Strategy is king! You, as an entrepreneur or a business enthusiast, know that there’s not a day in the business world that goes by without a proper strategy. It’s a sure way to success. If we have to explain the importance of strategy, take a regular day as an example. From the moment we wake up to the moment we hit the bed, everything we do has a reason why we do it.
If you start a project today, your mind will subconsciously map the best route and strategy to take in order to finish the project on time. This process of mapping out a rough plan is key to taking the first steps. In this blog, we’ll explain to you what a proper digital strategy does to your business.
What exactly is a digital strategy?
Earlier, we talked about what strategy is. It’s the plan that you need to finish a task successfully. Now, when you apply the same to the digital communication of your brand, it evolves as a digital strategy. In simple terms, a digital strategy is a plan that you’ll need to follow for your business to grow on an online platform.
This blog is also a way for us to explain to you what you can expect when you take us on board to create a digital strategy for your business. While there are multiple ways we go about creating it, in this blog, we’ll explain the basics of what happens behind the scenes.
What happens Behind The Scene?
We are always proud of how we managed to create perfect strategies for brands throughout our journey. And, we can say that it’s definitely not a cakewalk. To create a strategy, there are tons of factors to consider and tons more to implement. Here’s how we strategise your digital presence:
Research is the backbone of everything we do. We put brakes on our creative selves and start digging into every aspect of the brand. Before we can think of creating a campaign, we need to know who the brand’s audience is because communication isn’t just about the brand talking but about making the audience listen.
The audience’s span of attention has reduced to seconds these days, and we need to perfectly target the communication to those who want to listen to the brand. Research helps us know the audience better.
What goals do we want to achieve?
The goals that we set for the brand and ourselves depend entirely on the purpose of the campaign. Depending on the end result you need, we’ll set a few goals to achieve within the campaign duration.
Is budget important? What’s an action plan?
If research is the backbone of a strategy, an appropriate budget is a foundation. The scale of a campaign’s reach depends mostly on the budget. Once the budget is finalised, we’ll propose the action plan. The plan contains the set paths that we’ll need to follow to drive the campaign to success.
Implementation & analysing results
Winston Churchill said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results”. We follow this with every campaign we do. This gives both the brand and us what we have achieved. To learn from our own experiences is a thing of beauty.
This is how we create a digital strategy for a brand and its campaign. Although this is only a part and the basics of what we do, we’d suggest that you get in touch with us to know more. There’s a lot of ground to cover before creating a strategy, and we think that you’ll enjoy getting to know more.
Running a school is quite possibly a challenging task. There is a lot of weight that ‘trust’ carries. When a parent looks for a school for their child, they weigh every aspect of the school. One simple flaw about the school, from the looks to the feel, could create a negative impression on the parent. We had an amazing opportunity to work on a campaign for an International School in Warangal called Skill Stork. They are relatively new to the competition but have a good rapport with the community in Warangal.
This school was established by the SVS group of institutions, a well-known group in the Warangal region. As mentioned in the blog, this establishment is fairly new to the public. This is a challenge we had to overcome before creating the campaign.
Phase 1: Brand campaigns about the school
Even though the overall campaign ran for 6 months, we had worked on creating a measurable impact on the brand through social media prior to launching the campaign. We have begun their communication by presenting the live pictures and the atmosphere of the school. We have published creative campaigns using their ambience so that the audience gets to know the true colours of the school.
Phase 2: Communicating all about the school
As we moved closer to the admissions phase, we started communicating all that the school offers to the parents and the students. From the aspects of academics to the facilities that the school provides, phase 2 of the communication built a good bridge between the audience and the brand.
Phase 3: Paid Ad campaigns to drive admissions
Before creating the campaign, we did a thorough analysis of the challenges. Warangal is different from other cities. So, we had to be thorough in the plans we pitched. We made critical changes to our existing strategies and tailored a custom plan for this brand. The primary target audience for our campaign was parents in the age group of 22 – 45 years.
As the primary age group was a broader one, we targeted another age group within the primary one. The secondary target audience was parents who are in a better financial position and are looking to shift their kids to a better school. The age group for this set was 35 – 45 year parents.
Campaigns and their results
Moving forward, we have created a well-thought landing page to drive admissions. We set platforms for our communications- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Ads. Once these platforms are set up, we create campaigns that are children-centric, facility-centric, and so on. These helped the campaign give a solid boost to the audience and generated high-quality leads. After launching the campaigns, we have also managed the school’s reputation by being active on social media and successfully managing its online presence.
Key Highlights of the campaign:
The total span of the campaign 6 months
The total number of admissions recorded 1,400
Traffic generated 60,830
In addition to these numbers, the keywords we used for the campaign ranked first and made their way to the first page of Google search in the Warangal region.
This campaign will remain one of our success stories. The challenges gave us tons of new experiences, and we are optimistic that they will open new doors for improvement.
How do you turn a prospect into a lifetime customer? This is where you need to be acquainted with the concept of Lead Generation. And from a business perspective, lead generation ensures you are ideally matched with potential customers. Further, you need to strategise with the audience to turn them into potential customers.
Well, one of the main objectives of any business is acquiring leads. Quality leads and prospects have a certain interest in your services and products. Also, potential leads can generate sales and Revenue of Income (ROI). With the introduction of marketing tools, you can fine-tune your attributes to generate good leads. Well, the only challenge you face regarding lead generation is- you need to identify which lead is of high quality and ready to buy. In this blog, we will give you an insight into the world of lead generation and how to partner it with your business to soar high!
What are the three approaches to lead generation?
Almost all businesses today are technologically driven; therefore, it is essential to adapt according to the advancements and possibilities. Moreover, the strategies that you adopted one year ago, which gave you potential results, may not yield results today. Therefore, you must be aware of certain ground rules to generate more sales leads.
Content Marketing
To begin with, one of the top lead-generating methods is content marketing. There are several ways in which you can use content marketing to generate sales. Webinars are one of the most known ways of lead generation. You can use videos and blogs to generate quality leads. If you haven’t started your lead generation strategy with videos, it’s time to! It helps in building a large community of like-minded people who has purchasing potential.
SEO
SEO is considered to be the biggest source of leads for B2Bs. Therefore, SEO can serve as one of the growth strategies for your business. The main aim of SEO is to bring visibility to your services and products. SEO works on keywords, and they are used to optimise your web content. If your business focuses on local foot traffic, then you should focus on local SEO strategies. You can also ask your customers to leave reviews of your business online. This will help in ranking more local keywords to generate more leads for your business.
Google ads
Google ads work wonders for lead generation. It drives potential customers who are looking for your services or offers. Also, with Google ads, you can have full control over your cost.
When it comes to lead generation, research should be done on where your audience is. If you’re a Food and business brand, you should focus on active social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. If you’re a B2B brand, LinkedIn is a promising platform to bring in leads. If this step of the process is boiled down properly, you’ll surely be rewarded with high-quality leads that turn into sales.
We, at WIN Creatives, have been the perfect brand partner to many brands in our journey. All along the way, we have delivered our clients with promising leads. If you want to know more about our work, please feel free to browse through our Case Studies section. You’ll get to know all about how we work and tackle brand challenges like a pro. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us today.
What is customer-centricity, and why is it important?
If the content is king, we can say customers are the kingdom. To put it simply, customer centricity is an approach that revolves around customers. Over the past few decades, it is evident how customer-centricity has taken centre stage. So, what should be your goal to ultimately provide the audience with great experiences? How should you approach this? Well, this blog will give you the answers.
How do you get customer-centricity?
Do you have a unique way of approaching customers? If yes, you are halfway there! If your target is a customer, your trial should be efficient. For instance, you should ease the complications, solve problems and should suggest the best path based on customer needs. For instance, if you are a brand or a company dealing with products and services, defining your customer culture should be your first step.
It is not always the revenue which should do the talking; rather, it should be your thinking and approach too. To elaborate, there are certain potential opportunities you should definitely give a thought to cultivate the best results.
Firstly, listen to your customers. By saying so, we don’t just mean conducting surveys and getting your customers to fill out forms. It means to ask the customers specific questions like what and why. This is followed by the customer reality. You need to bridge the gap between your service and customer satisfaction. This is one of the ways you can understand the quality of experience. Always make your customer part of the solution. The next comes mapping the journey of customers. This includes customer interactions as well. So, to reap better results for your brand, it is evident that you should keep thorough monitoring of customer experience. This is where we shine. At WIN, we create a customer-centric approach by analysing where the audience is spending their time. Further, we strategise the best way to reach them and convey the brand.
Why should a business be customer-centric?
Loyalty and retention are the ultimate answers. Now how will this help you to attain your goal? Both of these depend on the company and of course the service that your company offers. More precisely, your business should be the combination of product offering benefits followed by building the value of the brand. With this, you will be able to improve your customer loyalty and retention. We suggest you focus more on the quality of the products and services of your business so that even if your competitors offer them good deals, it will be your quality and loyalty that will keep them close to you.
The final call
In conclusion, the groundwork for successful customer-centricity is to streamline the right culture followed by technology to drive sales. Moreover, both of these are essential to creating a solid & effective strategy. If you are ready to start your journey or want to give a customer-centric dynamism, join us. You’ll be guided with the best possible strategies and solutions to boost your game.
We won’t be surprised if you have heard this word while searching and surfing about Digital Marketing agencies these days. This is because this is right now a growing trend in the advertising space. In this blog, we are going to give you a deeper understanding of what Performance Marketing is, why its gaining popularity, and its advantages too.
What exactly is Performance Marketing?
There are various definitions of Performance Marketing. The easier one is that it is tied up directly with the results of the marketing you do. Meaning, that agencies create campaigns based solely on performance as a scale. Following the same, you pay them based on the results the campaigns reap.
This is how you pay agencies doing Performance Marketing:
(CPC) Cost Per Click: You pay marketers for every click on the ad
(CPM) Cost Per Impression: Using a base rate for every 1000 impressions, you pay marketers based on the total number of impressions the ad creates for the brand.
(CPL) Cost Per Lead: You pay every time the brand receives a lead from the ad campaign.
What type of brands should choose Performance Marketing?
Brands that are eager to grow exponentially. If your brand is new, young, and exciting for your audience, you should choose Performance Marketing. Keep in mind that this type of campaigning and budgeting is a WIN-WIN for both parties. While the agency reaps a good sum until the campaign runs, the brand gets the exposure it needs.
Performance Marketing vs Digital Marketing
There are a few technical aspects that differentiate both these marketing techniques. The first and the most obvious one is that Digital Marketing focuses on paid campaigns such as Search Ads, Display Ads, and Lead Ads. On the other hand, Performance Marketing focuses on reach, impressions, and so on. That way, even though there’s not much push for the brand using paid and traditional methods, there are always metrics that determine the brand’s presence in the audience.
Also, the approach to these marketing techniques is majorly different. While Digital Marketing is about generating leads for the brand using paid campaigns, Performance Marketing flourishes in an organic way to increase the brand’s presence.
There you go. That’s what Performance Marketing is all about. We hope this blog helped you get a better understanding of what it is and if you can apply it to your brand’s growth. If you have any questions, please feel free to connect with us.
Hey there, small business owners! Aren’t these days the best time to start a small business? We hope your business is thriving. Now, you want to take the next step. We can assume that you’re here to know more about how a Digital Marketing Agency can help your business grow. We’re devouring the same in this blog today.
Yes, there are a lot of digital marketing agencies out there. The rise of the pandemic has given way to a lot more too. So, it could become a bit harder to find the right agency to get your business to flourish. But, there are a few factors that you can use as filters while sorting through the agencies. Until you find the right agency, keep searching because there’s a lot a digital marketing agency can offer to a small business.
What makes a good digital marketing agency?
Transparency is one of the most important traits of an agency. Being transparent is a good place to start with. Choose a digital agency that puts honesty before creativity. Moving on, the experience of the agency comes into play. To handle the pressure of today’s rapidly changing social medial world, you need an agency that can adapt itself quickly. Look for an agency that puts out not just their work but also the results of their works.
Factors to consider while choosing a Digital Marketing Agency
What do you need?
In order to assess the type of agency you need, you should be clear about what you need. Is it a product you want to promote? Or maybe a service that you need to increase sales for? Or you want to put your brands’ name and identity out there. Whatever your needs are, make a list and then start sorting the agencies.
Do they offer diversity in advertising?
Digital marketing is a gamut of multiple tools and channels of marketing. When you look for an agency, make sure to do proper research if they provide multiple Digital Marketing services. If you want to see what we offer in Digital Marketing.
Ask for references and reports of their works
This is where most of the agencies on your list will get filtered out. Look for all the material that the agency puts out on its website. Or ask for the results of previous works. While doing this, make sure if the agency has previously worked with any other clients under the same business as yours. This way, you can be sure that there won’t be any hiccups in your work. If you want to see the works that we have done and the case studies, click here.
These are a few tips that you can use while sorting and filtering the agencies you want to work with. To make this process even easier, connect with us. We have expert teams that can create excellent strategies to help your business achieve the desired results. We hope to talk to you soon. Take care.
Hey, digital marketers! Now that we’ve stepped into 2022, there’s a lot of potential to discuss and point out. These things are going to be pivotal. Every year, we get to see new advancements in digital marketing. This year, we are following a few trends that are going to change the path of digital marketing.
Before we dive into what’s going to change in 2022, let’s have a quick recap of what happened in 2021. One of the biggest introductions is the YouTube shorts. This way of short video content has seen a huge boost in content creation in 2021. On the other hand, Metaverse made a huge buzz too. In this year, we are likely to see these platforms adapting their models.
Marketing using Short Videos
There’s no denying that Short Videos are everywhere today. Especially with TikTok being banned in India, social media platforms jumped at the chance and created their versions of Short Video formats. For example, Instagram introduced Reels, and YouTube came up with YouTube Shorts. Also, a few of us might also be in a way addicted to the scrolling infinitely consuming Short Video Content.
In addition to this, a few platforms might use this feature for advertising so that brands can create fun and quick short videos about their products to sell.
Conversational Marketing
Conversation leads to building trust. There are a few ways you can integrate this method. Some of them are:
Chatbots
Chatbots are going to be way more friendly and effective in the coming days. With AI technology advancing every day, there’s a high possibility that it applies to chatbots. You can install these chatbots on your website or social media pages. These will create a natural conversation with your visitors and try to make a sale.
Shoppable Livestreams
There’s a Livestream that Kim Kardashian made about one of her products, and the sale numbers blasted through the roof during the stream.
Metaverse is going all-in
As you read this blog, Metaverse today is taking huge leaps in how to create new ways of interaction. There already are tons of articles out there that talk about how VR technology improves and changes the way we shop.
AR competes with VR
While VR is being built from scratch by Meta, AR, on the other hand, has already made milestones. Especially in the field of interior design, you can use your phone to create your dream space.
These are a few things that are going to change the course of digital marketing in 2022. Like every other year, we are anticipating interesting changes this year too. Let’s all be hopeful and curious to see how we can use these advancements for the best. If you’re wondering how we can make your brand find its wings, get in touch with us. Until then, please take care of your health.
So, before we give you a little background about us, we thought it’s best to let you know what will you learn by the end of this comprehensive blog post about the 7 key Digital Marketing questions, every brand owner wants to ask. Before we move ahead, we guarantee that this is the only and the most comprehensive blog you’ll need to read as a brand owner this year. It’s a detailed one. So, only if you’re serious about the activities of your Digital Marketing Agency for your brand, read on. Here’s a list of questions we’ll answer in this post:
1. What has changed about Digital Marketing in 2019?
2. Why should I choose a full-service Digital Marketing agency?
3. How to identify the difference between right and wrong strategy by a Digital Marketing Agency?
4. When to make a switch from my current Digital Marketing Agency?
5. How long should I continue my Digital Marketing activities?
6. How to make optimum utilisation of every penny I spend on online marketing?
7. What’s the fine print I should know about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) & Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Well, before we begin, here’s a little background of ours.
We are What’s In a Name (WIN), a full-service Advertising & Digital Marketing Agency in Hyderabad. Incepted in the year 2010, we have built quite a few Regional & National brands from scratch. We’ve been equally recognised and awarded for our Branding and Digital Marketing capabilities, regionally & nationally. We’re one of the very few Advertising Agencies to be Google Partners.
We’d started as a Print Advertising Agency; we’ve worked our way up to add Digital Marketing to our repertoire of services. It took us a couple of years to complete this transformation. So, unlike most other agencies, it was not an overnight change. And through the process, we made sure we understood the subject and delivered measurable results.
1. What has changed about Digital Marketing in 2019?
Well, simply put, we’d say; a lot.
But there’s more than meets the eye. The recent updates across various properties of Google; read Google AdWords, Search Engine Result Pages (SERP), Google MyBusiness, Google Analytics, et al.
There are tons of changes in every property of Google since last year. And that will undoubtedly impact every Digital Strategy.
Google MyBusiness
Unfortunately, most business owners don’t realise the importance of maintaining good hygiene across their MyBusiness Pages. Well, this includes Google Maps and a whole lot of stuff.
It is a single dashboard that you can use to communicate with Google about your “physical” business location. Everything, from sharing the exact pin location, phone number, and information matters. It is a crucial snippet that pops up in every search we make on Google. It is also called a “Snack Pack” or “Local Listing” in the Digital World.
And that’s not all.
You can also share some posts the way you do on other Social Media Channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc. Plus, some specific offers that you’d like to share with your customers. So, there’s a lot of stuff you can do there.
Last year saw Google giving a complete make-over to the UI of the Dashboard. And it looks pretty cool. But it’s not just all good looks here. It does a lot more stuff too.
The unique search box, allows you to ask some direct questions like “What is my average page load time?” And this is to help the rapidly growing “Voice Search”.
Now you’d ask how does the speed of your page matter?
Well, thanks to the fresh updates by Google, it’s one of the top three ranking factors. Let’s assume your SEO (more on this later), is pretty similar to your competitor’s across various metrics. So, Google will by default show the fastest loading site higher. Speed could, at times, even beat websites with good SEO.
SERP (Search Engine Result Pages)
SERP, as the name suggests, is nothing but the results that Search Engines throw the moment you type a query. One of the significant changes from last year, that’s likely to get crazier this year, is the inclusion of separate ranks of your website on PC and Mobile, for a particular Keyword or Key-phrase.
So, if you type “Best 3-star hotels in Hyderabad”, and see that your brand is ranking “Number 3” on PC, it could rank “Number 8”, or 20, or beyond 100 on mobile. So, the work of a Digital Marketing Agency doubles up. We need to maintain rankings across devices.
As per a statistical report in Statista, currently, India has around 420 million Mobile Internet Users, and this number is likely to increase by another 100 million Mobile Internet Users by 2023.
So, it’s high time we begin to think mobile-first. Something that Google has been advocating for a while too.
Apart from all this, content still remains the king. The only difference is that the focus is now primarily on original, interesting content only. Gone are the days when stuffing excessive content would guarantee a top result on the search engine result pages. Though some website might still enjoy the results of the old strategy. They will soon be pushed behind by new, better content. It’s just a matter of time.
Backlinks are still important. But silly, irrelevant back links will do more harm than ever before.
Finally, the most important metric is the speed of your website; the speed of loading a page. If it’s not under 3 seconds, you’ve got reasons to worry. Of course, this varies from industry to industry and device to device.
2. Why should I choose a full-service Digital Marketing Agency?
As a brand owner, you’ve got a zillion things to tackle. And having some clue about the Digital Marketing or Marketing activities carried out by your Digital Marketing Agency, is a great thing. However, if you are investing more than a few minutes a day on this subject, you’re losing out on crucial time that can help you scale your business, better still, improvise your product or service.
There’s an old saying by William Bernbach, one of the legends of advertising from the 1950s, “A great Advertising Campaign will make a bad product fail faster.”
There are a lot of brands who consider having two different agencies for their brand. As there’s a dearth of a full-service Advertising & Digital Marketing Agency, brand owners think it’s best to opt for the best of both worlds, albeit differently.
If you’re going keep two legs in two boats, you’ll invest most of your time maintaining balance, and there will hardly be any time to make progress. Picture this, and you’ll understand what we’re saying.
And in most cases, this can be harmful to a brand. It should be considered only as a last resort. If you’ve got an excellent full-service agency, it will solve a lot of issues with you. Most importantly, your valuable time can be invested in a place where it matters the most – your business!
Finally, a full-service advertising & digital marketing agency will make sure that your brand tone and personality is standardised across various channels of communication – online and offline. It might sound simple, or unimportant. But this is complex. And if your current agency has nailed this for you, don’t disturb the composition. Focus on growing your business.
So, look for an agency where every single job is planned and executed end-to-end under one roof. Well, that’s the true meaning of “Full-service Agency”. Isn’t it?
3. How to identify the difference between right and wrong strategy of a Digital Marketing Agency?
Digital Marketing, compared to traditional advertising, is highly quantifiable. However, if your agency-to-be promises absurd numbers that sound too good to be true, you’ve got your answer. Listen to your inner voice. Don’t fall for that trap!
Like any business, or branding exercise, Digital Marketing is a difficult process too. So, it’s going to take some time. Have patience.
A lot of agencies try to play foul on the biggest weakness of an entrepreneur – “cheaper costs”. Well, it is indeed possible to bring your digital marketing costs down. But then there’s a limit to that as well. If your agency begins to keep your advertising Demographics broad, it will be much cheaper to execute. But you’d be doing a big disservice to your brand.
“Get three quotes. Hire the Digital Marketing Agency that quotes the lowest.”
It is a mindset that could do more harm than good.
It can be summed up in a saying, “Pennywise. Pound foolish.”
When an agency is chosen only because they are charging less, take a pause, and ask yourself. “When is the last time, I’d given a heavy discount on a good product of mine?” It would mostly be in cases of dead stock, an outdated model, or worse still, something that’s of poor quality.”
Voila! You’ve got your answer there.
Cutting corners is a great thing. But cutting the right corners is an art. An agency will make or break all the millions you plan to invest in your brand’s marketing activities. So, you might win the battle by negotiating a “seemingly profitable deal”. But you’re certainly going to lose the War!
Finally, a lot of brand owners believe that not sharing the data of the final conversion/revenues from the leads with their agency is a smart move. Unfortunately, it’s not the right approach.
Picture this. You share the exact data of the sales you’ve generated against each lead your agency has provided. That complete the circle for your agency. With this, they don’t just know which medium is working great for you; they can also determine what type of ad is working for your brand. And hence, they know where their strength lies. And they will work towards giving you better results.
Unfortunately, brand owners think that informing the agency of the success of their work will back-fire. The truth, however, is that NOT informing them about their success back-fires. The mindset that the moment an agency gets to know that their work is showing results, they might hike up their fee is pre-historic. Creative people crave appreciation; honest appreciation. They do have a dimension them that’s beyond money. And not hitting the right note there will only hamper your business.
4. When to make a switch from my current Digital Marketing Agency?
Simply put, never!
Well, the longer the association you have with your partner, the better the understanding. The amount of time you’ll need to spend on them will be way lesser. And that time of yours could be worth millions.
So, it’s not like the association should last forever. But if there’s not substantiate issue, it’s best to continue. A lot of brand owners, try to bring in their ego, and fool around with a good agency, in greed to exploit.
Then there are others who are always “Window Shopping”. Or want to divide the work of their brand into more pieces than that of shattered glass.
So, it’s a never-ending cycle.
The trick is… if you’ve got the right composition, don’t waste time tinkering with it. Just nurture it, water it, and let it blossom to give you results that you can’t even possibly imagine.
Remember, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
5. How long should I continue my Digital Marketing Activities?
As long as you intend to keep your business alive.
Well, they say that a business without promotion is like you winking at a girl in dark. Only you know what you’re doing.
Most business owners suffer from an ideology that once my business makes enough money, I’ll spend on Branding & Marketing activities. Unfortunately, it works the other way around.
So, once you begin to spend money on these activities, in the right way though, your business will begin to flourish. Your business will have more awareness. And that will in turn lead to more customers, over a period of time. The term “period of time” is crucial here. It all takes time.
Another big misconception we’ve got about our spends on any marketing activity is that if it’s not generating enough business, it’s not good. Well, there are tones of factors that determine whether a potential customer decides to give his details to you in the form of a lead or not. In cases of an e-commerce platform, there are varied other reasons why a potential customer would choose to buy from you.
It’s not always about the efforts by your Digital Marketing Agency. For all you know, you keep changing your agencies thinking, they are unable to crack this for you. And pretty late in the game you get to know that the issue is with your product, price, service, etc. It also depends on how your audience perceives your brand. And whether they find it valuable or not.
For example, a brand like Coca Cola, doesn’t promote themselves thinking that every time you see one of their commercials, you’ll immediately buy a bottle of coke. That’s something they’d love though.
So, it’s a process. It’s called brand recall. It’s a slow and steady process of promoting or advertising your brand across various channels, thereby building a strong brand image. All this needs to team up with a good product or service though.
So, in most scenarios, business owners tend to forget the “intangible” brand-building impact their Agency’s marketing and advertising efforts will have. So, it’s not always about sales. And not about instant sales for sure. The journey of a customer is pretty long from the time they see your ad, to the time they repeatedly see your ad, to the time the slowly build a connection and an affinity with your brand, to the time see your ad again, and then have a recall, and finally make a purchase. So, you ought to be patient.
Remember, if your product or service is good, the only marketing effort, online or offline, that goes waste is the one that’s not consistent!
6. How to make optimum utilisation of every penny I spend on online marketing?
Firstly, make a comprehensive list of products/services that are highly profitable for you. Apart from this, focus on basics, and stuff that’s influenced by season, event, time-of-day, geographic location, and other such factors, etc.
Share these details with your Digital Marketing Agency. Also, tell them openly about the challenges, draw-backs, points-of-differentiation, etc. An agency is like a doctor. The more the information you share with them, the better the results/treatment you can expect.
Next, don’t go for just vanity stuff.
For instance, a lot of people know that “content is king”.
There was a time when the more the number of pages you’ve got on your website, the better the prospects of it ranking higher. The more the number of blogs you write, the higher the chances of it dominating the search results for you.
Now, some part of this still holds good though. But Google is highly focused on content that’s unique, original, interesting, and solves the customers’ problem.
So, there could be a website that posts a new crappy blog every other day, and then there’s one that publishes an excellent blog just once a week. There’s a good chance that the latter will rank higher. So, though there’s some emphasis on quantity, quality is still a more important factor.
It leads us to those who want to upload 30 posts a month on their various Social Media Channels. Worse still, those who wish to post multiple times in a day. Well, there’s a Science behind posting. There’s also some common-sense needed.
A lot of Social Media Channels consider “over posting” as spam. Plus, when you upload content on your Social Channels and don’t spend a penny on promoting it, you and your family are the only ones who’re going to consume it.
Did someone say vanity?
Bang on!
So, upload three posts a week or 4 posts a month. But make sure they’re all promoted.
Now that doesn’t mean the organic reach is a myth. Or stuff doesn’t go viral. It certainly does.
But that’s for few rare pages and brands.
7. What’s the fine print I should know about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) & Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Oh! It could be a good subject for another blog post. But we’ll try to answer this in brief.
Every channel comes with its pros and cons. Just because your friends are getting good results on Instagram, doesn’t mean you will too.
Let your agency do some research on this. Have some faith in them. Assist them with all the information about your business.
Search Engine Marketing is a long-term commitment. If you think, you’ll get someone on board for a few months, reach a good rank for various keywords or key phrases, and then you’re mistaken.
What most people know about Social Media is just half knowledge. It seems pretty easy. People think they can boost a post on their own, and avoid the expense of a Professional or an Agency. Well, just because someone roughly knows how the gears of car work, doesn’t mean they can be good drivers; rather safe drivers. Isn’t it?
It’s a similar scenario. To have half-baked information about boosting a post is one thing. To have complete in-depth knowledge about the subject is another.
There’s way too much that goes behind the scenes in Social Media. It’s Science. It needs thinking. It needs experience, it needs common sense. It needs business understanding. Most importantly, one needs to be updated with the ever-changing landscape of Social Media. A good Agency can help you make the most of it.
Search Engine Marketing or SEM, on the other hand, is way beyond Social Media Marketing. It has infinite permutations and combinations. It’s an ocean. And it’s changing rapidly too. If one doesn’t keep themselves abreast with all the updates and changes, they might lose the game.
Also, most of your Digital Marketing activities will have an impact on each other. For instance, your Social Media Engagement does have an affect on your Brand. It is thereby impacting your SEO.
Bonus Tip:
In our day-to-day business activities, at times, we forget who we’re working for. The end customer who pays to buy your product or service is, and will always remain, the hero of every story. So, stop making your Marketing activities centred around you unless you want to end up being your only customer!
In this era of Social Media Marketing (S.M.M), on a tentative basis, we miss out on one of the “Big Guns” of B2B Social Media Marketing. Yes, you know where this is going, it’s LinkedIn!
Here is an overview of LinkedIn:
Why is LinkedIn considered as the king of B2B Social Media Marketing? Because, people who use LinkedIn generally don’t come on to it to upload “selfies” but rather are people who are thinking about their careers or companies.
With 2+ people join LinkedIn per second globally and 2/3 users of LinkedIn are not Americans…with the total of nearly 500 Million users ranging from Mass Affluent/influents, decision making opinion leaders to College students come together on LinkedIn
What is LinkedIn Advertising? :
Well, as the name suggests LinkedIn Ads is the Advertising platform provided by LinkedIn for Social Media Marketing. Even though LinkedIn’s Advertising domain is not as strong as Google Ad Words it does work out pretty good on many levels with ‘Target Audience’ being really specific one can rely better.. and further filtering options given vary from Region/Country, Company and some advanced options such as “Similar Audiences” , making it better to work on their B2B Social Media Marketing.
Ok, say I’m impressed, what options do I have on LinkedIn Ads? :
Someone wise said, “People with great connections get 13x more opportunities in life.”…No! We just made that up. But you get the point. When it comes to LinkedIn Ads, we have a range of Ad formats which LinkedIn named them as..
Sponsored Content
Sponsored Inmails
Text Ads
Dynamic Ads
Programmatic Display Ads
Oh! Fancy words! Care to Explain? :
Isn’t Social Media Marketing majorly depending on fancy words? ok, let us not bore you by getting into micro details we’ll keep it short.
Sponsored Content: Helps you promote your updates to targeted audiences on different channels like desktop, mobile, and tablet. Drive awareness and leads in the world’s most viewed professional news feed.
Sponsored inmails: “Inmails” is short for the mails one receives (Inbox). Sponsored Inmails can help you reach your target audiences right in their LinkedIn inbox and deliver personalized messages that drive more conversions than email.
Text Ads: Text Ads help you reach your target audiences by allowing you to add a compelling & clickable headline, description and even a 50×50 image. This is one way you can start reaching your target audience in minutes on LinkedIn Ad platform. These Ads will appear on the homepage, Results page and Individual Profiles as well.
Dynamic Ads: These are the Ads which appear on the left of your home page which will help your profile to connect you with the Ads and allow you to precisely target decision-makers and influencers with highly relevant and customizable creatives on LinkedIn giving it a real personal touch. According to LinkedIn “60% of marketers say personalizing the customer experience is their top marketing objective.”
Programmatic Display Ads: Programmatic Display Ads are 300×250 standard display ads on the right column of the desktop. considering LinkedIn to believe that ‘61% of advertisers cite inventory quality as a leading challenge’ Programmatic Display Ads bring your business in front of the world’s largest, most engaged professional audience of influencers and decision-makers with efficiency and control.
We at What’s in a name help you confidently get your business in front of the world’s largest, most engaged professional audience of influencers and decision-makers with efficiency and control.
Zip.in is an online Supermarket, based out of Hyderabad. Until recently, it was operational in Hyderabad only. But soon it will expand to other cities across the country. The website has over 8,000 listed products that includes categories like fruits, vegetables, frozen food, pet care, organic food, stationery, essentials and many more. The BETA website went live in November 2014, and the final website went live in December 2014. Then began the 360 Degrees Branding effort to take the brand ahead.
Challenges:
The first challenge was to strengthen the business segment. That’s because a significant percentage of people were either unaware, or skeptical about an option to shop for groceries online.
The second challenge was the fact that there were quite a few customers who were unhappy with the service & products that they received from competition. It was almost impossible to get them to try online grocery shopping again.
The next challenge was that Zip.in delivery was available in limited locations only.
Finally, we had to spread brand awareness, define its positioning, reach out to the right people, increase website traffic, focus on conversions, and make it all happen with limited budgets. Hence, a 360 Degrees Branding Strategy was formulated.
Target Audience:
We were talking to a huge range of audiences. But our primary audience is a working couple that lives separately. They realise the importance of having good and wholesome meals. However, as both husband and wife are working, it becomes difficult for them to buy groceries regularly.
The secondary audience is the single, corporate employees who are either lazy or don’t have time to buy groceries; thanks to their erratic and long shifts. They are our secondary audience because these would be small ticket size customers. And that’s because they would mostly survive on Maggi (of course, when it was being sold), canned juices, bread, butter, etc.
The tertiary audience is not direct consumers, but influencers. These could be teenagers who would help us spread the word to the decision makers – their parents. These also include retired senior citizens who would help us spread awareness and share the information with their children.
With this we were clear about “Whom” we wanted to talk to. But the question was “What” should we talk about? Once we were clear on our target audience, we decided to understand their pain. We began thinking like customers. We also did some backend research to know how the competition was treating customers. After putting all this together, we came up with a 360 Degrees Branding Strategy.
Communication Guidelines:
We were sure that our 360 Degrees Branding Strategy should comprise the following:
Our communication should be simple, and it should be easily understood both by a techie and a retired senior citizen.
Creativity is not the most important thing here. That’s because in a bid to be overtly creative, we didn’t want to move away from our objective of simplicity. Making sure that we take the message home.
The 360 Degrees Branding communication should establish the business line clearly. This is for those who don’t really know how it works.
The communication should work as a confirmation tool to those who are just at the fence. They want to try the option of online grocery buying, but are slightly doubtful.
The communication should make use of the competition analysis that we did. As the competition had captured a greater market share, it was important to understand how they have peeved the customers, and how we can give a believable assurance to these customers.
Also, it was important to make sure that the layout of the campaign was standardised, and that it stands out in a clutter of Newspaper ads, hoardings, online banners, etc. So, achieving high recall was imperative.
Finally, we wanted to make sure that the communication connects with the audiences. They should be able to visualise themselves as customers of www.zip.in. So, we did decide to keep it real too.
PS: Of course, the content was tweaked to suit various channels, but certain things were retained to establish connectivity. The idea was to benefit from integration. So, now we knew “how” our communication should be. But it was time to decide “What” our communication should be. And we came up with the following 360 Degrees Branding Strategy.
Ever wondered what the first Indian advertisement looked like? When Englishman James Augustus Hickey started making losses on his newspaper (India’s first) ...
Ever wondered what the first Indian advertisement looked like? When Englishman James Augustus Hickey started making losses on his newspaper (India’s first) business in 1780, he resorted to advertising . The newspaper didn’t survive for long. But India was gifted a terrific new medium of communication. The first Indian ads mainly revolved around simple & direct messages. And featured a mailing address. Times have drastically changed since then.
Milestone is synonymous to words like business, organizations and entrepreneurs. It is what liter is to liquid – a measure. It is like any degree or credential that you’d have; more of a brand value of an organization and an individual both. We all know the dictionary meaning of the word “milestone”. In fact, this word is overtly used in a zillion places (read presentations, annual meetings, client reviews, appraisals, etc.). We hear this word so often that it almost puts us to sleep. But have you ever wondered on what could be the milestone of the Best Advertising Agency in Hyderabad?
The Best Advertising Agency In Hyderabad:
Celebrating milestones is certainly of the best things an organization and a leader can do. It peps-up the environment, boosts the productivity of its people and helps the organization climb up the ladder. But in this quantitative world, where every conversation has to lead to a visible gain, every meeting has to lead to a materialistic conclusion, every penny has to lead to a negotiation, we tend to place our milestones with an approach that is too narrow, and sometimes hollow; we place them where the results are. The bests don’t do that. Specially, the Best Advertising Agency in Hyderabad would never!
An organization is never about a single person. As much as you call yourself the leader who’s done it all, it is always about a set of people. Despite the fact that you’ve been responsible to bring these people on-board. Entrepreneurs tend to get way too aggressive while placing their milestones. At times, they are so aggressive that they tend to ignore any other person who’s associated with this milestone. The situation then looks something like this – A leader who’s seeing a milestone clearly, has conveyed it to his team as clearly, is moving at a fast pace towards it and is also pushing his team with the same force. His team, however, just pretends to be moving with as much zeal. And what comes next is a reality check. After a half yearly review, the leader along with his team is nowhere closer to the milestone!
Well, the reason was that the team was never in the consensus with the leader. They felt that the milestone he set was too unrealistic. It’s good to be crazy. But to be the best, you’ll need to be a little realistic too. Unfortunately, in this case the Best Advertising Agency was not.
Now, you may argue that you’ll never be able to set a milestone that would be accepted by every single person of your core team. This is possibly a realistic and a common scenario too. But have you ever heard of the word majority?
Exactly! When the majority of your core team decides to agree with your milestone(s), the probability of you, as a company, achieving it is way higher.
At least, this way you know that more than 50% of your team is with you. In fact, you can get them to set the milestones for themselves. This way they’d be taking more ownership of reaching these milestones too.
This is an unorthodox way of placing milestones. The only difference is the fact that the probability of achieving these milestones is a bit higher. The flip side however, is that your core team might not necessarily be as aggressive as you are. Hence, it might work out milestones that are less aggressive. But they’d certainly be more achievable. Here, the choice is yours; you can either set milestones that look great on paper but might not necessarily sound realistic and achievable to your team, or you can let your core team set simpler but highly achievable milestones.
In our day-to-day rush to meet business challenges and work towards innovation, we tend to forget that milestones can be placed differently.
In business terms a milestone is perceived as a destination. Very few leaders feel it’s a journey. But one of the most effective placements of a milestone is somewhere in between.
To evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy of placing a milestone, an Art Director of the Best Advertising Agency, invited a few creative writers. These writers were divided into two teams – Team A and Team B. Both teams were given a brief to work on a launch campaign for one of its clients. This was the launch of a new energy drink – Octane. The client wanted to position their drink in the premium segment. They were well aware of the existing market leader in this segment. Due to smaller marketing budgets, they wanted something that was not just a strong launch campaign, but would also help them place their product in the premium segment. The writers wore their thinking caps, and began to pen down some interesting ideas. After a long brainstorming session, both teams realized that they had to create an aspirational value for the brand. They also decided to focus on their target audience who’d in-turn become brand loyalists. The teams then started working independently.
One of the creative communication ideas by Team A was to create an in-the-face ad concept to take the market leader head-on. The headline for this concept was “Wings are for birds. Real men fly with Octane!”
Team B, on the other hand, worked on a concept that was subtle but equally strong. The headline for their concept was “Octane – Packed with NEWclear Energy.“
Both the concepts were shared with the client. But the Creative Director of the advertising agency chose to reward one of the teams (Team A), the moment the concept was shared with him. However, he was not too convinced about the concept that Team B shared. He knew it was great too but he decided to wait until he heard from the client.
After a few days, the client got back saying that they liked the concept by Team B better. In fact, they shared a very valid reason for the same. They felt that though the first concept was strong, it clearly divided their audience and boiled their product down to an only-for-men product.
The Creative Director then realized that he had misjudged the client and the idea that was shared by Team B. He, later, decided to call Team B and reward them too. By now, both the teams were rewarded. The only difference was the timing. Though, the concept shared by Team B was finally approved by the client and they were rewarded by the Creative Director, they didn’t really like two things about him – he rewarded them only after the client approved their concept and the fact that he rewarded Team A way before he heard from the client. There was clear discrimination and he came across as biased. However, what didn’t really work for him was the timing. Not something that should have happened at the Best Advertising Agency in Hyderabad.
The idea of placing milestones differently is more about understanding the fact that a milestone is not a destination, it’s not even a journey; it’s in between! Well, in business terms, the journey in this case was the process that involved the teams working on ideas. And the destination was the client approving these ideas. But only if we choose to place our milestone, when we are closer to the destination and when we have put in all our efforts, it would work wonders for an organization and it’s people. We can choose to, without discrimination, reward our people and celebrate the mere fact that the best efforts were put in. This should be unbiased and irrespective of the final outcome (client’s approval in this case). This might not necessarily guarantee the project to you. But this will certainly let your people know that you value their efforts purely as they are; without being biased or influenced by any external factors.
The milestone should be placed where you end up putting all your efforts – just before the destination is reached. That’s the hallmark of the Best Advertising Agency in Hyderabad.
