How-to-Evaluate-the-Effectiveness-of-your-online-marketing-campaigns

How To Evaluate the Effectiveness Of Your Online Marketing Campaigns?

by Digital Marketing

Online marketing has become a great way to boost your brand awareness and sales, but how do you know if your marketing campaigns are actually working? Knowing how your online marketing campaign is crucial because it will let you know if you’re meeting your marketing goals and expectations (whatever they are).

With no real knowledge of how your online marketing campaigns are doing, you’re wasting time, money and effort. Before you even start your campaign, you’ll need to define a few variables to determine your metrics. This includes your objective, user context, target audience and the like.

Then based on these variables, you’ll be able to create specific call-to-action and associated assets that will yield trackable results. Here are some helpful ways on how to evaluate the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns:

1. Total Website Visits

One of the easiest ways to track your online marketing campaign’s effectiveness is with how many site visits you got during the time period of the campaign. This will give you a rough idea if the campaign is driving the traffic you expected to your site.

2. Website Traffic By Channels Or Sources

You should be using your online marketing campaign on all your social media channels and any other places you can drive traffic from, such as blogs, forums and the like. To do so, give each source and channel it’s own unique link so that you can track it to see where the most traffic clicks came from.

Using Google metrics like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools can help you determine where the most traffic came from.

3. Your Site’s Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of your website is the number of users that visit your website and then leave without performing any action. A high bounce rate means that there are flaws in your online marketing tactics.

Either it’s poor campaign targeting, weak landing pages, irrelevant traffic sources and the like. But whatever it is, your bounce rate means there’s a problem in your marketing that needs to be fixed for your next campaign.

4. Online Sales

If your online marketing campaign revolves around a product on your site, the number of online sales will help you figure out if you met your goal or not.

Even if you have brick-and-motor store, you can also track the sales of a particular item you mentioned in your online marketing campaign or see if your sales for the time period increased due to the online marketing campaign you created around more foot traffic.

How-to-get-more-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-website

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your E-Commerce Website?

by Website Development

There are many ways to get traffic to your e-commerce website, without having to pay for ads. Your business may not have a budget to spend on Facebook, Google or Instagram ads because you’re still starting out, or focusing your budget on other aspects of the business.

You don’t have to spend any money on growing your e-commerce website traffic – you just need to know how to do it organically! Organic traffic may sound like a challenge, but here are a few tips on how to accomplish this goal.

Here are the 3 most crucial factors to get more organic traffic to your e-commerce website.

1. Create Quality Content

The first thing you’d want to focus on is creating unique content on each of your product pages, homepage, and blog. By creating relevant content, people find value in your website and when it is mixed with vital keywords, search engines like Google will find more relevancy in your content and rank your page higher, allowing people looking for key terms to find you on the first few pages which leads to increase in organic traffic.

One easy way to do so is with product reviews and blog posts. By allowing your customers to submit reviews, you can leverage their words into sales to convince new website visitors to convert. You’ll also want to highlight the reviews on your site’s home page so it’s the first thing new visitors see.

Fresh content and regular blog posts will keep your potential customers more engaged with your brand, website and thus value the information you provide them.

2. Have Dynamic Meta Descriptions To Increase Organic Traffic

Your site’s meta descriptions are very important as they appear directly below the page title. Even though Google often doesn’t read what’s in a meta description, customers do and it’s the only other information besides the title and URL that appears on the search results providing them enough reasons to visit your website.

Writing engaging meta description is important for readers to visit your e-commerce store.

The 70-80% of search engine users are ignoring the paid ads and are only focusing on the organic results

3. Make Your Site’s Speed A Priority

Speed is actually a decisive factor for ranking on Google so you need to make sure that your e-commerce site loads in under four seconds (as well as all of its pages). The faster your site is, the better chance it has to rank on the search results.

You may also have to constantly monitor the load time, bounce rate and time spent on the site to really get a clear understanding of the health of your website.

Top-Internet-Marketing-Strategies

The Top Internet Marketing Strategies For Your Business

by Digital Marketing

When it comes to marketing your business online, it doesn’t matter whether you are a small local craft shop or a global business standing the test of time, the way we advertise and the way consumers look at our products or services is constantly shifting.

So we need to be constantly aware of what is going on in the digital marketing scene so that we can continue to do what we do and to continue to be seen.

Looking ahead towards 2019, we are seeing some changes in the way consumers are viewing advertisements and how they are reacting to them. People are constantly connected and as a result, are more clued up towards gimmicky and flashy ads that they see thousands of times a day.

In this article, we will look at a few of the top marketing strategies that you should currently be employing in your business and we will also take a look at what is trending for 2019 giving you a head start in shaping your next year.

What is an Internet Marketing Strategy?

You strategically market your business by putting in place a plan of action to promote, advertise and sell your service or products to people.

By understanding whom your target audience is, that is, who you are trying to sell your product or service to, you have taken the first step in implementing a strategic internet marketing plan.

Perhaps you want to advertise to other businesses (business to business or B2B marketing) or maybe your customers are the general public. In this case, you must consider the age group and gender among other factors to define your target audience.

Top Tip 1: Search Engine Marketing

This boils down to two subcategories, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay per Click (PPC) Marketing.

SEO is organic and allows for your company’s website to be on the list of search engine results. It is advised not to rely on SEO as your only marketing strategy, but you shouldn’t pass up on putting some effort into it either, as Google, Bing or Yahoo searches can still bring in massive amounts of leads and traffic to your site.

Your ranking within a search engine result is deemed by a number of factors, including what you keywords you place in your description and meta-tags on your website, your social media activity guest blog posts and such.

Pay per Click advertising such as Google’s Adwords involves you paying for your website to be displayed alongside an organic search engine results.

Other PPC advertising strategies include the very popular Facebook Ads, which is still one of the best ways to gain leads available with a ton of marketing information available on the billion people active every day.

Top Tip 2: Contests, Vouchers and Giveaways

Everybody loves to win. It is irresistible to enter a free draw and much more appealing to enter an online store or business with a voucher code in hand.

An epic way to see an increase in leads, customers and traffic are to advertise a voucher, offering 10% off, free shipping or a buy one get two deal, or to run a contest or giveaway to get involvement, shares and traffic through to your website.

Not only do contests give you loads of consumer data to use, but your consumers also market for your business and you can increase your fan base tenfold.

Top Tip 3: Be Active on Social Media

Not only should you reply to any comments that you receive on your Instagram, Facebook or Twitter accounts, increasing public likeability and engaging with your customers, but it is worthwhile maintaining a blog as well.

The more active you are on your blog and on social media, the more often you are able to post new keywords. This enables search engines to find and display your website more often, which we spoke about earlier with SEO.

Your blog can also gather a sort of a cult following, where you can offer advice, share what you know and really get to know who your target audience is.

Looking Ahead:

Digital Marketing sees trends rise and fall as consumers change the way they connect with each other on an online platform. Looking ahead, we can see a few trends that are to shape how we market online for 2019.

Video Marketing.

You yourself probably feel like you are watching more videos these days as you stroll through the net and your attention is called to something. Watching videos is more fun than reading an article and this new opportunity to reach and engage with customers is growing terrifically.

Thanks to a survey from Wyzowl,  99% of businesses who use videos say they will use them again, and 85% of businesses regarding video marketing as an important part of their marketing strategy. Get on board and don’t be left behind.

Internet video traffic will become a huge percentage of all consumer internet traffic in 2019. Live streams, in particular, are extremely popular and there is a lot of evidence pointing to a higher retention rate of live videos over pre-recorded ones.

Authenticity

Not exactly new, but in the world of marketing automation and chatbots, it is so easy to forget who it is we are actually trying to sell to real people. One of the best ways to market your business, and a definite growing trend as consumers are demanding it, is authenticity.

According to a review by Stackla, 86% of customers said that authenticity greatly influences their decision on what brands they like and support.

This is a huge percentage of people who want to feel like they are dealing with real people, not just another big business or brand. Take that into account when considering your marketing strategy for 2019.

With a strong online marketing strategy, you will help to grow your business and see more traffic to your site, more customers, more leads and connections and in the end, more sales. By taking into account the above tips your internet marketing plan can be your key to future and substantial success.

evaluate-brand-awareness

What Tools Can I Use To Evaluate Brand Awareness?

by Digital Marketing

Most business owners who are goal-oriented know how to track their sales and conversion rates, but how can you track and evaluate your marketing strategies on brand awareness?

Before the digital age, it just didn’t happen. We had no idea how many people saw an advertisement on a billboard or paid attention to a radio or television advertisement and knew what a brand was all about unless perhaps some surveys or questionnaires were taken.

But in the digital age, we have a much greater awareness of what people are seeing and how they are reacting to it. Just because a digital marketer has the same goal for every business they market, a business does not have to have the same goal as another business.

Some businesses are hoping to reach a different set of customers whilst others may want to target their target audiences only. How can we evaluate if our marketing techniques are effective in brand awareness?

1. Investigate your Social Media Followers

Calculating the number of people who follow your brand across the social media channels available, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit Google+ etc., is a great way of evaluating who is aware of your brand. Needless to say, those with greater social media following tend to have a more successful business.

It is also important to track the involvement of these followers, so you can put more time and effort into the channels that are more active than the ones where not too many people show an interest or engage with.

As you follow these engagements, you can assess progress within your brand to see what marketing strategies work to garner more interest and build bigger followers.

2. Look at Website Traffic

Using Google Analytics or a marketing automation platform such as this one, to directly track the number of people who typed your URL into their address bar, clicked a link in an email or offline document or used a browser bookmark gives you over time, incredible depth into how your brand awareness is increasing or decreasing.

Measuring your website traffic over time when you look in the right places will certainly offer you insights into how people are aware of your brand.

Of course, measuring keywords has become more and more difficult with the introduction of private searching, so you will not entirely be able to evaluate who searched for your brand because they knew of it before or whether they happened upon it by chance.

Of course, not every brand is dependent on their website for sales, advertising may come from another point of call and the website is purely additional information for those interested

3. Surveys

You can conduct a survey either through email, telephone, website, social media or at the end of an order form. This will give you an opportunity to either ask existing customers how they heard about you or you can reach out to a randomly selected group of people to ask whether they have heard about your brand or not.

The latter approach is more useful if your brand already has the following of a decent percentage of a group of people, perhaps in your local town or community.

If a local business asked globally if their brand was known, the statistics would not come back in their favor.

When conducting a survey, you need to be aware of response bias, where people may not give accurate answers based on how they were asked. A way around this might be to be a fly on the wall. Again, social media is great for ‘listening in’ on organic conversations about your brand.

4. Don’t forget to benchmark your findings

It is all well and good to get more involved on social media, get your customers involved and use a few analytical tools to see how many people are viewing your website, but if you don’t benchmark these findings, that is to say, you do not have a baseline from where you have begun, you will not be able to document any natural peaks and troughs, or any irregularities. You can use this information to change how you chose to advertise.

89% of B2B marketers say brand awareness is the most important goal, followed by sales and lead generation.

We will continue the article by explaining some of the metrics that you can apply to assist with measuring brand awareness. Although the use of digital marketing has made it easier for us to gather information about our customers and leads, understanding and using all the tools available out there can be mind-boggling. Here are a few you should know about that you can use to evaluate brand awareness.

5. Reach

Reach is defined by the potential number of people who will view something about your brand online and will go and view your brand’s content.

This is the reason that influencers are given free products in return for writing a blog post or making a video about it. The number of followers an author has is the ‘reach’ that the author has for your brand when they mention it.

6. PPC analytics

This is probably the easiest tool you can use to gauge online brand awareness. PPC analytics can help you to calculate the conversion rate by providing you with the number of people that clicked your ads.

By using this information, you can also understand how many people you are converting through your paid advertisements.

This online tool is available on any individual platform that you are spending money advertising on, such as with Facebook Ads or Google Adwords.

Using brand awareness effectively results in an effective marketing strategy for your business. When you are able to understand how your customers are reached and how they respond once they have been made aware of your brand, you are able to design marketing tools effective to bring leads into sales.

Generally, the more consumers that are able to remember your brand, the more successful your brand is going to be. With social media being such an effective marketing tool, we are now able to use a huge amount of information that is obtained to our benefit and reach more people than ever before.

10-inexpensive-ways-to-get-your-business-noticed-online

10 Inexpensive Ways to Get Your Business Noticed Online

by Digital Marketing

When it comes to marketing our businesses online, it doesn’t matter whether you are a small local craft shop or a global business standing the test of time, we want to get noticed and we don’t want to spend a lot of money doing so.

The way we advertise and the way consumers look at our products or services is forever changing. So we need to be constantly aware of what is going on in the digital marketing scene so that we can continue to do what we do and to continue to be seen.

Here are 10 inexpensive ways to get your business noticed online.

1. Search Engine Optimization

If you haven’t heard of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before, then now is the time for you to get clued up and involved. This is one of the best things you can do to ensure your business is found when potential customers search for what they are after, and best of all, it’s free!

SEO is organic. This means that it happens naturally and fortunately, it is through not too much effort from you. It is not a Pay per Click advertisement scheme or generated through you purchasing a bot to boost your presence.

When somebody asks Google, Yahoo or Bing (search engines) for information on a product or service, if you have input keywords relating to your business in the meta-tag and description of your website, then the search engines will relate those keywords to the person’s request and present your webpage. The higher up a webpage is relating to the relevance as well as activity and popularity of the website.

2. Love Social Media

You have probably heard it all before, but social media is key these days in giving you the opportunity to spread your word, share your name and attract leads, interest, and hopefully, sales! Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram are all social media platforms you should be familiar with and using regularity.

Remember not to preach too much about yourself all the time and mix it up with some other interesting posts in order to keep it fresh and exciting for your followers.

3. Choose a simple domain name

Now here is one where the boat might have already sailed, but if you are new to the world of online business or even willing to give another website a shot, bear in mind that your customers need to be able to remember your website, so keep it as short, simple and to the point as possible.

4. Try a high end (or low cost) domain

You might have heard that Google penalizes new domain names such as. flowers and .market so you might be willing to spend that extra cash by sticking with a .com or .org in order to move your search engine ranking up the scale. It appears this isn’t actually true.

Google has informed us here that they treat these new domains just like any other domain, so if you are squeezing every penny, don’t feel obliged to take a .com

5. Create a shareable blog

Blogging is great for connecting with your audience on a more personal level. You can offer insights into the industry, you are able to answer questions and by creating shareable posts, then your customers are essentially doing the marketing for you.

Not only that, but Google loves it when you create new and interesting posts and will reward you by boosting your ranking to allow you to receive more organic traffic to your website. The best type of blog posts you can make offer information about your company without preaching about it. You also need to make it easy to share on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit as when it is easy to share, people are more likely to do so.

6. Video Marketing

This is a great and inexpensive way to get your business online. It is dubbed to be the most influential medium in which to advertise this coming year, with 99% of businesses who use videos say they will use them again, and 85% of businesses regarding video marketing as an important part of their marketing strategy.

The survey from Wyzowl also informs us that “the average person is watching more than an hour and a half of online video content per day, with around 15%watching more than three hours”. That is a lot of video time.

7. Reward referrals

Let the people supporting your business such as friends, family and employees earn a little from their support. By including a referral system that offers a discount or up to 10% off when they refer a friend can provide a huge boost to your customer pool.

People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. (Nielsen)

8. Be authentic

According to a review by Stackla, 86% of customers said that authenticity greatly influences their decision on what brands they like and support. This is a huge percentage of people who want to feel like they are dealing with real people, not just another big business or brand. This is a great inexpensive way to garner interest in your business.

9. Join up with another company

Think airlines and car rentals. They go hand in hand, don’t they? So when there is a deal that allows you to purchase your flight as well as sort out your car rental, many people enjoy the simplicity. This can apply to your business. You are also benefiting from the traffic flow of the other company, which boosts your exposure significantly.

If you haven’t been online long enough to have a substantial customer base, pairing with a company of similar age can be extremely useful.

10. Experiment with Instagram

Instagram, as a photo sharing platform may lead you to believe that it’s only really serving businesses such as bakeries, florists and cake decorators when it comes to getting your business noticed online.

But you can use Instagram to connect with your customers, no matter your business, by allowing to let people into a bit of your company’s culture and energy.

shopping-cart-abandonment

How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment with a Seamless Checkout

by Website Development

It has happened to all of us. We pick products on a website, add them to the shopping cart, and for one reason or another, finally, we do not buy and the order remains in the limbo of unpaid orders.

Facing the abandonment of a shopping cart by customers is something that creates a lot of insecurity in online stores. It is also a problem for many online business owners.

Fortunately, more and more studies reveal the different reasons why abandoned carts appear, which allows companies to improve the sales process and adapt it to improve the conversion rates in their stores.

Reasons for having abandoned carts

There are many reasons why consumers abandon full shopping carts in an online store. Although, difficult navigation or a complicated interface to use are some of the main reasons for the abandonment of the shopping cart.

The following are also some of the major reasons shopping carts are abandoned:

1. The inability to save in order to validate later
2. The number of shipping costs is not visible
3. The impossibility of contacting customer support
4. The impossibility of using a third payer
5. The volume of information requested is too high
6. The complexity of the payment process

Seamless checkout tips that can solve the problem of abandoned carts

We will discuss the issue of how to reduce shopping cart abandonment in your online store. Fortunately, more and more studies reveal different reasons why this happens, which allows companies to improve the sales process and adapt to improve the conversion rates in their stores. We have tried to collect the potential solutions that can be helpful in creating a better experience for your shoppers.

1. Quality customer service

We must pay special attention to communication with the client. E-commerce creates a new way of relating to the consumer, a relationship that is essential for the purchase process to be formalized successfully. Customer service is key. It has to be accessible and impeccable, we must realize that it is the only “contact” the client has with the company, so, even if it is virtual, it must provide adequate trust and demand from the client.

It is proven that when customer support is available at a single click, the abandonment of the shopping cart is reduced by 30%.

In the United States, 21% of online shoppers prefer a chat conversation with the company’s own support.

The ability to respond and the need for more information from the users have made companies rethink their sales process and bring a change in their strategy. The importance of knowing each client individually and building a lasting relationship will ensure better sales numbers.

2. Free shipping or discounts

Many online buyers abandon their shopping cart either due to a high shipping cost or the seller has not mentioned it during the entire purchase process, which may be an unpleasant surprise when they find it on the checkout page.

Also, keep in mind that customers are more likely to buy more products when you offer Free shipping.

3. Show the break-up of the cost

In the shopping cart, there must be a clear break-up of tax, shipping cost, and the final price, as it can mean a considerable difference that causes the customer to abandon their purchase.

Not indicating the final price on the products until the end of the transaction, can shoot the number of abandoned carts on your website

 

 

 

 

 

4.

The shopping cart must always be visible

Keeping it this way reminds customers to buy. Sometimes the product itself could distract the buying activity so a visible shopping cart will bring the customers to engage with the website.

5. Give them fewer steps

The customers are there to purchase, not just to fill out some irrelevant data. This may seem obvious, but there are still thousands of stores that put obstacles to their customers by adding an increasingly longer purchase process. You should minimize the number of clicks and make the customers buy the product at ease.

Analyze the heatmaps and study the behavior of your website visitors to know where you are failing.

6. Offer several payment options

You need to provide the clients with all possible payment options. The ideal thing would be to be able to pay by credit card, by conventional methods such as bank transfer or counter-reimbursement, by Paypal, or even other alternative methods.

There are many payment alternatives, the more the better. This will eliminate one of the most important barriers that a consumer would encounter.

SUPERCOMPUTER

Why Countries Are Competing To Build Supercomputers?

by Artificial Intelligence

Controlling supremacy in the technology world largely involves computers. Countries have realized this fact hence the effort in investing in supercomputers. Supercomputers are defined by speed and efficiency. Companies with a vision to lead different industries are at the forefront to acquire modern equipment and invest in fast processors.

The rapid changes in technology leave no room for delay in investment. While we still want to explore other factors to identify winners in different industries based on business strategies, nothing beats the investment in supercomputers.

The modern supercomputer

The size and performance of a supercomputer are compared to the size of a parking field with a capacity of 50 cars. The computation capability is immense; it takes a day to solve complex calculations that would take thousands of years with an average computer. However, personal computers are also improving in performance in the same way as supercomputers.

There are various terms you have to learn to understand how supercomputers work and how they differ from personal computers. A ‘bit’ is a unit of data measurement, ‘bytes’ is a measure of digital information storage and ‘flop’ is a measure of computation speed. Floating-point otherwise known as flop allows computers to process long numbers and post results within a short time. This is a distinguishing characteristic of supercomputers

Who controls the best supercomputers?

As mentioned, every country is keen to invest as much as they can in the development or acquiring fast processors that distinguish supercomputers from average computers. Of course, there are super economic powers in the globe that you will expect to be on top of this list. The United States, UK, Japan, China, and selected EU states battle for the top position in controlling supercomputers.

It is difficult to point out a specific country based on their investment level; however, we can filter these major players in the tech industry by analyzing the top supercomputers.

Here are the top 10 supercomputers in 2018

1. AI Bridging Cloud | Japan | 130 petaflops
2. Sunway TaihuLight | China | 93 petaflops
3. Tianhe-2 | China | 34 petaflops
4. SuperMUC-NG | Germany | 27 petaflops
5. Piz Daint | Switzerland | 20 petaflops
6. Gyoukou | Japan | 19 petaflops
7. Titan | United States | 18 petaflops
8. Sequoia | United States | 17 petaflops
9. Trinity | United States | 14 petaflops
10. Cori | United States | 14 petaflops

While featuring in the top 10 list of 2018 is big for any country, it does not amount to controlling the industry. The availability of resources and share of developing tools is key. On this basis, China beats all the countries. It enjoys a big share of supercomputers’ resources thus controlling the industry.

Why do countries compete for supremacy?

China hosts 500 supercomputers, which is way ahead of America’s 144 supercomputers. While how a country uses supercomputers matters more than the number, China still enjoys the top position by controlling 35% of supercomputers’ resources in the world. The United States of America follows at 30%.

Why all the statistics? Why are countries competing in developing the best supercomputers?

The answer is in the use of supercomputers. As mentioned, the distinguishing characteristic is the speed of solving long numbers. This is important in analyzing data in weather forecasting, nuclear weapons, biology, and astrophysics. Scientists and engineers of any country will benefit from the fast speeds hence boost innovation and efficiency in various industries.

High computation speeds increase the profitability of the private sector and boost service delivery in public sectors. A country’s economy is guaranteed to rise with supercomputers. Geopolitical standings and military accuracy and efficiency are also dependent on supercomputers. Countries are competing for supremacy in developing supercomputers because it is the future.

Breaking the exaflop barrier

Of course, the United States is not bowing to China, especially after the 2017 statistics. Soon after the 2017 results, President Obama launched the National Strategic Computing Initiative, which is a partnership between the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and the National Science Foundation.

The initiative comes along with huge funding to developers in the private sector to come up with the best processors in terms of speed and quality. The initiative targets to develop the first exaflop computer, known as Aurora, which is equivalent to 1,000 petaflops.

The computation speed is unimaginable; it is compared to 500 supercomputers and a trillion times faster than a personal computer. The exaflop computer is set to be released in 2021 to help with research and accuracy in the FBI, Homeland Security, and NASA.

The US government-funded channeled $600 million dollars to the development of the following exaflop computers.

  • ORNL System delivered in 2021 and accepted in 2022 (ORNL system)
  • LLNL System delivered in 2022 and accepted in 2023 (LLNL system)
  • ANL Potential System delivered in 2022 and accepted in 2023 (ANL system)
  • Definitely, China is also working on an exaflop computer, probably a more superior one.

 

Benefits of supercomputers

Scientists reap a lot from the continuous enhancement of supercomputers. Accuracy and high computation speeds are everything in research and decision-making in biology, security, agriculture, and other crucial fields in a country. The efficiency of artificial intelligence also depends on supercomputers.

AUGMENTED-REALITY-AR-IN-MARKETING

Augmented Reality in Marketing

by Artificial Intelligence

At the moment, Augment Reality (AR) is still new and under-explored. This novelty makes it the latest solution for sharing information. It is set to beat the amount print, online, and TV advertisements combined. AR can capture people’s attention for at least 85 seconds, raise interaction by 20%, and raise the click-through rate to buy by a further 33%. Soon it will be the mainstream and competition will rise—as is the case with all other industries.

With time, there will be more companies focusing on AR-inspired experiences. A rise in people incorporating AR into marketing will yield an equal rise in competition. The quality of campaigns will improve in quality as companies seek to impress audiences. Creativity will determine the best performing products. You will, therefore, need to improve your ingenuity and innovativeness to retain relevance.

Here’s Why Apple Acquired a Small Augmented Reality Startup

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook predicts that AR will become part of our daily lives. It is, therefore, of vital importance for marketers to learn how it works. Let us explore companies that already utilize the technology. These leading companies focus on innovativeness and are keen on taking risks on future technology.

Sephora

Purchasing products online is continuously easy and convenient for most people. However, there are certain products such as makeup, which needs trying on first. Women make up the target group for beauty products and face a problem of having to try on desirable products.

 

Sephora’s Virtual Artist App with ModiFace is an AR tool responsible that helps you view makeup on a similar face. Not only does the app reveal how your face will appear when you apply that product but also suggests tools you need. It also shows the appropriate equipment for application and things you would need to accompany the product.

Virtual Artist also reveals the long-term effects of the consistent use of skincare. This is not possible with beauty professionals.

 

Timberland

Many people are not fond of utilizing dressing rooms when shopping. They prefer to try outfits in the comfort of their homes. Most stores allow returning dresses, shoes, hats, and other items if they do not fit. As a result, many shoppers choose to purchase items but retain the right to return them if they are not satisfied. No one likes to carry a pile of clothes into a public dressing room and wait in a line.

Timberland created a virtual fitting room to help people who want to avoid the hassle in stores. It is, therefore, designed for convenience and comfort. Using Kinect motion sensing technology, the AR lets shoppers view their image. You can see a model body with your size in various outfits.

 

Home Depot

Decorating homes is trendy and exciting but very cumbersome and involving. It is not easy to predict the outcome of a color, for example. Working on your house requires a predictive image to confirm if you will like the results. Products may seem impressive online but fail to give you the level of satisfaction you expected. You may end up with a bathroom that is too bright due to the wrong kind of paint.

Furniture can also go wrong. A piece of furniture may fail to impress you. For example, you may purchase a bulky coffee table at a high cost that does not fit in your living room like you wanted. Going through the hassle of acquiring and transporting an item that does not fit is demoralizing.

Project Color App is Home Depot’s AR tool. It uses patent technology to depict the outcome of colors in rooms. The technology is capable of incorporating a variety of conditions. For example, it takes into consideration, the lighting, objects, and shadows in the room of choice. You can see the real version of your room and share with friends to help you assess it.

 

StubHub

For Super Bowl lovers, StubHub provided an AR feature on their mobile app. The app allowed ticket buyers to view a virtual 3D model of the U.S bank stadium. They could visualize their experience at the stadium before purchasing it.

The different views helped them select seats. Hesitant buyers could not resist the offer. Sales increased tremendously.

 

Pepsi

Pepsi is responsible for designing one of the most exciting tools with AR technology. The tool was made in a London bus shelter. One side of the structure appears as though thrilling objects such as flying saucers, and a tiger is headed for the commuters.

This AR technique was used to amuse the public. It reveals the playful personality of the company. It entertains the Londoners with an exceptional experience. A video of the shelter’s exceptional design made 6 million views on YouTube. This became the most viewed advertising campaign ever.

 

AMC Theaters

AMC Theaters sought to enhance delivery of latest movie trailers in time. When movie lovers come across a movie poster in a theater, they can launch the AMC app and scan the poster. They will instantly receive information about it and a trailer too.

Technology accuracy and timing has given mankind a vital piece of technology of the future.

Billion-Dollar-Business-Model

Billion-Dollar Business Models

by Digital Marketing

A business model helps you define your customer value proposition and pricing. It provides a helpful guide on how to organize your business, whom you should partner with to generate revenue, and how to structure and manage your supply chain accordingly.

Airbnb, Amazon, Netflix, and Uber are among the most innovative tech companies. Their success lies in the viability of their respective business models. Any creative mind can design an attractive brand image to lure potential customers. Without a realistic business model, however, it would be impossible to monetize the attention. The ultimate goal of a business is to capture and retain customers to enable consistent growth. Failure to achieve this would prove costly to the firm.

For the best examples of business models, we sampled four innovative tech companies.

Amazon

Amazon has risen to become one of the most successful companies on the globe beating the biggest retail stores in the game. With a revenue of approximately $177.8 billion, the company surpasses Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Macy’s and other biggest retail stores combined.

Constant innovation that enables it to reach millions of people globally is responsible for this success. Amazon has diversified to as many markets as possible to achieve the widest variety of revenue options.

The company makes 67% of its revenue from retail. Negotiating with wholesalers for low prices helps boost their profit. Since they are dealing with massive amounts of products, the profit margin immensely increases. Over time, the company has developed a network of warehouses and lately manufactured its own products.

There are currently over 45000 robots working in the Amazon Warehouses

Amazon marketplace makes up to 17% of net sales according to their latest reports. The platform allows third-party sellers to conduct business on the company website. These sellers may also purchase Fulfillment By Amazon, which is a service that stores, packs, and ships products with world-class facilities.

Web Services contribute 9% of net sales for the company. Cloud computing infrastructure allows customers to access the software at any location and with any device.

A further 5% of net sales are derived from Amazon Prime. Through monthly subscriptions, Amazon Prime provides customers with shipping options, offers no-cost, unlimited space, and gifts.

Netflix

Netflix generated USD 11.6 billion from big data and analytics making it a major tech company. They buy and create content that resonates with subscribers. They can monitor and predict subscribers’ behavior and preferences with precision.

Netflix aims for 700 original series, movies in 2018

The streaming services come with free monthly trials. After the trials, the subscribers may continue with membership by paying for three plans. The plans are; Basic, Standard, and Premium. The basic plan is the cheapest and allows you to watch Netflix on one screen. The standard plan has an average price. It allowed you to watch Netflix on two screens simultaneously while the premium plan offers four screens running concurrently. It is the most expensive.

Most of the revenue comes from streaming but they still maintain DVD services.

Uber

Uber set out to revolutionize taxi tradition. It transformed the perception of the business. It has changed into a lucrative and efficient business. Since 2009, the company quickly increased its success in providing quality services. Today, it manages 15 million rides a day without owning a single vehicle. At the close of the previous financial year, Uber recorded $ 37 Billion in revenue.

The management-focused their effort on perfecting convenience for riders. They strove to increase speed and lower the cost of service. The company succeeded in addressing the issues facing most city dwellers. It made it possible for customers to book a ride with the nearest driver. They can also see the prices and track the driver’s location on the app.

Uber’s continued customer-related strategy attracted a huge following.

Customers may cancel a request before their driver arrives but at a minimum cost. If it takes too long to meet the driver, they hold the right to cancel the deal. Drivers can also accept or reject the request based on a user’s rating. The request immediately goes to the next available driver nearby.

Uber says it has 2 million drivers globally and 750,000 in the United States. They are the backbone of the company, which is valued at $70 billion.

Uber charges customers depending on the estimated time and distance of their route. Another contributing factor to pricing is the current demand for rides in the area. Your choice of the type of car also contributes to the rate. For example, for your comfort, there are four categories namely; economy, premium, extra seats, and more.

Economy level offers average carpool opportunities with other customers in a sedan. Premium level, on the other hand, offers a luxury ride with a professional driver. The extra-seats option offers space for 6 with a professional driver in an SUV or Uber XL. The final option named ‘more’ offers space for special cases such as wheelchairs.

Uber keeps between 20% to 25% of the revenue and leaves the rest to the drivers. Prices hike during rush hour, bad weather, holidays, and whenever there is high demand.

With the app, it is easy to track users. The app generates massive revenue for the firm due to its popular use by over 40 million active users. Other businesses can also advertise on the app and earn Uber more income.

Airbnb

Airbnb connects over 140,000 travelers with hosts in 190 countries every day. Like Uber, it owns no single property but manages accommodation services. It reached USD 2.6 billion by the end of 2017.

Airbnb became popular because of the creative ideas that give hosts a chance to use their property as a side hustle.

Airbnb have accommodated over 60 million people in 34,000 cities around the world.

Guests simply book rooms in a home that come at affordable prices in comparison to hotel rooms. Spending nights in a foreign home gives you the feeling of the local culture. This is not possible in a hotel.

According to this Fortune article, Airbnb bookings will increase from around 79 million “room nights” in 2016 to one billion per year by 2025.

The booking is easy and cheap. 3% of every booking goes to Airbnb. Guests, on the other hand, are charged 5% to 15% of the booking cost. Hosts can review their guests online before accenting to the deal.

YouTube-Marketing-Tips

YouTube Marketing Tips, Trends, & Strategies

by Digital Marketing

To achieve success online, a serious business cannot ignore the significance of YouTube as a marketing tool. Today there are over 1.3 million users and millions of visitors every day. Experts expect that by the end of 2018, video marketing will be the main marketing tool online.

Today, videos play a massive role in influencing the audience of any product. By the end of 2017, at least 80% of Internet traffic was video. A further 50% of all web traffic, especially in the evenings and nighttime, is YouTube and Netflix videos among other platforms. YouTube has proven to be the biggest and most promising marketing tool of the future.

6 out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV.

Videos give the businesses a chance to address their audience. This is a great way to build a connection as you explain to the viewer why your product/service is good for them. It could also be an idea that you are trying to rally people around. YouTube marketing should, therefore, be part of your online marketing strategy. Take advantage of the great shift towards video with the trend of the moment.

We watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos a day, more than Netflix and Facebook video combined

Learn the tricks and tips to making appropriate videos that will give you the edge of the competition. Here are some marketing tips, trends, and strategies.

YouTube Channels

If you want your business to have a successful online presence, you need to view YouTube as the second website. This will help you to use your channels strategically. Change your perception of the platform from a social place for sharing fun videos into a marketing tool. First, create a channel and make it your homepage. Think of it as the website and the videos as web pages.

The logic is each video point back to the main page, which is your channel. Use the rules of web designing to YouTube too. The more commanding your channel is; the better your ‘site’ will rank. Make your videos aligned with the theme of your core mission depicted by the channel. It will help you build authority.

Creating a Good Video

Before creating a video, be clear on the role it is supposed to play on your channel. Determine exactly what you want the audience to get from the video as the initial plan. Let us explore some of the most common targets that businesses aim for using YouTube videos.

Growing readership

Since video gives you a good chance to encourage visitors to check your main website, use it to advertise by directing them to it. This will improve the readership on your website.

Lead Capture

Videos are among the best tools for capturing leads. Use them to direct the viewer to a link visible below your video. Let the visitor know what to expect if they choose to visit the page.

Building the Brand

This should be one of the main long-term missions of your videos. Seek to build your business website profile and visibility.

Direct Sales

YouTube videos help businesses to present the crucial CALL-To-Action. You can directly address the viewers and ask them to try out your product/service with the details of how to conduct the transaction.

Video Sequence

After creating your channels with the appropriate theme that addresses your business correctly, it is time to create the communicative video.

The ideal length of your video is extremely important in the process of video sequencing. Most businesses squeeze all the information they need to pass into a 3-minute video. Our recommendation would be to avoid a video that is 10 minutes or longer.

To make a good video, Introduce yourself and declare the brand. Be brief and precise in your content. Make sure you connect with your brand passionately if possible. Remember to give Facebook and Twitter connections.

Proceed by informing the viewers what they will gain by watching your video. Explain the benefits they should expect. Address the issues you promised in your introduction. Be detailed but brief and clear. Your summary should re-highlight and emphasize the key things in the presentation for the remembrance of the visitors.

Daniel Middleton, better known as DanTDM, is the highest earning YouTuber, bringing in $16.5m in 2017

Be kind and polite to advise them instead of begging or commanding the potential customers. You may encourage them, give a recommendation or tell them the merits of your product/service and how it would add value to their lives.

Do not forget to call the audience to take an action. Request them to take the next step and subscribe to your list and make a purchase. Find a creative way to make this call-to-action work. Do not be pushy.

Avoid sudden cuts

Let the video run a little for emphasis. For example, to avoid a boring end, use an arrow pointing to the download link or the subscription button. Abrupt ends will limit the time the audience can focus on the link as the video jumps to another on YouTube.

Content

Try to keep the content flowing. This is very important because you will keep the potential customers busy watching more of your stuff. Keep the video uploads frequent so that they may have daily or weekly check on your channel. More content will also increase the chances of the video being shared, which improves your secondary marketing technique- Referral visits.

Traffic and Connections

Connect your channel to other social media profiles to direct more traffic to your channel. Direct the traffic by advertising on the social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to increase the views of your videos.