage and attract potential consumers, finding out the potential business is also one of the advantages of automation that marketing professionals in the education industry can target. Why is focused targeting required, and why can’t an institute follow the conventional method? Obviously, they can, but the problem with conventional methods is that it requires a lot of resources to provide very less output. Whereas, through the use of automation tools, an institute can create and maintain a database of potential consumers and reach out to them. This will help them save their efforts and resources and ultimately increase their conversion rate.

#4. Analytical benefits

Traditional marketing tools are done on a large scale and create a buzz about the institute that's utilising these tools amongst the general populace, but there’s no proper method to track the success and ROI of such marketing campaigns. This is contrary to the measurement of results of digital marketing, which makes the mapping of certain metrics of a campaign possible through these marketing automation tools. Every company wants to measure the results of their marketing campaigns, and with the help of tools like HubSpot, an organization can analyze and measure the ROI of their marketing campaigns without much efforts.

#5. One integrated platform for all your needs

Every marketing professional knows the efforts they have to put in to manage their marketing campaigns on multiple platforms. Well, automation tools are to the rescue for them. Using the automation tools, marketers can run, manage and track all their campaigns on a single platform. This one feature saves professionals from a lot of headaches and minimises the probability of any error that might arise in the campaign. Using these tools is not an especially challenging task either. Any marketer with a basic understanding of technology can easily get some much-needed information on these tools and manage multiple campaigns with ease.

#6. Optimizing landing page

One of the major marketing automation tasks definitely includes website optimisation. Any educational institute which wants to leverage the complete potential of automation tools and achieve maximum results absolutely cannot ignore website optimisation. By optimising the website, we mean that educational institutes need to integrate features like landing and CTA’s on their website. Including CTA’s in your relevant content floating on the internet helps increase the chances of a consumer to reach your website. Once a consumer is on your site, then through the smart integration of content and automation tools, institutes can push consumers to share their queries/information (e-mail id, phone number). Using this information, an institute can reach out to them in a better way and increase their chances of getting their business. There is undoubtedly a lot left to discover in the field of marketing automation, and all we can say is that it is going to change the way marketing is done in the field of the education sector. We hope that you got the information required to know exactly how an automation tool can help education institutes boost their student recruitment. But, if you still wish to know more about marketing automation and how using tools like HubSpot can help your institute then visit:

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BlogSearch Engine Optimization (SEO)

7 SEO Growth Hacking Techniques to Scale Your Business

By Anushree Bose
December 5, 2017

In today's competitive market, it is very important for any performance marketer to have a site that can attract a considerable amount of qualified traffic. Online business efforts have been contributing to a large chunk of revenue for businesses lately. Many businesses rely on online marketing to cater to the buyers of niche products, and to provide them with a cheaper price or the best value option. And, if you want to succeed in this space, then it is not enough to rely on these glamorous aspects of the website, such as a nice interface. What really matters is the non-glamorous parts, or the technical aspects, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Till a few years back, SEO was a relatively new profession, and not many marketers were familiar with its concept and all the technical know-hows. However, now it has evolved and become a necessity for every online business. There are lot of marketers who use the wrong approach, and assume that traffic will start coming automatically as soon as they hit the publish button. But SEO, like any other profession, is highly technical, and a lot of efforts are needed by webmasters to keep up with the constant updates. Here are 7 SEO growth hacking techniques which will help you make the most out of your SEO strategy:

1. Focus on Technical Aspects of SEO

You may have formulated a good SEO plan, but that plan will simply be incomplete if you do not focus on the technical aspects of SEO. If you don’t do so, then there can be many things that can go wrong with your business, and you won’t be able to implement your online marketing plan properly. Firstly, you need to focus on the status of your your robot.txt files and robots Meta Tags. Both of these are used to restrict Google to index certain pages. Occasionally, webmasters may add certain pages that shouldn’t be on that list. As a result, some of the pages may not be indexed.

2. Improve Your Website Architecture and XML Sitemap

You also need to focus on your website’s architecture and XML sitemap, and ensure there are no shortcomings in them. Either Google crawlers or bots of other search engines crawl these pages from time-to-time, and they look for a website’s architecture and XML sitemap to gain full information about the website in a short time. If these two elements are not in place, then they have difficulty in crawling the website, and hence, it will affect your SEO since it may push you down the search engine results page. Hence, this is where technical prowess in SEO comes into play. The lack of this prowess can seriously affect your SEO efforts, and can push your website down drastically in the results page. Therefore, it is very important for any marketer to have technical know-how of SEO. If your website’s design is in place, it will be beneficial for both customers and the bots, since it will be easily navigable as well as crawl able by the bots. Otherwise, both Google and your customers may not notice your site.

3. Focus on Customer journey optimization

A customer’s journey consists of 4 stages – awareness, consideration, decision and delight. A marketer must ensure that the customers are satisfied in each of these stages and must take steps to optimize the customer’s whole buying process. To achieve this goal, he must ensure that the content of his website is fully customer-oriented and enhances their overall journey with your company. Regardless of the device they are viewing in, whether mobile or tablet, users should be able to surf your landing pages easily and quickly.

4. Choose your domain wisely

Let’s consider your domain as a whole. Your website needs to be registered in the country from where you are conducting business from. To achieve better results, you must consider having local domains such as .in, or .uk. On the other hand, if you are a multinational company, or if your services are solely provided through the internet, then you can go for a .com domain, since it will make your page visible in international searches – especially in the US. What domain you choose does matter, since you will be featured more in the local search results by Google.

5. Invest in Keyword Research

The content of every single page on your site should be focused around one particular term or phrase, known as keywords. These keywords are exactly what users are typing to find you on Google. Your focus should be to create your content in such a manner that there is an optimal usage of keywords throughout the body of the page, so when a user searches using that exact keyword or uses some variation, he should be able to find you at the first page of the search results. Before creating content for a particular page of your site, you must do a proper research for what should be your focus keyword or keywords, and use that keyword or keywords optimally throughout the body of that content. You must choose your keywords wisely, and not go for keywords which have too low or too high competition. Instead, you should choose for keywords with medium competition. You can take help from tools such as Google Keyword Planner for such tasks, which gives you ideas for new keywords and also show its competitive level.

6. Focus on blogs as a way to promote content

In today’s content-driven age, it is not sufficient to just create great content. Every site has great content today, so there is a fierce competition to show up at the top position of the results page. Hence, you need something beyond great content, and need to implement content marketing, content promotion strategies and other growth hack techniques. One of the greatest ways to publish and promote great content and increase your conversion rate is through a blog. Once you set up a blog and craft your content, you must focus on building relevant and high-quality links. In other words, your blog must be so visually attractive (through the usage videos or infographics, among other visual elements), that other sites with great authority would be compelled to pass on their link to your site. For instance, if your link comes from a source of high authority to your blog (like an eminent blogger), then it would be a high authority link for you. A high quality backlink is a sign of trust from other thought leaders and other professionals in your industry. Thus, it is regarded as a high-ranking signal from Google. It also helps to build the trust and confidence of the readers. Thus, you must focus on the quality, not quantity of your links

7. Improve your content marketing strategies

When it comes to content marketing strategies, there are certain rules which need to be followed. Needless to say, all your articles and videos should be connected to what you are offering. Your content needs to be informative, relevant and unique. Also, you should keep in mind to give references to popular websites and influencers which would add great value to your product. You may have created a great piece of content, but none of it will matter if you are not promoting it. You can promote it by optimizing the page for SEO, and focusing on longer content with lots of images, links and interesting formatting to create shareable buttons on social media. Another great way you can attract visitors to your website and increase conversion rates is through email marketing. On the other hand, social media also provides one of the most effective ways to put your content in front of a wider audience, and also interact efficiently with them. The most important advantage of using this channel is that is also works as a strong ranking factor for Google.

Conclusion

If you are putting your efforts in an SEO strategy, then it would be a waste if you are not visible on Google and other search engines. Today, a majority of the customers already have knowledge about the product they want to buy, and prefer to do shopping online. So, if they are not able to find you on the first page of the search results, then you are losing out on a major chunk of your potential customers. Hence, you need to go beyond the basic SEO practices, and adopt the SEO growth hacking techniques mentioned above, in order to stay above your competitors in the search results and – eventually – increase your sales. Know more about the Best SEO Techniques to Rank #1 in Search Engines.

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BlogTechnology

Increase College Enrollments With Education Focused Web Design

By Shashank kaushik
December 4, 2017

Let us start this article off by asking a simple question: why does a business even need a website, to begin with? It is the most basic requirement for any organization to mark its presence online. The benefits that a website can provide to an organization are endless, and must be known to everybody. But, it’s surprisingly alarming that a lot of people aren’t fully aware of them or don’t even have a website for their business. Building a website must be the first thing that a business should do. And, this is true for organizations in every industry, be it educational or product drive. This is especially true for the higher education sector, where most of the TG consumes information online. Everyone, from small schools to big universities, are now making their presence known online with their websites. However, just having a website is not enough; there’s a dire need to update these websites to make them more engaging and informative. According to a survey, only 15% of students apply to a college on their first visit to a website. Generally, 54% of applicants visit the website at least five times before applying to any course. The plausible reason to this is because of the fact that people are now making more informed decisions than ever before. Parents and students now perform extensive research before making a choice. With so many colleges and universities around, it’s now vital for educational institutes to optimize their websites to get the attention of students. Here are a few things that an educational website can do to increase enrolment rate through their website. Get more Inbound links The intent to get your website optimized is to rank high in the relevant Google searches. But, it’s not that easy. To get found online, you need to have a strong SEO strategy. What adds value to your SEO rankings is getting a link back from other high-ranking websites. The more backlinks you’ll get for your website, the stronger will be your ranking on various search engines On-page SEO Placing the right keywords in your content is vital, so that when someone searches for them, your website shows up on the first page of Google results. What’s important is to choose these keywords properly, and to integrate them smartly in your content to improve the search results. First impression matters The design and layout of a website is something that indirectly plays an important role in attracting students towards a particular college. Students are increasingly tech-savvy now, and like seeing new and innovative designs. Designing a website to cater to the needs of both parents and students can be a tricky task. While design certainly matters for students, parents would prefer those institutions that have a simple and easy way to navigate the website. Having a proper structure, focusing on a consistent layout and using friendly colours is something that must be considered while designing the website. The best practice is to keep your website consistent throughout, and not to experiment much with the designs. Mobile friendly There has been a constant increase in usage of mobile devices for surfing the internet and gathering information. Therefore, it is pivotal for any institute to make their website mobile-friendly. As per studies, about 40% of people abandon a website if takes more than 3-6 seconds to load on their mobile devices. Quality Content How many times do you go to a website just because you read some quality information and exited the window without subscribing to that site? Quite often, I guess. This is very likely to happen with educational websites. Students are always looking for relevant information to read, and that provides an opening for universities to attract them towards their institutes. Keeping a website updated with fresh content, including proper sources and timely releasing content pieces is the minimum of what you can do to provide your website with a level of authority. Call-to-action This one aspect is what brings quality leads to any business. An effective CTA helps students to provide their information and gives a chance to universities when it comes to garnering a better understanding of the requirements of potential leads. These CTAs are best used when they’re linked to landing pages or forms on a website. Also keep in mind that on these landing pages and forms, there must be just the right amount of questions that should be asked, as too many questions might compel the consumer to quit the page and move forward. Social media links If your content is good and students find the website useful, then there’s a good chance that they’ll share the links to your website on their social media platforms. Therefore, it is important for educational institutes to have a link to social media platforms that provide ease to students and parents to share the information with others. This will yield visibility of your institute and increase the chances of lead generation. Integrating AI chatbots Artificially intelligent chatbots are something that can increase the conversion rate of an educational institute by a sizeable number. Firstly, because students are attracted towards such technologies and tend to interact more when encountering such technology. Secondly, because such artificially intelligent chatbots also map a proper journey/behaviour of an individual according to their journey on the website and questions asked, which gives institutes an additional and relevant information about a student to convert them into a successful business. A website is what decides the admission rate of a college. So, an educational institution must mark their presence online with an appealing website to increase their enrollment rate. We hope that this article has helped you understand what all things you must work on to improve your results. If you still wish to understand how exactly web design can help your business, then click here.

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BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

Digital Trends to Make the Most of December’s Festive Season

By Ritesh Singh
December 1, 2017

As we approach another festive season, it would be safe to say that the constant curiosity of deal-hungry consumers will hallmark the success of digital campaigns and efforts of brands. So, how should digital marketers do to break through the clutter and catch the attention of the curious lot? We'll tell you how - a compelling combination of digital trends and practices that would make sure that your offers are not being missed out by your target audience. Through this article, we've listed various digital marketing trends that you should use in December:

#1. E-mail marketing in the spirit of the holiday season

When it comes to sending out a personalised form of communication that will resonate the most with customers, one of the most effective marketing strategies has to be e-mail marketing. Contrary to the myth that most people believe – e-mail marketing is still going strong as a relevant marketing strategy in the fast-paced digital landscape. The sheer wealth of options that brands have when it comes to this form of marketing is massive, and this will especially be true for December. Therefore, it goes without saying that marketers should undoubtedly try to capitalize on the popularity of this festival and develop a form of e-mail communication that packs in a catchy copy and a better offer.

#2. Reward loyal customers with royal packages

When it comes to driving the sales of a particular organisation, it goes without saying that garnering as many customers as possible is the highest priority of any business. However, keep in mind that merely generating high sales at one point in time is not an optimum strategy in the slightest. A company also needs to make sure that they’re taking the appropriate steps to enhance the overall satisfaction that customers experience from interacting with their business. There are multiple ways in which a brand can help improve this nurturing they provide to their customer, and with the onset of the festive season, it becomes easier for business to figure out effective ways to reward their customers for sticking with the business. One such approach is to provide loyal customers with useful packages, that will bring them the ultimate delight. Also, you can share these offers/gifts when they expect it the least.

#3. Provide employees with festive rewards

Customers won’t be the only people that businesses will provide with these lucrative packages. In fact, one might argue that the people who deserve such rewards the most has to be the backbone of the organisation itself – the employees. It goes without saying that a motivated workforce will contribute to the overall growth when it comes to improving the productivity and efficiency of the organisation. And yes, one of the tried-and-tested ways to do so is through the provision of adequate reward services to these employees. Not only will this prove to be a rather useful motivator in itself, but it will also help when it comes to reducing employee turnover, incentivising work, and providing some other such valuable benefits.

#4. Usage of VR and AR

We’ve already seen just how powerful Augmented Reality can be in the form of Pokémon Go, that took over the world by storm almost a year back. While AR is an exciting piece of technology in itself, what’s really got most people quaking in their boots with excitement has to be the unprecedented rise of Virtual Reality as one of the most prominent ways in which technology can affect our lives. Everything from shopping products, viewing movies & TV shows, and – especially – playing games has been completely revolutionised with the continuing rise of this immersive technology. Adding a bit of a festive touch to both these forms of technology can prove to be an interactive marketing tool that will undoubtedly generate a lot of buzzes.

#5. Judicious application of chatbots

AI is quickly shaping up to be one of the most prominently used forms of technology, due to the sheer levels of functionality that are provided through the various applications. One such use that has taken over the marketing world by storm has to be chatbots, which have proved to be extremely effective when it comes to augmenting the marketing efforts of a particular organisation. Perhaps the major reason why chatbots have grown as a useful marketing tool is due to the personalised interactions that are enabled through the usage of this technology. As the festive seasons dawns upon us, the AI of these chatbots can also be tweaked to provide the customer with a better and more topical medium to let them interact with this particular brand.

#6. Taking advantage of geolocation opportunities

The widespread adoption of digital solutions has led to the innovation of specific technologies, which have proven to be quite revolutionary when it comes to revamping existing marketing strategies and efforts. Geolocation marketing has gone mainstream, which has led to the development of many innovative and highly convenient services that have certainly dictated how we go about with our daily lives. The technology of geolocation can prove to be highly efficient when it comes to revamping the existing digital marketing efforts of a particular brand since they can tailor this technology to suit their needs and provide their customers with a personalised experience when it comes to interacting with their brand. The points mentioned above detail out the various digital trends that are poised to take over the market come December and through the successful deployment, brands will be able to expand their marketing efforts in a way that serves the consumers as well as the business motives!

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PR

What is the best way to measure PR?

Note: I have answered the similar questions in various thread of quora where someone asked about the ROI from Public Relations. Summarising it again as a post here! Public relations or PR is often considered a job that must be done but actually, cannot see conversions in real time. This…

By Honey Singh
November 30, 2017

Note: I have answered the similar questions in various thread of quora where someone asked about the ROI from Public Relations. Summarising it again as a post here! Public relations or PR is often considered a job that must be done but actually, cannot see conversions in real time. This is an old school pattern of considering how PR works. With PR integrating very closely with marketing and advertising a brand, these days, PR is considered more relevant and is measurable in terms of how much return on investment (ROI) it brings to the organisation. There are many tools used by top PR Firms – the most common of them, Google Analytics - that bring the vital information on the amount spent and the leads that spend has procured. However, PR can be separately measured for its effectiveness. I’m not talking about ways to measure the PR value which are not relevant anymore. PR Value = Ad value (for print/online coverage) x 3? You get the cost of ad & then multiply it by 3 (PR value Factor) is way old way to measure the ROI. Here are some of the concepts to keep an eye out for while measuring your ROI, specifically on PR spends.

Brand perception building Building your credibility and authority within the industry and the world at large is certainly very important for any brand. If your competitors notice you and your consumers want you, there is hardly a better indicator of the ROI from your PR initiative. Your conversation must help your consumers make the decision to go with you. Engaging with your audiences, appearing in the news, podcasts, webinars, radios are all important ways to show your visibility.Example: In a recent press unveiling during CES for a wearable startup (boltt) we secured a 3 min prime-time live broadcast coverage in CNN International. As a result, the brand perception for a startup has been built in a league of global competitors like under armour and Fitbit
Sentiments It is necessary to monitor the sentiments of the brand, PR can make & break the brand in a day. There always is a huge impact on brand mentions before & after PR announcements done right. For measuring the ROI, you can track the +ve & -ve cloud within the time span using tools like meltwater, brandwatch, simply measured & others.
The Share of Voice (SOV) SOV can be defined as the % of share for your brand while considering the total number of competitor/category mentions ie it is the percentage of all online content and conversations about your company, compared against those of your competitors.Since the new share of public relations is Digital PR, most of the online mentions are inspired from the media coverages, their posts on social channels & hence making anything go viral with visitors/followers comments.Example #1: SOV can influence the purchase decision of buyers. See how ebook buyers discover books vs role of blogs/reviews.
Referral Traffic Visitors arriving at your website from other website are considered as referral traffic. Here by gaining insights from referral traffic to a client’s website, the public relation team is capable of drilling down deeper into who the target market is, how they were driven to your website, what they are interested in, and what are activities performed by them. For instance, if you know the exact demographic of your audience based on the referral traffic, apart from measuring your current reach, you can additionally tweak future PR efforts to target it to your right audiences.
Social media mentions & new followers from PR coverages
Increase in inquiries and sales inspired from awareness created from PR Example: The recent tea for trump viral marketing campaign that we executed results in 1100% increase in international business enquiries, 9900% increase in website organic traffic.

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BlogGeneric

CMO’S Best Guide to HubSpot for Business Success

By Shashank kaushik
November 29, 2017

The playbook of yore is no longer in use, since the control’s moved to the consumers and CMOs have structured their marketing organizations like never before. With technology enabling more and more innovations in the field of marketing – especially the digital kind – CMOs have had to reinvent their thinking and redo their processes to be ahead of the pack. With the help of HubSpot, the marketing gurus and leaders of today have adapted strategies that can help address the inbound marketing processes. As the marketing leaders, it is their job to know what’s happening around them, stay ahead of the curve and also identify the trends that make a difference in the market. Marketers, it's our job to be on top of trends and stay ahead of the curve. With digital marketing constantly evolving and changing at speeds never witnessed before, many of the strategies need to be relooked at and repurposed for them to be as effective as they are meant to be. We know and fully admit that digital marketing is complex. It also involves not just immaculate planning but also the formidable combination of consumer insights, coupled with talent as well as technology to reach the heights you want to take it to. Here, we put forth a plan of action as well as a vision with a focus on priorities we think will take you ahead in the game. Some of the pointers will be the ones that you definitely will be comfortable with, and may already be performing. While some you may not be very open to this, just take a look and you can decide for yourself. HubSpot lists down some of the tactics that have helped many companies grow their bottom line significantly and spectacularly.

#1. The big guys buy-in

First things first – the C-level needs to bring in the caliber and the inspiration to handle the complexity and the scale of the challenges that come with the change that is inevitable as well as required to be undertaken soon. The vision and the strategy need to be in place. It should be in tandem with what needs to be achieved in the long run. What are the metrics that will be employed and the tactics that will be used? Should the team be lean, or do more number of people with specialized skills need to be brought in? Are the budgets looking fine, or will it need to be upped and bettered? Is the technology used agile in nature, or does it need to be taken a step further to enhance revenues? These are questions that need answering from C-level managers who are holding the reins of the ever-changing digital marketing landscape.

#2. Agile operations

The C-suite will need to bring in an agile marketing team with skills that are definitely a bit different from the ones seen in offline marketing. The skills that CMOs would need to look at would differ depending on the product as well as the market, but you will need employees or freelancers who can create email campaigns and track their efficacy as well. People who could monitor social media channels and optimize profiles would also be of immense importance. Online advertising campaign creators would also be requisite for the team. The people should also be able to make amendments to the website that is being used to test consumer behaviour.

#3. Facebook advertising

What does 1.23 billion users mean? An enormous ad platform. Facebook has managed to surpass all predictions and expectations in the social media domain, even with serious competition around. When a digital marketing guru looks at Facebook, all she/he can see is the wonderfully shiny ad platform. And this is one platform that has done better than most others functioning on the same lines. Facebook Ads have even worked wonders for B2B brands. It has demographic information that is unparalleled, so its targeting capabilities too are notched higher than others in the fray. With the target group so well defined, segmentation on the basis of age, occupation, interests etc. becomes much easier and more efficient. With so many options available, you could still look at video afresh because this social media giant is investing heavily in that format. With an algorithm especially adjusted to offer preference to longer videos, it’s time you took this approach seriously.

#4. Video marketing

We are sure you’ve had a taste of Facebook Live, and if you think that this is THE medium, then you’re absolutely right; video marketing is – as of now – one of the fastest growing mediums where content marketing’s concerned. With video accounting for around 74% of all the web traffic, wouldn’t it make sense to look at videos a little more significantly? In today’s day and age, the web has witnessed more uploading of video content in a month than TV has managed to create and showcase in over thirty years. Video viewers are patient enough to watch a video until at least ¾ of it and 28% of smartphone consumers see a video on their handhelds at least once a day. 35% of tablet owners use their devices to watch a video for at least an hour. It has also been noticed that when marketers use a video in their email communication, the click rate increases by around 300%. So, as a CMO, if you wish to be amongst the top and gain competitive advantage, you will have to consider video marketing.

#5. Facebook Live

We’ve spoken about it already, haven’t we? With Facebook Live kicking the video format a few notches higher, video marketing has redefined engagement itself. It’s interactive, it’s appealing, and – when coupled with Facebook’s comment tools – takes interesting to another level. People now comment much more on Facebook Live videos as compared to regular ones. The users love the transparency that this medium provides and the little glitches that come with it add to the authenticity of the format.

#6. Getting rid of silos

Digital marketing entails a lot more than what we experienced in the traditional setup. The team suddenly has to look at a lot more to handle, which wasn’t even part of the deal some years back! Think digital terms and concepts such as social selling, customized customer experiences pop up, among other such concepts. Taking care of these responsibilities is just one part of the big picture. Another challenge that needs to be overcome is orchestrating all the facets together on an organizational level to achieve a unified and continuous customer journey. You may need to battle it out with budget allocations, company wide politics as well as governance. This will help you realize that silos will just not work; there is an inherent need to look at all the pieces together and not in piecemeal.

#7. Podcasting is big

This medium has seen exponential growth, and over the last few years become quite a big proposition. Presenting plentiful prospects for digital marketers, podcasting is a wonderful opportunity for those who can speak properly but are camera shy. With a standard format that is followed by interviews, you can face the world by just talking to yourself or team up with someone else too. When you talk to famous people in your industry, you can benefit from their followers and the audience that already loves them. You could also appear on some well-known podcasts to make your presence felt.

#8. Content still rules

Short and sweet does not apply here! Gone are the days when 500 words made a mark. If you want to catch the search engines’ as well as the markets’ attention, write some more. Long form content that is unique and spectacularly inventive can only be the way to impress Google and appear on its first page. With no magic number at play, keep posting your blogs that offer value, are long and appeal to the target audience. Conclusion The coming years promise a lot of excitement for inbound marketers who aren’t fearful of transformations and evolution. With newer ways and smarter strategies, it is a time to look forward to impressive results.

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BlogTechnology

Top 3 Technologies That Are Making Marketing More impactful

By Team #ARM Worldwide
November 27, 2017

Over the past few years, technology has hugely impacted how businesses interact with consumers. Ever since the advent of online marketing, there has been a constant endeavour to give it a more humane approach. For instance, by adopting traditional marketing methods like advertising in newspapers, marketers just shout out their message to their users, and it becomes a one-sided communication. Customers today are empowered with knowledge, and marketers should change their strategy of indulging in continuous cold-calling to their customers, to become facilitators in finding the solution to their problems. Here are 3 technologies that customises marketing efforts for each user, and gives it a more humane approach :

The Rise of Voice and Visual Interface

The market for voice recognition technology (like voice search and personal assistants) and visual interface is growing at a rapid pace. And with its increasing accuracy, more and more people are using voice search. Google reported that 20% of its mobile queries were done through voice search in 2016. A remarkable innovation in this aspect has been Amazon’s Alexa, which is an intelligent personal assistant designed by Amazon. It is a voice-activated software, which – apart from having the capability to perform all the regular tasks which other personal assistants can perform – has gone a step further by adding skills which basically function like apps on a smartphone. Google’s also launched a competing product, called Google Home, which has similar function called “actions”.

Advanced Content Creation Tools

In today’s content-driven digital age, delivering excellent content has become the top priority for the marketers. To drive more traffic to their sites, marketers need to create content which the customers find relevant and provides a viable solution to what they are looking for. There are many content creation tools available in the market today such as Google Drive’s “Research” tool, Google’s “site:search” command, etc. But these tools only assist a content writer to do research for his content, and do not perform any other additional functions. With the rapid advancement of technology, we can expect various online and offline advanced content creation tools which would develop several futuristic features such as brainstorming, topic generation, content tweaking, content creation, proofreading and plagiarism checking. Like the various automation tools available today, that perform the function of automating various routine marketing tasks which a marketer does, these advanced content creation tools work in a similar manner to help automate the content creation function to a great extent.

Rise of Visual Medium in Content Strategies

The content of a page can be best communicated to a user through a visual medium such as infographics, data charts, images, videos, etc. Currently, many companies are using the visual medium to communicate their message to their users. The various methods of visual storytelling, especially infographics, will be on the rise in the future as well. Infographics will be the most important medium to disseminate content to the users, and will be used extensively by marketers in their content marketing strategy. These are some of the emerging tech trends which are becoming popular among the marketers, and will become more advanced and used more extensively in the future. These trends give a more humane touch to marketing by focusing on building a level of affinity and trust with potential customers, and developing the relationship between the business and customers. Going by its rising popularity, these trends are here to stay, and will bring a win-win situation for both marketers and customers.

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BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

3 Reasons Education Sector Should Invest in Inbound Marketing

By Rajesh Jhamb
November 23, 2017

The digital landscape is constantly on the rise and is evolving at a pace that’s honestly hard to process. Evolving technology and the ease that these digital platforms are providing to consumers is what’s changing the status-quo of every industry, regardless of their domain. From consumer electronics to education, and from technology giants to food manufacturers – there’s no vertical that’s unaffected by these recent developments. This is pretty much the case with the marketing industry. With the advent of social media platforms and other interactive digital platforms, traditional marketing strategies have taken a backseat, and it’s now more difficult than ever before to get a hold of the market and establish a name for any particular organization. Internet – being an open platform – gives everyone an opportunity to express themselves, which makes this case even worse, because now people can compete with pretty much anyone on a social platform, with millions of people being nothing more than a spectator. So, the question that arises is – how can an educational institute distinguish themselves from others and attract their TG with ease? What are innovative marketing strategies there that an educational institute can opt for? Considering the industry trends and the stats (1) of the marketing world, one solution that has the answer to most of these problems is inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is growing exponentially and is being used by almost every smart marketer in the industry – and for good reason. It is based on a straightforward rule of attracting your consumers, rather than going after them. Unlike outbound marketing, which was done on the terms of the marketer and was quite intrusive in nature, inbound marketing depends on the consumers and their overall preferences. Inbound marketing strategies are known to produce effective results, and are based on a methodology that’s divided into four basic steps:

Attract
Convert
Close
Delight

Let’s understand why inbound is the solution for marketing in the education sector:

1. Students are now more aware than ever

In today’s day-and-age, when people research and read reviews before even buying earphones worth a few hundred bucks, imagine the amount of research they would be doing before investing their money in any particular college. It’s more than just money – students are worried and confused about their future and are on a constant lookout for quality information which can guide them in the right direction. Therefore, it is essential for educational institutes to understand the needs of students and feed them with the information that they want. Inbound marketing ends up doing this work for educational institutes as well. One major aspect of inbound marketing is mapping the buyer’s journey. When done efficiently, the buyer’s journey gives enough insights into the behaviour of students to institutes and ultimately lets them understand exactly what are the things that students want. Utilising this information, an institute can create and publish content that is relevant to students, and help them make well-informed decisions. This helps universities to build authority amongst their TG, and stay in front of them every time. When a student trusts your content, it further improves the chances of them sharing your content with their friends, which adds-on to the credibility of your institute. Also, when a student trusts an institute, there is an additional advantage for an institute to convert them and subsequently increase their enrolment rates.

2. Reliable data sources

With inbound marketing strategies, institutes reach out to consumers with the information they want, which makes students share their information willingly with these educational organizations. Therefore, institutes don’t have to buy any unnecessary email data and student name, thereby wasting their money for a useless purpose. Inbound marketing helps a university build a detailed database of potential consumers, which has a higher chance of conversion and improves the enrolment rate exponentially as well. Also, when an institute uses refined data, they subsequently get updated information about the trends and queries of students that they can use to improve the quality of content that is being published online.

3. Don’t spam

Inbound marketing, unlike outbound marketing, is permission-based. Inbound marketing lets marketers establish a strong connection with their audience, and makes them aware of the importance and quality of your content. But, why is visibility of a university name important to begin with? Ask a student preparing for their higher education about the number of e-mails they receive regarding the admission process every day, and you’ll have your answer. Trust us; you don’t want to get into the spam radar of students. Students are more cautious now than ever before, and to successfully keep them engaged, you need to know the exact amount of quality data you have to send them so that it doesn’t become redundant and they don’t start ignoring you – which is the worst result for an educational institute. Inbound marketing helps universities to understand the underlying psychology of students through various methods, and lets them hit the right chord with students. The higher education market is something that is dependent majorly on digital marketing, and if an institute wants to make the best of their campaigns, then inbound marketing can help them achieve their goals. Inbound marketing is something that is proven to generate results for universities worldwide. Here are a few examples of how universities got sizeable results from their inbound marketing strategies: https://www.hubspot.com/customers#/f=education

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BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

Looking For a Full-Service Digital Marketing Agency? Here’s What You Need to Know.

By Shashank kaushik
November 22, 2017

Every so often, we’ve heard of organizations looking at their digital marketing strategy just like they would react to a sudden pang of hunger – get something from the vending machine till you’re hungry again! This disjointed approach to digital marketing eventually leads to fragmented and inconsistent messaging, the branding looks fractured and the signals confused and mixed. Opportunities are lost on the way and there is an inherent damage to your business because of a scattered marketing plan. So, why don’t you ignore the marketing world’s vending machines and look at a long-term strategy for a change? A full-service digital marketing agency can manage all the digital marketing, website development, content creation, and advertising aspects of your business. This would entail branding, strategic planning, content creation, video production, web development, inbound marketing services, app development, and a whole lot more. Here are some solid reasons why a full-service marketing agency can keep you satiated for a long time.

1. Do you have the expertise to do it all?

Do you consider yourself to be the jack of all trades? If not, then it would make perfect sense for you to go for an effective inbound marketing company. Inbound marketing campaigns are not really child’s play. They require a lot of information about a lot of topics such as SEO, social media, content marketing, paid media and branding, amongst others. So rather than going for piecemeal solutions, it would do you good if you decided to go for specialists who know what is required and do it the way it is supposed to be done.

2. Public relations just look easy; they are actually way more than that

Do you have it in you to build and sustain relationships? You may have been misled to think that public relations are a cakewalk with a few phone calls to make and a few emails to be dropped off and on. Well, let us tell you that it is a little more than that – it is all about taking care of relationships in your community, along with various media channels. You need to realize that public relations do not exist in isolation. It works in tandem with a lot of other channels including social media efforts. These channels help deliver and reinforce the message you want to communicate.

3. Social media is going to be around

It was considered a passing fad once upon a time, but – like it or not – social media is here to stay. What was once not even thought of as a viable tool to boost sales and leads is now taking center stage. Social media now does everything, from building brand awareness to generating new leads and influencing sales. It helps you reach your target group with a focused approach. LinkedIn and Twitter have proven to be highly effective for B2B companies. So if you’re still living under a rock, please remember that your customers are not.

4. The capacity to keep it local or take it across the globe

Working with an agile full-service digital marketing agency allows you to emphasize and focus on your local audience. This also helps with garnering a sizeable following where it actually makes the most difference – at home. Starting at the local level and then slowly building it up, helps you understand the consumer better. The significance of marketing services like listings, citations, SEO, and Google AdWords is huge. These services not only help in reaching a local audience but also gives way to reach a larger base.

5. You can measure exactly how you’re faring

Inbound marketing strategies tackle a lot of things at any given time. But, the best part is that all of it is measurable and progress can be determined in real time. Key performance indicators can be worked out along with the ROI.

6. Are you sure you will be consistent all the time?

When you’re handling a lot of other initiatives for your company and dousing fires as well, maintaining an in-house marketing department might not really be up your alley. But by availing the services of a third-party digital marketing agency, they can dedicatedly and wholly focus on your campaigns day after day.

7. Digital marketing should be integral to your marketing plan

Your pay-per-click ad campaigns, SEO strategies and the content you come up with needs to be an integral part of your marketing plan. Digital tactics should be employed along with other forms such as traditional advertising. It cannot be considered as a strategy in a silo. A full-service marketing agency has the wherewithal to seamlessly integrate the old and new together and does so beautifully.

8. A video strategy will definitely add to your prowess

Some time back, it was predicted that almost 69% of online traffic would be video-based. Consumers are wolfing down huge quantities of videos. So, if your marketing strategy is devoid of an interesting video showcasing your brand in a unique manner, you might lose out to the zillions of videos that are already present out there.

9. It can provide an all-new perspective

Getting someone on board who’s not part of your organization or as close to your brand can help provide you with some invaluable and unbiased feedback. Full-service digital marketing agencies can create novel ideas based on their experiences with the consumer, and not the employee.

10. Systems and software come with the agency

You don’t have to bother with the cost-prohibitive marketing tools for analytics, automation, and other management systems. Digital marketing agencies have all of those in place already and use it optimally to give you the results that are well worth it.

11. Full-service agencies are quite cost-effective

Imagine paying a hefty sum to a freelancer. Now, imagine paying that same sum to get access to an entire team of professionals who give you an amazing ROI. Full-service digital agencies are extremely cost-effective and give the entire gamut of services.

12. Radio and TV are not obsolete yet

TV and radio are still around and provide a viable option to marketers as well. So, you should think about how to use these traditional media outlets in an organized fashion, not a haphazard manner. A strong background and knowledge of radio and TV demographics is required, along with knowing what the viewing and listening patterns are as well. Digital agencies master this art and also interact with media companies who deal with TV and radio.

13. It’s up to speed and also totally scalable

Without having to go through the various bends of the learning curve, you can take advantage of the agency’s personnel to easily increase your content marketing or social media posts. This can be achieved without adding anything substantial to your own team. Not just that – the digital agency’s resources can manage to get a campaign running within minutes, once you finalize your strategy.

14. Put your labor to other aspects of work

When you have someone else doing all the work for you, it becomes easier to keep your in-house personnel focused on other initiatives like customer service, sales, product development, and enhancement. So, basically, we need to address the complex system of marketing with a full-service marketing agency that takes care of everything from A to Z like social media, strategic SEO, interactive web design, email workflows, content marketing, explainer videos, and other inbound marketing services.

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Skyrocket Student Admissions with Inbound Marketing

By Rajesh Jhamb
November 21, 2017

“The education sector doesn’t need marketing!” “A good college doesn’t have to sell themselves!” You might have heard such statements quite a lot. But, the reality is something else. Every educational institute needs a good marketing strategy if they want to survive in this highly competitive industry. After all, with the increase in a number of colleges and e-learning platforms, it is pivotal for education institutes to market themselves appropriately to attract a suitable audience. Everyone who looks for information about universities or good schools for higher education has one thing in common – they do it online. Students and parents now primarily depend on the internet to access any information, which signifies the necessity to upgrade these marketing strategies to establish a presence on these digital platforms. If we consider the current stats of the marketing world, a clear understanding that we get is that using traditional marketing strategies is not going to yield significant results. After all, it has become pretty clear that the future lies in Inbound Marketing. Through the usage of dedicated inbound marketing strategies, an educational institute can efficiently use their marketing plans and increase their enrolment rates substantially. Inbound marketing is the process of creating and distributing relevant content across various digital platforms in such a way that it meets the audience where they are as per their convenience. Inbound marketing is more about educating and attracting your audience rather than selling a product or a service. While our traditional marketing strategies come across as intrusive to consumers, inbound marketing is the complete opposite and is meant to attract customers to your site via non-intrusive means. Inbound marketing can help an educational institute to attract potential customers and convert them to students. It works on the basic methodology which has four steps:

Attract
Convert
Nurture
Close

Let’s understand how this can help an educational institute to increase their enrolment rate.

1. Attract

The majority of the target audience that an educational institute wants to appeal to has an online presence. Students are digitally smart and are on a constant lookout for relevant information. Generally, the target audience for educational institutes are confused and search the web for information which can guide them on a certain path. By understanding the general buyer persona, i.e., the thought process of students, an educational institute can create content accordingly and market themselves better. When an institute understands the pain point of students and creates content that they are looking for, it creates a certain affinity towards the institute. By doing so, an organization can establish authority in their own domain and attract potential leads towards them. Consider an example where a student is confused and not able to come to a conclusion when it comes to whether he should opt for a 2-year MBA or a 3-year project management course. So, to gain information, he’ll look on the internet for relevant information about the courses with keywords like: “Job opportunities after MBA” or “Which one is better MBA or project management”. Now if your institute has written and published such content pieces on the internet, then there’s a good chance that this student will end up landing on your website. If you happen to have quality content that’s helpful to the student, then it will generate an affinity towards your institute and provide you with a potential lead.

2. Convert

Once an institute has attracted a potential lead to their website, the next task is to convert them. There are many institutes that are publishing the same content and thousands of students are reading that information online every day. How can an institute convert these readers into potential leads and get their valuable information? The answer is to optimise your website. While you might have relevant data floating around the internet which is being read by many students, all of it will go to waste if they simply can’t reach you. Therefore, it is essential for educational institutes to optimise their website and include landing pages and CTA’s in their content. Once you include these in your content and direct a reader to reach out and read your quality content, then they can simply click on the link and give their valuable information to you. This information is what helps you to understand the students better and provide them with personalized solutions.

3. Nurture

This is the stage where an institute can create a strong impact and convince the potential lead to take the next step and become a customer. Once students share their relevant information with an institute, it’s up to them when it comes to how they can close and convert them into a customer. For example, let’s consider a situation where a student filled a query form on your website and asked a specific question regarding the placement opportunities of a course. Now, either an institute can send a one-off information to that student, or simply add him to a subscriber list and share relevant content every week/month to establish a goodwill with that student. If the student likes the content, then there are chances that he/she might share it with others, which will create an authority towards the institute. When you send relevant information to that student, there is a high probability that he’ll enroll himself for a course in your college.

4. Close

This is where a lot of institutes make a mistake. Once they have the guaranteed business of students, they simply don’t focus enough on them afterward, which generates a negative impression towards the brand. Emphasising on the students that have already given their business to you is equally as important as giving importance to leads. Making communities for new entrants, forming alumni groups on social media, developing student engagement programs and many such activities can be done to engage the students in activities on these digital platforms. These activities will contribute immensely to the creation of a digital awareness about the institute in a specific age group, which will further amplify the online presence of the brand. Apart from generating awareness and getting admissions, inbound marketing can also help an institute to establish thought leadership, attract potential investors, build a team of esteemed faculty and so much more. All these pointers should ideally be enough to give you an understanding of how inbound marketing is beneficial for any educational institute, and how an institute can increase their enrolment rate.

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