Griffon Webstudios, Author at Griffon Webstudios

short-term-vs-long-term-marketing-strategy

Short Term vs. Long Term Digital Marketing Strategies

August 12, 2018

The business world has turned digital; In fact, if you do not have a responsive website or blog you are lagging behind the competitors in your business. Traditional marketing techniques of physically talking to your audience or potential customers are no longer effective; printing posters and hiring sales representatives is a thing of the past.

Besides effectiveness with respect to sales, such marketing strategies are expensive so you need to spend extra time and money hence there is a need to consider a better alternative- Invest in a website.

After investing in a professional website, the next step is to build your brand by increasing traffic and converting the numbers to sales. It can be overwhelming but you really have no better option. Irrespective of your business industry and niche, consumers expect to find your products and services online, competitors have the same resources, and opportunities hence there’s a definite need for a creative marketing strategy to increase sales.

Here are some long term and short term digital marketing strategies you should consider.

Short-term strategies

These techniques are often used to get a quicker result. Short-term strategies result in a significant boost in sales but for a limited time.

Pay-per-click

Paid advertising strategy is probably the fastest way to generate sales and traffic to your website. Common tools are Google Adwords and Facebook Lead Ads where an investor creates a link attached to a sensible investment idea.

It is about attracting online users to the platform with a form of payment when they click on advertisements. You have probably clicked on several advertisements without your knowledge because of the attractive rewards presented. This is the easiest and reasonable way to generate traffic as a technique in online marketing. $300 is the standard or least investment in implementing the short-term strategy.

Tradeshows

Attending tradeshows exposes your company to a wide audience. You also have a chance to physically introduce your products and services to your target audience; Also, you are able to answer any queries from potential customers.

Tradeshows give you a platform to explain why people should subscribe to your services; you have an opportunity to pick consumer reactions to each of your strategies and product types. Face to face interactions with the target audience is important for any business.

Today, Companies incorporate landing pages and email marketing techniques to reach out to a wider audience. Tradeshows are no longer out in the field; you can interact with consumers over a given link and share your website as a lead to your products and services. Tradeshows are characterized by promotions and offers, which attract customers.

Limited time promotions

Gifts-on-purchase, referral incentives, and price discounts are modern digital techniques in boosting sales. The promotions and offers are made attractive by setting a time limit to increase urgency. Consumers tend to rush to make purchases and enjoy the discounts hence boosting traffic and sales over a short period.

Long-term strategies

While short-term strategies are important for any business, they are temporary. You need to sustain the positive results through with long-term strategies.

Search Engine Optimization

Success in online marketing is defined by targeting specific audience and frequency on search engine pages. This can only be realized through proper search engine optimization techniques. After settling on a niche, you have to identify keywords based on the type of your audience and how they search for products or services.

50% of visitors are more likely to click a result if the brand appears multiple times in search engine results

Customizing content to suit a specific audience is the goal of SEO. There are billions of e-commerce websites and blogs meaning the competition is extremely high; you can easily be irrelevant. Search engine optimization increases visibility on search engine hence higher chances of sales. Also, you will no longer have to pay for advertising space on other platforms because search engines like Google present your company on top of its pages making it easily accessible to consumers. You also win confidence and trust with customers if you appear on top of Google first page.

Social media

Social media platforms are increasingly becoming popular in the business world. It can be a short-term and long-term strategy. Quick results can be demonstrated from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter because of the ease of access and graphics effect. Also, the platforms offer an opportunity to build networks and a huge following, which increases your chance of sales. It is not easy to gather 1000 likes on your Facebook page, it takes time and effort, but it pays in the long run.

61% of all visits from social media websites come from Facebook

With huge followers on social media, you are sure to reach people three times the number because, with every follower, there is a network of friends who would view your post. The beauty of this long-term strategy is the cost element; you won’t spend a dime for the following years while the network will be generating sales.

Content creation

Customize your content not only to suit the current target audience but potential customers in the future. This is in relation with SEO techniques; All you have to do is identify keywords and tailor content around that in relation to your business. If need be, regularly update the content posted on your blog to match business trends.

Companies who blog have 434% more indexed pages than those who don’t. That means more leads!

The digital business world is more interesting and effective; however, you are still expected to work for your success. Marketing is irreplaceable in any business; you have to be creative and apply relevant techniques to rise above the flooding online world.

Identify-Target-Audience-and-Increase-Sales

How to Identify Your Target Audience and Increase Your Sales Online

August 10, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Digital Marketing

Defining a specific target market is important more than ever before in the business world. If you keep to old strategies of focusing on traffic, you have no place in the competition; Today, it is more of conversions other than traffic.

The online webspace is flooding; every retail/product-based business is investing in an e-commerce website. Billions are accessing online stores and blogs every minute, The only way to draw attention to your page is by offering relevant products and services to your target audience. The generic Ad term “Anyone who needs our services” no longer works in the 21st century; you need to focus on age, location, sex, and income level among other elements in society depending on your type of business.

Of what good is huge traffic to our website without sales?

Identifying and specifying your target audience is crucial. Find out what they want, how and when they want it and then customize your products and services based on these factors.

Why it’s important to identify your target audience?

First, you should know who your potential customers are. This defines what kind of content they are searching online, how they want the information delivered, and when exactly they search for a specific term. It is important to define your audience on “who” to customize your blog or website based on these qualities.

After identifying the “who,” figure out how they perceive and describe the services you are offering. It is important to have these details when designing and optimizing your website. Search engine optimization techniques vary widely, old marketing techniques may not work here. However, it is crucial to consider specific words popular in your target audience to title your services.

Identifying your audience helps in prioritizing services and products on your blog. Understanding how they choose and compare different products lays a basis for making the priority decisions. Resources are limited, you don’t want to invest unnecessarily unless it is translating into sales. Structuring the content and design of your blog is dependent on how your target chooses products and services.

Figuring out the exact needs of your audience is crucial in the sense that you only focus on relevant products and services. Advertisements and marketing techniques online should be relevant lest you lose customers. Honestly, people no longer have time for shopping and this is why online shopping is increasingly becoming popular.

Once a consumer spots any irrelevance, your blog will be dismissed; probably never to visit again. While you should focus on the value proposition, 99% of the content should be relevant to your target audience.

Identifying a target audience for your business saves time and costs

You will not invest in graphics and animation if kids are not your focus. Baby boomers are less interested in color and graphics, brief and preciseness sell for such an audience. You also save space on your blog for posting relevant products and services.

Relevance is key in online business

Be sure to identify a target audience and let your offer match the state of mind. No business can offer relevant services to everyone; it is a lie, if anything, you are wasting time and resources.

Start with assumptions

If you are starting off with limited facts about the niche you intend to focus on, work with assumptions. Of course, informed choices. Typically, age, income level, sex, and location are used to determine the needs of a target audience. However, geographical location is not a concern for online businesses. E-commerce websites offer delivery services to various parts of the country.

Once you settle on a niche, you can evaluate your expenses and the kind of people you expect to buy before setting a price. If you are targeting baby boomers in a certain location, quick research on the neighborhood gives an insight on how to customize your content. Data on every region in the world may not be available but that doesn’t mean you can’t define your audience and be successful in your business.

Engage people

Of course, there is more than enough data on the Internet, which you can access from the comfort of your bed. But entrepreneurship is less convenient, you need to get out of that house or office and find concrete information. There are no facts inside buildings, only theories, and unestablished conclusions. One of the causes of business failure is the poor relationship with consumers; you need to talk to your audience and find out their specific needs and preferences.

You are missing a lot when relying on general information about a certain group of people. Why not spare some time and talk to people among your target audience in different locations. Get the general feeling on the type of products. If you are lucky to profile and engage an existing customer for your business the better. Increasing sales involves research, there is no option; you have to invest time and resources to realize results.

Search engine optimization techniques are of no use if they cannot translate to sales. The primary goal of any business is making profits; every minute and dollar you spend in establishing a business should convert to income. Investing in e-commerce websites can only translate to desirable results if you learn and commit to identifying your online target audience.

10 Reasons why your website is not ranked on the search results

June 16, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Website Development

If you have a website, your ultimate objective is to get it ranked on the leading search engines such as Google. Unfortunately, most of the website owners out there in the world struggle hard to get their websites ranked. If you don’t experience any positive results in getting the website ranked, you need to take a look at the reasons behind it.

Here is a list of 10 prominent reasons that indicate why your website is not getting ranked on the search results.

1. High Bounce Rate
2. Frequent Hosting downtime
3. Duplicate content
4. Links to suspicious websites
5. Poor website architecture
6. Not Mobile Friendly
7. Lacks Depth in content
8. Over optimization
9. Too many 403 and 404 errors
10. Poor grammar and spelling in content

High Bounce Rate

What is a Bounce Rate? It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave (“bounce”) rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site.

If the visitors exit your page without browsing further then your bounce rate will increase. When you have a higher bounce rate, the search engines will assume that your website is irrelevant or it doesn’t provide adequate information to the visitors.

Therefore, you need to add more relevant content, make your website more user-friendly and engage your visitors, so that you will be able to minimize the bounce rate.

Frequent Hosting downtime

If your website cannot be accessed by the search engine crawlers, it will not be indexed. This usually happens when your web hosting keeps going down frequently.

Best Web Hosting Services in 2018: Reviews & Comparison

If you are having any such issues, you are strongly recommended to change your web hosting service provider. Then you will be able to make your website visible for the search engine crawlers.

Duplicate content

You should never copy content from other websites and paste them on to your website. It is true that you need to have quality content to assure higher rankings in the search engine results page. But this doesn’t mean that you can copy content. Instead, you need to put efforts and come up with unique content that adds value to your audience.

If you find it difficult to come up with content on your own, you can seek the assistance of a professional to get the job done.

Links to suspicious websites

If your website has outbound links to suspicious websites, the search engines will not rank you in higher positions on the search results. It is important that you keep an eye on whether your website has links pointing out to suspicious, unethical and adult websites. If you find any, quickly disavow them.- How to Use Google’s Disavow Tool Correctly

You also need to be vigilant on inbound links as well. If you notice any suspicious links, which you have not added, you will need to take appropriate steps to get them removed. This will let you minimize the damage caused on the website.

Poor website architecture

There is a strong relationship between the architecture of your website and the search engine rankings. That’s because the search engine crawlers find it as a difficult task to go through your website and properly index content if the site architecture is bad.

Therefore, you will need to spend your time and effort to come up with a proper architecture of the website. If you can do it, you will be able to secure amazing results in the search engine results.

Not Mobile Friendly

Most of the users in today’s world prefer to browse the internet via their mobile devices. The leading search engines tend to present mobile responsive websites to those users. If your website is not mobile responsive, it will not be seen by most of your potential customers.

Google has announced mobile friendliness as an important ranking signal. The change has affected the websites all over the world and made a significant impact on the search results. Optimizing your website to be mobile friendly will result in reaching scores of mobile users.

Lacks Depth in content

Your content should offer value to the readers. That’s why it is important for you to be concerned about the depth of content available on your website. Even if you post 10 articles in your website each day, you will not be able to secure top placements in the search engine results.

That’s because the search engines will reject your content because they don’t have enough depth. Due to this reason, you must extremely be concerned about the quality and depth of the content available on your website.

Over optimization

Website optimization should be done moderately. If you over optimize your website for the search engines, you will not be able to get ranked.

For example, most of the people tend to increase the number of keywords that appear inside content. In other words, they believe that increasing the keyword density is in a position to provide a tremendous assistance to them with securing better results in the search engines.

This fact is not true at all. If you do this, you will become a victim of keyword stuffing and won’t be able to get the website ranked. Therefore, it is important to use the keywords in your website in moderate amounts.

Too many 403 and 404 errors

If you don’t link the pages of your website properly, you will end up with 403 and 404 errors. These errors are in a position to create a negative impact on the search engine results.

Therefore, you should continuously audit your website and locate the broken links. Once you notice such broken links, you will need to take immediate steps to get them fixed.

Poor grammar and spelling in content

Having poor grammar and spelling in web content can also make the leading search engines reject your website from indexing in the top of the search engine results. Most of the website owners who live out there use article spinners to come up with content.

The article spinners just duplicate content. They don’t care about the quality of the content. Hence, you need to make sure that you come up with high quality, unique and manually written content on the website.

Best Way To Gain Brand Awareness In 2018

June 4, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Digital Marketing

Introducing your business to the community or target market might be easy but building a brand is surely not. As Mark Cuban says “Focus on building the best possible business. If you are great, people will notice and opportunities will appear.”

As a business owner, It is important that you make it easier for people to find the products and services you offer. Following are some of the ideas that could help your business get more attention and build the brand.

1. Make use of Social media

2. Launch an effective PR Campaign

3. Brand Exhibition

4. Partner with another Business

5. Be a Sponsor

6. Have a strong web Identity

7. Invest in Content Marketing

8. Make use of Video Strategy

9. Host Live Events

10. Participate in Referral Programs

Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.- Jeff Bezos

1. Utilize social media

Social media offers a platform for companies to promote themselves. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, enable the companies to build their brand infront of millions of audiences worldwide.

If you are using social media to build brand awareness, you need to keep your business profile active by posting regular updates and answering your customer’s queries. Responding to comments, tweets consistently will increase the interaction with your followers and it creates a strong influence on your brand in the minds of your audience.

2. Public Relation campaign

Press coverage is substantive and way better than free advertising because the editorial has the ability to persuade potential customers to check your brand. You have to identify the media that is newsworthy for your brand or product, Is it the print media, the radio, or television? Do what works best for your industry.

Coming up with a good story to lure the journalist to cover your business will make the press coverage more effective.

Before you start contacting journalists or writing Press Releases, you need to decide the objective of your campaign and set a realistic timeframe for it. If you are about to launch a product or announce a huge offer on your products, you should set measurable goals- such as an increase in traffic by 20% or increase in sales by 10%, etc. Your message should always focus on the problem you promise to solve for your potential customers.

Exhibition of your brand

Amplify the reach of your brand in trade shows, business meetups, Ads, cultural festivals etc. This is one of the most effective ways to create local brand awareness and a best bet for a better return on investment.

If you are an online service provider, You could do a podcast or a webinar or the tested and proven pay-per-click campaigns. Many awesome online products provide a free trial, allowing the users to try out the entire features and upgrade if satisfied. With the freemium account, you get more people to use your product/service which will not only get them to talk about it but eventually upgrade to be a paying customer.

In order to make people remember your brand, You can always provide freebies. Everyone loves free stuff! Put your brand name on t-shirts, pens etc, and distribute at the local event or business conference. A free advertisement is done right.

77 percent of B2B marketing leaders say branding is critical to growth.

Partner with other businesses

Joining forces with other businesses would be a win-win situation for both. Find other businesses targeting similar customers but not competing with you directly.

It is very crucial for your business to partner with other businesses to increase the awareness of your brand. If you own a Spa, you can provide exclusive discounts for customers at the nearby Hotel. For an established business it’s a way to reward their customers at no cost and effort.

Sponsorship

Sponsoring an event or a product is another great way to create brand awareness. Sponsorships put your brand visuals in front of large audiences who haven’t heard of your business. The bigger the event, the more press and social media mentions you get before, during, and after the event day.

It also enables you to engage directly with the customers and create a good network with potential customers. Ensure that you choose to sponsor any event or product wisely, it should be in line and relevant to what your brand stands for.

Have a well-designed logo

The logo has always been crucial for branding. It serves as the face of your business and should convey your company’s motto/story. One-third (33%) of the top 100 brands use the color blue in their logo.

Although consumers form a first impression of a brand’s logo within 10 seconds, it takes 5-7 impressions for consumers to remember the logo.

A logo should always fit your brand and speak to your target audience so you should work with a well-experienced designing team.

Content Marketing

Keep in mind that the main objective of Google is to provide users with useful and relevant search results. All you need to do is, Create helpful content that benefits people. If you have a product or provide a specific service, Talk about it on blogs. Let the readers know how your product/service adds value to people’s lives.

Companies with blogs produce 67 percent more leads per month than companies who don’t have a blog. In fact, blogs account for 434 percent more of indexed pages on Google.

Make sure that your content resonates with your targeted customer that will encourage them to interact with you. Your content may also help you build an active community that is ready to be converted into a purchasing customer.

Video marketing

Video marketing has raised its popularity, with YouTube, Facebook Live, and Instagram videos and it has redefined the way people consume content. Facebook live videos have grown increasingly popular and now competing against the 1 billion daily viewers on YouTube.

500 million people watch Facebook videos every day

It has become obvious that your target audience is likely to be more engaged in video content than text. You need to have a strong video marketing strategy to take advantage of the current trend.

Hosting live events

Hosting a live event is an effective way of not only promoting your brand but also getting the attention of potential clients. It may seem like a hassle but you create a lot more reason for people to visit your brand.

Nowadays Live events are not just for large broadcasting companies but for small businesses as well. You can even launch your brand or business in a live event to increase awareness since a live event will trigger a lot more attention and bring a bigger audience.

Here are 5 reasons to use Facebook and Instagram live in your marketing campaigns.

#1 To Connect with Your Audience in the Most Genuine, Human Way Possible

#2 To answer questions in Real-Time

#3 To Showcase an Event to People Who Couldn’t Attend In Real Life

#4 To Share Industry-Related Updates

#5 To Show Off Your Company Culture

Holding a live event is an effective initiative to give you one-on-one time with your clients, It also offers the customers the opportunity to feel and experience your brand. Though hosting live events may seem expensive and time-consuming, it has a lot of benefits like meeting potential customers who may end up staying loyal to your brand.

Referral programs

The referral program is the smartest marketing strategy. It entails customers referring their friends to your product thus creating a strong buying influence. A referral is a more credible method than any other type of advertising as once you get a recommendation from a friend or a person you trust you will feel obligated to check it out.

77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family. – Nielsen

Knowing about your service or a product from a friend will have a great impact than seeing the ad in a billboard. Referral programs also reward and incentivize the person who refers your product, thus motivating them to act as your brand ambassador.

Online Shopping Stats and Trends

June 2, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Digital Marketing

Technology has become the backbone of almost everything we do in our daily lives. This is from agriculture, business, education, government systems and creative arts just to mention a few. The growth in technology has led to the introduction of new products and business processes.

Online shopping has been one of the introduced technologies. Most of the businesses if not all, have adopted this technology just to increase their networks, market and getting customer feedback to improve their products. It provides a platform where businesses engage themselves virtually directly with their customers. Here are some of the statistics and trends in online shopping.

E-commerce Statistics

E-commerce is growing at the rate of 11.9% annually-up from 3.9% a decade ago. The millennial’s desire to get instant and quick access to products has contributed a lot to this growth. There are 80 million of them in the US. They spend $600 billion annually and that’s 28% of all daily per-person consumer spending. They are forecasted to be 35% of spending by 2030.

Retailers should now able to keep track of the growing number of users and also set effective measures in driving sales.

By 2040, it is thought 95% of purchases will be facilitated by eCommerce (Nasdaq)
54% of the online purchases are done by millennials.
71% of Shoppers Prefer Online Stores.
Retail E-Commerce Sales will Grow to $4.5 Trillion by 2021.
35% of Online Shoppers Start with Big E-Commerce Marketplaces.
56% of online shoppers abandon their online basket because they were presented with unexpected costs at the checkout
52% of people say they’re less likely to re-engage with a brand following a bad mobile experience (Google)
Email accounts as the biggest source of traffic to eCommerce sites after organic (SocialMediaToday)

Curated and Subscription statistics

23% of shoppers will abandon their shopping basket if they are forced to register an account.
By 2020, personalization technology that recognizes customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase profits by up to 15%

A staggering 35% of Amazon’s revenue is generated by its recommendation engine
The average order value (AOV) of purchases from basket abandonment emails is 14.2% higher than typical purchases.
74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized.

Customer reviews statistics

It only takes 1-3 negative review for an online buyer to make their decision whether to buy the product or not.
70% of potential customers are lost if there are 4 or more articles talking negatively about your company or products.
40% of online buyers create an opinion of a company or business just only after reading 1 to 3 customer reviews.
48% will visit a company’s website after reading positive reviews.

Reliability (27%), expertise (21%) and professionalism (18%) remain the most important attributes to consumers.
Reviews produce an average of 18% uplift in sales.
At least 55% of shoppers agree that online reviews influence on whether they make a purchase or not
About 88% of consumers agree that they trusted reviews made online as much as they did personal recommendations.
Reviews of a business can impact it up to 10% in the search rankings.
Only 72% of buyers make a purchase upon reading a good review.
It’s 7 times more expensive to get a new customer than retain an existing one.

Social media Statistics

48 percent of Americans have interacted with companies or institutions on at least one social media network.
23% of online purchases are through social media.
51% said that they would unfollow brands on social media if they posted irritating posts and 27% said they would mark/report the brand and page as spam and block them.
Facebook still reigns supreme as the most popular social media network, with 79% of internet users in the US logging on the site.

Facebook videos were 109% higher than on YouTube videos.
Instagram ads grew by 28% in the second half of 2017.
Instagram drives the most engagement per post compared to any social network – 84 times more than Twitter, 54 times more than Pinterest and 10 times more than Facebook.
47% of marketers agreed Twitter was the best social media channel for customer engagement.
94% B2B organizations rely on LinkedIn for content marketing and distribution.
More than 400 million Snapchat stories are created per day.

Marketplace Statistics

Amazon was the most popular marketplace with a total score of 6.12 on a 10-point scale. (Statista)
Only 63% sell on marketplaces.
55% sellers have a profit margin above 20%. Profit margins on Amazon and eBay are almost identical.
29% are not satisfied with their channel management tool.
36% of people begin their search in a marketplace.

Mobile Statistics

Users spend on average 69% of their media time on smartphones.
Mobile devices will drive 80% of global internet usage.
69% of consumers worldwide between the ages of 18 and 39 use mobile devices to research products before they buy. (Aumcore)
78% of mobile searches for local business information result in a purchase. That’s higher than from any other kind of device. (Comscore)

Mobile-influenced offline spending is already over $1 trillion. People do heavy mobile research before indulging in offline purchasing in almost all categories. (Forrester)
57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site. (Socpub)
It’s estimated that US mobile search spending will reach $25.11 billion in 2018 and $28.25 billion in 2019. (Aumcore)
By 2019, mobile advertising is expected to represent 72% of all U.S. digital ad spending. (Marketingland)

Importance of User Experience In Your Business.

May 28, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Website Development

User experience encompasses all efforts you put on the website in order to make it attractive, user-friendly and interesting to visitors. Visual appeal and usability have the largest influence on people’s first impression of a brand. And these initial impressions can last for years.

First impressions are 94% design-related. Don’t get me wrong, quality content matters. A lot. But even the best content is rendered powerless when it’s embedded in poor design.

A good user experience should entail value, usability, ease of navigation and a functionality which provides the website visitors with a positive impression. Cheap is expensive, Do not compromise on average design and functionality to save cost.

Ask yourself and your staff the following question: Have we logged in and changed anything in the last month? Six months? Year or more?

The longer that period is, the more likely your site is outdated and that goes double if no one can remember the logins to get into the website.

Reasons why user experience matter to your company.

Mobile factors

In the current scenario, mobile phones account for 52.2 percent of everyday web traffic. This means you should design your website to accommodate mobile users or else you will be serving less than half of the web users. Most companies are quickly adopting mobile-friendly website and marketing strategies to boost their sales.

User Behavior

It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave.

Here’s a sad scenario.

A prospective client is referred to you by a friend, family member or client. Before they contact you, though, this person does what everyone else does — they visit your website to learn more about who you are and what you do.

But then, silence. They don’t call for an appointment. They don’t email you. Nothing.

Apparently, your warm lead just turned cold. What happened?

Easy. Your website scared them away.

Instead of giving them the confidence that you know what you’re doing and you can actually help them, your site did just the opposite. It created doubt, uncertainty and a general feeling of uneasiness about you and your company.

So they quietly click the back button on their browser and decided to look elsewhere. Probably to one of your competitors that offers inferior services to yours, but has a better website than you.

Bringing clients on board is already tough. Don’t make it even harder by having anything lesser than an exceptional website that drives them away.

Referral to other users

When your website leaves a lasting impression on the minds of the users there is a huge probability that they will pass on the good name to their friends hence increase traffic to your site.

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

With limited time and higher stakes than the general consumer, business leaders have to be sure that they’re making the right decision. And many of these top-level business people already know that referrals are worth their weight in company gold.

84% of B2B decision makers start the buying process with a referral.

With the right tools, your organization can implement a structured process for monitoring, tracking and rewarding your customers. And over time, campaign analytics can show you key areas of the referral funnel that need improvement.

Sites efficiency

If you can customize your site in such a way that it simplifies processes and saves the users time, you will definitely create a great user experience. If a task initially took five minutes but your system performs it in two minutes people will definitely opt to use your site. The ease of your site is also an important factor to consider.

The ability to increase sales

One of our clients runs an e-commerce business and they faced a situation where more than 60% of the users exit the page after adding the items to the cart.

After some research, it was discovered that there was a form that the customers were supposed to fill before checking out and it was putting most of them off.

In order to make sure that you don’t face such user experience nightmares, you should ensure that your site has a smooth workflow and the user should not be introduced to a new task after every click.

Elements of a successful User experience.

Most people always assume that user experience only entails design and colors of your site, well there is a little more than that. A positive user experience must incorporate the following elements.

Value

What are your customers getting from your website? What value are your services adding to their lives? Are you solving their business challenges? These are the basic questions which should be answered when developing a perfect User Experience strategy for your site.

Usability

Good usability is not attained overnight. Your website should consist of clear, credible and relevant information that provide answers to all the questions your visitors are yet to formulate.

Navigation

Customers definitely hate a lot of ‘next buttons’. You should, therefore, reduce the number of clicks to find out what they are looking for. The layout of your site also plays a key role in ensuring that your site offers a great user experience.

Functionality

A website without functionality is a one-way street. Since the Internet is designed to allow more than one channel of communication, it is pointless to have a website that does not provide some form of visitor interactivity.

Your site should be straightforward about the services you offer. Customers should not wonder what you are specialized at and be able to see it at the first click.

Adaptability and Design

Your website should be goal oriented without distraction to the buyers. It is always easy to deviate from your goal when on the internet; your website design should not be the reason the users will get distracted from what brought them there in the first place.

It should also adapt to all devices that use internet be it phones, tablet, iPad or even desktops

57% of internet users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile

In 2017, mobile eCommerce revenue accounted for 50% of total U.S. eCommerce revenue

Nearly 8 in 10 customers would stop engaging with content that doesn’t display well on their device

Average smartphone conversion rates are up 64% compared to desktop conversion rates

Impact of User Experience in Return-on-investment (ROI)

Research shows that your ROI increases rapidly with an increase in your investment in better design. Every 1 dollar spent on UX has a $100 ROI.

A good example is the ESPN which saw its profits increase by 35% after taking into consideration its fan base suggestions on how they wanted the site’s homepage designed.

It is important to ensure that you offer the best experience for your clients. This can get you a better website traffic, generate sales and an increase in ROI.

Snapchat for Business: Should Companies Start using Snapchat?

April 16, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Digital Marketing

Despite its 187 million daily active users, its 10 billion daily video views, its 2.5 billion daily snaps, and the approximately 18 visits it enjoys from daily active users, Snapchat remains another massively underestimated platform.

Since its founding in September 2011, Snapchat continues to evolve and transform allowing you to post videos as well as photos and has added all kinds of extras, like filters, Geo-filters, lenses, emojis, and video-editing tools like slo-mo. Content is no longer ephemeral.

The growth of Snapchat messaging app is unparalleled with millions of millennials using these feature every day. Snapchat is a lucrative platform for businesses and companies and some of the reasons why they should use snapchat include:

A quick way to reach a massive audience

Snapchat Ads– With a massive user count, Snapchat is one of the most popular social platforms today. Advertising your business on it will get you in front of millions of people, especially the young crowd aged 18 to 34 years. This is a group that love to stay connected and keep themselves updated on what’s trending in the social world and command a large purchasing power.

Some 82% of Snapchat users ages 18 to 24 say they use the platform daily, with 71% indicating that they use it multiple times per day.

In the United States alone, 80 million young Americans are using Snapchat several times a day. The chances of your sales skyrocketing are quite high if you use Snapchat to advertise your business.

Growingly Popular among the Adults

With the average age of Snapchat users steadily going up, It’s no longer just for teens. According to Comscore’s U.S Cross-platform Future in Focus, Snapchat is getting a meaningful traction from the age group of 35+ and with more new releases, the number is expected to grow. At present, 28% of snapchat users are among the age of 35+. Companies should kick-start into the Ad products of Snapchat before it gets flooded with Ads.

More than 20,000 photos are shared every second.

Excellent User Engagement

Despite getting few punches from Instagram, Snapchat is growing steadily with its users seriously engaged to the content. An active Snapchatter opens the app 18+ times and creates 20+ stories a day.

According to a report by Axios, Snapchat user engagement is up by 40%. The users spent a total of 32.8 minutes per day with the app, up from 30.3 minutes per day in Q1, and 27.5 minutes in Q4. That’s almost a 20 percent jump in just six months during a time when Instagram was offering its own version of Snap’s best product, Stories.

The opening rate for an email newsletter is about 25% whereas for Snapchat it is 61%. If you have 100 followers on snapchat, it is very likely that 60+ would engage in your content.

Truly a fun way to advertise

Adverts about your company need not be too formal and serious. Companies could add some sense of humour in order to connect with their target market. Snapchat gives you that opportunity to be cool and funny while presenting your idea to your followers.

Younger audiences (which make the best targets on social media) express themselves through brands, and they engage with brands that have a relatable personality.

Rather than presenting the marketing gigs to your customers, you can relate to them by having a conversation which is more endearing to customers and helps you with a wider reach.

New ways for Brands to stay trendy

Are you trying to create awareness about your brand in the market? You should be the first one to give quick alerts, trends and breaking news about your industry. This will give the customers the curiosity to know more about your products and will stay tuned or follow your company.

Snap chat offers a platform where you can add brilliant value to your brand with fresh content. When sharing your product or status on other platforms like Facebook & Twitter, Make it a habit that you create a story in Snapchat.

Powerful tool to influence the market

Traditional Advertisements may continue to enter our homes through television and radio stations, but advertising that actually influences people will happen only when people feel comfortable with the brand that establishes personal affinity with the consumers. This will encourage the buyers to learn more about the brand and be all ears to their stories.

And the most effective way to do this is for companies to think and act like individuals with unique personalities and voices that people can actually see and trust.

Snapchat brings a lot of value to your Ad campaign but you need the assistance of a talented marketer/agency to master your Ads. With the benefits associated with using snapchat, Companies should revisit their marketing strategy and embrace the app because the results will be quite rewarding.

How can a Mobile-Friendly Website Boost User Engagement

April 15, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Website Development

With the introduction of technology in the business world, complicated business endeavours that were once a pain have now been made simpler. We live in a generation where a simple device like a mobile phone is no longer just used for communication but to mainly seek information on the internet and even manage and run a business.

The big question is How much time do consumers spend on mobile devices?

With a massive growth of the mobile market in the recent years, having an archaic website that only runs on the desktop means that your website is losing a large volume of valuable traffic.

1. Mobile Marketing Strategy

Why do you need a mobile marketing strategy? Well, this is the age we live in! Just get to the city square and you’ll find thousands of folks glued to their smartphone screens.

Here’s a quick bite of some mobile marketing stats.

According to official Google statements, more than 50 percent of search queries globally now come from mobile devices. But we don’t know whether the number is 51 percent or 60 percent, or if it varies significantly by country.

The number of mobile phone users in the world is expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019. In 2016, an estimated 62.9 percent of the population worldwide already owned a mobile phone. The mobile phone penetration is forecasted to continue to grow, rounding up to 67 percent by 2019.

66 percent of all email in the US is now opened/read on smartphones or tablets and 34 percent is viewed on a desktop. The mobile breakdown is as follows: 49.5 percent of email opens were on a smartphone, 16.8 on a tablet.

By 2019, mobile advertising is expected to represent 72% of all U.S. digital ad spending.

Google drives 96% of mobile search traffic, followed by Yahoo at 2% and Bing at 1%.

Apps account for 89% of mobile media time, with the other 11% spent on websites

2. Mobile website optimization

With the help of a Smartphone, Buyers can now access your website within a short span of time and shop. Due to the increased use of mobile devices to access online content, you need to ensure that your website is fully functional and well optimized for mobile devices.

Enter your website’s URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and it will let you know if you’ve got a mobile-friendly page on your hands. If the website you entered passes Google’s test, you will see a green banner indicating the website is mobile-friendly

A slow website loading time is, and will always be your biggest threat. The webpages should operate well to allow it to smoothly function on multiple screen sizes. Most people will abandon the website if the loading time takes more than five seconds.

3. Mobile phone applications

Companies have started to embrace mobile apps as they understand the exceptional user engagement and the value-add it brings to their business. It can be easily downloaded from the App Store. The app economy is continuing to grow, with the worldwide revenue from app stores expected to top $110 billion this year.

Mobile apps with numerous functions help customers to quickly access the company’s products/services with minimum steps.

It also provides an easy payment option with an ability to track sales which benefits both the customer and the seller. Similar to mobile-friendly websites, Mobile apps engage buyers to spend more time surfing the products and services, thus increasing sales remarkably.

4. Social Share

It is no longer a news that we’re in a social-driven world. Facebook has more than 1.6 billion monthly active users, while Twitter has 305 million–numbers that are rapidly increasing. More than 100 million people use Instagram every month.

You don’t have to limit social engagement on social media. Engage customers as soon as they arrive on your website by offering a Live Chat option. Linking your social media is just the first step but to truly boost engagement, you need to get serious about the content creation and distribution.

A mobile-friendly website with social media engagement would be a perfect mix to retain visitors and respond to your call-to-action.

5. Online surveys

Surveys are a way to know the market views concerning a certain product or service. The consumers give their opinions concerning the improvement of a product or service by completing online questionnaires made available.

A mobile-friendly website would allow the customers to take part in online surveys easily. This will enable the service providers or companies to evaluate themselves and make changes to the products/services leading to a better user experience and increased sales.

6. Better Conversion Rate

If your target market can access your website conveniently on their mobile devices, then they are more likely to complete contact forms, make purchases and become a loyal customer to your brand.

One of the main benefits of having a mobile-friendly website is that even for dynamic technology platforms- such as wearable devices and smartphones- your website will still run very well and be optimized. This means that a mobile-friendly website will serve your business for years to come.

The mobile market is rapidly expanding nowadays. It presents a great opportunity for your business to stand out from your competition. When done properly, your mobile website will help attract more customers and achieve a better bottom line.

5 B2B Marketing Tactics to increase your Sales.

April 14, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios with No Comment Digital Marketing

The business world has seen an enormous transformation in the steps involved in business-to-business marketing and sales. Business to Business (B2B) marketing has evolved so much that outbound marketing has started becoming to be the tactic of the past. Automation, Digital Business Network & Social Media have rewritten the way business used to operate.

The B2B business is characterized by fewer customers, complicated business transactions, derivative demand and a few numbers of employees. The internet has played a major role in turning the B2B marketing into a round-the-clock activity making it very competitive since every business is scrambling for the clients found on the internet.

For every business to grow and make profits there have to be strategies put in place to govern and enhance the marketing and sales activities. Setting an online presence is not just enough to put you ahead of the game in a B2B business set up. The following strategies can be used to increase the market share and generate more revenue.

1. Establish a specific goal

Before setting any specific goals for marketing you need to establish the kind of customers you want to reach out to. With this, you will be able to determine the tactics, strategies, promotional avenues and the messaging you can use in the marketing campaigns. You can start by creating buyer information channels to gain knowledge about your customers’ goals, motivations, pain processes.

By this, you can understand where the buyers get their information from, what kind of products attracts them and how they carry their research. You can then synchronize the buyer’s needs and challenges with your products/services and how you can add value to them. This will help in creating relevant content which will keep you ahead of your competitors. Since the B2B marketing has many stakeholders, you have to go through this process to make sure you deliver the right message to the right person and at the right time.

2. Use video in your marketing

By 2019, global consumer Internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and the easiest and fastest way to spread your product in the market is through video advertisement.

YouTube has been a very powerful tool in the social media for advertising, promotion, and marketing. This is a media platform that can no longer be ignored because videos are becoming more prominent as a content formatting tool. You can work on the strength of your video to deliver a special and unique experience that will assist in sharing accurate insights, create emotional and personal connections and help solve market problems.

3. Prioritize Digital Advertising

With digital marketing becoming more mature, it’s no surprise that companies are continually getting better at SEO. Marketers see SEO as becoming more effective, with 82% reporting effectiveness is on the rise and 42% of this group stating effectiveness is increasing significantly.

Google receives 63,000 searches per second on any given day.

In terms of efficiency the digital paid advertising was ranked at 52 percent while posts promoted by social media came second with 39 percent. The preference of using paid advertising whether it’s the social media ads, social media posts that are promoted or the pay-per-click ads found in search engines will continue being in an upward direction.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more suitable for B2B sales and marketing because it enables you to reach out to your intended market organically.

4. Use Content marketing to assist customer’s journey

94 percent of people that buy through the B2B marketing platforms are said to have done some online research before buying any product, while the majority of decision makers of a business prefer to know the company they are engaging with from a number of articles rather than hearing of them through adverts.

Content marketing can take the perspective of the buyer about your products right from the awareness stage to the buying or purchasing stage. Apart from that, it can also help to increase the awareness of the brand to people, direct new customers to your website and helps to boost your search engine optimization.

A content marketing strategy that is well designed allows you as the seller to get the best leads, build trust with the buyers, nurture relationships, help prospects, lead decision makers of companies to their platform which finally leads to getting high sales

5. Build a good e-commerce website platform

If your potential clients are bypassing the website without spending time or engaging in the available resources on the page, then you need to know that your content marketing and advertising techniques are all in vain. It is very important that your business is supported by a strong e-commerce website that is fully featured.

This can help you to process the number of website visits to sales and then to recurring orders which obviously is the goal for any business.

This entire customer journey can flawlessly happen only when your website offers an outstanding user experience.

The digital era has brought with it significant changes posing some challenges while at the same time opening up numerous market opportunities in the B2B world. The big question is, Are you making the best use of all the available resources and technology to meet the demands of your customers? If not then you now know the strategies to run a successful B2B marketing campaign.

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence and it’s Future.

March 2, 2018

by Griffon Webstudios Artificial Intelligence

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence

Technology is the backbone of everything we do or even say in our modern life. This has necessitated the advancement of technology even further. Artificial intelligence is the imitation of human intelligence in machines. It is the equipment of machines with the ability to assess their surroundings and react accordingly.

AI is the study as well as the design of systems that sense and understand their environment and act in ways that highly increase their chance of success.

By the end of 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised by a “robo-boss.” Robo-bosses will increasingly make decisions that previously could only have been made by human managers…

Investments in Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence borrows from natural intelligence which is what living things have. Machines are made by humans and due to the advancement in technology, human beings are always looking for ways to outdo themselves. Since the majority of brilliant minds are always inventing new ways of making life easier, major steps have been taken towards technological advancement.

Artificial intelligence covers a huge chunk of the technological field. Every day, there are new ways of approaching AI that is created amongst researchers.

Major approaches of AI

Despite the many ways that are invented from one day to the next in artificial intelligence, they all borrow from the major approaches to AI. They deviate in a few ways but generally almost always achieve the same goal which is machines ‘thinking’ for themselves. The major approaches to artificial intelligence include:

Fuzzy logic
Neural network
Genetic Algorithm
PSO – Particle Swarm Optimization

businesses-are-in-a-constant-state-of-change-02

Fuzzy logic

What is Fuzzy Logic?

It is a powerful problem-solving methodology.
Builds on a set of user-supplied human language of rules.
Fuzzy Systems convert these rules to their mathematical equivalents.

This is the creation of intelligence in machines so that they use logical reasoning in executing their tasks. Human beings are known to use logical reasons in making their decisions and when they use fuzzy logic they are trying to design machines that emulate this behavior.

Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning

Currently, fuzzy logic is in the process of evolving even as human beings continue evolving. Machines are able to rationalize situations and come up with solutions promptly. The major advantage of this approach in machines is that they are not governed by their emotions and as such, they are able to make split-second decisions.

The advancement in this approach as a major approach to AI is that more machines are being manufactured and used instead of human beings to make crucial decisions. The machines are able to use a collection of attributes concerning the situation to get the most suitable solution.

The drawback to this approach is that the world is ever-changing and so are the factors to consider when mitigating a problem.

Fuzzy logic uses pre-existing conditions to give solutions. In the case where an alien factor is introduced at the last minute, the decision arrived at would most probably be a wrong one.

However, In the future fuzzy systems in machines will be able to make split-second decisions no matter when or how new factors are introduced to the system. Better ways of enhancing fuzzy systems are discovered daily and the future where your phone decides for you whether to pick a call or not is almost here.

Neural network

This approach imitates the functioning of the human brain. The artificial neural network is an exact copy of the human brain. It is, however, safe to presume that since it is the human brain that invents such a system, the human brain is still more superior. In the same way that the neural network in living things consists of neurons that analyze and send information, the concept is the same in machines with the only difference being that machines use artificial neurons.

Neural-Network

In the same way that human beings learn through repeated actions from time to time, the machines are taught in the same way. The machines are trained to identify similarities or patterns in all operations and they end up working as though a human was responsible for the thought process of the entire work. In the same way that human beings adapt to their surrounding as well as tolerate much of their surroundings, so do artificial neural networks. They are tolerant of the fault and they adjust accordingly to different situations.

Currently, machines that are reliant on neural networks for their operations are advancing in development. They think better than earlier machines and adapt easier. Machines nowadays stop operation in the case where only one component is not working, or they may choose to isolate the weak link and continue operating but at a lower capacity while sending a signal that one part is down. This emulates the way pain is in the mind. When we are in pain we may not move at all or we may slow down while doing normal activities while looking for ways to heal the broken parts.

In the future, our suitcases would be able to identify when we need to unpack and open them or they may ‘think’ we are on the move and follow us. In fact, such suitcases may already be in production. If this were the case, then in the future they may just go ahead and calculate how long you intend to stay away and recommend what to pack and where to put each item for maximum use of the available space. If this were to happen, human beings would be lazier than they are perceived to be right now.

Genetic Algorithm

Based on the evolution theory that living things evolved from simple organisms into more complex organisms, an idea was formed in the minds of brilliant scientists. Throughout the years, human beings have tried to establish the validity of the theory. Nevertheless, researchers and computer engineers decided to replicate the theory in machines to determine if it would hold.

Genetic Algorithm was developed to illustrate that natural evolution worked and continues to work. It is an algorithm used in machines to create machines that are intelligent from machines that are not.

There are four steps that summarize all Genetic Algorithm (GA) is all about:

A pool of solutions is generated to solve a presented problem.
The solutions that exist are mated to give new solutions
The current solutions are mutated in ways that are a replica of natural genetic variation
The weak population (machines that are not adapting well) are eliminated via natural selection.

Genetic Algorithm

This mechanism applies the mantra “survival of the fittest” in the machine world to get better and more sophisticated machines. In the past, if you needed to work on a machine you had to physically see it.

Currently, applications such as team viewer allow a person to remotely access a computer. Machines in the future may not need to have visible microprocessors in them. A wireless link may be developed such that a person may not need to physically see the machine to use it. An alternative would be to teach a machine to learn how to do things on its own based on the genetic algorithm in it.

Particle Swarm Optimization

It is an optimization technique that heavily relies on the behavior of different swarms. The setting is always a multi-dimensional search space. The algorithm uses repetition as well as speed and positions of the members of the swarm or in the case of machines, swarm particles. In machines, PSO is applied in the case where:

The machines are randomly placed in a search space.
They are then located in the search space
The objective task at each machine’s position is evaluated
A machine with the highest chance of succeeding at a task is identified and all other machines are adjusted towards performing just as well as the benchmark machine.

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In the effort of getting the intelligent machines, this technique is used to establish the machine with the highest probability of success and the assumption made is that all the other machines will be able to get the work done just as well as the benchmark machine.

Conclusion

AI in its elemental form is a fun way of using machines. It is very impressive to know that human beings invent better systems every day. However, in spite of the many things AI has and is yet to bring, the human race should remain active because, at this rate, machines may just take over the world.