Category: Marketing

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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. 

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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.

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Marketing

How to Make Profit in Off Season

जीडीपी
जीडीपी

?Introduction

  • Do you run a seasonal business?
  • Are you unable to run your seasonal business during off season?
  • Do you know how to make profit in off season?

Ice cream, cold/hot drinks, woolen cloths, summer clothes, agro products, tourism, firecrackers, and colors are among those businesses, which are either fully seasonal or semi-seasonal.

Such products or services are sold only during one particular period or season, while the rest of the time, sales of these products drop so much that merchants find it difficult to cover even their operational cost.

If you are also running a seasonal business, then let’s find out the answer to how to make profit in off season through following ways:

Tip #1: Go Where the Season is

It is the first tip of how to make profit in off season. It means think geographically. Select those places for your business where the demand for that product is, or where you can sell more products.

Example:
A merchant running a business of woolen cloths will find difficult to sell his products during the summer season. He can ’explore hilly places’ to sell his products where there are ’winters for an extended period’. 

Tip #2: Extend Your Season

Seasonal businesses can also be extended by giving off season promotions and schemes to attract consumers before and after the season.

If your business Season is Diwali (Business Period – 1 week)

 If your business Season is Winters (Woolen clothes) (Business Period – 4 Months)
You can extend your period by giving off season promotions like Pre-Diwali offers. Add 2 months pre-winter season.
You can extend your period post-Diwali offers. Add 2 months post-winter season.
Extend your season for 2-3 months before and after Diwali. Bring some schemes in pre and post-season months to attract customers
By extending your business season you can increase the size of your business even during offseason.
Tip #3: Contract Manufacturing/Channel Partner
Instead of selling your products with a small brand name and limited reach or customer base, you can make a deal with big brands to sell your products even during off-season through a heavy dose of branding.
It is one of the tips on how to make profit in offseason.
?  Contact with Big brands to sell your products with their brand name.
?  Build business partners in locations where you don’t have to reach.
Tip #4: Serve Other Industries
Even during off-season you can explore the opportunity to sell your products to different industries by creating market demand through marketing and sales strategies. 
Don’t depend only on one Sector or Season to sell your products.
The below example will tell you how to bring customers in offseason of your business. 
Example:
A cracker manufacturer, apart from Diwali season, can sell crackers to event organizers, wedding planners, national festivals and other celebrations. 

Tip #5: Stay on the Top of your Customer’s Mind

Through various marketing and branding strategies, you can influence customer’s minds during the off-season to increase sales.
Make optimum use of ’guerrilla marketing’ to stay on top of customer’s mind via Social Media, Print Media, TV/Radio Ads, and Hoarding/Billboards.
Tip #6: Build a Referral and a Loyalty Program
There are some businesses that run during some specific period or season and remain saturated during the rest of the time such as Aviation, Hospitality, and Tourism, etc.
During the summer season, hotels in hill stations get maximum customers, while their business remains saturated during other seasons.
To know how to make profit in off-season, you should:
?  Build loyalty with your past & existing customers
?  Give them attractive offers and deals through various mediums
?  Try to get the reference of new customers from existing customers
Tip #7: Add Complimentary Freebies Product or Service
Instead of giving discounts during off-season, you can give your customers off-season promotions schemes like ’small freebies along with the main product’ to increase your sales.
You can give exciting offers to your customers like free home delivery, gift & voucher, and extended warranty, etc. These are some of the offseason promotions techniques. 

Tip #8: Focus on What You can’t do During the Season Time

During business season, since you remain too busy with customers and vendors in selling and buying products that you hardly get time to focus on other activities which can increase your sales and stop leakages.
However, you can perform such activities during off season to increase your sales in the upcoming season.
To know how to make profit in off season, you can focus on below given things:
?  Build a low-cost infrastructure
?  Reduce purchasing cost
?  Create web/digital infrastructure
?  Build a digital marketing team  
?  Hire and train better manpower

Tip #9: Build a New Product Line Specifically for Off-Season

You can also bring required changes in your product as per customer’s demand to sell it during the off-season to keep your recurring revenue from fluctuating.
Example:
A manufacturer of blazer can design a light waistcoat which can be sold even in the summer season.
Tip #10: Money Saved is also Money Earned
When there is a slowdown in your sales during off-season, you can work on implementing new ideas to reduce your operational cost by a leakage management system.
It is another tip to how to make profit in offseason.
You can reduce your operational cost during off-season by changing:
?  Supply chain
?  Hiring contractual staff
?  Changing vendor
’Business can be seasonal but commitment should not be seasonal’
Categories
Marketing

How to Create a Hook to Attract Customers

Introduction

  • Do you want to increase your sales?
  • Do you know how to create a hook to attract more customers?

As a hook is required to catch a fish, similarly you require a hook in your product to catch the customer’s attention. You require a hook in your advertising brand campaign.

Your customer is busy. If you provide him a complex and long message, he will forget it quickly. You need to grab his attention in the minimum time.

You need to create that attention grabber through which the customer is able to connect with you.

This attention grabber is the hook.

Before you get to know how to create a hook, you must know what it is.

What actually a Hook is?

A hook is any benefit or information about your product that the customer can recall.

It can be a small title or a tagline explaining what you are doing differently in your business.

It also includes a promise or commitment that your customer requires.

Your hook should be surprising, touches the extreme emotions, and exclamatory.

Use a hook in your all the communication material including your website, brochure, business

card, hoarding, lanyard, landing page, social media, email, or your corporate dress.

How to Create a Hook?

You can create a hook through six types of hooks.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Your customers should have a fear that they can miss out on your product.

Good hook sentence example:
 

’Sirf ek tapakti boond, apki kismat badal sakti hai.
’ The advertisement of m-seal created a hook by using this catchy sentence. 

Customer Convenience or Comfort

You can create a hook that promises customer convenience or comfort.

With given example let’s understand how to create a hook by using the sentences that comfort consumers. 

Good hook sentence example
: Surf excel created a hook by saying, ’Daag ache hain.’

It promises the mothers that they need not worry about the stains as it can be easily washed with the help of their product.

The feeling of Belongingness and Relation between the Company and Customer

Good hook sentence example:

The tagline of Tata Salt is, ’Desh ka namak, Tata namak.’

This creates a feeling in the hearts of the customers that this is our country’s salt.

Help your audience to achieve their goals: Your tagline should be like -you can help the customer in solving their problem or achieving their goals.

Good hook sentence example:

Big Bazar says, ’Is se sasta aur accha kahin nahi.’

This is an assurance to customers that we will help you in achieving your goal of purchasing the cheapest and best products.

How to Create a Hook by Power of Thrill and Excitement

Good hook sentence example:

Mountain dew says, ’Darr ke aage jeet hai.’

All the advertisements of mountain dew include adventure and thrill like people climbing in the mountains. This gives a feeling of thrill among the customers.

Convert Hurt, Mystery, or Disappointment into Hope

Good hook sentence example:

CP Plus is a CCTV camera brand which became famous from its hook: ’Upar wala sab dekh raha hai.’

In the advertisement, someone is stealing something but is being watched by top-fitted CCTV cameras. In the background voice says, ’Upar wala sab dekh raha hai’ referring to the CCTV cameras.

Essentials for Creating Hook

For creating a hook, you need to be:

  • Creative and think out of the box.
  • Conduct research about your competitors and the taglines they are using to attract customers.
  • Study the buying behavior of your existing customers.

Your hook should be the problem-solving USP of your product. It should be able to take out or touch the hidden emotions of your customers.

So, your hook should be like that it can enable your customers to recall your product immediately. For this, you can use the six types of hooks discussed above. 

Categories
Marketing

How to Build Customer Loyalty

Introduction

  • Is your customer loyal to you or feel connected with you?
  • Do you want to know formulas to calculate customer’s loyalty?
  • Do you want to know how to build customer loyalty? 

Getting a customer is easy, but getting their loyalty is the difficult part. To make your customer loyal, you first need to do his purchase analysis.

Whenever a customer comes to your store, you need to observe which kind of products he is purchasing and in which kind of products he is interested.

If you incentivize the products in which he is interested, he will buy your products and become your loyal customer.

To know how to build customer loyalty, you need to understand the customer loyalty formula. 

Following are the 5 important loyalty formulas on how to gain customer loyalty.

Formula #1: Repurchase Rate

The repurchase rate is one of the formulas to know how to gain customer loyalty.

Repurchase rate = (Number of repurchases/ Number of unique purchases) x 100

For Example:

10,000 people purchase your product. Among them, 1000 people came again to purchase something from you. In this case, your repurchase rate is 10%.

Once you got the repurchase rate, it becomes easy for you to increase it.

Formula #2: Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is also one of the ways to know how to gain customer loyalty.

NPS is the rate to which your customers are satisfied with your products and services. NPS is calculated as follows:

NPS = Promoters (Highly satisfied customers) ’ Detractors (Dissatisfied customers)

You can determine your number of promoters and detractors by taking customer feedback on a scale of 1-10. Different ratings on the scale have different meanings like:

Rating 1-6
’ means customers are not satisfied with your products or services

Rating between 7-8
’ means customers are neutral about your products or services

Rating between 9-10 
’ means customers are highly satisfied with your products or services

Let’s talk about customer loyalty example:

If 100 people visit your restaurant in a month and 70 people gave you either 9 or 10 rating, 10 people gave you 7-8 rating and the 20 people gave you a rating between 1- 6, then your NPS is:

Net Promoter Score (NPS) = 70 ’ 20 = 50

Formula #3: Up-Selling and Cross-Selling Ratio

To know how to build customer loyalty, you need to first determine the up-selling and cross-selling ratio.

Suppose, you have a fast food outlet and a customer buys a burger from you.

Can you sell something else with the burger like a cold drink or ice cream?

If yes, then you can create a meal for him like McDonald’s does.

If a person comes to buy a particular product but he buys some other product as well, this is called cross-selling and up-selling.

Up-selling and cross-selling ratio:

= (Number of customers buying more than one product/Number of customers who bought a single product) x 100

For Example

If 5000 people are buying 1 product from you and among them and 1000 people bought more than 1 product, then your upselling and cross-selling ratio will be:

Upselling and cross-selling ratio = (1000/5000) x 100 = 20%.

Now, you just have to increase this upselling and cross-selling ratio and your turnover will increase drastically.

Formula #4: Frequency and Recency

Frequency means how frequent a customer buys your product, whereas recency means how recently the customer bought your product.

Calculate the frequency and recency of a loyal customer.

You need to know whether the customer is coming to your shop because he loves to shop there or he is coming just because the other shop is closed.

Formula #5: Redemption Rate

Give free coupons to your customers and ask them to redeem it on their next visit. This will encourage the customer for repeat purchases.

Soon, he will become your loyal customer as he is getting extra benefits from you.

Redemption rate = (Total loyalty points issued by you/Redeemed points) x 100

For Example

If 10,000 loyalty points were issued in a month by you and about 5000 points were redeemed, the rate comes out to be 50%.

All the above formulas will help you in understanding how to build customer loyalty efficiently and effectively.

An increase in customer loyalty will not only increase your customer base but will also grow your sales and profit.