The way websites are designed and developed has undergone a lot of changes in the past few years. Earlier, mostly HTML and JAVA were used to design the websites, but they were less interactive, lacked behind on the creative front and was less intuitive. The introduction of PHP and Content Management System (CMS) changed the face of web development forever. CMS such as Joomla, Drupal, SharePoint and WordPress are hugely popular and used widely by webmasters to develop websites. It helps in the creation and maintenance of the content of a website. It also eliminates the requirement of the knowledge of coding.

Another facet of web development which has changed is the increasing importance of content. Content was always an important aspect of marketing, and more and more marketers are realizing its importance now. The reason it has gained so much importance is that marketing has become more customer-centric. The importance of having a website has also increased, and it has become a lifeline for the survival of any business. These reasons have led to newer trends in web development, and there will be many more to come in the future.

Some of these trends in web development have become so major and so popular that they are here to stay in the market for a long time. Here are some of the trends which changed the web development game forever:

Web Development Trends For A Long Time

#1. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already changed the way businesses interact with their consumers. Earlier, it was limited to industries such as Science, Tech and Medicine, but now it has also made its presence felt in the IT industry. The potential of AI is huge and is being used to make websites more interactive, automated and personalized. It was pioneered by Facebook and Google, and is being used by many apps and sites nowadays. A widely used example of AI is face recognition, which is used by many devices and apps nowadays. Perhaps the best example is the Facebook photo-tagging feature.

The power of AI can be gauged by the fact that it can automate many functions of websites and devices. This makes the design of the website more intuitive, interactive, as well as easy to use for the user. Most importantly, its high accuracy and efficiency enhances user experience and delivers exactly what the user wants, thus increasing your brand’s value.

With so many benefits, it would not be difficult to say that AI is here to stay, and it is only getting better with each passing day.

#2. Internet of Things (IoT)

The next big advancement in the digital world today, Internet of Things (IoT) is all about making devices smart and enabling them to communicate with its users by being connected to the internet. IoT has been put to a wide variety of uses like smart TVs and refrigerators, which can answer a user’s query by interacting with him. It helps to disseminate content to the user, without restricting it to only PC’s, mobiles or laptops.

In future, the importance of IoT is only going to grow. Web developers may want to develop apps which can remotely control household devices and help in dissemination of content to the users.

#3. Rise of JavaScript

Ever since its inception in 1995, Java has been one of the most popular and widely used programming languages due to its portability, i.e., “write once, run anywhere” feature. In 2016, it was one of the most popular programming languages in use, particularly for client-server web applications, with reportedly 9 million web developers.

The rapid growth of Java has allowed developers to work on chatbots, virtual reality (VR) and many other emerging tech trends.

The growth of Java has also enabled the improvement the overall language, grammar and efficiency of the apps. This indicates that it is here to stay.

#4. Static Site Generators

Static Site Generators (SSGs) are softwares which take content from markdown files instead of a database, and produces a completely static website ready to be served by HTML or other web servers. The main advantage it provides is that you don’t need to create a database in order to create a website. You can create a static website directly from the text stored in files. Its other advantages are that it reduces the website loading time, provides better security and makes dissemination of content to the user much easier.

#5. Virtual Reality (VR)

Technology is slowly diminishing the lines between the virtual world and the real world. And virtual reality (VR) is a technology which is just able to do that. VR is not a new trend in the digital industry, and many big players like Google are using it in their APIs to make VR transition into the web. But the latest development in the world of VR is that many web developers are using it in their apps, and it is being used by various industries. For example, it is being used by the real estate industry to enable their consumers to take a virtual tour of the property that they want to take possession of, or about to get possession of.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a very common term to hear nowadays, and is so widely used by different industries since it helps companies to provide a superior user experience, which in turn increases their loyalty for the company.

#6. Graphics Interchange Format (GIFs)

GIFs have become so popular that everyone might have gone through it once, or – at the very least – heard about it. It is considered a fun way of communication, and is widely used across social media platforms and chat boxes. Cashing on its popularity, many brands have utilized it to market their content on social media platforms, websites, or other types of medium on the web. And the response they have received is overwhelming!

In the coming times, GIFs are only going to be used in a bigger way. Web developers can use it in their sites or apps,for better engagement with users. And since it uses pictorial representation, it can convey the message better than plain text to a consumer.

#7. Bot

We all might have come across a bot without even realizing it. Bot is an umbrella term given to a group of softwares which use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate repetitive tasks. Using bots is not new, and it is used by many big brands and companies. For example, Facebook uses chatbots to engage with users by personally communicating with them.

With advancements in technology, bots are being improved to create more personalized and better user experiences. Bots are able to respond in a more “human-like” way with a user. This can be a great marketing advantage for businesses. Hence, web developers can use various bots in their sites or apps to automate the repetitive marketing tasks and create personalized user experiences. This will enhance the user experience, and keep them engaged with a brand for a long time.

These are some of the major web development trends which were buzzwords in the tech industry last year, and have gained momentum from then till now. And going their popularity, we are sure they are here to stay for quite some time!

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Every marketer dreams of creating and implementing the greatest buzz-worthy marketing campaign on social media platforms to gather the attention of the masses. Brands have come up with a blend of traditional and new media tactics to get the people talking about their brands on social media platforms. A social media campaign is a marketing effort to reinforce a brand’s awareness by using various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Before the execution of the campaign, you can set a baseline and the target metrics, and then track the changes in the performance throughout the campaign and beyond using these parameters.

6 Must Read Award-Winning Social Media Campaigns of 2018

#1. Buzzfeed- Tasty

Buzzfeed is a media company that has a massive following on social media platforms. It started with Facebook and expanded to all the traditional social networking platforms. Tasty is an example of how to dominate the niche audience. Since July, it had 52 million likes and 2.2 billion views.

Their target audience is 'foodies', and the channel has been top-rated among them. They have a series of videos of mouthwatering recipes which interests all the cooking enthusiasts. They delight the viewers with their quick and easy-to-make recipes. The right use of content in their videos is impossible to ignore. In a short span of time, they have accumulated a huge following on Facebook, and this campaign resulted in the launch of Tasty Junior and Nifty as their other competitors.

#2. Paramount Pictures: #BlueSteelSelfie

Paramount Picture's #BlueSteelSelfie placed their bets on fans to share their style by motivating them to click selfies in Derek Zoolander's signature Blue Steel pose for the promotion of their Zoolander 2 release. This campaign said that you could go on the Paramount Pictures' website, take a selfie by making Derek Zoolander's signature expression and do it until your Blue Steel is perfect. Then you can share it on social media.

It was a straightforward and fun campaign which was trending in 24 hours with over 1000 posts per hour at its peak. It wasn't any groundbreaking campaign but was an excellent example of how a product or brand can leverage user-generated content to create a buzz.

#3. Amnesty International: #GayTurtle

According to the 2014 UN Universal Periodic Report of Human Rights Violations of LGBT individuals in Turkey report, Homophobia and Transphobia had reached absurdly high levels. The country saw hundreds of hate crimes and more than 41 hate murders due to homophobia. Amnesty International launched a campaign where they did a sting operation with a hidden camera in a pet shop in Turkey. Several customers quickly bonded with the turtle in the beginning but changed their thought of purchasing it when the shop owner revealed that the turtle was gay. There were various reactions made by the visitors like, "give me an average turtle; a non-gay, standard turtle."

This campaign was a smart use of content marketing to deliver a particular message and raise awareness with the use of #GayTurtle to track the effectiveness of the campaign. At the end of their video, they deliver the message of "Love is Love, Hate is a choice."

#4. L’Oréal Paris: #WorthSaying

#WorthSaying picked up steam on social media when multiple anti-sexism campaigns encouraged journalists to question female actors about their work and everything important to them, not just their clothing and makeup. L'Oreal Paris kept the discussion alive by launching their campaign #WorthSaying in the Golden Globes Award in 2016.

The campaign title was rooted from their tagline "Because you're worth it." According to them, they believe that all women have something worthy to say.

“We recognised the importance of fueling the powerful words of women everywhere, so their conversations reach, affect and inspire as many women as possible.” - Karen Fondu, president of L’Oréal Paris.

This campaign was launched by McCann and Alison Bord Relation. By indulging into various award shows, L'Oreal seamlessly incorporated celebrity spokeswomen into their campaign, amplifying their message.

#5. Lowes: Fixinsix

Lowes created a social media campaign using platforms like Vine and Snapchat which offered quick home improvement tips. They are 6 seconds DIY tricks which you can try at home.

These clips have stop motion techniques along with claymation to make it a fun and engaging video which delivers valuable content for their viewers with an educational takeaway. The tricks in these clips are informative and useful. These vines generated more than 15 million impressions and had thousands of shares on social media.

BBDO was the agency behind this short and creative idea. The stop-motion shorts won awards at Cannes Lion, Mashies Awards and much more. The whole campaign is a counterpoint to the traditional Vine marketing, and this idea can be used by other brands too if they want to engage their audience.

#6. Knorr: Love at First Taste

Knorr has done an exceptional job by leveraging the connection between food and romance. Their #LoveAtFirstTaste campaign combined video, Twitter cards and trend promotion to boost brand awareness around Knorr foods.

It's a storytelling approach of making an emotional connection that reminded people of those amazing firsts in dating.

The effort takes a lighthearted approach, opening with the question, “Can flavour help you find love?” MullenLowe, the agency attempts to answer the question with an experiment of matching up couples by the characteristics they prefer. After that, they set the couples out on a date with a catch: they had to feed each other the entire meal. In the end, there's an effort to engage the viewers by bringing them back to the brand, inviting them to discover their flavour profile with the Knorr Flavour Quiz.

Conclusion The aforementioned award-winning marketing campaigns show just how important it is to enlist professional social media marketing services to initiate a successful marketing campaign. It might seem challenging to pull off a successful marketing campaign and increase the brand and/product recognition among the masses, but by utilizing effective social media marketing services, this goal can be successfully achieved as a result. You May Also Be Interested In

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Public relations 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 is 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 a 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.

1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 e-book buyers discover books vs the role of blogs/reviews.
5. Social media mentions & new followers from PR coverages
6. 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.

Digital PR is a way to create brand perception using content marketing via digital super users like media, bloggers, journalist & super influencers (like YouTubers, Instagrammer’s & others) It is public relations for new age having a hybrid mix of marketing & PR for driving defined business goals. It provides add-on benefits to brands existing digital marketing efforts like SEO & social media. It bridges the gaps traditional PR approach, we use our psychometric perception building frameworks to identify the brand problems & hence define personalized solutions for different objectives like brand awareness, audience engagement, a higher share of voice (SOV), thought leadership, product leadership, reputation management & other. Digital PR Framework: How it works?

1. Research about the category & create a benchmark of content strategies that can work for the brand.
2. Identify the topics of influence that speak to your brand’s target buyers.
3. Vet & improvise the influencers who are a good contextual fit with your brand.Look for content quality, reach, engagement and an alignment of brand values.
4. Relate and engage with to your target influencers via email and other social channels. Ask them to partner with your brand and offer them compensation to create mutually beneficial relationships.
5. Measure all earned media and identify which influencers and which topics lift your brand the most.
6. Repeat Once you’ve identified who and what works best for your brand you can build a stronger influencer marketing strategy each time around.

Digital PR amplification framework that we use in #ARM Worldwide:

With the world’s focus shifting from traditional marketing to digital marketing, it is important to distribute your budget to achieve good marketing strategies effectively. Digital marketing strategies can take up unlimited funds, which is why you need to set a budget which is comfortable for your company to spend.

Within this budget, it is important to allocate the right resources to help maximise your efficiency. If you don’t divide and pay in an organised way, digital marketing can become a big hole for your company, causing problems that will be tough to deal with.

10 Essential Digital Marketing Spends for Your Business

#1. Content

This is the most important part of any marketing strategy. Without this, no company can gain enough traction with their marketing strategy. In digital marketing, most campaigns revolve around content to interact with people online. This content may be in the form of videos, photos or written pieces. Thus, hiring talented content creators or companies to handle your content requirements are important.

#2. Content Marketing Specialists

This is the new age of marketing which means there is a need to hire new people who are experienced with or specialise in content marketing. Without having these people on board, running a successful campaign is tough as there is nobody experienced enough to handle tough situations or have the ability to think of the best ideas by utilising all resources available to the fullest. In the competitive world, being on top with the best resources and people in order to craft the best strategies is important.

#3. Content Distribution

Content distribution avenues on social media are endless in nature. While brands can look at some paid avenues, they can look at other free options as well. Investing in the right ones for your brand is key. Getting paid ads everywhere is not the best way as a large number of people ignore these paid ads or block them. Using only unpaid avenues makes your brand hidden in the wave of information that exists on the internet. Striking the right balance is crucial to expand your viewership base and have a successful marketing strategy.

#4. Email Communications

No matter what people say about it, email is not dead. It is still the primary medium of communication for all official purposes. A lot of customer engagement still happens via email. Thus, it is important to invest in email communication and automation. It is the easiest and cheapest way to have personalised communications with your customers. According to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the return on investment for emails is $43 for every dollar spent. Thus, spending on email is essential for a successful digital marketing budget.

#5. Influencer Marketing

Social influencers who have an enormous social following help you get access to wider customer bases. It allows you to tap into the trust certain people have in specific circles online. Doing so helps you build credibility and trust among influencer’s followers as well when they advocate your product on their social handles. Not only is your brand promoted in front of a bigger audience, but it also helps in building greater brand awareness.

#6. SEO

This helps you boost your organic search ranking in search engines. Most people never go beyond the second page of search results. Thus, it is important for you to get ranked higher in search results; doing so will exponentially increase the traffic on your website, helping you boost sales. Many tools are used in the process of SEO, and they require specialists to use and work on them. SEO is an important part of marketing in the digital sphere. It exponentially increases website traffic, generating more leads.

#7. Marketing and Analytics Tools

Analytics is critical to measure the progress and success of any online campaign. Using analytics, you can check the reach of your social posts, measure social traffic, website traffic, online engagement, retention time and a lot of other valuable data which provide metrics for measuring the effectiveness of strategies. This data is essential as it gives you an insight into what to tweak, what works, what doesn’t and what is your average buyer persona. You can mould your strategies to fit your buyer personas to reach your target audience.

#8. Paid Media

Ads are a good way to reach out to people who may not be in your target audience but still would be interested in buying your product. The majority of digital marketing efforts go into targeting particular audiences. This strategy neglects potential customers you are not targeting. Ads are a good way to reach out to untargeted customers. They will let people know about your company and product without engaging them in any activities with your business. The people interested in this can participate further if they want.

#9. Web Design

Your website will be the first self-owned page through which people will engage with you. For this, your site needs to be very intuitive and user-friendly, or else people will not want to stay on your website and engage further. The site helps form the first impression based on which people judge your company while deciding between you and your competitors. Hence, having a great web design is of utmost importance to your web team. Thus, putting this high up in your budget is important as a significant part of your sales depend on it.

#10. Social Media

Social media is an essential online medium to connect with people. It lets you reach out to a large number of individuals at the same time and engage with them. For making the best use of this medium, it is essential to invest in a team to manage all posts and engagement on it, and also on tools that help you analyse and make the best use of social media.

Dividing your budget according to your requirements is essential. Wasting extra money on tools don’t always ensure better results. Smartly optimising the money spent in every avenue helps ensure better strategies and best use of resources, maximising results in the given resources.

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With the emergence of the digital era, two-way communication process has diversified into computer-mediated communication these days. Blogs have frequently become a source to generate content on websites and connect to millions of users on the internet. Text, pictures and sound files have become various approaches to reach potential customers through their high-quality content. Readers have the option to give feedback, comment or connect to any individual posting or the website. For any marketer, blogging has become a necessary tool for a successful business.With the emergence of the digital era, two-way communication process has diversified into computer-mediated communication these days. Blogs have frequently become a source to generate content on websites and connect to millions of users on the internet. Text, pictures and sound files have become various approaches to reach potential customers through their high-quality content. Readers have the option to give feedback, comment or connect to any individual posting or the website. For any marketer, blogging has become a necessary tool for a successful business. Here is a list of reasons that states the benefits of blogging on any website.

1. Boost Search Engine Optimization

Regarding search engine optimization, the more you add content to your website, the more pages from your domain becomes indexed in search engines. This helps to improve organic search visibility and increases the traffic on your website. Blogging frequently provides Google and other search engines with a new content to add to their index which creates opportunities to plug in the all-important keywords and increases the visibility on search engine results pages. Therefore, the more blogs you post, the more chances you have to rank for various keywords.

2. Helps to convert the traffic into leads

With the help of blogging, you can drive the attention of the potential customers. It generates traffic on your website, and you have the opportunity to convert your potential customer into leads. Each blog is an opportunity to generate new leads. The way this works is effortless – just add a lead generating call to action for every blog post. Often, there are various approaches to generate lead like free eBooks, free whitepapers, free fact sheets, free webinars, free trials or any content asset for which someone would be willing to exchange their information.

3. Positions you as an expert

The business blogs answer common questions their customers have. If you are consistently creating content that is helpful for your target and existing customers, they will love you! Can you imagine the impact of sending an educational blog post you wrote to clear things up for a confused customer? Blogging posts is one of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert in your genre as it gives you a platform to share valuable insights and industry-related information. You can build up an authority in your niche. This authority incorporates trust and familiarity and keeps you on the top of your customers’ mind.

4. Humanizes your brand

The possibilities of what you can blog about are endless! You can start answering real customer questions, write about staff members, upcoming events, charity events, community-related projects and publish case studies & testimonials. Blogging gives your website a way to touch on the concerns of interest of your customer and also shares the passion for your employee. Showcasing the areas of your organization ‘humanises’ it and gives the marketers a platform to raise their voice, build up the trust and build up the brand's presence for existing customers, prospects and followers.

5. Shows consistency

The only route to convert your potential customers into leads is that your website has blog post consistently. Blogging about fresh and valuable content from time to time commits your readers. You need to produce great contents on a consistent basis, and you need to promote your blog and content on a regular basis. If you don't blog frequently, irrespective of the blogging platform you are using or how beautiful or stylish your blog is, you will simply not succeed. For your marketing strategies, you need to be CONSISTENT with things that would make your website a success.

6. Develop Relationships with Customers

Blogging helps you to connect with your site’s visitors through a two-way conversation. This interaction can be accomplished by asking questions at the end of your posts to get the conversation going on or by simply allowing comments and feedback or even criticism. By responding to readers’ comments, you can create a relationship with your readers and gain valuable insight into what information they require.

7.  Supports your social media initiatives

It is essential to maintain an active social media presence in the world of web with the access to effective and high-quality content. Businesses want to interact with their customers collectively and make them interact with their content, sharing it and promoting lead generation. Sharing a blog post raises the traffic on the website. The sharing of content on the social media platform gives a boost to the website and its e-mail marketing.

8. Take Control of Your Online Identity

For every business or marketer, it is essential to mark their presence on a digital platform. There's too much information available to the customers that they need to attain and you want to make sure that customers get the complete picture about your website, your objective and the content the website produces. With the help of a blog, it lets you have an excellent control of your online identity, and with the integration of SEO and Content Marketing, it makes sure that your website reaches the top result on the search engine.

9. Cost Effective approach

Every blog you publish is a long-term asset which helps to build brand awareness and promotes expertise for the products and services. Unlike other tools of developing the business, blogging comes as one of the most cost-effective processes which are enriched in its content and the customers reach to the website looking for the information they require instead of the product's hunt to its customers.

10. It drives long-term results

Blog posting will benefit immensely in the long run. It is an investment towards the future growth of your website. The blog posts you generate become an ongoing source of value to grab the attention of visitors and promote the website. Even after a period, a blog post keeps the high ranking in search engines. That means for the couple of days, weeks, months, and years to come, you can get traffic and leads from that blog post. >>To know about great Marketing Tools for SMB’s.

Today, technology has changed the way we market and promote our products and services. Websites and Applications have become an important marketing model to maintain a digital presence on the web for any business. An active site helps the marketers for generating the leads. But there is a need to analyse the user experience while designing that website. While reviewing the superior user experience (UX), there are some ways to approach this process.

Lean UX method generates the user experience designs to a more efficient and lightweight process, emphasising on a quick process of the Building, Measuring and Learning rapid cycle.

Lean UX is continually validating UX designers’ assumptions to build a user-friendly website that provides information or highlights a product or service. Everything about analysing user experience begins with research and strategy. There is a need to understand user’s goals while they approach any website. This analysis helps to create a wireframe to identify the features of a website or application. Along with understanding the users need, Lead UX unlocks the pain and frustrations the users are currently facing while using the site or an app.

Lean User Experience to Capture User Behaviour

#1. Research

While experiencing user-friendly experience, traditional research methods like surveys, interviews, usability testing and focus groups can be considered. Focus groups tend to take more time and comparatively a costlier research process.

Usability testing comes when we have some interface available for users to test (wireframe, prototype, and mockup). Therefore, regarding Lean UX, we can discuss and focus on the first two methods, i.e.,.e surveys and interviews.

Lean UX process helps to understand users within a short period. By asking essential questions based on the audience experience, while continuously validating our assumptions, we can refine these hypotheses. This method helps to achieve user solutions more rapidly. One of the most important reasons to do research is to know who our user's insights which include where and when they bounce off a site or application.

#2. Defining the User

Lean UX research begins with determining the actual users. We can create users' personas and assumptions to identify their pain points and difficulties. Personas are the user profiles outlining their demographic, consumer behaviour, as well as their needs and goals. After we create the hypothesis persona, we should validate the proposition.

To generate customer-centric experience, we need to authenticate our assumptions with limited resources. As discussed, one rapid way is through traditional research method like surveys which is a quick and cost efficient way to capture a better understanding of customer's needs and goals. Surveys can be sent out to many users. Then the information gathered through those surveys can be compiled and help to create the UX.

Another method to capture users, needs and goals is through interviews. It brings out more personal information about the users, unlocking their behaviour patterns to build a better website profile. Interview questions can be open-ended or close-ended. For example, an open ended question like "What do you want out of the site/application can be put forth? There may be several items that the users are looking for or they may provide a brief description of it through their answers. Then, close-ended questions could be framed like "Do you prefer open menus or pull out menus?” where there are multiple options provided to the answer, and the user has to choose one accordingly.

These two forms of questions allow getting a concrete answer to particular questions you may have and unique perspective of the individuals utilising that site or app.

#3. User Validation

You can create two types of validation questions while going for a user's research i.e. screening questions and interview questions. Screening questions prove whether the individuals you are talking fits in the right segment of users whereas interview questions are to reaffirm the user hypothesis.

The process of making an interview validation, hypothetical user persona and learning from the end users defines the Lean UX method. Their approach is to build, measure and then determine cycle. Lean UX approach helps the UX team to identify the users, their needs and goals instead of making assumptions.

There are possibilities that Lean UX is not in-depth as other processes where the same traditional user research methods are used like in Lean UX, but it provides a better understanding of the users within limited time and resources. It helps to understand the user-behavior, their pain points and difficulties of their audience.

The information gathered through surveys and interviews; the website designer can create a persona with some certain assumptions about their users and make the site easier and approachable for them. Finally, revise the persona based on the findings.

Lean UX is essential for any website or app making to understand because the process will help the website strategy, understanding of the users and monetization of the site. The approach does not stop here. It should continue to apply to the next steps of user research, such as creating prototypes, and usability testing.

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Content marketing is the new way of marketing a brand in the age of social media. Running a SMB is not an easy task and to get your brand across to potential customers is even difficult. If you can’t get across to your target audience, you can’t create awareness for your brand. This affects the sales and other aspects of your company. This is where adopting content marketing steps in.

Content marketing employs the use of creative and interactive content, in the form of videos or pictures or even written articles. These creative elements are targeted towards the potential customers, helping you reach out to them in a non-invasive way. Content marketing is inexpensive than traditional marketing to implement, more efficient and requires less labour. Overall it is a better strategy to follow and is also easier for small businesses to implement. With a good campaign, you can increase your reach on social media, like any other big brand.

Challenges Faced by SMB’s for Marketing

The biggest problem faced by any SMB is its limited resources. The fact that they don’t have a lot of people or capital to assign to marketing restricts the choices they have to market their brand. Unlike bigger companies, SMB’s cannot allot big teams just to take care of marketing, or big budgets. It puts a restriction on the methods or reach that you can have and limits the visibility for the company on web. Another limitation is, as the visibility of the brand is low, generating leads is challenging and affects sales. Customers nowadays know how to avoid or block out most of the advertisement content on the internet using ad-blockers and other tools. Reaching out to them in an organic way is important for any company. People don’t want to be bombarded with information on products they don’t want. They just want what’s relevant to them.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves creating relevant, audience targeted content to reach out to potential customers, in an effort create awareness for the brand. It can also be used to convert the target audience into leads and leads into customers.

The targeted content can be in the form of informative or viral videos, or written text like a blog, which talks more about particular problems and their solutions, which can be solved by their product.

The purpose of writing a blog should not be aimed at talking only about the product or brand for promotion but should be written with an intent to increase user engagement. A greater user engagement will in turn increase the social traffic of the company’s website.

When people share the content that you post, it helps spread the message to more potential customers and improve brand awareness. Interested people will follow the posts to the website. There, through the inclusion of call to action buttons, the visitors’ information can be turned into leads.

Content marketing can also help in keeping existing customers in the loop, making them come back for repurchase. Thus, growth via content marketing improves the company’s performance in all sectors.

How is Content Marketing Good for SMB’s?

Content marketing is an inexpensive method of marketing. It can reduce marketing costs by up to 60%. It does not require a lot of human resources either. A small team can achieve the goals. Essentially, an SMB would have to look at a content heavy strategy to achieve desired results. As more quality content is floated, it reflects in a bigger brand awareness.

With good content, the brand recall also increases, which helps in converting potential customers to leads. This is good for sales as more and more people know about the brand and are interested in what it has to offer.

Another important factor for SMBs to consider is the fact that content marketing can even be done in-house, which is a big plus point for small businesses as hiring an external agency is costly. The results derived from these methods are purely organic. And, as noticed, is a way to get genuine visitors who are interested in the brand. The more genuine readers a brand gets, the better it is for spiking brand conversations. This boosts the brand image further.

Being connected with the customers is also important to build brand trust and loyalty. Another thing to note here is that great content pulls a huge number of follower on social media. As opposed to other ways of buying likes or followers, this is a way more cost effective way.

This method of marketing puts the target audience before the company, increasing their trust and loyalty. The next step for a brand is to start engaging with this community by sending them personalised emails and replying to their social posts.

Responding to their opinions is a great way to improve customer experience. As the content is shareable, if someone likes the content, they can share it and spread the word. This helps with overall brand publicity.

Conclusion

Content Marketing is the marketing of future, which has a lot of benefits when used aptly, like increased brand awareness, greater brand engagement, and outreach. It is an inexpensive and more efficient system that provides value-driven results.

Hence, it is suitable for SMB’s to adopt and compete with bigger competitors without indulging in big-pocketed marketing budgets. It helps them quickly reach out to and engage with people on social media, creating a fast-paced interactive community that helps in building the image and perception of the brand.

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Marketing automation tools are the talk of the town. From offering the marketing team significant resources which saves time to providing tools that streamline marketing efforts, automation tools have become the necessity for every marketing team. Any B2C or B2B company realises how even the most basic marketing tasks can take a toll on marketing executives and consume an ample amount of time as well. From staying in contact with potential clients to sustaining leads, managing email campaigns, and coordinating social media marketing efforts, all is done by the marketing team because of the dearth of resources like marketing automation tools.

This gap can be combated by some marketing automation tools that can make these tedious and time-consuming marketing tasks uncomplicated. From handling email marketing with autoresponders to tools that coordinate the firm's social media efforts and editorial calendars there are hundreds of tools that can make the lives of marketers simple and less stressful.

Best Marketing Automation Tools that Global Companies are Using

#1. Hubspot

HubSpot is a premium platform that starts at $200/month. HubSpot integrates all marketing efforts that one needs to pull off a better marketing strategy. It can overview social media, blogging, email and sales in one place. Everything is synced, so you can see where leads and sales are coming from with each marketing effort. HubSpot helps you automate social media, emails, and email workflows as well. So, if you’re looking for an “all-in-one” tool that gives you the basic functionality of various marketing systems, HubSpot is a good alternative for you.

#2. Marketo

Marketo, with a base cost of $895/month, is a good option for medium-large sized businesses. It is a multi-purpose marketing automation software offering customer engagement marketing, real-time personalization to provide customised messaging across marketing platforms and marketing management functionality, including budgeting tools and marketing calendars. Nevertheless, if one is just starting and wishes to do that with the basics and move into the more advanced functionality soon, it could be a good idea to start with a marketing automation tool like Marketo so that you don’t have to switch over all your data and campaigns down the line. Moreover, Marketo has a very enormous and active knowledge base, which is an excellent resource for new users.

#3. Eloqua

With entry-point cost as $2000 per month, Eloqua is by far the most priced and enterprise-focused marketing automation tool. The firm was acquired in 2012 by Oracle for $871m. One of the best features in Eloqua is HyperSites, which are fundamentally micro site landing pages that include extremely personalised information, such as a customer’s name and other details.

Eloqua doesn’t have a personal CRM but instead integrates with popular enterprise-level CRM systems like Oracle/Siebel CRM, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It does come with exceptional services but with a matching price tag. Hence, Eloqua is considered to be the best automation marketing software for large enterprises with big budgets.

#4. Pardot

The price for standard Pardot package is $1000. The marketing automation tool can target communications over manifold channels. Most marketing automation tools focus on email communications, but Pardot goes beyond that and lets you target mobile app notifications and messages. While Pardot does have integration with most of the known CRMs, they have just 32 third-party apps, which is significantly lower than other tools, such as Marketo. Its API access and A/B testing is only available to pro users hence are available only to customers paying for their $2,000/month package.

The price for standard Pardot package is $1000. The marketing automation tool can target communications over manifold channels. Most marketing automation tools focus on email communications, but Pardot goes beyond that and lets you target mobile app notifications and messages. While Pardot does have integration with most of the known CRMs, they have just 32 third-party apps, which is significantly lower than other tools, such as Marketo. Its API access and A/B testing is only available to pro users hence is available only to customers paying for their $2,000/month package.

#5. Customer.io

Priced at $75/month (and they offer a free plan too), Customer.io is one of the newer players in the marketing automation, but they’re growing very rapidly and are definitely a company to look out for. Unlike most of the other tools, Customer.io is built to trigger emails based on events, instead of just pageviews. Customer.io’s lightweight UI, fast personal customer support and flexibility are the features that attract customers. It is good for companies that are on the lookout to get started with marketing automation and prefer a lightweight UI instead of the typical enterprise software. Businesses that are looking for some more progressive functionality that requires flexibility and personalization, and have the required developers to implement such practices can use this tool.

#6. Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft’s entry point cost is $199 / month (+ mandatory one-off $1,999 kickstart package). It is one of the most popular marketing automation platforms, with over 20,000 customers. The CRM system on Infusionsoft is pretty great. One can get lead scoring, automated quotes, pipeline reporting, unlimited tags, and much more. If one has the eCommerce package, you can also use Infusionsoft to manage your site’s eCommerce system, which automatically adds customers into your CRM, enabling up-selling, customer lifecycle marketing, etc. Companies with a sales team can have the advantage when using Infusionspot, as their CRM system is one of their strongest and seamless offering.

#7. Ontraport

 

$297/month, there’s no question that Ontraport is designed with small companies in mind. Their email deliverability rates are some of the highest among all automation vendors, and their range of services are equally good. Ontraport offers the feature to build custom objects which are available only in enterprise systems. Custom objects allow you to create relationships between multiple databases. Ontraport has a large range of striking e-commerce features that include automatic credit card payment collections, cross-sells, cart abandonment, ability to add upsells, and credit card expiration notification automation. While you can create virtually any metric you’d like, their reporting dashboard isn’t particularly visually appealing as it doesn’t have graphs and charts. While Ontraport’s campaign builder is simple and sufficiently efficient, it adds text-based rules one under another.

No marketing automation software is either perfect or the best to address the ever-changing demands of brands, but they can help you out on most of your marketing woes. With constant development, marketing automation software are trying to offer solutions for brand’s every marketing need, so as to let marketing teams focus on their core tasks. Budget, requirements, and scalability of firms are what will provide the answer when faced to choose from the above available options.

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Cheap, efficient and accessible - inbound marketing strategies are all that and more. Inbound marketing puts a stronger emphasis on creating quality content that pulls an audience towards your firm and its services. By ensuring that the content you publish aligns with your customer’s interests, you attract traffic that you can convert into customers over time. Customers are getting more value because of a buyer-centric approach, which is a clear indication that inbound marketing strategies are here to stay. With an amalgamation of countless benefits, inbound marketing software serves as the light in the startup tunnel. So if you wake up today and decide to be an entrepreneur, or have already fallen into the startup sphere, here are five inevitable inbound marketing strategies for every entrepreneur:

Inbound Marketing Strategies for Every Entrepreneur

#1. Strategy Driven SEO

If you aspire to see your startup on the first page of Google and Bing, SEO is your go-to saviour. SEO tools are handy and quite practical when it comes to increasing visibility, publicity and the reach of a company by unpaid methods. Some popular SEO tools that start-ups need to get their hands on are Google Analytics, Moz, Google Keyword Planner and BuiltWith. A start-up can also venture into more multi-faceted SEO tools for optimisation of websites and to target exact keyword phrases in latter stages. These include optimising for mobile devices, refining site speed and targeting exact strategic keywords. With a limited budget and no wish to decrease the quality of your work, you can look out for free SEO tools that provide exemplary services like Buffer, RocketRanking, and MergeWords. When it comes to getting started in the world of SEO, startups have a plethora of resources on their hands. Staying one step ahead of your competitors and watching your rankings improve over time is made tremendously easier with the help of these tools.

#2. Social Media Marketing

Facebook and Twitter are where businesses are and where every startup should be. Here, an organic social presence will give you a lot of recognition. Paid tools can be used on social media, which help a startup gain visibility and a larger audience. Social media has a massive hold on a brand’s image, which can either make your Q1 result everything you wished for or send you home with packed up investors. Thus, it is vital to use these tools carefully for the desired effect. Hootsuite, Facebook Ads, MeetEdgar, and AgoraPulse are some of the best tools for inbound marketing on social media. Startups seem to have a distinct advantage in the social media marketing realm. The answer revolves partially around the fact that social users love what’s new and start-ups are new by default. Most startups also don’t have a heap of funds or options when it comes to marketing, and social media serves as a perfect gateway to build a brand.

#3. Influencer Marketing

For startups who barely have any online presence, the key to getting the customer’s attention is to pull the reach of influencers. These are bloggers, social media celebrities, actors, or anyone else who can uphold the brand’s reputation and persuade the audience to make a purchase decision.

There are innumerable ways to reach out to online influencers – from granting them primary access to your product, to updating your social media with regular updates while tagging them along, to giving them products for review.

Influencer marketing works well if you can find and choose a person whose personality resonates with your brand image. The person or influencer can be an actor/actress, a sports personality or even a politician as long as they go with the idea and product of your brand. To target such people, you must first identify their reputation and your consumer preferences. By working with these influencers on projects, your company will automatically catch more attention and may even get a greater reputation because of the influencer.

Persuading the customer to engage with your brand and its audience might be hard but will reap major benefits, especially in the case of start-ups. For instance, Shahrukh Khan has been promoting Tag Heuer, giving the luxury brand the perfect image of its user.

#4. On-site content marketing

Your website is not only your brand’s address but also its face. With engaging content, any startup can attract its potential audience to invest in its services. Content should be simple enough to understand but also advanced enough to tell the customer that you know what you are talking about. High-quality content can boost your SEO rankings and improve your social media presence. Information provided to clients must be detailed, informative and engaging enough to persuade your visitors to know more about your brand. Pictures, visual demonstrations, and demographics can help the consumer have a better visual understanding of the brand and what it offers.

#5. Off-site content marketing

Your website may attract several potential customers, but the real deal may be somewhere else. Here is when off-site marketing comes into play and helps you crack more leads. Blogs and media publishing platforms with useful and informative content will attract a number of new people hence, increasing overall traffic and potential leads. Referral traffic due to a new audience will also boost your brand’s reputation and engage a larger consumer base. Off-site content spreads your audience by winning customers who might not have found your website otherwise. For example, Medium connects your content with the people most likely to read it.

When you are just starting, you need to have everything ready in your bag to pull off inbound marketing strategies that can revolutionize the emerging startup scenario. Inbound marketing strategies are the pillars for startups who aspire to engage an audience from everywhere. Initially, you may get lesser conversions but at least people will know about you and the fact that you are here to stay.

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