Category: Marketing

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Marketing

How Blogging Can Help a Business Get More Customers

बिजनेस आइडिया

Content is King: Master the Art of Blogging to get more Customers

Getting customers to come to your blog and fall in love with your product requires time and effort but it is not an impossible task. Blogging for business is the new-age sensation that can help you get customers without much cost. This step-by-step guide will help you connect with consumers through blogging.

1. Don’t make the Blog a Sales Pitch

  • The objective of your blog is to generate business leads and project a profile that connects with the consumer
  • Advantages of blogging are that you can reach out to millions of people which is not possible using the conventional means of marketing
  • Do not use your blog to make sales, if you use the blog only for sales messages you will struggle to find readers
  • If you want people to come to your blog, make them understand what is in it for them. Become a mentor, give advice to your target consumers, build trust and help them achieve their goals

2. Develop Content that can become Viral
 

  • You need to create content that can be shared, is interesting and engaging so that traffic can be increased.
  • When blogging for business and creating viral content, make sure you start your blog with a catchy headline. 8/10 people click on the link that has an attractive headline
  • Get the length of your blog right- The blog should not be very small or too long- a 700-1000 word blog post can lead to a better conversion rate with more opportunities for SEO
  • Need an Out-of-the-box idea- Your idea needs to be new & innovative based on what the audience wants. This will help in making your content evergreen and likable
  • Short emotional videos or beautiful images can become hugely viral if it makes the viewer curious

3. Focus on the Opening and the Conclusion of the blog

  • After clicking on the headline when a viewer comes to your blog, the opening should hook him enough to go through the entire post
  • The opening paragraph should spell it out to the customer that the tips or steps in the remaining blog are going to change his life and will be beneficial for him
  • Close the blog on an inspirational note. Make sure your reader not only reads your advice but also encourage him/her to follow it so that the reader revisits the blog

4. Blog as often as possible
 

The advantages of blogging and that to frequent blogging are that more traffic will get generated. But make sure the quality and originality of the blog is not compromised. 

5. Include Call-to-Actions

Make it a point to include some kind of Call-to-Action in your post otherwise it is going to be a waste if you are looking to generate customers through this activity

6. SEO Optimization

  • Google is the undisputed king of generating organic traffic. One big advantage of blogging is that if you conform to the guidelines of Google you will get guaranteed traffic
  • Do your keyword research and create content that is SEO-friendly

7. Use Google Analytics

Sometimes you wonder why a particular post gets less traffic or why a specific offer’s conversions are low. When you are blogging for business, use Google analytics especially the behavior flow section to see how people react from one page to another.

8 Create an E-mail Follow up

  • E-mail allows you to build a connect with the reader and forces him to come back to your blog or keep in touch
  • When you send an e-mail once a week to the reader, you’re compelling them to visit you again and engage with you
  • Once readers understand the benefit of signing up, this will create an opportunity for you to sell

Blogging for business is not easy. You need to develop good content skills and understand the minds of the reader and potential clients. Once you know what the customer is struggling with, your blog post will hit a bull’s eye!

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Marketing

Importance of Lead Management Software in Business

?

Power your Performance with a good Lead Management software
 

As the name suggests, Lead Management is a way of process set in the company to generate leads. It is a software-based system intended to build access to a new customer base.  

Good lead management software has the potential to impact revenue of a business directly by bringing sales and marketing together.

In today’s time and age, technology has given a whole new dimension to businesses. SMEs and MSMEs are always on a lookout to be more productive and grow their business efficiently.

Leads are potential customers who are interested in your business, services or products. Often it happens that despite showing interest, your potential customer doesn’t invest in buying your brand. Lead management software not only helps in tracking the leads but improves strategies of sales to get more and more customers into the system

Let us see the various benefits of a lead management software in business- 

1. Boosts Efficiency-
 

Every business wants to run its operations effectively and smoothly. Automation in marketing streamlines the sales experience. It automatically books an appointment, helps in online payments, sets reminders, and increases the engagement with the customers.

In this way, your interaction with the customer increases making them feel important and wanted

2. Improved customer relationship management-
 

Maintaining a lifelong relationship with the customer is very crucial for any business and customer service is undoubtedly one of the most important parameters for growth. 

The software helps in creating an online history of its customers, information of orders and communications or dealings with other companies.

The storage of bulk data at one place with the lead management software also becomes convenient.

3. Saves time-

Time management for any business is very significant. Especially for small businesses time is money. That is why it becomes important for business owners to monitor the daily work flow efficiently.

The software can help in the reduction of routine manual tasks since automation allows online tasks to take center stage. 

Investing in good lead management software helps business owners to unlock their time and allows them to focus on other important aspects of business to generate revenue.

4. Increases Scalability-

Another important benefit is that the software helps business scalability. 

Based on customer’s previous action and interests it helps in implementing the better sale strategies for the business.

It also supports in managing and enhancing the inflow and outflow of the leads.

5. Better SalesForce?-

It enhances the overall productivity and efficiency of an employee. For any given task which needs to be accomplished an employee just needs to make the following entries in the system- 

  • Basic information
  • Browsing history
  • Scheduled task
  • Contact history

It helps business owners to evaluate the workforce required to achieve a certain target.

This software also acts like a one-stop solution for cloud-based information which can be accessed from any part of the world.

6. Customization-

The lead management software offers the feature of customization as it is crucial to reach out to the right leads with the right product or service. 

This automated feature ensures that based on the need of a client a customized message is sent according to the profile of the customer.

It also engages with the customers by sending reminders, SMS or emails.

7. Increases Scope of Consumption-

The biggest advantage of the lead management software is that it increases the consumption scope of customers.

The automated software can help in increasing the purchase ticket size by suggesting a combo offer (if any) with every sale of goods. It can also recommend any perks attached to the minimum purchase order, any ongoing scheme etc.

All this, will eventually lead to the overall revenue generation in the business.

Lead management software is the backbone of the sales operation in any business. It assists in accountability, tracks potential leads and gives a personalized experience to your customer. The right kind of software used in the right direction can increase the overall ROI of the business.

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Marketing

7 Strategies For Getting More Business From Social Media

How Social Media can turn the Fortune for your Business
 

Social media platforms have enabled business owners to connect with their target audience and engage with quality leads making it very important to focus on social media for business. Social media helps you find people who are interested in your product and can become your customers for life if you engage with them in the manner they like. Here are 7 strategies that can make you a hit on social media. 

1. Modify the content according to your social media platform

  • The biggest mistake a business with social media does is to post the same content on all platforms. People want to see different content. For instance a story format will be best suited for Instagram, but for Facebook that might not work. Hence, customize your content according to the platform to drive your customers.
  • Try to add more emotional content that strikes a chord with the viewer as it is proven to have more effect on people. 

2. Tell stories rather selling your product

  • As you know that the social media platform is a powerful tool to make your product noticeable. Make sure that you have a story around the product you are selling as people on social media connect with stories.
  • People get curious about your product and brand when they see storytelling woven around it. Building a story that consumers can relate to and has a central theme around it helps your business for social media grow.

3. Experiment with the advertisement

  • Try experimenting with your promotional advertisements. Customers pay more attention when they see something different. Initially, you can test an experimental advertisement to see the reaction of your followers and improve it through their feedback.

4. Do tag your brand and influencers

  • To score good exposure, make sure you tag your brand and related influencers to get more followers. Post your content with hashtags # as they receive more attention and involve more people associated with it.
  • Influencer marketing has become popular among many social media platforms. Tactical tagging is important if you want to tap other audiences. Partnership with social media influencers is beneficial for both as the influencer gets to be associated with brands and gets paid for the same and the brand can expand their reach by tapping into the follower base of the influencer.

5. Listen to your customers and competitors

  • Pay attention to each feedback as their valuable feedback can help your product and business grow. Customers feel valued when they are asked to share their opinions and comments that can have a positive effect on the growth of your business and in turn also lead to a higher customer retention rate.
  • Keep an eye on your competitor’s activities; it will help you analyze the market and come up with better social media platform strategies.
  • You can also opt for digital tools to monitor the customer’s feedback and reviews. It will also help you to understand more about your audience profile and their viewing habits. Start paying attention to what is being said by the customer on your social media platform. This is the only place where the customers are the most honest. 

6. Organize Contests and Promotional Events

  • One of the most important tactics for networking on social media is to involve your target audiences in activities and contests. Create promotional events and prepare creative content to grab their attention.
  • Make sure to be creative while curating the contest. Everyone loves to participate in contests especially when they can win a prize at the end. You can start the contest with Limited offer tags or some discount coupons to get more audience on your site. Use interesting hashtags so that the contest reaches many more people.
  • Plan an interesting give away for the winner. There is no harm in spending some amount on a valuable giveaway which the participating members can talk about to their friends on social media. This will help in building a positive and brand image in the eyes of the customer.

7. Give out Freebies

  • If you want your customers to be loyal with you start giving out the freebies. Devote a good deal of freebies regularly. Check the gaps that exist between the customer’s expectation and experience. Giving out freebies and discount coupons can boost the energy of your customer which will lead to generating more revenue.

Implementation of these strategies on social media can generate better results for leaving your competitors in dust. The best way to grow your business is to experiment with new tactics to engage with the consumer and optimize your social media strategy.

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Marketing

8 Ways Your Small Business Can Get More Customer Calls

8 Ways Your Small Business Can Get More Customer Calls
8 Ways Your Small Business Can Get More Customer Calls

Your Ultimate Guide to Cold Calling

Is your business heavily dependent on the cold calling strategy? Allowing customers to quickly and easily contact your business through a phone call can help build trust and in turn improve the sales of your business.

Here are 8 ways your small business can get more customer calls:

1. Have web presence

Having a web presence is extremely essential nowadays. If your business is at an initial stage, then ‘Google My Business’ is a great place to get started with if you don’t have your own website yet.

This platform allows small business owners to display their business across all of Google’s products and platforms.

Tips:

  • Include your contact details at the top of every page so that it becomes easy for visitors to reach out to you.
  • Make sure you include a click-to-call link in the website, so that it becomes convenient for the visitors to call you without having to search for your number.

2. Use landing pages with a single call to action

Using one course of action through a promotional page increases the odds of your potential customers taking that particular route.

Tip:

  • Visitors are more likely to call when it is made clear that they should pick up the phone to receive a discount.

3. Speak at an event or host an industry gathering

Communities are a great way to capture a large segment of the market, hence if you have plenty of expertise in your field—why not get involved with the community?

By speaking at an event, sharing your experience and getting involved in your industry at a local level, you’ll have the opportunity to build your connections and give an impetus to your reputation as a thought leader.

4. Get your business listed in local directories

Marketing through listings in local directories can have a great impact to get more customer calls.

The idea is to make it more convenient for the consumers to find your brand, and one of the most assured and affordable ways to do so is to get your brand listed in local directories.

Tip:

  • Try to be as elaborate as possible by adding your company information in detail, the product/service that your brand caters to and most importantly your contact information.

5. Feature your number on all your marketing material

You never know which medium a potential buyer might choose to find your brand

You might be marketing your products or services through various channels such as outdoor media, catalogs, brochures, social media posts, search ads or any other form of marketing tools. All these marketing materials must include your phone number.

Assign a unique number to each of your marketing channels, as it will help you analyse which channel is driving maximum results. You can then shift the maximum focus there to boost the results further.

6. Paid advertising

We all know about the benefits that paid advertise can bring to the table.

This route is a sure shot way to get that phone ringing and to get more customer calls, if done right.

  • You can hire an agency that fits your budget to help you out with this.
  • Take small steps by allocating a small budget towards paid advertising and use core optimization techniques. Explore different paid channels such as Google Search Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.

7. Spend more on click-to-call (CTC) campaigns

Listing your phone number on your website is a great way to encourage people to call you.

You should focus to spend more on click-to-call campaigns.

  • You should add a click-to-call feature in your website, so that, if you’re dealing with people who are interested in talking to a real person, this feature could result in more calls.
  • According to statistics 52% of search queries come from smartphones, hence, a click-to-call feature encourages consumers to call your business & get answers as soon as they have a question.

8. Have Social Media presence

As the first step, you have to create a profile for your small business on each relevant social media platform.

  • Leverage these platforms by creating & sharing customised content to each of your social media handle.
  • An effective social media presence will encourage your followers to go through your lead funnel and eventually reach out to you by calling your business.
  • Make sure to include a click-to-call link on your social handles as well, so that it becomes convenient for the visitors to call you without having to search for your number.

With the advancement of technology, there are multiple ways through which customers can reach out to businesses, but, there is always a sense of satisfaction for the customer when they speak to an executive in person and this feeling surely can’t be replaced easily.

So for those businesses that depend & focus more on calling as a point of contact, you now have 8 more tools in your arsenal to get more customer calls and begin tangible conversions.

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Marketing

5 Proven Ways to Improve Your Video Marketing Strategy

How to Build a Unique Video Marketing Strategy!

The year 2020 marks the rebirth of video marketing. More than 50% of customers want to see videos from companies & brands, more than any other type of content. A video marketing strategy is within the reach of virtually every business despite its budget & size.

Videos are capable of increasing conversion rates by over 80% on the landing pages.

Here are 5 steps to build a perfect video marketing strategy for your business to enhance your brand:

1. Identify your Goal

The first step in order to creating a perfect video marketing strategy is to know & assess your video’s goal.

Every decision taken during the video creation process will lead back to your video’s end goal and what action you’d like your audience to take after watching it.

What’s the goal?

  • Is it to increase brand awareness?
  • Is it to sell more event tickets?
  • Launch a new product?
  • Ultimately, what action do you want your viewers to take after watching the video?

How will you determine the success of your video?
 

Decide several key performance indicators that match with your video goal, to determine the success of your video.

2. Focus on Your Target Audience

Now that you know what the goal of your videos is, it’s time to figure out who is your audience 

This is a very crucial step; if you create your videos without a specific audience in mind, it is going to fall flat. Your target audience will not get to watch it and those who watch it accidently won’t result in a conversion.

If you want to very specific on who consumes your content, then you would need to analyse the buyer persona. They are mostly used by B2B companies and are subsets of the ideal customer profile.

To finalize your target audience strategy, just make sure you know where your target audience hangs out
’ this will help you with right distribution of your video.

3. Provide Incredible Valuable Information

Quality content was and will continue to dominate if it reaches the right audience. Once you understand who your target audience is, you should start working on creating incredible valuable content for them.

What does your audience want to see? What is the burning problem of your audience?

  • Make the effort to study & understand what your audience wants. This can add a huge amount of value to your content, as your content will be relevant & informative for the audience.
  • Listen to your audience through your social media conversations, questions, replies, and through frequently asked questions from your support inbox.

How to create an impactful video?

  • Start with a Strong Hook Statement
  • Include data to support rational mind
  • Include stories & examples to engage the visualization of the mind
  • Focused Central Message 

4. 10x Your Content Marketing Consistency

Since more and more businesses are realizing the value of a well-developed content marketing strategy, competition in the space is increasing.

  • One of the most important ways businesses can distinguish themselves from their competitors is by increasing their content 10x i.e. by providing valuable content consistently to their audience.
  • Providing high-quality consistent content helps businesses enhance their brand and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.

Consistency in your content has a direct influence on your brand’s credibility. The more consistent you are, the more credible your brand becomes.

  • Consistency builds brand awareness
  • Engages the audience
  • Helps in generating leads
  • Improves website traffic and SEO

5. Measure Your Performance

Test. Analyze. Modify. Retest.

If you want your video marketing strategy to work, then you must test, analyze, modify, and test again.

You need to produce, release, then review your video’s engagement data in the same way as you do to track key performance indicators (KPIs) for written content.

This data will help you justify the investment that you’re making in videos and gauge the performance of the videos as well. 

Hence, the bottom line is ’ overall strategy and data should drive your video marketing strategy.

Video marketing strategy is very useful particularly for startups and small businesses as they want to get recognised fast and build a recall in the minds of the consumer.

Follow these 5 steps to enhance your brand through the right video marketing strategy and see the wonders visual treatment can do for your business.

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Marketing

Advantages of Having a Mobile App for Business

Look at what you’re missing if you don’t have a mobile app for your business!

What is the one thing today we can’t live without?

It’s our smartphones. According to recent research, people spend an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones with millennials spending 5.7 hours per day. People check their phones 58 times a day on average with more than half of those occurring during working hours.

Businesses from all over the world that offer a varied range of products have moved on to mobile applications, and if the increase in smartphone usage should make you do so too! If you want to prepare for the future, you’ll need a mobile app for business.

Here are 5 benefits of mobile app for your business:

1. Provide More Value to Your Customer

Business is all about adding value in the lives of your customers, which they can’t get anywhere else by solving their burning problems.

One of the ways to do this is by creating a loyalty program for your customers within your app. How does this work?

  • The more customers interact with your business and your product, the more loyalty points they earn, which can be used for great deals or cash backs on the products they already know they want.

For Example: 

Starbucks uses their mobile app for business to their advantage by offering rewards exclusively to their app subscribers, which then motivates their customers to buy more coffee from them.

Similarly, you can create such loyalty programs that have app exclusive offers for your customers in your mobile app for business.

2. Personalised Content

  • Studies show that users love personalised content for a fascinating experience.
  • Offering personalised content is like offering a tailored or customised communication in the language that your users speak and understand and the users love it.
  • Mobile apps make it easy to cater to personalized experiences, which can be based on your customer’s interest, behaviour, location, culture, etc.
  • The application will observe their habits, behaviour and engagement, filter updates for them depending upon their actual location in real-time

3. Push Notifications and Instant Updates

The ability to send instant and non-intrusive notifications to your app users is one of the primary reasons why companies should build a mobile app for business.

  • When your user opens an app on their device and receives a notification, it is called as In-App notification.
  • On the other hand, push notifications are received on the device regardless a user opens an application or not. 

Moreover, you can send regular updates of your application with all the latest features, images and your product listings via play store, iTunes and windows store. 

It will also allow you to promote your product and services regularly, leading to an increase in sales for your business.

4. Branding and Design

’Your mobile application becomes your business’ brand ambassador’

A mobile app for business is an effective tool for building your brand awareness and recognition.

  • Your mobile app for business works like a blank billboard sign. A business owner can do whatever he/she wants; make it stylish, functional or informative. But what you would really want to build is an app that your customers would love, while at the same time it’s well-designed & easy to navigate serving your purpose well.
  • How soon the customer will be inclined to buy your product is directly dependent upon how often you can get your customers engage with your app.

5. Interactive Engagement

This is one of the most important benefits of a mobile app for business. 

Communicating to the customer is essential for marketing, reverse communication is equally important for businesses to maintain customer loyalty.

  • Studies have shown, customers feel wanted when their complaints and their concerns are heard out and resolved within a limited time frame. This helps businesses build a loyal customer base and brand loyalty.
  • Mobile app for business helps to maintain the critical relationship between customer and the business through online help desks and support systems.

The increased accessibility of your product and services to the customers combined with reduced cost is a cherry on the cake to build customer engagement.

Other Benefits of Mobile Apps:

Apart from the above-mentioned benefits of mobile app for business, there are a few critical differentiators of adopting a mobile app strategy.

  • Access to analytics and data on how people interact with your app
  • Location data: Where most of the people are purchasing your product
  • Stand out from your competitors
  • Reach out to a younger demographic

90% of the companies plan to increase investment in mobile app for business in 2020, and if you don’t, there’s a good chance your competitors will get ahead of you.

Entrepreneurs should know that if they want to focus on customer engagement and build a loyal user base, mobile is the way forward. The power in their hands can make all the difference!

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Marketing

Effective Budget-Friendly Marketing Ideas

महिला उद्यमिता
महिला उद्यमिता

Cost effective marketing that can make you viral!

Small businesses usually work on a small budget and apart from budget, there are other concerns of resources and time. Hence, SMEs need cost-effective marketing ideas
that can help get the word out to their customers in the best possible budget. Depending on your target audience, digital media is a saviour when it comes to low-cost effective marketing ideas
. Here are 5 such strategies that can help small businesses build their brand

1. Use Social Media Extensively

  • Use Facebook and Instagram effectively, they are free of cost and organic marketing can help create awareness about your brand. You can also explore paid marketing with them to boost your reach to the target group. Nurture your consumers through Facebook groups and Instagram Stories
  • Create great content that can help build communities around your brand. Be creative, use innovative ways to connect and build a loyal customer base For e.g. From 1990-2009, Harley Davidson purely built their community by producing great content around the brand which made the bike an aspirational product and changed the fortunes for the company
  • Use more of videos, infographics & pictures to hook the customer when talking about your brand or any offer
  • Carry online contests- Spend some money on a good price because the number of participants and the potential leads you get is worth every penny spent

2. Turn your customers into your Brand Ambassadors

  • Make the customer feel special so that he becomes the ambassador of your brand and this can be done by providing certain memories to them that they would like to hold on to and carry with them
  • Give them T-shirts, laptop stickers, notebooks, basically things they use in daily life
  • Use can use social media to take an opinion poll on new deigns they would like to see and perhaps reward the winning design. This will help them engage with you as an effective marketing idea 

3. Focus on SEO Strategies

  • Investment into SEO is not much but is a cost-effective marketing idea to get target customers
  • In search engine optimization, you need to choose the targeted words that can increase your search possibilities and divert traffic to your website
  • For example, if you have a business named Gagan Dry Cleaners in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi, you will develop content across your platforms that focus on the keyword Lajpat Nagar + dry cleaners. It will help draw potential customers looking for dry cleaners in that area.

4. Build an easy to navigate Website

  • Another cost-effective marketing idea is to build a website. Having a website with an easy to navigate approach is a must for a small business as part of its marketing mix
  • Your website should contain all the important information about your products & services, how to reach you, contact details and a tracker of your location
  • Use your website smartly to put amazing content that makes it a must-visit for the customer

5. Sponsor Local Events

  • There are many events that happen locally and sponsoring such events is an effective marketing idea to get your business in front of local patrons
  • Sponsoring an event opens doors for networking with other businesses, which can lead to fruitful partnerships going ahead
  • Since local events are always looking for sponsors, it would be easy to negotiate on the pricing.

Always keep an eye out for cost-effective marketing ideas, because the only way to make an impact today is to think differently. Spend time, not money to devise a strategy that works best for your company.

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Marketing

Zero Dollar Marketing Strategies to Attain More Customers

Learn the Art of Zero Dollar Marketing to Get More Customers

In today’s digital India, social media has democratized marketing for everyone and zero dollar marketing techniques can be a boon for SMEs. It’s about your creativity, your understanding of the customer & innovative strategies that will get you more customers. Here are 7 strategies that will get the customers rolling!

1. Make a World-class Strategy at Minimum Cost

  • The basic premise is that the customer should be able to find you. You should not spend your energy in finding people and zero dollar marketing tools help you to achieve that
  • Design a website and that has a neat and clean home page, so that the customer can understand the messaging easily
  • The website should support a Call to action; this will help in engaging the customer.
  • Focus on the solution- Don’t waste your website space on product introduction and description. Maximize your messaging on the solution
  • Try and have all the navigation information on one page making it convenient for the customer to browse
  • Stick to need-based up-gradation of the website

You would need either a full-time resource or a vendor to fulfill these requirements. Look at minimizing the cost but increasing the scope of work here. And how can you minimize the cost- by using zero dollar marketing ideas!

  • Ask the technology vendor to come and explain how the technology works and how will it benefit you.
  • Call 4-5 vendors and understand what they teach you and then finally choose the best vendor for your company
  • This will help in minimizing your cost to set up your website or what we call as zero dollar marketing

2. Track the Pattern of your Customer’s  Buying Behaviour
 

Consumer behavior is key to an entrepreneur’s business and zero dollar marketing tools can help track this beahviour in a structured manner

  • To begin with you need to analyze the old buying behavior of the consumer
  • Understand the touch points, how is the customer reaching you?
  • What is your customer’s buying process and where is his pain point. Try and solve that buying process gap.
  • For e.g. If a customer would order multiple items from a restaurant, it would cost him Rs. 800, but if that restaurant owner gave him an option of a fixed thali with most of his likable items with a cost of Rs.600, immediately the customer would prefer to order the thali. This is how you can pull the consumer using zero dollar marketing
  • Take business decisions based on analytics & data and not based on perception. You can use the Google analytics tool for this
  • Check which pages on the website show high traffic and which pages show low traffic
  • Analyze for how much time you retain the customer on your webpage
  • What are the videos from your website that he is sharing on other social media platforms?
  • What is the bounce rate which means at what point does the customer move to another video or website

3. Anticipatory Content to gain Customer Attention

  • Anticipatory Content is that content which is authentic, relevant, and to the point. Don’t write big articles but use infographics, tabular representation instead. This just requires a little time and effort but is a powerful tool for zero dollar marketing
  • Make the content free and make sure it is not about your product features or promotions
  • For e.g. For a pathology lab, give the consumer content related to what tests are beneficial for him. For a restaurant owner, give content related to recipes & international food items. Interesting content makes for good zero dollar marketing.
  • Understand that content is king and the customer will come to you with these zero dollar marketing technique

4. Flip your Marketing Budget from Outbound to Inbound

  • Outbound methods include- Trade shows, Seminars, TV Ads, Print, Cold Calling, Tele marketing, E-mail, Hoardings & Door-to-Door marketing
  • Inbound Marketing includes- SEO, Blogging, CRM, Social media, Call to Action, Analytics
  • Change your model, spend 90% of your funds on inbound methods and 10% on outbound. The ROI on outbound marketing is less
  • Attract, engage and delight the right customer by using zero dollar marketing

5. Build your Database

  • Data is the heart of your business, keep your customer’s personal data and their preferences secure to successfully run your business
  • Build a database of your prospective and relevant customers gathered from calls, events, old sales and enquiry forms
  • Put all data in the CRM software so that it is registered for life
  • Empower your employees to build a relationship with the customer using this data

6. Give Old Data a New Life

  • Follow-up with ageing lead and build a relationship with the customer
  • Don’t waste time on incompatible, incomplete or unqualified data
  • The sales agent should call the old customer to build a relationship and not to sell the product in the first go. Ask more questions on why the customer has not returned to make more purchases
  • Building on employee-customer relation can go a long way when it comes to zero dollar marketing strategies 

7. Story Telling for Recall

  • Have an emotional, engaging & educational story that talks about your brand rather than a direct advertisement
  • Add a story in everything; from your sales pitch to your brand campaign to your website. This will help the customer connect with your brand
  • Become a problem solver!

If an entrepreneur follows these Zero dollar marketing strategies to acquire more customers, not only will his business flourish but his customer too will be happy and satisfied.

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Marketing

8 Ways CRM For Small Business Can Help Reduce Costs

CRM: An Essential Tool to Reduce Costs

  • What do businesses want today?
  • Increased Efficiency
  • Seamless management
  • Growth & Profitability

This is where CRM for business software comes in

The CRM system can help you build an organisation that can focus on increasing sales, improving employee productivity and making your long-term customers more loyal to you. Here are 8 ways that can help you reduce costs for your business

1. Cost Reduction
 

Very often, CRM systems are customized solutions created based on the specific requirements of a particular business. But there are also ready-made CRM for business software in the market that contain built-in features that are also beneficial for a business.

  • Creating a customised individual CRM system allows you to work with your personal pain points, thereby reducing those costs which are either not very essential or are present due to inefficiencies in the operations process.
  • For example: Let’s say the load has significantly increased on your customer support staff and they don’t have the bandwidth to manage the influx of new customer queries. In such a case, the implementation of the CRM for business system will help in managing the load and eliminating the need to hire additional staff, thereby reducing the costs.

2. Keeping Production Costs in Control

One of the benefits of CRM system is that it has powerful built-in analytics and accounting tools. These features enable you to manage the goods that are in the manufacturing phase or already in stock.

  • You can take into account each unit of goods with the help of CRM.
  • You can also run an analysis on which goods are sold better than the others.

This allows your business to optimize your production and reinvest the profits to produce those goods that see increased customer demand 

3. Reducing Cost of Customer Acquisition

’Retaining an existing customer is cheaper than attracting a new one’

This is a long-known law of marketing & economics. We know the business needs to grow and one parameter for growth is acquiring new customers & clients.

CRM for business system can indirectly help you generate new leads without digging a huge hole in your pocket.

Recommendations, word of mouth can lead to exponential growth in the business, and a CRM software can help in turning around these referrals into satisfied customer queries. This might lead to a conversion for your business. 

4. Streamlining & Reorganising Sales
 

Business is based on long-term relationships with your customers. This means that the sales team that represents your company needs to meet your customer personally from time to time and provide answers to all their queries till the customer is fully satisfied.

With the CRM system:

  • It is possible to plan these meetings with competence and localize these meetings at a minimum distance from each other.
  • For business, this means saving tons of time and lower transportation costs.

5. Reduction in Customer Support Service Maintenance Cost

Generally, a CRM system has a self-service portal for a customer that allows them to resolve their issues on their own, thus, reducing the load of your support desk.

Let’s take an example of the financial industry

  • The client wants to take a small loan from your company. Instead of calling you or visiting your company’s office, he fills out an online application on your site, which is automatically redirected to your CRM system and a specific manager is assigned to this task

Thus, the business immediately gets the opportunity to initiate working with the leads bypassing transit points in-between, like calling the support service.

6. Reduces cost of Mistakes

How many times have you been in a situation where your manager mixed up a customer’s contact details, forgot to call back, mixed up goods in package or simply sent them to the wrong customers?

All these situations affects your brand images and hurts the trust built but the customer  

With a CRM for small business system, the chance of a human error or forgetfulness tends to be zero. 

Every manager remains up-to-date on what he needs to do right now according to the company’s strategy.

7. Improves Tracking Methodology

Tracking & Evaluation can help in a big way to track the growth of your company. With CRM for business, every team can track and make changes in their functions

Sales Team can track the lead conversions, Service team can track customer satisfaction index, and marketing team can track what strategies generated how much business. Hence it gives a clear direction to managers on future steps

8. Reduction in Paper Waste

Businesses should also focus is on being green these days; hence unnecessary usage of paper can be eliminated with the help of CRM since everything is just a click away

CRM for small business software keeps everything ’ customer’s contact details, sales records & numbers, documents ’ all in one, easy to access application.

There are many ways in which CRM software can be proven beneficial for your business, but how it can impact the bottom line of your business is one of the most important. 

These 8 ways can help you reduce your costs substantially leading to increased efficiencies, giving a boost to profitability & growth. 

Categories
Marketing

White Labeling Or Building Your Own Solution?

Reap the benefits of White Labeling

White labeling solutions
are produced by one company and rebranded and resold to the end consumer. Benefits of white labeling are that it helps to expand your network and the reseller need not bother about the cost of building his own product, instead focus on increasing his sales for the product.

Sometimes for a small business, building the customized solution from scratch can lead to failure, hence to avoid this pitfall simply opt for a white labeling solution rather than building your own. Some of the benefits of opting for white labeling are:

1. Saves Money and Time

When you opt for white labeling solutions, you don’t have to go through the entire cycle of building a new product, designing, testing and hiring new talent

Since no reinvention of the wheel is supposed to take place, a lot of cost and time is saved

The idea is to repackage the product and give it to the end-user the way he prefers to consume it

You just need to add your brand and identity to it and the product is ready to go to the market

2. Faster to reach the market
 

As the process is speedy, you have an advantage of reaching the end customer faster than anyone who is perhaps building a product similar to yours

You don’t miss out on specific resources and expertise which are required to focus on a solution 

3. Expansion of Distribution Network

Since in white labeling you are reselling your product, it helps in organic expansion of your distribution network by adding the network of your reseller

This gives an opportunity to small businesses to compete with bigger players in the same field

4. Increase of Target Communities

When you are catering to a particular community, let’s say entrepreneurs you think of building products only around and for them. But with the help of white labeling solutions you can increase your reach & customer base.

For e.g the benefit of white labeling is that the end consumer can be a digital company, an educational institution or a small community of like-minded individuals, the idea is to increase the customer base and find many more touchpoints for the product

5. Enhance Customer Satisfaction

With white label software, you can reach the market faster. This translates into your customer getting the product faster.

The consumer enjoys this prompt service and a happy customer will result in faster revenues and a smooth churning of the product

6.Alternate Revenue streams

On one hand, e are saving cost by repackaging the same product and not hiring additional resources to build it, white labeling can help us with other revenue streams as well

For e.g. An Advertising agency doesn’t offer design as a part of its product offerings. But white labeling design, the company can now offer an additional service to its clients leading to extra revenue

Since the branding will be of the agency, the client will stick to the company and not look out for competitors

Bada Business as a Case Study on White labeling
 

  • Bada Business’s model is based on 2 pillars namely: learning and earning. We aim to be recognized as the most trusted source of learning and earning for entrepreneurs, students and women entrepreneurs in India.
  • All of our products are designed with the focus of empowering entrepreneurs learning and enabling them with tools, frameworks, examples and case studies that they can implement in their business and careers.
  • To expand our gamut a little further than just entrepreneurs, we decided to white label our product for the benefit of other communities as well who want to learn the know-how of entrepreneurship
  • This is a solution where Bada Business creates content that is white-labeled by partners. An example is the ’Campus to Business’ course that is being white-labeled by the top educational institutions of the country for their students.
  • Through white labeling, educational institutes will be providing 21st century skills to their students without going through the pain of building a curriculum for it from scratch. In other words, we are providing a plug and play learning management solution to them.

Businesses looking for new means and ways to provide more products or services & clients want to receive a bundled package of different offerings. In such a dynamic market, white labeling is the perfect solution for small businesses rather than building their own product.