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The Marketing mix 4 p’s of marketing examples

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THE MARKETING MIX

The Marketing Mix

The marketing mix is a traditional foundation model for business which provides the basis for marketing strategy for businesses. Whether it is a small home business or a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, understanding of the marketing mix is of paramount importance for it could mean the difference between success and failure.

The original concept of marketing mix was introduced by Neil Borden to refer to the distinct elements which according to him were critical to marketing of a product and differentiate it from its competitors.

Table of Content

  1. Product
  2. Price
  3. Promotion
  4. Place
  5. Advantages of a marketing mix
  6. Disadvantages and limitations of a marketing mix
  7. 4Ps explained with an example
    1. Product
    2. Price
    3. Promotion
    4. Place
  8. Conclusion

As years passed, the concept of marketing mix evolved into the “Four Ps” of marketing which were formally coined by E. Jerome Mcarthy.  The “Four Ps” in marketing are

  • MARKETING MIX
    MARKETING MIX
  • Product
  • Price
  • Promotion
  • Place

Let’s explore these element in further details

Product

According to Philip Kotler:

“A product is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption. It includes physical objects, services, personalities, place, organizations and ideas.”

In other words, product is something that the producer sells to its consumers in the market. It could be a tangible product, an experience, an idea or a service.

It is the first activity in the marketing cycle and begins with an idea. The idea is normally something which satisfies a customer need.

The product can be a tangible product, intangible like service or a combination of both.

For example a regular ball point pen is something where in normal course you would not expect a service following the sale.

However in a fine dining restaurant, you get the physical product (food) and along with it comes the service experience.

The service part determines the overall experience and would include the staff behavior, service time and ambiance.

The key to an effective product is ensuring you have the right offering for the customer demands. One must look at the product from the perspective of the customer. Ask yourself

1. Does your product benefit the customer?

2. Does your product have the necessary features?

3. How is your product unique in comparison to competitors?

Price

The price is the value or the money the customer pays in exchange of your product or service. While the other elements of the marketing mix are en expense, price is an earning.

Getting the price right is extremely critical to success of your business.

There are several considerations while pricing and pricing definitely affects the customer perception of your product or brand.

For instance in automobiles a Suzuki car is priced very differently from a Mercedes car. One caters to the mass market while the other caters to a relative niche.

There are several pricing strategies like skimming (useful for innovative products), predatory low pricing (for a normal “new” product) or perceived value pricing (depending on product positioning).

Additionally one needs to be have a flexible approach toward pricing. It is important to understand the price elasticity of the product.

Decreasing the price slightly may cause a significant surge in demand.

While managing the pricing, ask yourself:

1. How does my price relate to my break-even ?

2. What is the perceived value of my product to the customer ?

3. How is my product prices in relation to the competitors?

Promotion

Promotion is the most visible element of the marketing mix. It is essentially all the communication you make to your potential customer regarding your product or service.

The promotion mix for your said product/ service is defines by various factors and can greatly influence the end success.

Promotion could be in the form of formal advertising, personal selling, online selling or relationship based selling. With the advent of the digital channels the promotional activity have undergone a sea change.

Aside from the television and print medium, internet has emerged as a strong alternative medium with an extensive reach. However for expensive or niche products personal selling still works best.

The promotion activities need to evolve constantly with changing times as the market is extremely dynamic.

Strategies that work today may not work tomorrow, so one must constantly tinker their plans.

When it comes to promotion, ask yourself:

1. How much can you spend on promotion?

2. Should you go for television ads or online or mix of both?

3. Does your promotional message convey your product or service essence?

4. How does your promotion compare with that of your competitors

Place

This is often the most overlooked aspect of the marketing mix. However placement is an extremely critical part.

Place here refers to the product placement and encompasses things like distribution network and the various channels employed for the same.

The important of placement in the marketing mix cannot be overestimated. What is the use of a great, well priced product that people know of but they cannot access it.

As a producer, you need to make sure that your product is available in areas accessible to your end consumer. For this one needs a thorough understanding of the market and the customer accessibility.

Putting it simply, it would mean answers questions like how is your sold and where is it brought.

The movement of the product from your production facility to the end customer could be through a combination of intermediaries like distributors, wholesalers and retailers.

You product or service normally dictates how it is placed.

You may look at direct selling (useful in case of seasonal products) or look at more complex Distribution methods may include, but are not limited to, door-to-door, retail, e-commerce, mail order, or on-site.

Depending on the market being catered you could look at intensive distribution, selective distribution or exclusive distribution.

The power of distribution is demonstrated by organization like Coca-Cola where the distribution channels are so strong.

So have a strong product placement, ask yourself the following

1. Where would your customers normally look for your product?

2. Are your products available at the right place and at the right time?

3. Where does your placement stand in relation to your competitors?

4. Marketing mix is an effective foundation framework that has certain advantages

Advantages of a marketing mix

It brings together various aspects of marketing decision making into a single framework making it easier to manage.

Allows segregating of marketing activities and allocation of the same to specialists.

It helps identify key drivers of sales, profit and performance.

It helps identify several high level “What if” scenarios and that compare market tactics; product sales activities and asses budget allocation across channels

It helps identify where you stand in conjunction to your competitors.

Enables you to efficient resource allocation across various activities and allows varying your activities in relation to the market conditions prevalent.

Allows you to take decisions taking in mind various interconnected aspects of marketing.

But like every framework, the traditional marketing mix also has a few drawbacks and limitations. One needs to be aware of the framework while applying it in a business context.

Disadvantages and limitations of a marketing mix

The marketing mix is not oriented towards customer behaviour, but is internal to the producer organization

The model does not take into account an iterative process of customer interaction and considers the customers as passive.

It is simplistic in the fact that it considers a singular product or service. However in today`s times most companies sell several products and services in a mix.

It does not account for customer relationships in terms of understanding behaviour patterns. This is an important

It does not address issues pertaining to productivity in terms of quality of product or service delivery.

Over the years the marketing mix has evolved to include three other elements i.e.  People, processes and Physical environment.

This has helped overcome some of the limitations to an extent. However overall the model is still oriented internally.

People

This aspect deals with the people driving the marketing mix. Having the right people is essential as they are the one`s driving your service experience to the customer.

Processes 

This deals with the steps which are required to deliver the product or service to the customer. The companies should share the process maps to their employees to ensure repeatable and successful delivery of product or service.

Physical Evidence 

This could be the place where the service is delivered and would include the branding and overall environment for the service delivery.

4Ps explained with an example

  • The Marketing mix 4 p's of marketing examples 1 The Digital Chapters

Let’s consider the example of McDonald’s. McDonald’s mix (4Ps) involves varied approaches that enable it to meet its business targets in geographically and economically different markets spread across the world.

McDonald`s uses it`s globally acclaimed marketing mix and replicated it across numerous locations and franchise.

While it is mostly standardized, McDonald’s also applies some variations in its marketing mix to suit the conditions of local or regional markets. 

Product

Its product mix consists mostly of food and beverage products.

The product mix includes vegetarian and non-vegetarian options and has gradually expanded the product offerings from its famous burgers to items like deserts, breakfast options, and customized beverages.

Expanding the product mix reduces the company’s dependence on singular products.

Price

The company uses unique pricing strategies including bundle and psychological pricing strategies. For example bundling items together into a happy meal and offering pricing that is less than the sum of whole.

Also offering prices like INR 49/99/- instead of INR 50/- or INR 100/-

Promotion

McDonald’s extensively uses television and print advertisement for its products.

Additionally attaching discount coupons with newspapers is another popular method of attracting people to its restaurants or incentivise people to order home.

Top 10 Digital Marketing Blogs you should read daily

Place

McDonald’s delivers its product and services through a mix of restaurants, kiosks, mobile apps and its website.

While its restaurants are the places where the company generates the majority of the revenues, the other formats are becoming increasingly popular.

For instance the small kiosks deal with limited items like ice creams and drinks, while the app and the website are extensively used to order from home.

Conclusion

While the Marketing Mix products a useful framework for evolving the marketing strategies, in today`s time, it must be used in conjunction with strategies that account for customer behaviour and customer relationship management. In other words, the marketing mix must be customer-centric.

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Marketing

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

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Top Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home in

Top Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home in

“Work from home,” demands appropriate utilization of the best technology for working remotely. It would mean proper know-how about remote working tools and work from home tools as well.

“Work from home,” would also require remote working equipment along with remote working accessories.

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home 2 The Digital Chapters

Table of Content

  1. Hardware Tools
    1. Mobile
    2. Laptop
    3. Camera
    4. Wifi-Internet
  2. Google Tools
    1. Drive
    2. gmail
    3. Hangout
    4. sHEET
  3. Video communication and Conference Tools
    1. ZOOM
    2. SKYPE
    3. PukkaTeam
    4. Join.Me
  4. Real-time messaging and Group Chat
    1. Glip  
    2. Float
    3. Chanty
    4. Hangouts Chat
    5. Slack
    6. Flock
    7. Campfire
  5. Project management tool
    1. GanttPRO
    2. Teamdeck
    3. Monday.com
    4. Podio
    5. Microsoft Teams
    6. Asana
  6. Task Management and Task reporting
    1. Datadeck
    2. Ninja Reports
    3. Trello
    4. Taskworld
    5. Wunderlist
  7. Screen Sharing Tools
    1. ScreenHero
    2. GitHub
    3. TeamViewer
  8. Cloud Storage, File Sharing and teamwork Collaboration  
    1. Google Drive
    2. Dropbox
    3. Box
  9. Time Management tools
    1. Timely
    2. Toggle
    3. everhour
  10. Performance Management Tools
    1. WebLOAD
    2. LoadView
    3. RedLine13
    4. Silk Performer
    5. LoadUI Pro

In order to facilitate “Work from home,” we attempt to shed some light upon the prominent remote working accessories and the top 10 digital tools available for working from your home.

1. Hardware Tools:

A very important component of the remote working equipment is the Hardware tools. These tools provide us with the framework to facilitate “Work from home.” Some of the important Hardware Tools are as follows:

1.1 Mobile:

A mobile phone is a critical element of the work from home tools. A mobile phone facilitates communication through voice calls, text messaging, group messaging, chats and the like.

A mobile phone also facilitates quick mail sending and receiving process at your fingertips.

1.2 Laptop:

A laptop is an absolute necessity to log on to your work domain and connect to critical work processes over a secured channel. A laptop can become an easy substitute to your workplace desktop machine.

1.3 Camera:

A camera facilitates video chatting, video conferences and live teleconferencing. This provides an opportunity to share your work related queries, and discuss problems and solutions with colleagues and clients.

1.4 Wi-Fi-Internet

One of the most essential work from home tools is the Internet. Without the availability of internet, you won’t be able to connect with your servers and also no conferencing facilities and email or chatting facilities would be available to you.

Moreover, a Wi-Fi availability is an absolute necessity to get you Laptop and Mobile connected with the Internet easily.

The Wi-Fi connectivity ensures you can easily perform your tasks sitting in your own room without much interference from others around.

2. Google Tools

Google tools are a set of accessories and tools which you can easily utilize during the “Work from home.” Google has developed a wide variety of tools and the following ones are few of them you should know about for using them as work from home tools.

2.1 Drive

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

Google Drive is a powerful and spacious cloud storage platform provided by Google. You can keep all your essential files in Google Drive and carry them around virtually accessing them as and when required over the internet. The files stored in Google Drive are much secured as Google has a very safe Security Policy protecting the Integrity of Drive files.

2.2 Gmail

Gmail is the mail service provided by Google. It is of types one a free email service the other a paid one. Gmail enables you to utilise their mail service and global network for faster and reliable Email delivery and receipt services.

2.3 Hangout

Google has created an effective and modern chat service named Hangout. Through Hangout, you can chat and instantaneously message your colleagues and clients or seniors and communicate with them over the Internet. It also allows audio and video chats and messages as well as file sharing.

 2.4 Goolge SHEETS / Spread Sheet

Google SHEETS are cloud based spreadsheet document program developed by Google. With SHEETS, you can easily perform all your tabulation and reporting work online over the internet. This tool can be one very handy remote working tool and can easily assist you in report generation while working from home.

3. Video Communication and Conference Tools

In order to effective confer with colleagues and clients; video conferencing over the internet is a very essential remote working tool. The following conferencing tools may be resorted to while working from home.

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

3.1 ZOOM

ZOOM is an effective business video conferencing platform which can be used to host and join video conference meetings. ZOOM also supports Video Webinar, Conference Rooms, Phone System and Business Instant Messaging.

3.2 SKYPE

Skype is one powerful and robust video calling software. It was launched in 2003. Since its launch, Skype has grown to be well known and massively used software. Skype Calls are very clear and of a higher quality. Skype also supports audio messaging and file sharing.

3.3 PukkaTeam

PukkaTeam is remote communication software. It keeps you in touch with your teammates and has a very smart artificial Intelligence enabled system which detects the presence and absence of any member during the meeting sessions.

3.4 JoinMe

JoinMe is a simple yet powerful application designed for web based meetings and conferences. It supports screen sharing and also shares applications, web pages and documents with partners.

4. Real-Time Messaging and Group Chats

Real-time Messaging has grown in prominence over the years with the advent of the internet; text messaging has made way for its real-time counterpart-Instant Messaging. 

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

Instant Messaging and Group Chats are effective remote working accessories, which help you to know the responses of teammates over an issue.

Some popular Messaging and Chat Softwares are:

4.1 GLIP

It is software which encompasses free real-time messaging and chats. GLIP also supports video chats and task management and is aimed at team collaboration and task completion.

4.2 Float

Float is a resource planning application which provides you composite availability status of your teammates, track team’s timings, and multi-project planning and provides you with easy and stress free scheduling power.

4.3 Chanty

Chanty is powerful real-time chatting software which is incorporated with Artificial Intelligence.  It lets you to communicate, collaborate, connect, organize meetings and create a Focus notification smartly.

4.4 Hangouts Chat

Google’s Hangout chats provides excellent medium of multi-party communication using voice, video and group conferencing. File sharing and resource sharing are added features of Hangouts with the added assurance of Google’s privacy and safety.

4.5 Slack

Slack is an advanced business application incorporating real-time chatting and files sharing features. Slack is a secured environment wherein you can collaborate with teammates and discuss with them critical business or process related issues securely.

4.6 Flock

It is one of the best team communication applications with inbuilt online collaboration feature, team messaging feature, video calling feature, and resource sharing feature.

5. Project Management Tools

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

When at home, and working on a certain project, these project management tools offer us with the best technology for working remotely. We take a look into details of some of them.

5.1 GanttPRO

GanttPRO is very efficient software for online project management. Armed with tools like online drag and drop facility, team progress monitoring and management and a mix of online plans for your project.

5.2 Teamdeck

Teamdeck is another project resource management tool, which can be utilised effectively for scheduling, time tracking, online leave management and preparing timesheets of fellow colleagues and subordinates.

5.3 Monday.com

Monday.com can be termed as a complete work operating system. It enables you to create and manage an entire workflow in a code-free and secure environment.

5.4 Podio

It is a web based platform providing team communication, organizing tools, resource management and workspaces as demanded by users.

5.5 Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a unified team collaboration and communication platform. This platform gives its users workspaces, text and video chats and meetings as well as file storage facilities to choose from as per their needs and demands.

5.6 Asana

Asana is an application which is developed to give its users the facilities like organizing, tracking and managing work. It can well be regarded as a team productivity monitoring tool which encompasses team collaboration as well.

6. Task Management and Task Reporting

The following are some of the Task Management and Task Reporting tools which could constitute remote working accessories.

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

6.1 Datadeck 

Datadeck is a modern and efficient way to create goal oriented teams and manage processes and businesses using data. It enables you to track and monitor data and identify trends facilitating actions and optimizations.

6.2 Ninja Reports

Ninja Reports uses Artificial Intelligence to prepare beautifully compiled and stunning reports of your project.

6.3 Trello

Trello lets you optimize your day to day tasks by facilitating list-making which forms basics steps in project organizing.

6.4 Taskworld

Taskworld is a cloud based platform facilitating project management by means of task management. It provides means and medium for task delegation, proper communication and tracking for effective task monitoring.

6.5 Wunderlust

Wunderlust is another cloud based project management platform designed to enable its users numerous facilities to choose from. But sadly enough Wunderlust is being discontinued and is going to end in May 2020.

7. Screen Sharing Tools

In the context of work from home tools, screen sharing tools are very important medium and amongst the best technologies for working remotely. Some of them are as follows:

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

7.1 ScreenHero

ScreenHero is a collaboration tool which can be utilised to share screen, keyboards and mice together for simultaneous project work completion.

7.2 GitHub

GitHub is another powerful screen sharing and hosting software, which enables developers discover, share, and contribute for building better software.

7.3 Teamviewer

Teamviewer is a very powerful application which facilitates remote desktop sharing, file sharing and transfer facilities.

8. Cloud Storage, File Sharing and teamwork Collaboration

Cloud storage, file sharing and team collaboration tools are remote working tools which may be beneficial during work from home. Some of them are:

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

8.1 Google Drive

Google Drive is an online storage platform which provides relentless and safe data storage facilities to users over the cloud.

8.2 Dropbox

Dropbox is another online storage platform facilitating online file storage and sharing. Dropbox enables link sharing via emails amongst users and supports data privacy and security.

8.3 Box

Box is a cloud based content management and file sharing service. This service enables its users to perform data storage and secure sharing facilities to its users.

9. Time Management tools: 

Time management is very important aspect of “Work from Home.” The following tools can be utilized as effective remote working tools:

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

9.1 Timely

Timely is a fully automatic time tracking software designed to keep track of timings to facilitate workload balances.

9.2 Toggle

Toggle is another time tracking application designed for online time tracking and recording.

9.3 EverHour

EverHour is team time tracking software which enables users to track and record timings of teammates and group mates.

10. Performance Management Tools:

Performance management tools are essential remote working tools intended to gauge the performance of the processes and projects. Some of the tools are:

Top 10 types of Digital Tools and Software to use while working from Home

10.1 WebLoad

WebLoad is a unique performance management tools designed to monitor project progress performance using very sophisticated web based tools.

10.2 LoadView

Loadview is another performance management tool used to analyze team task progress.

10.3 Redline13

RedLIne13 is a power tool for online project management and progress measuring.

10.4 Blazemeter

Blazemeter tool is software which enables mangers to monitor project progress very minutely and address needs if any.

10.5 LoadUI Pro

LoadUI pro is a cloud based performance management software intented at online project management.

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Marketing

Marketing Basics for Beginners: Everything about Marketing

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Basics of Marketing

Marketing for Beginners: The 4ps of marketing explain

What is Marketing ? this is first question arises in Marketing Beginners mind. When you start learning the Marketing Basics, you are expected understand the meaning of Marketing. So, What are the Marketing Basics and What are the 4p’s of Marketing.

I am going to explain you everything about marketing for beginners by this blog.

Table of Content

  1. What is Marketing
  2. Importance of Marketing
  3. Marketing and Advertisement
  4. Marketing, Promotion, and Branding
  5. Types of Marketing
    1. Influencer Marketing
    2. Relationship Marketing:
    3. Viral marketing:
    4. Green Marketing
    5. Keyword Marketing
    6. Guerrilla Marketing
  6. 4 P’s of Marketing
    1. Product
    2. Price
    3. Place
    4. Promotion

What is Marketing?

  • Marketing Basics for Beginners: Everything about Marketing 3 The Digital Chapters

Marketing is an action that businesses take to promote their product and services.
This is a process where businesses create a set of activities to attract their potentials customers or clients to their product and services.

Shelby Hunt defined it in 1976 as

“the study and management of exchange relationships” in the Journal of Marketing.

The American Marketing Association, in 2017, defined marketing as

“the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

As we can see, this a very broad definition that encompasses a lot of areas to focus on.

To understand marketing, we must break down the definition and look at it in parts. The first part of the definition – “the activity, set of institutions and processes” refers to activities such as advertising and institutions like corporations and their brands.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as

“a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”

These brands utilize processes and activities for “creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging” goods and/or services that are designed specifically to be of great value to the consumer in question.

The last part of the definition refers to how marketing and its principles apply not only in business or economic contexts but to general societal situations as well.

In a more practical sense, marketing can be referred to as a means of acquiring and applying the knowledge of consumer patterns, preferences and needs to maximize the satisfaction of the consumer and increase the outreach and efficiency of advertisement strategies and promotional campaigns.

It is the process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers’ needs and wants.

Marketing techniques and processes are the way through which manufacturers obtain data about consumer behavior and patterns of spending, as well as other data such as age and race demographics.

The data is compiled and analyzed to anticipate consumer behavior and provide an insight into the mind of a consumer. Through this research, a company understands the needs and wants of a consumer, which allows them to predict the value a consumer derives from a good or service with greater accuracy.

This allows the company to establish a long-standing relationship with the consumer that is beneficial to both parties.

Importance of Marketing

  • Marketing Basics for Beginners: Everything about Marketing 4 The Digital Chapters

Therefore, marketing plays a very important role in contributing to a company’s sales, revenue and profit margins.

From deciding what product to manufacture, to how it will be delivered to the consumer and through which channels, all the answers to these questions involve marketing heavily.

The data is then used as the basis for promotional strategies adopted by companies, as well as advertising campaigns launched by them.

Apart from making up a huge and crucial component of sales and advertisement, marketing plays an important role in other areas of a company.

Not only does it impact a company’s manufacturing and sales policies, but marketing is also responsible for how a company is perceived by its consumers and society at large.

The overall image of a company and the creation of its brand identity is something that is handled by the marketing department and can play a huge role in a company’s fortunes.

For example – The perception of Apple being an ‘elite’ brand allows them to retain a large market percentage despite facing stiff competition from rivals that sell at lower prices.

Marketing covers product development, market research, advertisement campaigns, product distribution, sales strategy, public relations, and customer support.

It remains necessary in all the stages of a sale, and it can be used in multiple ways such as various social media platforms, or teams of people identifying consumer behavior and acting on it to establish a long-standing relationship with the consumer and maximize brand loyalty.

Advertising comes under the process of marketing.

The Economic Times defines advertising as

“a means of communication with the users of a product or service.”

The UK Advertising association defines it as such

“Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or influence people who receive them.”

Advertising is a means of grabbing a consumer’s attention and making them aware of a certain good or service and its benefits, usually through platforms where the seller is paying to make the consumer aware of the good or service.

The decision of what good or service to advertise, where to advertise it, and how are all decided by the processes of marketing to maximize the effectiveness of the advertisements.

Marketing and Advertisement

  • Marketing Basics for Beginners: Everything about Marketing 5 The Digital Chapters

Marketing is the main reason that we see the advertisements we do, and where we see them.

This is so because marketing processes allow companies to gauge or predict what kind of products consumers prefer, and thus allows them to start building a relationship with the consumer.

Promotion strategies are decided on the data that the tools of marketing help us in collecting.

For example, a company wanting to market a good/service for older people would advertise on platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook, whereas a company looking to market a good to a younger audience would advertise on platforms such as Twitter or Snapchat.

This is because we know that the demographic of users on Facebook and LinkedIn is that of older people whereas the user demographic of platforms such as Twitter and Snapchat leans toward younger people. This data is available to us due to market research done by fellow researchers.

Marketing, Promotion, and Branding

Marketing Basics for Beginners: Everything about Marketing 6 The Digital Chapters

Any feature of a company which it uses to distinguish itself from another company providing the same or similar goods/services is known as its brand.

For example, the four colored squares synonymous with Microsoft, or the three stripes we all have come to associate with Adidas.

Brands often align themselves with a certain demographic to maximize profits and the decision of which demographic to align with is one taken by marketing professionals.

The portrayal of Red Bull as being a brand for adventure thirsty people is crucial to the company, with it investing millions of dollars in ventures such as Formula1 and other obscure sports, which directly do not contribute to sales but help in increasing Red Bull’s reputation as THE drink for people seeking a thrill.

This has worked well for the company, as it has a dominant percentage of the energy drink market share. The functions of marketing allow for a company to maximize its profits on a good/service by targeting and aligning with a particular demographic through specifically designed promotion campaigns.

Types of Marketing

Business marketing is the practice of marketing goods or services to individuals or corporations, including the public and private sector, when they are not to be the final consumer.

This type of marketing is referred to as business-to-business or B2B for short.

According to the American Marketing Association, the various types of marketing that exist are :

Influencer Marketing:

It focuses on leveraging individuals who influence potential consumers. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, a brand hires influencers to get the word out on their behalf.

Relationship Marketing:

It refers to strategies and tactics for segmenting consumers to build loyalty. Rather than just listing the benefits of a good/service to potential consumers, brands phrase the content in such a way that it evokes an emotional response from the consumer.

Examples would include cement being advertised as being made from the country’s soil to evoke a nationalist sentiment

Viral marketing:

Marketing Basics for Beginners: Everything about Marketing 7 The Digital Chapters

It is a phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

It is done through social media platforms and brands often adopt hashtags, challenges, and memes to get the word out about their good or service. This is a tactic often used in tandem with influencer marketing

Green Marketing:

It refers to the development and marketing of products that are designed to minimize negative effects on the physical environment or to improve its quality.

This tactic employs the looming threat of global warming to effectively draw the attention of potential consumers to the goods/service.

Keyword Marketing:

This involves placing a marketing message in front of users based on the specific keywords and phrases they are using to search.

A key advantage of this method is that it gives marketers the ability to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. It also can be referred to as targeted advertising, where brands show the consumer content which they have displayed an interest in earlier.

Guerrilla Marketing:

This describes an unconventional and creative marketing strategy intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

4 P’s of Marketing

In the 1960s, E Jerome McCarthy came up with the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place, promotion. Essentially, these 4 Ps explain how marketing interacts with each stage of the business :

  • Marketing Basics for Beginners: Everything about Marketing 8 The Digital Chapters

Product

A product is defined as a bundle of attributes (features, functions, benefits, and uses) capable of exchange or use; usually a mix of tangible and intangible forms.

Thus a product may be an idea, a physical entity (a good), or a service, or any combination of the three. It exists for the purpose of exchange in the satisfaction of individual and organisational goals.

The decision of outlining a target audience, looking a market fit for the good, deciding on the messages to be used to drive up revenue, modifications to be done to the good, etc are all taken by marketers on the basis of consumer data they’ve collected.

Price:

Price is the amount a customer must pay to acquire a product. The selling price of a product is decided by the company on 1 main factor – maximizing profits.

Should the company price the product too high, it will lose a big customer base and goodwill with consumers. Vice-versa, the company will suffer losses if the product is priced low.

Therefore marketers have to utilize consumer data to arrive at an acceptable price point

Place:

Place is also called distribution as refers to the act of marketing and carrying products to consumers. It is also used to describe the extent of market coverage for a given product.

Marketers have to understand what will be best for the company in terms of logistical and geographical terms.

Decisions such as having a physical store versus a website, or to market the product locally, nationally or internationally are all taken by marketers.

Promotion:

According to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), promotion marketing includes tactics that encourage short-term purchase, influence trail and quantity of purchase, and are very measurable in volume, share, and profit. This includes tactics such as fire sales, raffles, coupons, etc.

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SEO

The Basic Of Technical SEO: A complete guide of Technical SEO Basics

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Digital Marketing Chapters

The Basic Of Technical SEO: A complete Technical SEO guide

What is Technical SEO ? What are some difference

Imagine this scenario where you have just created an amazing video on your website, conducted extensive digital marketing to create the awareness of your video, the date of the launch has gone viral, and people are waiting impatiently to watch the video. Then the d-day comes, and it takes your website 10 seconds plus to load. What do you suppose will happen?

First, your visitors will get tired of waiting for the page to load, your bounce rate will increase, and Google will penalize your site.

  • The Basic Of Technical SEO: A complete guide of Technical SEO Basics 9 The Digital Chapters

This scenario is caused by a faulty technical SEO; and it also brings to fore, the vital importance of performing it on your website. What is technical SEO, how relevant is it for websites, what are the elements that make up a good technical SEO? 

What is a technical SEO?

Russ Jones of TECH SEO provides this interesting definition, he says

“any sufficiently technical action undertaken with the intent to improve search results”.

Russ Jones definition may be interesting, but it failed to pin-point some significant elements of technical SEO like Alexis Sanders of Merkle, he said

“Technical SEO covers the crawl, index, and render the portion of the “crawl, index, rank” model. 

It is important to conduct technical update SEO on your website because technical problems undermine the usability of your web pages. Everything that works behind to scene to make your website SEO requires some technical know-how.

For instance, producing basic content and making it search engine optimized to appear and rank high in search engine result requires different skills. Unfortunately, marketers avoid making the necessary modification that makes website contents relevant just because they lack technical knowledge.

The purpose and work of technical SEO:

  • To ensure that search engine bots can crawl or find your page which includes status codes, information structure, robots.txt, facets, status codes, and sitemaps.
  • To ensure that your web page is easily indexed by search engine spider
  • To make bots render your page, and that includes, DOM, JavaScript, and page speed
  • To ensure that the content of your pages are easily comprehensible by bots
  • To ensure that your web pages are giving out the right signals to search engine regarding handling content ranking
  • And finally, to ensure that your page is ranking worthy.

Generally speaking, if your website is not performing well in search engines ranking, the reason is mostly tied to a failed technical SEO job.

To a layman that is still confused about the meaning of skilled SEO practice, here is a simpler definition:

It is the optimization of your website for easy crawling and indexing by search engine bots, and the purpose is to enhance search visibility and website usability. 

Another way to understand it is when you compare skilled SEO to the function of a skeleton in the human body. The skeleton provides protection, shape, support, and structure to the body; this pretty much summarizes the benefit of skilled or technical SEO.

Also, like the skeleton that is not visible to the eyes, a technical SEO job is invisible, but the impact can only be seen through website performances.

The elements of technical SEO:

Mobile friendly:

Many people own cell phones and are literally glued to it they act as if it’s their life. Every day, people are buying cell phones including those who already have one; some have two or more cell phones, while some habitually change their phones frequently.

The use of a mobile phone for online browsing will increase in the 2020s, Google and other search engines recognized this trend; therefore, they have been working hard over the years to adjust their search algorithms to show this mobile phone craze.

In 2015, they introduced mobile phone related updates. In 2016, an indexing plan for mobile was introduced.

Mobile phone traffic is currently more popular than desktop traffic. People are now conducting searches through their phone 57% of traffics and visit to retail stores is from mobile gadgets. 

Base on the brief illustration above about mobile phone usage, you can see why making your web pages mobile-optimized is important.

The update by Google makes it so, and because Google controls 93% of the search engine space, everyone including search engines is compelled to comply with their mobile algorithm update dictates.

How can a website become optimized for mobile traffic?

The simpler way is to create a dynamic or responsive website that can adapt to screen size.

2.      Website Speed:

How fast your website loads is a critical requirement for SEO ranking. It doesn’t matter if you are operating from a mobile or desktop device, your web page speed is crucial. 

Website visitors generally are impatient and will simply leave a website for another if it takes too long to load; this action is called pogo-sticking, and Google hates it. A page that takes 10 seconds to loads increases bounces rate by 132%. A slow-loading page is one of the major reasons people abandon a website for another. 

Google reacts to pogo-sticking by reducing the ranking potential of a website. Technical SEO will ensure that your page load time is fast.

Reasons websites have speed problems are:

  • Images are poorly optimized or too big
  • No web content compression
  • Too many CSS image request on pages
  • No caching of information
  • Too many plugins installed on a website
  • CDN is absent for static files
  • Slow web host connection

3. Website errors:

Another aspect that technical search engine optimization deals with is site errors. The fact is website mistakes will tank your ranking; they are simply frustrating; everyone hates it, so should you. What causes a website error?

Most often, mistakes on the website are caused by broken links, missing pages, and incorrect redirects. To handle errors on websites, keep this in mind.

You have to handle 404 errors. Imagine clicking a website, and what you get is a 404 error. This gives a website a bad image and low credibility. Google simply hates it. 

Look for broken links and fix them:

A broken link is another aspect that requires technical SEO. Google hates broken links because it’s annoying. Envisage clicking on a link with the hope of reading an interesting article, and what happens? Nothing, no article to read; this is very frustrating especially if the situation persists on the same page. The next sensible action is you stop visiting that website. 

You can fix this problem by locating broken links; it’s not complicating. Also, avoid this problem by monitoring your link building effort. 

There are tools you can use online to discover and fix broken links.

4. Duplicate contents:

Producing content that is similar to another in several websites is called duplicate content, the crime is plagiarism. Duplicate content can be in the form of written content like articles, blog posts, images, videos, etc. Many webmasters use duplicate or plagiarized content on their website, and Google frowns against this practice – no one likes to read or view the same contents seen two or more websites. 

Check duplicate contents with Copyscape and avoid Google punishment.

5. Avoid crawl errors with sitemaps:

Never overlook crawl errors. What is a crawl error? It simply indicates that bots crawling your website discovers something amiss that will affect the ranking of your website. You can prevent this problem with sitemaps. Add a working sitemap on your website. 

A sitemap makes the crawling of your website easy, use XML sitemap on your website, and when you are done, present it to the search engines. After you have added it to the search engine, Google will easily index your pages.

6.      Long and confusing URL:

Does your URL have a query stricture at the end? If it does, take it off, because, it will constitute an indexing problem. Other problems that can cause index difficulties are, missing alt tags, title tags, and long or missing meta descriptions.

7.      Optimize images:

Having responsive visual content that enhances users’ experience is very portent for on-page and marketing SEO.

An abnormally large image can affect page load-time, make your website less mobile-friendly, and eventually, affect your Google ranking.

Apart from abnormal sized images, broken images can also damage user experience hence increasing the bounce rate.

Upload only top-quality images and use the Smush tool for compressing and optimization.

The Smush tool is a plugin that helps to reduce the size of your images to a point it doesn’t slow down your pages. T

he wonderful part about the tool is that it works without changing the quality of your pix.

Another tool is called Super Cache, used for producing pictures of your sites. It can reduce the number of data your website utilizes and increase your website load time.

8.      International SEO:

Some websites target international or global users. Such websites need to optimize their web pages to allow easy international user accessibility.

If your global target audience cannot access your sites, they will abandon it for another; this invariable leads to pogo-sticking that Google hates so much.

You can fix this technical issue through these 2 avenues:

Country:

A website that targets international audiences are nick-named multi-regional sites; to avoid SEO issues, they should select a URL that allows easy domain targeting. Using a “ccTLD like .ca, .uk,” or a country- exact subfolder like “.com/ca” is recommended.

Language:

If your sites target people of different languages, add “hreflang tag to notify Google that your pages have a duplicate for another language.

The basics of Technical SEO involve enhancing your website usability. It is a behind the scene optimization of your website structure and contents that makes indexing easy and Google ranking possible. It makes website responsive promoting excellent user experience. 

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Branding

What is Brand Strategy? How to develop an effective Brand Strategy?

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what-is-brand-strategy

What is Brand Strategy? How to develop an effective Brand Strategy?

  • what-is-brand-strategy
    what-is-brand-strategy

Before we go ahead to understand the meaning of Brand strategy we should to learn about Branding.  To create effective Brand strategy, one should go with Marketing Goals or Organisations goals. Business Goals and Brand Building or creating a Brand strategy should match to each other.

Here is the Table of Content list that we are explain in this article-:

  • What is a Brand
  • What is the Brand Image ?
  • What Is strategy ?
  • What is Brand Strategy ?
  • the position of the brand
  • The architecture associated with a Brand
  • Brand and Product Line Extensions
  • Why is branding Important ?
  • Brand Image and CSR

What is a Brand?

A brand is a company or group’s image as perceived by the customers when buying products or services in the market. A brand is a non-taxable asset, and if adequately maintained, brand image a go a long way to support a company or group power to the top.

What is the brand image?

Brand image is the identity that one associates a company or group with when purchasing a product or service. Brand image is an intangible asset for a company or group.

 A right brand image can help a company or group to do well in business and gain customer’s faith and confidence. Brand image can go a long way to generate more significant sales and increase the overall revenue of a company or group.

The brand image does not develop in one moment. It takes years and even decades for a company or group to become a successful and famous brand.

Brand image demands a company or group to make specific promises in terms of the product or service quality and standards.

The company or group must adhere to those standards, no matter how long it has been in business. The company or group needs to stick firm to the rules as per the commitment made by it earlier to its customers.

Any non-adherence to the quality or the standards of the company or group’s commitments are bound to harm the image gained by it and certainly decrease its sales and creditability in the minds of the customers.

What is Strategy?

A strategy is the process of determination of long term business goals and objectives of a company that at the proper allocation of necessary resources and the appropriate adoption of appropriate courses of action.

What are Brand Strategy and its importance?

Brand Strategy is a pretty hard concept to define. It encompasses the promises one sets to be associated with his or her company. The messages one conveys through the company.

The behavioral approach and practices followed in the company. To sum up, Brand Strategy is the company personality that its owners or promoters try and project to its customers and the markets in general.

A successful brand image created by a company or firm involves the adoption of specific vital strategies by it.

These strategies, when applied with proper planning and orientation, can push the company’s brand to greater heights and catapult its image amongst customers.

These strategies are as follows:

1. The positioning of a Brand

Positioning a brand refers to the place where you want your brand to be in a prospective customer’s mind.

It is a psychological level where you want to be when a customer, in search of a particular product or service. Ideally,   you want to reach to such a level of confidence, in a customer’s mind, that he or she will correlate a particular brand with a specific product.

For example, we often demand a packet of Surf in the market, not even realizing that Surf is the brand name of Hindustan Unilever Limited.

We are so used to with the name Surf that we tend to forget the actual name of the product that is detergent powder.

Brand Image

Such is the level of a brand that should ideally be thinking of positioning itself in the customer’s mind. Other examples of brand association with products are Colgate for toothpaste, Maggie for instant noodles, Life India Corporation of India with life coverage insurance policies, etc..

All these examples remind us about the brand-specific correlation with the product or service. Brand positioning regarding a place in a target customer should be high. A brand should be easily co relatable, and the benefits associated with a    brand’s product or services should be top.

There must be enough proofs available for a customer to verify with the benefits claimed by a Brand.

2. The architecture associated with a Brand

A brand is well perceived if it follows a   proper architecture related to the products and services it offers.

A brand can create a   master brand and then club multiple sub-brands under the same umbrella. For example, the Tata Sons have many sub-brands like Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy    Services, Tata Teleservices, Tata Motors, and so on under the parent brand of Tata.  

This generates a sense of the Tata flavour in any sub-brand offerings made.    Customers tend to go with the parent brand reputation when it comes to brand architecture is concerned.

A competent business firm can generate a broad business base and a wide array of businesses under the ahead and parent brand umbrella.

Talking of brand architectures and their management, another brand stands out; it is the Reliance   Group.

This group, too, holds several sub-brands like Reliance Jio, Reliance    Petroleum, Reliance Industries, and etc. all under the same parent brand Reliance.

This easily attracts customers to buy any product under the name of Reliance and effectively generates more significant revenue for the company and the group at large.

Thus brands with a distributed architecture are more likely to grow its business and spread its market reach and expand its businesses at large as compared with brands with the improper or weaker architecture of brands.

  3. Brand and Product Line Extensions

A brand producing a particular product can extend its product line to create variants of its existing products or services.

For example, Coca Cola has options like Diet Coke, Coca Cola Cherry Zero, etc. These variants constitute a product line extension of existing products of Coca Cola. Kinley also a product of Coca Cola, but it is in the market with an entirely new brand identity.

Thus this can be termed as Brand Extension. Brand extension is the creation of an entirely new brand for a product and launching it in the market. This minimizes the risk associated with the failure of a particular product, and it reduces the risk of deteriorating the existing brand image. 

In brand extension, a new product with a   different brand name is less likely to produce a significant impact on its failure on the parent brand.

This strategy is applied by many established brands to safeguard against product failures and minimizing risk associated with failed products or services.

Product extensions and product line extensions are, however, risky. The risk factor associated is a huge one.

As new products are just only an extension or curtailment of an existing brand, risks of failure are enormous, evolving out of a    product line extension failure upon the entire product range.

It can lead to loss of faith in the brand series and, as a result, can force producers to stop production of the whole range of products or services.

Why is branding important?

Reading through, we find that designing a brand strategy should be very intricate to impact a brand’s image growth positively. A particular brand has to very cautiously develop a customized brand strategy that suits its business, style, and ethical policies.

It should mould a plan to adapt its culture and values ideally. A company or group can think of developing a strategy wherein sustainable brand development becomes a reality.

It should choose the appropriate steps in brand strategy formulation, followed by its implementation. It should focus on customization to suit itself because not one size fits all businesses.

Brand Image and CSR

A company or group, to gain popularity and generate brand-loyal customers, must engage in some Corporate Social Responsibilities as well.

Engaging in Corporate Social Responsibilities helps develop a positive outlook towards the company in his or her mind. 

Corporate Social Responsibilities tend to make an impression that, “The Company has a good moral and social policy.”  This helps gather a great attraction of the media and the public at large towards the brand. Many people associate such a brand as “the brand to look forward to,” which represents greater faith in the company or the group at large.

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SEO

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Guide for 2020

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SEO Search Engine Optimization

A Complete Guide to SEO: What You Need to Know in 2020

Search Engine Optimization is an aspect of Internet Marketing and this suggests that there are other traffic generating methods online; however, SEO is a favorite among internet marketers and business owners, because, it’s a perfect source of organic traffic. When you desire to build credibility and brand loyalty for your business, SEO should be your preferred starting point.

According to stats, 93% of online experiences start with the search engine. What does this mean to new business or even thriving businesses? The answer is simple. It means that under normal circumstances, every business has a 9 out of 10 chances of being discovered through search engines. No wonder why search engine advertising is very important for your business growth.

What exactly is SEO, and how can you use it to promote your online business?

What is SEO?

SEO Search Engine Optimization
SEO Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is a vital online marketing source that uses the search engine as a way of promoting online businesses. It is a very perfect source of free organic traffic. The search engines provide an organized structure for people to discover products or services online through conducting searches and using specific keywords.

According to Wiki the definition of SEO is as below

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.

When people access your website as a result of specific keywords, they are regarded as organic, targeted, of primary traffic. Internet marketers observe that the inflow of people through search engines increases the conversation rate because they are interested in the product or service. 

For example, When people search for an “iPhone case” via Google, thousands of websites offering the product will be displayed with links to their different websites. When searchers click through the links they will be taken to the website, and because they conducted the search which indicates their interest in the product, there is a good chance the prospects will buy the product or perform other forms of action on the website; this is the importance of SEO and why it’s the number one source of online advertising. 

How SEO works:

Search engine advertising is made up of crawling, indexing, and selecting results. The search engine process is a technical one that requires solid knowledge and skill to execute. Below is a brief explanation of the process. 

First is the crawling stage. It is called spidering which simply refers to the act of scanning a website’s keywords, sections, contents, images, headings, and hyperlinks by bots. These bots crawl the internet constantly to update data. 

The indexing stage: After the scanning of the internet by bots, then indexing can occur. The result of crawling will usually lead to the successful addition of a website in a search engine which makes it visible. Indexing usually takes time depending on the quantity of data that requires crawling. 

Whenever there is a change or update made n a website, it will be crawled again.

Selecting the result:

After a search query is submitted by a website owner, the search engine kicks to action to investigate the index and extracts corresponding outcomes. 

The importance of SEO

Statistics show that about 93% of the world’s internet marketing traffic comes directly from an online search, while sixty-seven thousand (67,000) search engine searches are performed every second on Google. This is not all, 80% of people overlook paid ads in favor of search engine results.

These stats show the high relevance that search engine marketing has on other types of internet marketing. Below are some of the reasons why generating traffic through search engines is vital for your business.

1. Increased user experience:

Search engine optimization can boost users’ experience resulting in increased leads, clicks, and conversion rates.

2. It is an excellent source of primary leads:

SEO is a factor of inbound strategies including others like social media, referrals, content marketing, etc. Inbound tactics are an effective traffic generation avenue that is sure to result in the success of leads generation among B2C, B2B, and non-profit companies.

3. It brings about increased close rates:

Unlike out-bounds lead which has a close rate of 1.7%, SEO leads parades a whopping average close rate of 14.6%. This means that if a customer locates your service or products through searches, there is a very high tendency that he or she will either like your product, stay longer on your page, opt-in to your list or order your product.

4. Reduced advertising cost:

According to search journal, inbound leads coming from search result has the potential of reducing your cost of generating leads by 61%. Therefore, it reduces the cost of advertising hence boosting your bottom-line.

5. It promotes local business patronage:

With SEO, local clients may decide to visit your physical business address after their online search. Remember earlier in this write-up, it was declared that 91% of online experience begins through search engine searches, so imagine if after searching a particular keyword and your website shows up in number one result, the outcome will be a mammoth flow of leads to your website.

6. It builds the credibility of your business and brand loyalty:

Ranking on the top 3 search results will make prospects perceive you as an authority in your niche. It, therefore, shows that you are one of the best in your industry and this perception alone guarantees patronage and brand loyalty.

Types of SEO:

There are different SEO types, in this article, four types will be discussed briefly, and they are technical, on-page, local, and off-page SEO. 

1.Technical SEO:

This is the technical strictures that influence a website’s search engine accessibility. The core objective of this type of SEO is to guarantees the effectiveness of search engine crawlers among others which are:

  • Helping to optimize and check robot.txts that guarantees effective search engine website accessibility.
  • Adopting coverage reports to discover and correct mistakes
  • Creating and delivering XML Sitemap to the entire internet search engines
  • making websites loads very fast on mobile and desktop devices
  • Optimizing the URL and website structure.

2. On-page SEO:

This involves everything that has to do with the page plus how it can be made user and search engine-friendly. You must focus on optimizing all your site pages because search engine ranking is performed on a page to page basis. The key factors required for on-page optimization are:

  • Title optimization. This is very important because the title of your site pages shows up on page results; therefore, it should be interesting and attractive. Optimizing your H1, H2, and H3 tags for various sections.
  • Images: optimizing any image(s) used in your websites, if you don’t, search engines will not recognize it.
  • Page formatting: Always take time to beautify your images and text before you publish the website. Avoid the habit of wrong formatting as it will work against you.
  • Content SEO: This has to do with the quality of your website content and how you can make it better.

3. Off-page SEO:

Off-page SEO involves internet promotion. It focuses on the strategies adopted by you to advertise your website. There are different off-page SEO strategy, the major one is link building.

Popular websites have a greater propensity of receiving higher ranking than less-known sites. The major off-page SEO methods are link building and brand advertising, 

4. Local SEO:

This type of SEO is created or is best suited for offline or local businesses alone. If you operate a business locally and you have a website, should you need to redirect online traffic to your local business via your website, practice local SEO?

SEO activities

The higher a website is in a search engine result the more chances of being seen by prospects. A website that does not show up in the first 10 results may not be seen by searchers, and this is why businesses fight for top search engine placements or ranking. Therefore, the totality of this type of advertising is not just about getting on the search engine, but about getting top ranking for better exposure.

This is why the best SEO guide will focus mostly on how to rank high in search results and importantly making your website convert using strategies.

Performing basic SEO activity

On-page SEO is technical and very important if you want to get indexed and ranked in the search engines. In the past on-page, SEO was all about meta-tags, headlines, and optimized content. Today, it’s a new ball game, the new SEO trends involve doing things differently to enjoy SEO in 2020. 

So when creating your website, follow these tips:

  1. Discover what people are looking for before you start creating your website contents
  2. Apply headlines and title tags. Produce a very interesting meta-description, title tag, and headlines. Avoid keyword over-stuffing – it doesn’t work anymore. Focus on making an excellent call to action in your meta description. 
  3. SEO-friendly URL works any day, so use it as an optimization strategy. The best type of URL should be one that matches the theme of your website. For example, if your website is about “dog training,” your URL should have keyword relating to “dog training” like “www.dogtraining.com
  4. Graphics and multimedia: Engaging your visitors is an excellent SEO ranking strategy. Google takes to account how long a visitor stays on your website and uses the action as a ranking factor. Therefore, optimizing your images, videos, is a good SEO and ranking strategy, also, adding interesting visual contents like Infographics, charts, polls, comments, etc will not only attract visitors, it will make them spend time on your website.
  5. Internal and outbound links: Give your website the needed relevancy. Linking to authority website through creating outbound link will shoot your website up search engine ranking

 Summary

Search engine optimization is a type of internet marketing that involves generating traffic through the use of search engines. It is a favorite of internet marketing experts, and businesses too because it provides business credibility and brand loyalty, increases bottom-line, etc. In 2020, the use of SEO advertising will increase beyond anyone’s expectations. Therefore, individuals and business owners should possess at least a basic knowledge of the subject by attending SEO tutorials.

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What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020?

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What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 10 The Digital Chapters

Brand Building Strategies

What is a Brand ? What are some Brand Building Strategies ? What are difference between Brand and Branding? There are a lot of question that arises. Here is the detailed guide for you about marketing, branding and brand building

We are going to discuss the following in this post-:

Table of Content

  1. What is a Brand
  2. What is Branding?
  3. What is not Branding ?
  4. Why Branding is so Important to everyone?
  5. Brand Identity Selection:
  6. What is Brand Sponsorship ?
  7. Brand Development

What is a Brand ?

A Brand is a term that is used for a Company, Product, Symbol, Design, Person or Any other service that is offered to customers that distinct from other similar things. There are multiple definitions by different marketing professionals and experts. Some of the are here-:

  • Brand Building Strategies
    Brand Building Strategies

According to The American Marketing Association ,

“A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”

Philip Kotler and Gary Amstrong defined the Brand as a-:

“name, term, sign symbol (or a combination of these) that identifies the maker or seller of the product”.

And P.Tailor of defines a Brand as a,

“Marketing tool that allows consumers to recognize the maker of a product”.

What is Branding?

 If you ask to me what Branding is ? I will define in simple words; branding is a set of activities to promote a brand In this, you will require an Advertisement, Promotion, and all other Marketing activities that required to make it different from others.

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 11 The Digital Chapters

Branding is a set of marketing activities aimed at the creation of a differentiated identity for company, product, service or an Individual. Branding puts one’s company in a distinct position from its competitors.

Branding is the focused marketing activities set, which aims at setting one’s business different from the others around. Brand of a company or group is the intangible value as perceived by its customers.

The brand-building process aims at creating a perception of additional value, apart from the usage value, which a customer should get when using a company or group’s product or services.  

Branding is a set of marketing activities and this is a process of building a brand. Branding starts from creating a logo and completed to turning customers into sales.
If you want to attract a customer to your product or service you do many things and that all is Branding. In this entire activity process to attract a customer you have to do many things like Finding a unique name, catchy taglines, attractive logo, Image and creatives of the product and service

What is not Branding ?

Many people get confused while understanding the real meaning of Branding. They think creating a logo, creative or an advertisement is a Branding and actually this is not.

Branding is more than what you think. This is a process to attract people to your brand.

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 12 The Digital Chapters

Branding is creating a brand and Brand is Branding.
Branding is -:
 1. Who you are ?
2. What you stand for/ What is your purpose ?
3. Why it exists ?
4. How you are different?
5. How someone feel about it?
6. Who associates with your brand ?

Brand building is a set of unwritten commitments to one’s customers about the affectivity, consistency, quality, and the truthiness of purpose delivered as an additional package or bundle with the actual set of qualities borne by the product or service.

Branding and marketing are often confused with being all and the same. But essentially, brand strategy is one channelized marketing effort of building an emotional connection between customers and a company’s products, or services whilst marketing is the overall process of revenue generation from them.

Why Branding is so Important to everyone?

Brand building process is an extremely essential process to make long-lasting impressions in the minds of the common customers.

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 13 The Digital Chapters
  • Stand out a clear communication to people.
  • Identify and recognize your Brand.
  • It makes a credibility in the marketplace.
  • Connect with people emotionally.
  • Attract buyers to add the brand.
  • Branding helps recognizing a Brand.
  • Branding helps in referrals.

Brand identity instantly influences a prospective customer, which impacts buying decisions and propels him or her to choose a particular brand over others.

Thus, Brand Identity can catapult a prospective buyer to a revenue source of the company.

Brand Strategy creates an explicit recognition for a particular company or group’s business, commanding a higher degree of attraction amongst the masses.

The brand identity, if positively circulated, has the potential to generate heightened sales and add up to create a more extensive customer base. Branding, in itself, is an excellent source of advertising for a company or group.

The greatest asset of an established brand identity is the positive word of mouth advertisement which passes on from brand-loyal customers to the probable ones and increases their overall strength.

Brand Identity Selection:

The Brand building process starts with the selection of a particular brand name, the choice of a suitable tagline, a symbol, and a registered trademark for a specific company or group for unique identification amongst a wide variety of offers. A brand identity should clearly be in line with the vision and mission of the company or group. It should highlight

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 14 The Digital Chapters

the firm’s or group’s beliefs and values, which gives it uniqueness. Selection of Brand Identity should be in perfect sync with the ethics and moral value

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning refers to the place a brand wants to behold in the minds of the customers. It encompasses the brand’s promise revolving round the core benefits delivered by the product(s) or service(s) offered by the brand; over the nearest rivals of the brand. Brand positioning is a clear indicator to judge where a particular brand exists in the market, which is no short of rivals and competitors.  

What is Brand Sponsorship ?

Brand building process involves a strategic mix of decisions involving how a brand is primarily sponsored.

A brand can mostly be sponsored in the following ways-:

i. Manufacturer’s Brand

When the manufacturer of a particular item markets the goods produced by itself under its own name, it is called Manufacturer Branding.

The manufacturer, in this case, is called the Original Brand Manufacturer thus an original brand manufacturer retails the goods produced by it.

ii. Private Brand

When a brand is owned by a wholesaler or retailer of a particular product that is not produced or manufactured by them, then such a brand identity is known as Private Brand or commonly referred to as Private Label.

iii. Co-branding

It refers to the conscious coming together on collaborative terms by two or more parties to market a particular product or service. It happens when mergers and acquisitions take place amongst companies and also when a lesser-known company launches its product and uses the brand identity of a well-known company to aid the overall business.

iv. Licensing:

Brand licensing is when the owner of a particular brand allows some other firm to use its brand identity for marketing its products. The owner of the brand gets a tremendous amount of royalty for licensing its brand identity to the licensee.

v. Franchising:

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 15 The Digital Chapters

Franchising is a process wherein a brand owner issues permission to use its brand identity to another firm strictly on its terms and conditions. The franchisee has to adhere to these terms and conditions to the very core. Also, the franchisee has to guarantee the maintenance of quality norms and standards as demanded by the brand owner. The franchisee has to obtain permission from a brand owner to market any other brand in its facility. Also, it has to commit the promote and rescue the interest of the brand owner.

Brand Development:

A brand development process includes product line extensions under the roof of a brand. It also involves a brand extension, which essentially refers to horizontal expansion of the brand products or increasing the product mix.

A company or group has the choice of becoming a “House of Brands” or “A Branded House.” A house of brands essentially refers to when the owner prefers to hold multiple brands under the original or parent roof and markets each product, in its mix, as an individual brand in itself.

A branded house, on the other hand, incorporated the brand tag on all of its products, highlighting and showcasing the powerfulness and diversity in the range of products of one particular brand.

Brand Types

            Branding can typically be subdivided into three major types as described below:

The Corporate Brand:

A typical brand identity associated with a big Corporate House owning the brand under which many different products and product lines are housed is called The Corporate Brand.

For example, The Tata Group, The Coca-Cola Global brand, General Motors, and the like. Being a well-known identity, the Corporate Brand is easily associated with the customers, and a Corporate Brand’s products or services are instantly accepted and marketed fast as compared to other products or services which stand in direct competition with them.

The Product Brand:

Some firms believe that promoting a product’s or product lines’ name as a brand image in itself is suitable for marketing. Thus they promote the individual products’ name as the brand image; for example, Maggie, Kitkat, etc. are all products of Nestle Company, but they themselves are individual brands in themselves.

Fast Moving Consumer Goods market is also full of products where the individual products like Lifebuoy, Clinic, Fair and Lovely, Vaseline, Axe, Rexona, etc. are all brand names in themselves. Seldom are they correlated with the parent company brand that is Hindustan Unilever Limited. Similarly, ITC’s products, like Aashirwad atta, Sunfeast, Yippee, Candyman, Classmate, etc. are individual Product Brands. 

The Personal Brand:

Personal Branding is a type of branding and marketing that involves practices and activities aimed at developing a brand image and reputation of an individual or a group of individuals.

Individual names are associated with brands like The Trump Towers, which is a big name in the international real estate market.

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 16 The Digital Chapters

Celebrities such as actors, actresses, sportsperson are very much sought after for their personal brand. Some big shots of personal brands in today’s context are Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Aishwariya Rai, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, M. S. Dhoni, Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal, Tiger Woods, Kim Kardashian and so on.

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 17 The Digital Chapters

These individuals have excellent profiles in their respective careers. They are thus romped-in by business firms to endorse their products, which have an immediate impact on the customer base and are a sure-shot formula for increasing the sales of one’s products or services.

Thus we see that branding surely helps in creating a connection in the customers’ minds about the quality, value, and dependability of a company’s products or services.

Customers are very expectant when they come across new products or services of established brand identity and get easily moulded in choosing them and neglecting others around.

But, the brand-building process is a tenacious and long-term one. We cannot expect our company’s brand image to shoot up overnight. It takes an enormous amount of brand strategy and planning to go with personal efforts put in by individuals of the company to create a brand identity.

What is brand building? Do you know about Brand Building Strategies for 2020? 18 The Digital Chapters
Brand Building Process

Moreover, managing an established brand is far more complicated than building a new brand. Expectations from an established brand are far superior as compared to a new band. Thus, maintaining the quality and keeping up with the promises of the company as represented by the brand image is a tedious job.

Customers can quickly move away from a particular brand if their expectations are not fulfilled. Regaining brand identity is a very, very difficult proposition, for example, Maggie, which lost its brand image, had to face a very tough situation to regain its position back.

So, we need to be very cautious with our strategies and should try and develop an effective branding and marketing strategy to create a sustainable Brand Identity for ourselves.

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Business WhatsApp

How to use Business WhatsApp ?

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WhatsApp-Business

How to use Business Whats App? Tips and tricks to use

How to use Business Whats App? Tips and tricks to use
How to use Business Whats App? Tips and tricks to use

WhatsApp is a simple tool like any other app in your mobile. The most used app by all internet user to communicate each other. Messaging fasten your communication with customers. Business WhatsApp is helping many businesses to simply the communication with consumers. This is one of the best Apps for Digital Marketing.

From last few years WhatsApp has modified numerous things that helped it to retain its customers as well as double them.

Some statics you can’t ignore about WhatsApp
  • 1.5 Billion WhatsApp Users
  • 450 million people use WhatsApp daily
  • 2nd most used app
  • 65 million messages a day sent through this app.
  • 100 a voice calls a day
  •  2 million users in china
  • 200 million users in India
The best thing of WhatsApp is that it is easier than any other app to use. Businesses don’t need to educate buyers or their customers about this App; so, it helps businesses to send their message to customers without any efforts. Another great thing of WhatsApp is that, this doesn’t cost a single coin. It’s free.

What is business WhatsApp?

How to use Business Whats App?
How to use Business Whats App?

Business WhatsApp is like the same WhatsApp that you have in your mobile. This simplifies the use of WhatsApp for small business owners to communicate with their customers in a speedy way.  WhatsApp officially describe about Business WhatsApp-:

WhatsApp Business is an Android app which is free to download, and was built with the small business owner in mind. With the app, businesses can interact with customers easily by using tools to automate, sort, and quickly respond to messages.
Business WhatsApp gives you following new things that a normal WhatsApp doesn’t have 
1. Labels – it helps businesses to categories their customers and chat
2. Business profile- her you can describe your business with website link, email, GPS location on Phone no
3. Auto Messages- The best thing is you can sent automated messages to users
4. Delivery Reports- You can see the no of messages are sent or received
5. Verification- You can verify it with landline as well.
6. You can run web WhatsApp in many laptops or desktops

Is WhatsApp business important for my business

Yes, and Of course this is very important for your business and if you are not using start using it and it will grow your customer retention.
Cold calling can’t help you much but messaging still exists whether it’s smart messaging or texting. WhatsApp helps you sending unlimited text, videos or Images with description of your products and services.

How can I use business WhatsApp for my company?

You can start it from the easier format. Some businesses are using for offers and services however you can use this for customer support as well. This will help your customers to retain with you.

How to start the business WhatsApp

Step 1- Go to  play store in your mobile and search business WhatsApp
Step 2- Download the Business WhatsApp and Agree with terms and conditions
Step 3- Add the business no, you can use landline no.
Step 4- Verify your no. if this is landline you will receive a call about the code, note the code and enter the code to verify it.
Step 5- Fill out all the information on it like business name, website, business location, email or phone no. that you want to show (Remember this will be visible to public)

How should I set up Business WhatsApp?

Setting is up the business WhatsApp business is easier but you need to be very farsighted while the filling the information. Put only the relevant information that you can’t to share it with your users or customers.
Don’t forget to use automated messages in business WhatsApp. Set up greeting messages and away messages that will help customers to engage with you and will show you the customers that you provide quick replies.
Open web.whats-app.com in different computers and scan the code. Many users can use a single business WhatsApp at the different system at the same time and can chat with 100s of customers. Be wise while setting up the business WhatsApp.
 
Please share your comments and share your thoughts regarding the article. I will discuss about it in next article

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Referral Marketing

Referral Marketing Program: Everything You Need to Know About

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Referral-Marketing-Techniques

 Everything You Need to Know About Referral Marketing Program

Referral Marketing Program: Everything You Need to Know About
Referral Marketing Program: Everything You Need to Know About

From the past few years referral marketing has been acquired by many top brands and this is really helping them to grow faster than any other strategy for their business.

In Digital Marketing world when you plan about growing business online than you can’t ignore the referral marketing program.

Referral marketing program has helped several businesses to engage their customer and have helped them to retain their customers.
Many of the businesses are far away from referral marketing but in the coming years it will be necessity to bring loyal customers on board.
Referral Marketing Program: Everything You Need to Know About
Referral Marketing Program: Everything You Need to Know About
If you want build your brand or grow your online presence than you should not forget the referral marketing program.

What is referral marketing?

Referral marketing is when you get your customers to tell their friends about you.
This is a way of making fan following, creating a list of customer by obtaining support from specific sources or this is way getting referred your business to your customers friends
According to the New York Times, 65% of all new business comes from referrals. That means on average, two-thirds of consumers make purchases because someone they know recommended a particular product or service.
In normal words Referral marketing is a technique of promoting your products, services or your businesses to your friends.

How Referral Marketing help you in your business

This is great way promoting your brands organically without spending much on Advertisements. You just need to make great referral marketing program that engage your existing customer. The program should help retaining your customers and help you bringing new customer
 
 
Why should you use referral marketing?
Because you are human being and you always share your happenings and experience with your friends. When your friends recommend something to buy a product you definitely buy that and that’s referral marketing.
  • 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know – Nielsen
  • People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend – Nielsen
  • Consumers rely on word-of-mouth 2-10x more than paid media. – Boston Consulting Group
Following are the few reasons to use referral marketing-:
  • It saves your marketing budget
  • It retains your customer and acquire new customer
  • It is user friendly and customer centric marketing strategy
  • It engages customers and gives them benefits to retain with the brand
  •  This way you not only save your money but also bring new customer.
Referral Marketing Process
Any referral marketing program depends on the product, service, nature of business and its type of customers.
Let’s discuss few things about referral marketing process-
  • Discuss with your sales and marketing team about the customers
  • Understand the customers behavior and trends of the business in your industry
  • Draw a plan with sales team about what they can offer to a customer if that bring another customer
  • Discuss the finances with marketing team and chalk out the promotion plan
  • Make digital marketing plan to advertise your referral marketing program
The success of referral programme depends on the sales and marketing team. You need to plan the great rewards, offers, discounts or cash back offers to bring more customers or retain the existing one.
 
I will discuss the details of Referral Marketing in next article. Happy Reading.
 
 
You can explore more about different blog post at thedigitalchapters.com
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Pinterest Marketing

5 tips to improve your Pinterest Marketing

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pinterest marketing
Tор 5 tірѕ fоr Pіntеrеѕt Mаrkеtіng

5 tips to improve your Pinterest Marketing
5 tips to improve your Pinterest Marketing

Have you been looking fоr nеw mаrkеtіng ways to promote your business? If your аnѕwеr іѕ уеѕ, thеn уоu nееd to Cоnѕіdеr Pinterest.

Pinterest is a ѕосіаl mеdіа wеbѕіtе that іѕ fast-growing and addictive. It’ѕ image-focused, so,it is реrfесt fоr аdvеrtіѕіng. Pіntеrеѕt has аlwауѕ bееn аbоut thе ѕhаrіng аnd discovery оf іdеаѕwhich has аlѕо bесоme оnе оf thе mоѕt роwеrful аdvеrtіѕіng рlаtfоrm tо drіvе реrfоrmаnсе mаrkеtіng thrоugh thе соnсерt оf іdеа dіѕсоvеrу.

 Thе ѕіtе iѕ еаѕу tо uѕе, so, іt wоn’t take too much of your time to gеt up tо ѕрееd оn hоw іt wоrkѕ, аnd оn hоw уоu саn bеѕt make uѕе of іt in order to promote your business.
If уоu haven’t dоnе ѕо аlrеаdу, then it is time for you to add Pіntеrеѕt buttons and widgets tо your оwn website, so thаt уоur customers can “ріn” уоur іmаgеѕ. Thеn, gеt acquainted with the ѕіtе so that you will be able to best uѕе іt as раrt of уоur mаrkеtіng strategy.

These fіvе tірѕwill hеlр you to gеt thе mоѕt out of Pіntеrеѕt.

1.     Bе Prolific: Crеаtе Boards fоr Your Prоduсtѕ, аnd fоr Yоur Customers’ Intеrеѕtѕ

 Check оut whаt other соmраnіеѕ are dоіng. Petplan Pеt Inѕurаnсе fоr example hаѕ 42 boards wіth сutе images, аnd creative names, ѕuсh аѕ “Thе Bark Arоund thе Pаrk“.Rеtаіlеr Bеrgdоrf Gооdmаn hаѕ 39 bоаrdѕ which rеflесt the соmраnу’ѕ image, and showcase muѕt-hаvеѕ fоr ѕtуlіѕh women. One board, “History оf thе Lіttlе Blасk Jасkеt“, focuses on thе mаkіng оf аn ісоnіс jасkеt. You саn imagine customers whірріng оut thеіr сrеdіt саrdѕ whеn thеу ѕее thе саrе аnd сrаftѕmаnѕhір thаt gоеѕ into mаkіng ѕuсh a jасkеt.Aѕ уоu сlісk thrоugh оthеr соmраnіеѕ’ boards, make notes оf сlеvеr іdеаѕ you саn uѕе.

2.     Get Social оn thе Site

Fоllоw оthеrѕ, аnd pin others’ ріnѕ. Others wіll ѕее your асtіvіtу іn thеіr ѕtrеаmѕ and nоtіfісаtіоnѕ, аnd thеу’ll dіѕсоvеr уоur bоаrdѕ and will follow you.

3.     Gеt Chatty: Comment on Pорulаr Pіnѕ (Bесаuѕе Thеѕе Pins Arе Seen Mоrе Oftеn)

Pіntеrеѕt’ѕ “Pорulаr” саtеgоrу соnѕіѕtѕ of ріnѕ whісh аrе pinned mоѕt оftеn, аnd commented on most оftеn. Whеn уоu comment on ріnѕ іn thіѕ саtеgоrу, mоrе uѕеrѕ will ѕее уоur comments. As wіth blog соmmеntіng, be ѕіnсеrе and ѕресіfіс іn уоur соmmеntѕ. Say what уоu lіkе аbоut thе ріn and whу you like it, rаthеr thаn ѕіmрlу say  “I lіkе it.” Bе саrеful nоt tо оvеr-dо thе commenting; dоn’t соmmеnt-ѕраm.

4.     Prоmоtе Yоur Pinterest Boards tо Your Cuѕtоmеrѕ, аnd оn Yоur Othеr Social Mеdіа Accounts

Let your сuѕtоmеrѕ knоw that уоu’rе асtіvе оn Pinterest, аnd encourage them tо check оut уоur boards, аnd interact wіth you. Contests are рорulаr, ѕо соnѕіdеr runnіng оnе.Yоu саn also find уоur friends оn other ѕосіаl mеdіа accounts like Twіttеr аnd Facebook. Tо dо thіѕ, сlісk оn your buѕіnеѕѕ nаmе оn the home раgе. Choose Find Frіеndѕ from thе drор-dоwn list.

5.     Crеаtе a Pіntеrеѕt Mаrkеtіng Plаn

Aѕ уоu create mоrе bоаrdѕ аnd аdd ріnѕ tо thоѕе bоаrdѕ, ѕtаrt рrоmоtіng іndіvіduаl boards, rаthеr than уоur entire ассоunt. Create a рlаn, fосuѕіng оn one оr twо bоаrdѕ a wееk. As with аll online mаrkеtіng асtіvіtіеѕ, уоu ѕhоuld сhесk your аnаlуtісѕ tо еnѕurе уоur еffоrtѕ аrе gеttіng results – This аllоwѕ you to trасk how mаnу people hаvе been pinning frоm уоur website аnd hоw many people hаvе vіеwеd уоur pins. Mаkе аdjuѕtmеntѕ based оn уоur findings. 

Rеmеmbеr, the рurроѕе оf mаrkеtіng your buѕіnеѕѕ wіth Pinterest іѕ tо drіvе mоrе rеfеrrаl traffic tо your wеbѕіtеѕ and sales раgеѕ.

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Pin It The Digital Chapters