When you’re a SMEs or start-up, it is essential that you want to reach to your potential users; you want the people to know about you. The real struggle for SMEs or Startups is how they become the part of any discussion. One of the classic ways to implement any marketing strategy used in such confusion is either to use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC).

There are various questions raised in the mind of any small business during web marketing is "Whether I should be using SEO or PPC to drive traffic to my website?

Often PPC and SEO are approached with separate plans. Though they are dissimilar in their approaches, it is important to learn that they are part of the same domain: search. One is known for its paid clicks and another one for natural clicks. They both are suited for different outcomes and can be complimentary for any business if utilised together.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO is a strategy to maximise the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. It is an organic process of generating the lead through the results on search engine. SEO gives the link to the related websites as per the keywords typed by the users (depending upon the high-quality content of the website). Content marketing in many sights depends upon the SEO keywords to generate customer-centric content. Though SEO and Content Marketing are two different approaches, but they work together. SEO creates the demand for keywords and content

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay per Click is the Concept available on many internet marketing platforms like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. where you market your advertisements on these platforms and pay for every click that your prospective clients (viewers) make on these ads. It is an approach of internet marketing in which the advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads gets clicked. By this, the business buys the lead to their website rather than generating leads organically. It offers an immediate ROI in comparison to inbound strategy.

Before you jump to the strategy, the marketers need to consider some several factors like the budget of the business, business goals, how quick you want to see the results.

Budget:

When deciding between SEO and PPC, you need to determine that by what size advertising budget your business can support. If the small business doesn't have enough budgets to support the PPC strategy, then it's better to opt for SEO as it generates the organic traffic to your website.

Average Cost per Click:

The term CPC refers to the price users are willing to pay for each click they receive on their ad. It is an internet advertising model which helps to drive traffic to your website in which the advertisers pay to the site when the users click the ad.

When you establish a digital marketing budget, you should also consider what other people in the industry are paying for ads for Search Engine results. Some CPC is not so cheap as they can cost up to as much as 20$-30$. Such prices can make it difficult for the small business to earn revenue at initial stages.

How fast do you need results?

Where PPC has the advantage of quick results, SEO has a benefit of generating traffic organically. PPC can be a good option for the business which has the newly established website and wants the initial boost to drive traffic. But as a result, it doesn't turn out a long-term effect on the customers where SEO compels the potential customer to reach to your website builds long term relations. Therefore, SEO is a much practical approach to implement.

Which marketing strategy is better: SEO or PPC?

The main advantage of SEO is; statistically, it tends to bring you better traffic and the leads who are interested in the content published on your website. In the case of PPC, lots of searchers have trained themselves even to ignore "paid results" completely when browsing on the search engine.

There's plenty of data which suggests that organic visitors to your website are brand loyal, trust your business, and trust your products & services. Ranking highly on Google with the help of SEO for a keyword phrase is a sign that you're credible and that you're a valuable player in your industry. These are the major advantages of SEO. Moreover, it showcases you as expertise in your industry.

Though SEO runs for long-term benefits for any business, it takes time, skills and resource to implement correctly.

Summing-up

In order to achieve the best of results, it is vital for the small business to choose the best model marketing to execute which could bring the digital presence and reach the potential customers. PPC is a jump-start way for any business to build an online presence, and drive traffic to the website. Though a holistic campaign of both SEO and PPC will work the best to boost your small business and bring out online success, SEO would be ideal for stabilising traffic, nurturing leads, and building a long-term relationship with the customers cost-effectively. Plus, SEO efforts will help your PPC results as well.

Social media is the new way of communication. It hasn’t been here for long (maybe just over a decade) but it already is the most widespread method of communication. Social media has become so important that it is one of the biggest contributors to website traffic. The advent of so many social media portals has got people of all races, ages, and religions glued so much so that most people spend at least an hour collectively on these social media portals.

Using this vast networking platform for marketing can amplify your brand awareness exponentially. After all, content marketing strategies on social media brings about a level-playing field for small companies to match their marketing strategies with those of large enterprises and MNCs. Thus, for SMBs with little to no visibility, social media marketing is a great tool to reach out to potential customers and create their brand awareness by posting engaging content.

Challenges SMB’s Face When it Comes to Marketing

SMB’s face many challenges when they try to reach out to potential clients. These challenges can at times be pretty daunting and somewhat confusing. Here is a list of the challenges they face:

• Compared to their competitors, they have lesser brand awareness and visibility among the target audience. This makes it tougher to push through the competition and make their voices heard.
• With a limited budget, the adaptable marketing strategies get limited, hence implying a limited reach.
• The limited budget calls for a creative marketing team that can make things happen inside this constraint. But as a small business, you can’t allot a big team just for marketing.
• In this fast-paced world, where trends rise and fall by the minute, staying above that wave to be heard is a big challenge.

How Social Media Helps?

Social media nowadays is not just a way of communication for people. Now people can get the latest news, buy things directly from social media, connect with companies and build communities with like-minded people. These things make social media more than just a pastime for individuals, and it paves the way for sharing and consuming valuable information with peers. You can reach out to anyone, with less effort and barely any problems.

These developments have paved the way for social media to become an important marketing tool for companies to use. It helps companies connect with the target audience conveniently. It makes it easier for companies to reach out to such people and interact with them, creating a strong social media presence. It can help strengthen brand perception and trust, by providing key information to a wide customer base. This ability to reach out to a large customer base with good content makes social media marketing a lucrative idea. It is easier to implement, doesn’t require a large team to handle the mandate. It is also a money-saving option, costing up to 60% lesser than traditional marketing tools.

Social Media marketing depends heavily on content, in the written, photo or video formats. On basis of this, you can connect with people who might be interested in your company’s products. For a successful social media campaign, you need good content and the help of social media influencers to help spread the word about your company. When people see your content being promoted by someone they follow, they are inclined towards your product as well. The network that you can create on social media to connect with your target audience is ultimately what gives widespread reach to your content and help in building brand awareness.

Another big advantage of social media marketing is that your content is instantly shareable with the click of a button. This makes interested customers a source of spreading brand awareness for you, improving your reach. It also provides a platform for customers to reach out to your company for any grievances they might face. By promptly addressing such concerns, you can improve your brand’s trust. Customers take this as a sign that you are listening to and are aware of their problems, helping with improving brand perception.

Thus as an SMB, using social media strategies can help brands grow quickly and be recognised by potential customers. The two-way interaction allows customers to reach out to the company, building upon brand trust and loyalty in customers. With the help of good content, strangers can be made interested in the products/services, making them visit the website and find out more about your brand. These interested/potential customers can then be engaged with the company, turning them into leads, thus improving the overall sales of the company. It also helps you provide richer customer experiences before and after sales, making people come back to you for repurchase.

You can also collaborate with other people and brands for mutually benefiting campaigns, helping you build relationships for the future.

Conclusion

With the rapid rise of social media, it has become the number one medium for people to connect and share ideas. This increase in people’s interactions online makes social media the perfect tool to reach out to a large number of people efficiently and effectively at the same time. The content can also be targeted, made specifically to interest a certain group of people, who can be potential customers of the brand. Using social media influencers, you can reach out to a large audience, increasing the base of people you reach. Also, the progress and results of social media marketing are instantaneous and trackable, giving you an insight into what strategy works and what doesn’t. This is an important part of media marketing as this is what makes the results tangible.

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Inbound marketing has become a buzzword and an upcoming trend to talk among marketers for building an effective marketing strategy. It is a form of marketing which empowers potential customers by generating the content that resonates with the readers. Inbound marketing uses strategies in a way so that a company is visible to its clients. So instead of them going out and hunting customers, the customers discover them. For organisations looking to up the ante in their sales, inbound marketing can be a great solution. Companies that follow the inbound marketing strategy have been shown to be 4x more efficient in driving revenue and hitting sales goals.

Inbound marketing focuses a lot on nurturing leads. It is a customer-centric approach which attracts people through the integrated use of content marketing, search engine optimisation and social media marketing.

Content Marketing: It is used massively in the industry to engage the larger audience. The digital media has widened the scope of content marketing, and even the range of users has also increased. The audience has become very interactive and wants fresh and accurate information. Content Marketing is not limited to blogging but various other creative areas as well. Videos and images have played a great role in generating traffic, as they are interesting and appealing to the viewers.

Search Engine Optimisation: SEO is a strategy to maximise the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. It is an organic process of generating leads through the results on the search engine. SEO gives the link to the related websites as per the keywords typed by the users (depending upon the high-quality content of the site). Though SEO and Content Marketing are two different approaches, they are meant to work together; after all, SEO creates the demand for keywords and content.

Social Media Marketing: It is an important pillar which has taken its fair share of hits, but it remains one of the most effective strategies for generating visibility. Throw your content into syndication and the followers will have more reason to stick around. Social media can generate a steady traffic to your site and build your brand credibility. Lead generation through social media platforms is fast, efficient and a relatively inexpensive way to drive traffic to the website

Inbound takes time, expertise and resources to be implemented correctly. Here are some ideas on how to showcase the value of inbound to your CMO.

Some Ideas to Showcase the Value of Inbound to Your CMO

ROI of Inbound Marketing

Outbound marketing methods such as print advertising and direct mail do make it difficult for any business to calculate the ROI. Inbound gives an easier measure of your marketing performance to single out the efforts that need to be improved in various other business functions which are not performing. The ROI of inbound marketing is a lot higher than that of outbound. It is cost-effective, and the effectiveness and efficiency of the efforts are increased, leading to higher profits.

Content Assets

When explaining inbound to your CMO, the inbound content becomes inbound assets. The major focus of content marketing is to engage the audience by using information and creating content in such a manner that would drive more traffic to the site and help to change the consumer behaviour that could lead to better sales. It continues to drive traffic from social channels and SEO long after it has been published, without any additional investment.

Improves Customer Relations

Inbound marketing strives to provide high-quality content to their potential buyers to gain more insights from them and to be of value to them. It focuses on the long-term relationship between the consumer and the business. The main idea is to improve customer-business relations, and as a result, it improves the brand’s credibility, sales, reach and helps in generating new leads. By simply offering customer-centric content and services to the readers, it will contribute to improving brand credibility. This strategy can develop and improve the brand loyalty of the customers.

Retention Rate And Quality Leads

The people who generate traffic on the website are the actual people who are interested in your content. The retention rate in inbound marketing is more, as compared to outbound marketing as only the concerned ones take the effort of filling up a subscription form.

Inbound v/s Pay-per-click

Pay per Click is the concept available on many internet marketing platforms like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. where you market your advertisements on these platforms and pay for every click that your prospective clients (viewers) make on these ads. It offers an immediate ROI in comparison to inbound strategy.

But it is equivalent to renting space on someone else’s website, with which you are already competing on the digital platform. As a result, it doesn't lead to a long-term effect on the customers, whereas inbound marketing compels the potential customer to reach your website and build long-term relations. Therefore, Inbound is a more practical approach to implement.

To summarise, instead of outbound marketing methods of purchasing ads, buying email list or hunting down the leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content. By publishing useful and accurate content and optimizing it according to your target persona, the potential customer reaches automatically to the website. So, therefore, the output of that content becomes educational and relevant instead of being interruptive.

Inbound Marketing can be an analysed source which can grow its trend in the future. Many companies still believe that traditional or outbound marketing maintains better leads for the sales. One can use both the marketing techniques creatively to improve the overall chance of landing leads with a higher potential.

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TED talks are the short stories from some of the most influential and an engaging speakers around the world. They’re full of insights on the endless range of topics from human nature to scientific breakthroughs to trends in designs. They’re inspirational and informative which can help you to become a better person in your personal and professional life.

TED hosts engaging and charismatic speakers who talk about their personal experiences and new ideas which are relevant to international audience. TED has hosted some of the most known personalities from around the world like Bono, J.J. Abrams, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Larry Page and Stephen Hawking.

If you’re a CMO or MD, or aspire to be one, it’s important to schedule time for activities that can help you to learn new things and increase your profile value. For the aspiring entrepreneurs, TED talks can help them in challenging assumptions and push the envelope so as to expand the thinking capabilities. Such motivation is perfect when you feel low on inspiration and are in need of some of encouragement.

Here are Some of the Best TED Talks

#1. Shawn Achor: The Happy Secret to Better Work

Shawn Achor is a funny guy who is loud, fast talking and a great storyteller to boot. The overall talk is about reorganising people’s idea of successful lives and happiness. In this video, he suggests people to use positive psychology by not only studying the positive outliers but by using those outliers to raise the entire positivity. He further suggests that by paying more attention to the good things around us we will be happy and therefore people will become more efficient and successful.

#2. Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspires Action

Simon Sinek is the author of the book ‘Start with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action’. He has a powerful model for inspirational leadership which starts with the famous ‘golden circle of motivation’. In the video he discusses the idea of leadership and how some leaders are better at inspiring than others. He points out the various success examples of the leaders in the world of business in this video.

#3. Derek Sivers: How to Start a Movement

Derek Sivers became an entrepreneur by accident in 1998 where he started selling CDs on his website ‘cdbaby.com’. In his TED Talk, he explains that if a leader doesn’t believe in his idea then his followers will also not be able to trust it .If you really want to start a movement and bring a change, then you need to have the courage to follow that believe and lead others to it. “It’s the first follower that transforms the lone nut into a leader,” he says. Using the recording of a half-naked dancing man at the music festival, he emphasises that his easy-to-follow steps to begin a movement can be used in any situation.

#4. Amy Lockwood: Selling Condoms in the Congo

Amy Lockwood is a former ‘reformed marketer’ who now works in international development. She talks about how Congo is facing the problem of HIV where marketing about condoms was not effective in that area. There are 930,000 people infected with it, and even though the donor agencies provide condoms at lower rates, only 3% of adults actually use it. Her objective of speech was about the marketing fail of the donor agencies. It’s a useful message for marketers everywhere.

“If what we’re really trying to do is stop the spread of HIV, we need to think about the customer, the people whose behaviour needs to change . . . and whose lives depend on it,” she advised.

#5. Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From

Steven argues with the theme of how entrepreneurs credit their ideas to individual ‘eureka’ moments. According to him, a person cannot be a lone scientist, sitting alone and can brainstorm an idea. Instead, he believes that there should be an environment where a number of people can interact, discuss and improve each other’s idea.

#6. Stefan Sagmeister: The Power of Downtime

According to him, an average person spends 25 years of his life on learning, next 40 years of his life in working and then begins the retired life. He suggests pushing out the retirement age by five years and using them as a sabbatical in between the working years. This sabbatical helps us to get a better understanding in life so that we don’t have to wait till the retirement to do what we love. In every seven years, he closes up his shop goes on a sabbatical to rejuvenate himself so that he could be more fresh and productive after the sabbatical.

#7. Renny Gleeson: 404, the Story of a Page Not Found

No one likes to fall across a 404 error on the web. It makes us feel like you’ve felt through the cracks. In the video, Gleeson talks about how to utilize the opportunity that this page gives. His speech has created a feeling of positivity from a very negative page. His expressive words focus on how we can turn every situation into an opportunity. He says that “little things, done right, matter (and) well designed moments build brands.”

#8. Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts

Cain is the author of ‘Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking.’ In her talk, she argues that how in the culture of socialising and extrovertism, the society undervalues an introvert. According to her, introverts bring extraordinary talents to the world which should be encouraged and celebrated. Her TED Talk is still one of the most viewed TED talks of all the time.

#9. Gary Vaynerchuk: Building Personal Brand within the Social Media Landscape

The method Vaynerchuk uses to convince is inspiring to watch. He says that to be truly successful; you’ll have to love what you’re doing. You’ll never be satisfied if you work in an industry that you don’t care about or do the work that you actually don’t enjoy.

#10. Amy Cuddy: Empowering Through Body Language

Cuddy shares a powerful message of boosting your confidence. She believes that the change in our bodies can change our behaviour which could affect confidence right before an important presentation, interview or meetings.

According to Cuddy’s research, the act of faking body postures actually changes our hormone level. Through her empowering words, she concentrates on ‘power pose’ that makes you appear physically bigger – boosts up the confidence and can affect the testosterones which might impact our chances for success.

#11. Linda Hill: How to Manage for Collective Creativity

This is the perfect TED talk if you’re trying to maximise the creative potential and productivity of your team. She comes up with a simple set of tools and strategies in her TED talk, which any entrepreneur can use to come up with great new ideas from their entire team and motivating the employees to move forward. Hill explains in her best way that how creative thinking and abstract problem-solving are one of the most important features of any company and can be incorporated into their culture.

#12. Navi Radjou: Creative Problem-Solving in the Face of Extreme Limits

Navi Radjou’s examples in his talk are directly applied to the third-world countries that have only limited resources. He encourages the entrepreneurs to work with limited capital, resource and time. It might seem difficult and challenging in the beginning, but would drive a great degree of innovation.

If you haven’t seen these TED Talks, add these to your list right now. The insights and inspiration you get from such talks will help most likely help you yo open to new ideas and experiences.

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With most companies shifting their marketing attention from traditional media to social media, the importance of good marketing tactics has constantly been increasing. Getting the right marketing tactics is very important, or else the strategy is ineffective.

There are a lot of methods that people have used from time to time-related to social media marketing, but not all of them are effective. Here is a list of 10 marketing tactics that have been tried-and-tested as effective marketing methods.

10 Effective Social Media Tactics for SMBs

#1. Post Frequently

Frequently posting on various social media mediums is important, as this helps maintain a connection between your brand and its customers. With an active social media account, people will stay updated about your brand, its products, and all information relevant to your brand. Also, regularly posting content improves page engagement and redirection of traffic to the company website. Social media users are constantly engaging with your content on a regular basis, facilitating brand recall.

#2. Have Good Content

Good engaging content is key for a good social media marketing strategy. If people do not find your content good or appealing, they will not share that content or remember it, which affects both brand awareness and brand recall. For a successful campaign where content leads people to the website, it is important to have engaging content that your target audience would relate to. You also have to factor in the timing and frequency of posts, or else people will block your content from their feeds.

#3. Run Collaborations and Giveaways

Running collaborations with big social media influencers and other brands help in widening your reach. This brings more post engagement and website traffic. The number of leads increases, which helps with sales. With new people seeing your content and interacting, brand awareness also increases. Also, with campaigns like giveaways, the brand engagement increases by a lot, making more people follow the posts and experience the content. This, in turn, will also make people engage with the company, and become potential leads.

#4. Keep it Organic

Don’t indulge in too many paid or in-the-face ads. People only like to see the content that they want to see, not what you want them to see. Don’t try selling them your products directly. Instead, involve them in discussions or interaction on topics relevant to your company. Discussions are the best way to ensure brand engagement on social media. Such discussions also help maintain brand recall and brand loyalty, as everyone loves a healthy discussion.

#5. Be Prompt

Always be prompt in your interactions with your audience. People like to feel involved and have the knowledge that their grievances are being heard. They feel a sense of belonging with the brand and that builds a sense of brand trust and loyalty with the customer. This also helps in making existing customers come back for repurchase as a part of this loyalty. Building a community of the interested and existing customers and keeping them in a loyalty program makes them happy with your brand and more likely to get more customers for your brand in the future. Giving this loyalty group added benefits from time to time works as an icing on the cake for customer satisfaction.

#6. Use Analytics

Using social media analytics, you can monitor and understand what communications or posts were successful in grabbing attention, and which ones didn’t succeed. Using this data, you can create better social media campaigns, which will have greater reach and engagement. It also helps you understand your ideal customer persona - what they like, what they dislike, what drives their interest and what subgroup of people they belong to. This helps answer questions like, ‘What age group is my audience majorly from?’ or ‘which region does my brand enjoy maximum popularity in?’ This information helps you create targeted content, which will help boost activity and engagement of the company via the posts on social media.

#7. Monitor Mentions

Monitor any mention of your brand, whether in a good sense or bad. Be appreciative towards people who like your products or content. It gives a sense of loyalty for the customers. Never ignore negative mentions. Always respond to them in an effort to solve people’s grievances. Seeing this responsiveness to grievances builds trust towards the brand, which helps in widening the customer base and improves brand recognition.

#8. Tell People about your Team

From time to time, share team pics and tell them more about your team. This brings in a sense of freshness and keeps things informal. People feel more engaged when they know who they interact with or talk to. This helps humanize the experience that people have engaging with your company.

#9. Use Social Media Influencers

Social media influencers are people with big fan followings on – you guessed it – various social media sites. They have huge pre-built networks, and when they share any content, the reach of these posts are widespread in nature. Collaborating with such influencers to promote your content means that a new, huge community is being reached with your content. This is a huge bonus for any company. Many such influencers readily promote brand content for publicity and collaborations. Contact with such influencers on social media can prove to be a huge asset for content promotion.

#10. Online Contests

Hosting online contests is a great way to ensure audience participation. Getting people to create and share photos or videos with brand-specific hashtags is one way to crowd source content for brand promotion. It is also a great way to get people engaged with your brand for a prize, which could be a product of your company. People readily take part in contests in hope of winning the prize. This also helps spread brand awareness and liking, which gets people talking about your brand.

Using these tactics in the right way ensures improvement in brand awareness, engagement, liking, and trust. It helps generate leads for sales and also help retain existing customers, making them promoters of your brand.

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With the increase in competition in the marketing world, you need to develop strategies that outshine those of your competitors. This puts pressure on the CMO to come up with such strategies and help promote the company. For this, you must first have a good knowledge of what digital marketing entails and what are the various successful strategies that work. For this, we have compiled a list of 12 digital marketing strategies that you must try if you are a customer-driven CMO.

12 Digital Marketing Strategies for a Customer-Driven CMO

#1. Focus on a Holistic Customer Experience

Making customers feel valued at every stage – right from being a potential customer to the buying experience and also the after-sales services and newsletters – is very important. In the competitive world, making them feel welcome at every moment helps you attract more customers and make people keep coming back to you. If you provide a good buying experience to customers, but a bad after-sales experience when they call you for some problem, customers will not want to come back to your company, and may also keep other people from buying your products, which is certainly not good for your company.

#2. Prioritise Social Media Marketing

Social media is the biggest platform for you to reach out to potential customers in one go. With people logging onto social media almost daily, you can focus and reach a majority of your target audience easily and more effectively. Thus, it is better for you to direct most of your paid advertising budget towards ads on social media. People have gotten used to ignoring ads on traditional media, which renders them ineffective.

#3. Invest in Analytics

Analytics and other tools help you understand the market, the progress and success of your campaigns, and other such important information. Analytics provide you with the metrics for digital marketing. They help you understand which campaigns will work and which ones won’t. Using analytics is essential in the digital age to stay ahead of the competition, as everyone uses those nowadays.

#4. Build Buyer Personas

Buyer personas help you understand your average customer, how they think, what they like, what they care about and other valuable information. This information can help you target them and mould your campaigns to suit what they like. It helps build effective campaigns which are more likely to generate leads from the interested customers.

#5. Use Email Campaigning

Email is not a dead medium of communication. It is still widely used for official purposes and is the best way to reach out to your customers with personalised content to make the customers feel valued, and in turn, helps build brand trust. Also, email has a high ROI of 43$ for every dollar spent. This makes it a cheap and effective campaigning method as email systems can also be automated, making communications easier.

#6. Conduct Market Surveys and Customer Feedback

Conducting surveys and feedbacks from time to time lets you know where your company stands among competitors and lets you know what potential buyers and customers think about your company. This helps indicate what you need to change in your company’s workings for better customer engagement and to rise above the competition.

#7. Build Customer Loyalty

Having a good after-sales experience, like customer care and loyalty programs, helps you retain existing customers. This is important as it helps you build brand loyalty and makes your existing customers the promoters of your company. Having brand trust is good for the brand image as it helps improve awareness as well.

#8. Practice Customer Targeting

Targeting your customers and crafting campaigns specifically for that target audience helps make a connection with them. This boosts lead generation as the customers can connect with your company, and have a greater inclination to visit your website and see what you have to offer.

#9. Engage with Customers

Engaging with customers on social media, replying to their messages, engaging with their social posts and starting discussions helps build a connection with your customer, helping brand recall. This helps when the customer needs to buy a product that you sell.

#10. Build Communities of Your Customers

Building an online community will help your customers connect. In these communities, they can get help for their problems from other community members, building a sense of belonging to the company. This community can help you actively promote your company, and help in customer retention. Such communities also help you understand what improvements can be made in your services and other departments.

#11. Use Influencer Marketing

Social media influencers are an essential way to reach out to a huge follower base. Their followers trust them, and when they say they like your product in front of them, it helps create brand awareness, and people are more likely to visit your website.

#12. Focus on Customer Convenience

People always prefer going for the convenient option. They will like your company if it is convenient for them to reach out to you, buy your product or register complaints. Having complex methods to go about buying, reaching out or browsing your website will make customers less keen on opting to go with your product. Being customer friendly is key to having a good customer base with happy customers.

Thus, if you want to be a customer-driven company, you will have to place the customer before the product. Listening to your customers, being friendly and ease-of-approach are some of the key methods one can adopt to achieve the goal of being customer-driven. You have to form a connection with your customers that they value, which helps in keeping happy customers.

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Inbound marketing refers to a marketing strategy that helps companies bring their potential audience to their business, rather than having the marketing team pay a hefty amount and fight for the customer’s attention. Companies create marketing content in order to appeal to their potential customers, which attracts qualified client leads to the business and keeps them engaged for a longer term.

According to Hubspot, ‘Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people towards your company and product, where they naturally want to be.’

Due to the perceived lack of funds and experience during the introduction stage, it is pivotal for start-ups to adopt cost effective marketing strategies to promote their services and products. This is where inbound marketing strategies come into play and provide startups with cost effective marketing tools. As a novice in the business sphere, an entrepreneur who is working actively to get his startup to new heights will always find himself in the need for constant guidance.

As an entrepreneur, one needs to understand the A to Z needs of their business along with the needs of their teams. From managing a budget, maintaining profit margins, deciding the software for accounting department, handling employees to developing a sales and marketing structure that will attract customers to a brand and simultaneously build a market share; these are way too many tasks with very little or no expertise to address them.

Find out How Inbound Marketing can Help You Grow Your Startup

#1. Cost Effective

Since inbound marketing works in the prism of organic marketing, it is cheaper than traditional methods of marketing. A bootstrapped startup can use inbound marketing strategy as a tool to attract and build up an audience of fans, loyalists, potential customers and followers organically. As long as firms make use of inbound marketing they can save a lot more than before and utilise their resources better. Customers get their services where they want them to be, and businesses get customers from new avenues, hence making it a win-win situation.

#2. Prepare Yourselves for the Future

For a startup, it is pivotal to capture an audience right in the beginning and continue that relationship for a long time. Inbound marketing helps startups to establish relationships with their target audience from the beginning. Hence, it becomes easier for startups to get them to convert into customers and continue growing along with them. A good consumer base helps a firm to understand the prevailing trends keeping in view their demands and recurring nature.

#3. Good relationship with Customers

According to a research by McKenzie, ‘70% of buying experiences are based on how the customers feel they are being treated. Inbound marketing helps companies to ensure that they are able to engage customers, get more qualifying leads, convert those leads and satisfy the customers’ demands. The inbound marketing strategy focuses on the happiness of their customers. Hence, companies can build long and lasting relationships with them using these strategies. Inbound marketing enables businesses to convert customers and also make sure that those customers come back to buy more of their services or products. Inbound marketing helps firms to capture all kinds of customers and ensure that they remain associated with the company – be it first-time leads or existing ones.

#4. Helps in Building Credibility

With inbound marketing, businesses can create and post effective content on their websites which establishes their authority on the web. Hence, inbound marketing helps firms build visibility and credibility in the market place. This provides the potential audience with an impression that the firm is dependable and will be able to help them fulfil their needs.

Though Inbound marketing does attract a lot of customers and converts considerable leads, many analysts and firms believe that complementing it with traditional methods will result in better sales conversions.

Even Hubspot, the dominant leader in inbound marketing, uses outbound and traditional marketing strategies towards the last stage of the sales funnel to convert more customers.

As an owner of a startup, an entrepreneur can run a good marketing campaign by creatively combining inbound as well as outbound marketing strategies that results in more potential leads and higher customer conversion rates. There is no perfect amount of inbound or outbound marketing strategies. It depends on factors like the industry size, the competitors’ strategy, the target audience and the objectives of the marketing team.

Having a balanced mix of both outbound and inbound is pivotal and a must for today’s business ecosystem that is driven by digital-first scenarios.

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Many businesses understand the need of having a digital presence. But understanding the challenges of reaching out to target customers through a Facebook page or a website has its own set of challenges. Consumers online are looking for content that could amuse them or add value to what they’re seeking. Therefore, integrated digital marketing creates a strong, unified presence and positioning for your brand.

Integrated digital marketing requires the business to synergize their marketing efforts across various channels in real-time to improve their customer experience and drive better ROIs. The biggest challenge of integrated marketing is not only to create client specific marketing strategies, but also to increase a brand’s visibility on web.

How to Achieve Successful Integrated Digital Marketing

#1. DIGITAL PRESENCE MANAGEMENT

It is essential for any business to build its online presence. By implementing Responsive Web Design (RWD), consumers can access your website from any device. At times, you might get stuck in a situation where you feel that RWD integration costs you more than the ROI it brings to your business. However, it should be noted that integrating RWDs is long-term strategy and it essentially becomes more cost-effective in the long run.

#2. CONTENT MARKETING

Content Marketing is used massively in the industry to engage the larger audience. The current digital landscape has widened the scope of it, and even the range of users has increased. The audience has become very interactive and wants fresh and accurate information with regular updates. Content Marketing is not limited only to blogging but now has various other creative outlets. Videos and images play a great role in generating traffic as they are more engaging pieces of content and interest various types of consumers.

#3. TARGETED DISCOVERY

The elements of digital marketing are changing rapidly. Mobile device usage and context-based content has fragmented and redefined the search. Major players like Google and Facebook are implementing ads which are targeting users on the desktop and mobile devices separately. In fact, Google is expanding its AdWords to include mobile words automatically and Facebook has introduced a social search engine with graph search.

#4. ONLINE ENGAGEMENT

Social media has become one of the most influential platforms of audience engagement at present, and it is important to use each of the platforms in their unique capacities. You can use different functions of social media to expand the way for interaction with consumers. You may ask questions, take feedback or comment on what others are doing and then learn from them.

#5. SOCIAL LOCAL MOBILE

Smartphones have become an inevitable part of our lives, and it has embedded itself deeply into our culture. It is important to know where buyers are when they're trying to reach out to you and what sources they’re using. Are they using a cell phone or a computer? When do they most likely need your brand or product services? You can use SoLoMo to track high relevance opportunities by alluring the buyers with suitable deals. Social, local, mobile (SoLoMo) allows advertisers to reach potential customers by providing them with notifications about their brand or product at the right time and right place. Its principles are being incorporated into search engine queries for delivering the location based results to users.

#6. PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Whenever we implement any marketing strategy, it is important to set up the metrics by which we can measure their effectiveness. It might be difficult to gauge the value of their presence, but it’s important to monitor the changes in consumer behaviour and their engagement. This monitoring will help you in gauging what's working and what's not. You can use digital marketing analytics data to analyze the ongoing marketing strategy and also list the predictive analysis through this performance report.

In this age of digitalization, if you don't have an integrated digital marketing plan, you can't gain an edge in this competitive market. Businesses are becoming reliant on various marketing technologies such as integrated digital marketing to keep them engaged with their consumers. Brands who don't interact with their consumers through digital media would lag behind and slowly die out. The ones who makes the best use of this marketing strategy will win the loyalty of the mobile users.

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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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