Month: April 2020

Categories
Marketing

Zero Dollar Marketing Strategies to Attain More Customers

Learn the Art of Zero Dollar Marketing to Get More Customers

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

1. Make a World-class Strategy at Minimum Cost

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Anticipatory Content to gain Customer Attention

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

4. Flip your Marketing Budget from Outbound to Inbound

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

5. Build your Database

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

6. Give Old Data a New Life

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

7. Story Telling for Recall

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

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

Categories
Marketing

Effective Budget-Friendly Marketing Ideas

महिला उद्यमिता
महिला उद्यमिता

Cost effective marketing that can make you viral!

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

1. Use Social Media Extensively

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

2. Turn your customers into your Brand Ambassadors

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

3. Focus on SEO Strategies

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

4. Build an easy to navigate Website

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

5. Sponsor Local Events

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

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

Categories
Strategy

Your Complete Guide to Business Assets

इनकम टैक्स रिटर्न भरने वाली 57% इकाइयों की आय इतनी
इनकम टैक्स रिटर्न भरने वाली 57% इकाइयों की आय इतनी

Understand Deeply the Assets that Affect Your Business

Asset means anything of monetary value owned by an individual or business. 

A business asset is a resource that has an economic value for a company and which can be used in the current or future time period to generate revenues.

Examples of business assets are:

  • Cash and cash equivalents
  • Property, plant and equipment
  • Inventory
  • Investments
  • Furniture and fixtures
  • Patents, copyrights and trademarks

Properties of an Assets:

There are 3 key essential properties of a business asset:

  • Ownership:
    Assets that carry ownership and can be eventually turned into cash and cash equivalents
  • Economic Value:
    Assets that carry economic value & can be exchanged or sold
  • Resource:
    These assets are basically those resources which can be used to generate future economic benefits

Classification of assets:

Business Assets can be classified into 3 categories:

  1. Convertibility:
    Classifying assets based on how quickly they can be converted into cash.
  2. Physical Existence:
    Classifying assets on the basis of their physical existence i.e. tangible or intangible.
  3. Usage:
    Classifying assets on the basis of their business usage or purpose.

1. Convertibility:

Classifying assets based on how quickly they can be converted into cash i.e. short-term assets and long-term assets.

  • Short-term Assets
    = Assets that you expect to sell or convert into cash, within 1 year.

– Cash

– Marketable securities ’ traded investments easily convertible to cash

– Trade accounts receivable (Debtors + Bills receivable)

– Prepaid insurance

– Inventory

  • Long-term Assets = assets that will not get converted into cash in 1 year, and provide long-term value to your business.

– Fixed Assets: machinery, equipment, furniture, buildings, land, etc.

– Investments: similar to fixed assets; long-term investments, not to be sold within 1 year

– Franchise rights, patents, copyrights, trademarks, goodwill, etc.

2. Physical Existence:

On the basis of physical existence, assets can be classified as: tangible and intangible assets.

  • Tangible Assets
    = assets which can be seen, touched i.e. having physical existence

– Land

– Building

– Machinery

– Cash

– Furniture & Fixtures

– Office equipment

  • Intangible Assets
    = assets which can’t be seen i.e. which don’t have physical existence

– Goodwill

– Patents

– Brand

– Copyrights

– Trademarks

– Corporate intellectual property

3. Usage: 

On the basis of their usage, assets can be classified as operating and non-operating assets.

  • Operating Assets
    = assets required in the daily operations of business i.e. assets which are used to generate revenue from company’s core business activities.

– Cash

– Stock

– Building

– Machinery & Equipment

– Patents & Copyrights

– Goodwill

  • Non-operating Assets
    = assets which are not required in daily operations of business but still generate revenue for business.

– Short-term investments

– Marketable securities

– Vacant land

– Interest income from a fixed deposit

Why are these assets so important for any business?

Assets are important for any type of business due to the following reasons:

  • Generating revenue
  • Increasing the value of your business
  • Facilitate the running of your business

You can transfer or sell assets, use them to lower your tax liability and in turn increase the efficiency of your business.

A good understanding of assets in business can help you achieve potential savings in your business.

For example:
In some cases leasing an asset in a business, such as a machinery, can be way more cost-effective than buying one.

Intangible assets such as patents, copyrights and trademarks help in protecting your business against infringement. 

Learning about assets in business is a must for every entrepreneur. The efficient management of assets in a business is absolutely critical, as errors can lead to inefficient decision-making, incorrect tax reporting and inaccurate valuation of your business.

Categories
Strategy

How Animated Videos Can Be Used to Enhance Your Brand?

Animated Videos:  A Game-changing Strategy for Small Businesses

Do you want to establish a powerful connection with your audience?

In today’s market, there is no better way to do it than connecting through animated videos. 

Now you might be thinking, that you’re a serious business and there’s no way a cartoon is going to help your brand get audiences’ Just think of Red Bull’s TV commercial for a second ’ It’s all about interesting animated characters spelling out the brand message well. For a vast majority of businesses, creating animated videos is a perfect way to enhance their brand identity. 

Here are 5 ways to do that:

1. Powerful Communication Tool:

Animated videos for business utilises the power of storytelling. A brand can close the gap between itself and its audience with a powerful story they can empathise with.

  • A simple animated video, with a powerful script, and well-design characters, is sure to keep your audience hooked, even if the topic might be a bit complex for them.
  • Animation based videos reduce the time taken by a customer to read the description of a product or service to mere moments.

2. Higher Viewership & More Share:

Since there’s a wide variety of content available online & customers are being bombarded with this content, they will definitely want to pick something simple, informative and quick to consume.

When it comes to consuming simple and quick content, watching animated videos is typically more attractive than reading verbose textual messages.

  • Your conversion rate can increase by 80%, simply by having a video on your landing page. Higher conversion rate means more sales.
  • Chances of more views and shares increase with the use of animated videos, people are encouraged to share your videos, making them an advocate for your brand. 

3. Complex Topics can be easily simplified:
 

Animated videos for business can bring concepts to life in a way that text or even live videos can’t. 

Animation based videos are very effective for explaining complex topics in a step-by-step process in a fun and simple way. 

  • Animation allows unlimited flexibility i.e. you can simplify complex topics and showcase aspects of your product that might not be visible otherwise.
  • You can send a subtle but clear message to customers regarding what your company stands for through an animation style that matches with your brand.

For Example: 

A good example of this is the videos put out by Bada Business for their customers. Bada Business (Dr. Vivek Bindra) has over 12 million subscribers on Youtube, making it the World’s No.1 channel for entrepreneurship and business content in Hindi. 

Difficult topics are simplified for the entrepreneurs and small businessmen of India, using simple, informative and interesting animations.

4. Animations are Engaging & Easy to Remember:

Animations are engaging and fun and can tap into the emotions of audiences more effectively than any other medium. Just imagine a brand trying to explain its working through an animated video vis-’-vis a brochure. What would be more appealing to the customer? The answer is obviously the video format.

  • Numerous studies have shown the benefits of using animated videos in education. It is so because people find the concepts more engaging & easy to remember when shared using both audio & visual tools.
  • Animations can be used to reflect the uniqueness of your brand, as it can be personalised.

For example TV commercial of Red Bull: Just think how easy it is to recognise a Red Bull ad, by immediately identifying the style and characters.

Using animated videos for business can do the same for your brand.

5. Animations are Cost-Effective:

Animated videos are not just fascinating but also come with a low production budget when compared to other video formats.  

When you shoot any other type of video, like a live-action video, there can be an extensive list of associated expenses. 

  • Animated videos take off the burden to cast actors, scout for production, arranging for props and production time, scheduling for shoots & finalise sets and equipment.
  • A small businessman can simply get in touch with a design agency or a freelance animator to get rid of a lot of hassle and only worry about the creative input.
  • You have control and can manage small details until the last minute, which is certainly not possible with live videos.

In the case of live videos, one has to stick with decisions made prior to the shoot, and any changes mean additional cost to the business. However, in the case of animated videos, one can change the storyline or characters, without affecting the project or budget of the videos. 

Animated videos can be a useful tool for building your business & your brand. Animation based videos are cost-effective and at the same time a powerful communication tool for small businesses.

A well-done animation can help consumers remember your brand and compel them to do repeated business with you.

Categories
Strategy

How to Evaluate Your Small Business Marketing Plan

Ingredients to Evaluate Your Marketing Strategy

How do you know if your marketing plan is working out or not? 

How to improve your marketing campaigns?

The success of a small business marketing plan depends upon 3 key factors:

  • Developing a strong plan
  • Executing it effectively
  • Evaluating the plan to measure its effectiveness

Evaluating your small business marketing plan is very essential for an entrepreneur, as it helps the business owner to know which campaigns and strategies are working well, and where to focus his time, money and energy to get the best results.

Here are 6 smart ways to evaluate your small business marketing plan:

1. Brand Recognition & Establishment

Grabbing people’s attention, getting people to know your business & brand, and building a relationship with your customers should be the first objective of your marketing plan.

This can be measured by finding out:

  • The size of your fan base on your social media handles
  • Mentions of your brand name on social media sites
  • The number of positive reviews left by customers about your company on social media as well websites like Google Reviews
  • Inbound website visitors from social media handles
  • Total number of conversions resulting from traffic generated through social handles or any other form of advertising

By analysing these factors, you can determine what form of engagement is working to your benefit and how you can drive it further. Increase in traffic on your website and social media handles, retail channels or enquiries on your website/call centre means that your marketing campaign is working out well.

2. Lead Generation

Not all marketing efforts are directed towards generating sales, however, marketing plans must fuel the sales funnel of the business by generating leads.

How to evaluate your small business marketing plan in terms of lead generation:

  • Increase in subscribers to your mailing list
  • Increase in appointments
  • Increase in customer response for your products or services

You should set quantified goals to track & measure your leads generated over the period of a week, a month and a year. 

3. Reviewing Sales Numbers

This is simple: Sales should be going up!

Reviewing your sales numbers is fundamentally the fastest way to determine the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

For example:

If pre-marketing campaign sales of your company was Rs.500,000 and after the marketing campaign, the sales increased to Rs.800,000, it is a safe assumption that the campaign was effective and your sales have grown due to its effective execution 

4. Customer Response

Customer response in any or all its varied forms can help you determine the type of reaction your marketing activities create. 

  • You can create a funnel for surveys that can be posted online or taken in person from the customers. Customer feedback can help you figure out the reaction & impact of the marketing campaign on the consumer
  • Ask Simple Questions such as:

’How did you hear about us? 

How did you find out about our seasonal sale?

Will you try & recommend our product?

Such simple questions can reveal which marketing initiatives are reaching the right customers.

5. Business Expansion

When your marketing plan is working out well, your business begins to grow with more customer calls, fresh leads, sales and expansion

  • Good marketing campaign makes each customer, employee and stakeholder a marketer of your brand.
  • When you start getting customers from new regions and geographies, it simply means that your marketing plan is working well!

6. Return on Investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the top concerns of any business owner, when it comes to running marketing campaigns.

  • The idea of knowing the ROI is simply to find out whether the amount spent or invested in a marketing campaign has resulted in a profit or not.
  • This can be measured by comparing the amount spent on the campaign versus the amount of sales each campaign has brought in specifically.

A business owner must consistently and carefully evaluate its small business marketing plan to spread brand awareness, spend wisely on activities and maintain its growth momentum.

If the objective & outcome of each marketing campaign has been defined clearly, business owners can not only make smarter marketing decisions but convert potential leads into life-long customers much faster. 

Categories
Strategy

Strategies to Make Your Product Stand Out

Make Your Product Stand Out in 3 Simple Steps

Do you think your company has a unique product & offers?

Here’s the truth; you probably don’t, and there is nothing wrong about it.

Some of the world’s most successful products are not totally new, original or unique. Take the classic example of Google. Google’s founders ’ Larry & Sergey didn’t invent the search engine, yet the one they found out is generating crores of rupees in profits.

This is because they differentiated their product from the sea of other search engines over the years.

So, if you want to truly differentiate and make your product stand out from the crowd, here are 3 proven tips to help:

1. Target Audience: Define your perfect audience

’If you try to appeal to everyone, you will end up appealing to no-one’

Defining and choosing a specific target audience helps you make your product stand out from the rest, as long as you don’t choose the same target audience as your competitors.

For example:

  • McDonald’s target audience includes students, employees and professionals within the age group of 8 to 45 years, belonging to low & middle-income groups and having an easy-going personality.
  • Facebook: The target audience of Facebook has evolved with the company. In the initial years of its operations, Facebook targeted college students of the United States. 

But now Facebook has widened its target market focusing on millennials (25-34 years) and mobile using adults in 157 countries.

Choosing a specific audience for your brand is a start, marketing is the next step.

Marketing that doesn’t hit its intended target audience is classified as a waste, and marketing that does hit its target audience is classified as effective & efficient. The key here is to give your target audience something that interests them.

  

  

2. PSP Formula: Problem Solving Product (Value Proposition)

’You don’t grow when you try to make money, you grow when you try to offer the right value to your customers’

– Dr. Vivek Bindra (Founder & CEO, BadaBusiness.com)

Your value proposition tells your customers at a glance, what you do, and how you’re different & perhaps better from your competitors. 

It might not be the actual features that make your product standout from the crowd, but the way you deliver your service or a disruption brought about by you in a traditional function (think Ola Cabs or OYO rooms, for example)

Examples of Strong Value Proposition include:

Twitter: ’See what’s happening in the world right now’

Khan Academy: ’You can learn anything’

WeWork: ’Space to elevate your work’

These are all recognizable statements from companies that stand out from their competitors in their respective industries for their branding and positioning. 

Having clarity on what your value proposition is and what makes your business unique will help your customers understand what’s unique about your brand too and make your product stand out.

3. Customer Service: Providing consistent & quality customer service

Your product is only one half of the equation in making your brand stand out. Strong customer support & service is the other half.  A perfect balance between the two decided whether the consumer will make the initial purchase from you and whether they’ll continue to buy from you in the future.

  • Statistics shows that 45% of customers will immediately exclude products that come with additional shipping fees during an initial product search.
  • Similarly, other areas that matter includes warranty coverage, fast shipping, and hassle-free exchange & returns.

As a brand, your goal should be to provide consistent & high-quality experience to your customers, right from the moment a customer places their order till it reaches them at home.

Making your product stand out from the competition is getting more challenging nowadays. But it’s also becoming a necessity. Starting with these 3 fundamentals will help you breakthrough.

As the marketplace gets crowded, business owners need to leverage all the moving parts of their business in order to survive. Focusing on your target audience, the value proposition of your product and excellent customer service will help you make your product stand out among an increasing sea of sameness.

Categories
Marketing

Advantages of Having a Mobile App for Business

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

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

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

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

Here are 5 benefits of mobile app for your business:

1. Provide More Value to Your Customer

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

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

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

For Example: 

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

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

2. Personalised Content

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

3. Push Notifications and Instant Updates

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

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

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

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

4. Branding and Design

’Your mobile application becomes your business’ brand ambassador’

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

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

5. Interactive Engagement

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

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

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

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

Other Benefits of Mobile Apps:

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

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

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

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

Categories
Marketing

5 Proven Ways to Improve Your Video Marketing Strategy

How to Build a Unique Video Marketing Strategy!

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

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

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

1. Identify your Goal

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

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

What’s the goal?

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

How will you determine the success of your video?
 

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

2. Focus on Your Target Audience

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

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

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

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

3. Provide Incredible Valuable Information

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

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

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

How to create an impactful video?

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

4. 10x Your Content Marketing Consistency

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

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

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

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

5. Measure Your Performance

Test. Analyze. Modify. Retest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Finance

Advantages of Tally in a Small Business

स्टार्टअप

Automate Accounting with Tally!

If your business still uses manual systems for accounting and data entry, you may end up spending a lot of time keeping a track of paper documents, finding useful information and keeping your details secure. 

To survive in today’s competition, it is essential that your business adapts to the current technological trends by using tools that give you deeper insights about your business & strategy.

Small businesses usually hesitate to switch to an ERP even though they have the financial capacity to do so. Below are some of the advantages of tally that can do wonders for your business:

1. Multipurpose Use
 

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need ERP software to manage 3 essential functions of the business:

Tally for small business
is a one-stop solution and can be used in all these areas with its easy-to-use interface that manages complex activities of the software in the background, without any chances of errors.

2. Facilitating decision making

Since Tally seamlessly allows to manage accounting, inventory and compliance of business within a single software, its becomes easier & convenient for a small business owner to assess the financial impact of various functions on their business and take day to day decisions based on data. 

Tally for small business acts as the backbone of your company by providing estimates, detailed analysis, and overview of your business at your fingertips, which can further help in the decision making process that can boost the growth of your business.

3. Instant access to records

Small and medium enterprises need to monitor the cash flow and revenues of their business before making decisions, as they are typically hard-pressed for finances.

For Example
Decisions like whether to take a loan from a bank or other sources.

One of the advantages of Tally is that these critical business decisions can be taken, just by looking at the financial reports of the business available at the click of a button.

4. Inventory management

Small and medium enterprises need to keep track of their inventory data i.e. the current inventory in hand, to ensure that the business is not investing heavily in maintaining inventory by paying huge interest costs.

  • Tally for small business provides Stock Ageing report which helps manage inventory in the business.
  • Small business owners can take decisions such as giving new purchase orders to suppliers, based on stock clearance status by simply looking at the report.

5. GST ready

GST filing has become a monthly affair for small and medium enterprise business owners, since its introduction.

  • To file GST return without any hassle, small and medium enterprise business owners need a software for recording business data in GST compliant formats.
  • Tally ERP software is GST ready, giving business owners an advantage over their competitors by enabling them to become GST compliant.

6. Remote access to data

Tally enables a business to give remote access to the employees of the organization.

For example, An inventory manager who works from a warehouse location and not the office location could get access to appropriate information so that he can generate delivery challans using Tally at the warehouse itself.

Employees can get access to all the data by simply logging in using a unique ID and Password.

7. Acts as an Audit tool

Tally acts as an audit tool for compliance as it helps out in conducting regular audits of different companies.

Tally for small business does a thorough compliance check at the beginning of the financial year and ensures all monetary transactions are smoothly being carried out in the business.

  • With the help of Tally, Tax consultants can remotely perform audit without the hassle of transferring data.
  • For better coordination, auditors can leave their comments on the vouchers and business owners could take further action as required.

8. Multi-user

Tally enables business owners to manage multiple functions with multiple user logins. Owners can assign different access rights to their employees based on the data used to run the business.

Tally for small businesses enables its users to work remotely with accounts of multiple companies simultaneously and update the information in real-time as soon as the voucher entries are made.

Tally software has helped many small and medium enterprises to manage their tasks cost-effectively by saving time & increasing efficiency

There are multiple advantages of using tally, facilitating the digitization of bills and signatures, making business transactions a task of seconds.

With the aid of Tally, even a small shop owner can manage bills, customers, inventory, and daily financial transactions more effectively.

Categories
Process & Business Expansion

5 Business Automation Tools to Grow Your Business

Work from Anywhere, Anytime!
 

Have you ever thought of a scenario where you are on a holiday, sipping your favourite drink and your business back home is not only running smoothly but also generating revenue? 

Yes, it is possible! Automation in business gives an entrepreneur the advantage to create more value for himself and his customers. 

As a small business owner if you are not leveraging the power of technology, then in all probability you must be micromanaging everything in your business. In that case, as weird as it may sound, you are in all likelihood just like any other employee in your company with the fanciest title.

The advantages of using business automation technologies
are many. It helps:

  • In leveraging an entrepreneurs time
  • It reduces the time in completing a task
  • It increases the efficiency and productivity of employees
  • Business owner can focus on other important aspects of the business like customer service, innovation, strategies and revenue generation.

With the ever changing landscape of business, business owners need to develop the ability to adapt and use the power of technology and automation in their businesses.

The top 5 Business Automation Tools are-
 

1. Make a Repeatable business model

The model is applied to new products and services for the generation of sustained growth in the company. 

It can be achieved by enabling the people of your company through processes and technology.  

The best example of a repeatable business model is of DMart. The company enjoys the market capitalization of Rs.114,000 crore. Over the years the company has focused on building a good team, robust process and technology. 

2. Smart Marketing

As the name suggests, many B2B and B2C businesses swears by the smart marketing formula. 

Smart marketing not only helps business owners to increase their sales significantly but also allows unlocking their time.

Examples of smart marketing tool-

a) Facebook ads/Instagram Page

Facebook and Instagram are the most popular social media platforms. While Facebook has the largest user base across the globe, Instagram enjoys immense following amongst youngsters.

Both Facebook and Instagram are widely used as an advertising tool that allows you to reach directly to your specific customers based on their interests, gender, age and location.

The icing on the cake is that it is cheaper than the conventional modes of marketing.

b) LinkedIn Ads

If you want your business to get the visibility in the world’s largest professional community then LinkedIn ads are the best and the only bet. 

It helps in creating awareness about your brand, generating leads and increases engagement with your potential customer on a global professional platform.

3. Mail chimp

Mail chimp is a powerful marketing software. It is a tool that redefines the conventional way of connecting with your group of customers. 

With the help of this business automation tool, you can boost your email marketing efforts. It helps you in sending newsletters to thousands of recipients who have signed up for it in one go. 

It also helps in automating your email campaigns and collect leads for your business.

4. Technology

Technology in business is the best enabler. It helps in business automation and reduces operational costs. 

Few examples of popular business automation tools are:

a) ERP-

Enterprise Resource Planning is a centralized database that puts the important parts of business on automation.

ERP can be implemented across the departments of an organization be it Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Inventory Management etc.

b) Zoom- 

It is video conferencing platform which is used for conducting video conferencing meetings, webinars, audio conferencing, recordings and live chats from anywhere.

This business automation software saves travel time, helps in better communication, increases productivity without any physical infrastructure.

c) Cloud based Services- 

It is a system where the hardware and software hosted by a 3rd party. It is a service that can be accessed from any location freely through an internet connection. 

This business automation tool is cost effective and improves functionality of your business. 

For Example: Dropbox, Google Apps, Amazon EC2 etc.

5. CRM

Relationship with customers is the most important thing in the business world. To maintain a record of thousands of customers can become a cumbersome task at times. Customer relationship management (CRM) software eases out this process for business owners. 

This powerful business automation tool not only automates the whole process but also collects data from other sources as well.

If you are a small or medium-sized business, it is critical for you to implement these business automation tools to increase efficiency and productivity enables by tech today.