Category Archives: Digital Marketing

Digital transformation is the application of digital technologies into all aspects of an organisation, radically transforming how you work and providing consumers with value. It is also a cultural transition that allows firms to question the power structure on an ongoing basis, to evolve, and to be comfortable with uncertainty. For all industries, including medium to large, digital transformation is essential. From just about any briefing, panel discussion, post, or study related to how companies can stay innovative and important as the world is becoming increasingly digital, that message is coming through crystal clear.

Since digital transformation for every business may look completely different, a concept that corresponds to all can still be difficult to define. In simple terms, digital transformation is characterized as the incorporation of digital technologies through all areas of a company, leading to radical changes in how companies function and also how they deliver products and services.

Companies are forced by digital transformation to make a transition and adapt to a new consumer environment. What is fascinating about all this is – it is not the corporations that are pushing this transformation. Instead, the consumer is driving this move. With regards to what they’re doing at every moment, wherever and in the layout as well as on the computer of their choice, consumers today demand valuable content. Your approach is determined by their path. And to keep pace with this different sort of “always-connected” consumer, to offer an exceptional customer experience, the company must embrace the future. Fortunately, it is still at the heart of many organisations to put the client first.

Unfortunately, initiatives at digital transformation in industries around the world frequently do not place consumers at the forefront of their efforts. Instead, to minimize costs, emerging technologies are being used to build operating efficiencies. Although that’s essential, exasperated consumers dealing with poorly crafted interactions and inaccurate and unconvincing digital platforms with the brand too frequently pay for this narrow focus.

Businesses around the world are making major investments in digital transformation activities. International Data Corp., a technology analyst, estimates that these expenses would rise to more than $2.1 trillion by 2021. This rapid popularity of digital technology, paired with the decreasing cost of storage and computing capacity, has placed most innovations in the possession of virtually any enterprise, regardless of their size, particularly automation and computational intelligence. Thus, it won’t have a market edge just to get the latest technology.

Firstly, it isn’t centralized to digital transformation. Digital transformation has four types: business process, business model, domain, and culture. We also see businesses concentrating exclusively on the improvement of systems or organisations. Failure to overcome all four forms leaves substantial value on the table.

Second, digital transformation’s cross nature ensures that implementation has to be a team sport. It comprises not just the Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Digital Officer (CDO), but also the governance of the Strategy and Business Unit and therefore should be generally advocated by the CEO.

Third, many organizations wrongly conclude that societal shift should start with digital transformation.

Consumer habits have been influenced by digital technologies. Mobile devices, software, artificial intelligence, automation and so much more allow clients to get exactly what they’re doing at the moment they need it.

Also, these emerging digital innovations have caused consumer preferences to adjust, leading to a new category of modern buyers. Customers also score companies on their digital customer experience first because of the possibilities that come from using new technology. Digital needs you to reconsider how you communicate with your clients.

For B2B advertising agencies, digital-first means substituting social marketing with cold calling. On social networking sites, your clients are already involved and this is where you need to be. You would need to step it out to them, establish a relationship, and help guide them, rather than hoping for the client to approach you. By sharing quality information and your experience as part of the answer to their question.

For marketing departments, Digital reduces investment in offline marketing events, such as direct mail, billboards, and TV advertisements. Your clients want and expect highly targeted communications, which can only be done by data-driven marketing campaigns. Today, to incorporate search engine marketing, account-based marketing, and e-mail marketing tactics, you have to use digital platforms.

For customer service representatives, preparing for the phone to ring is no longer exclusive to anyone. First, digital isn’t all about being sensitive. It’s about being strategic in the direction you support your clients, who are searching for assistance using a wide variety of platforms. Social networking, review pages, forums, and groups are all now part of the environment of customer care.

Digital transformation creates the opportunity for companies to engage modern customers and exceed their needs of a seamless customer perception irrespective of channel or place.

For a deep dive on how to amplify the Customer Experience by offering a transformational Digital Experience, register to attend the webinar being hosted by ONLY webinars on 10 February 2021.

Technological advancements are happening daily all across the globe. There will always be room for improvement no matter how advanced the company may be. Small and Medium Enterprises are an important part of an economy as they provide employment, supplement other large companies, and accelerate the growth of any nation.

In the initial years of business, small companies face a lot of challenges which are at times very hard to overcome. Having said that, many of these problems and challenges can be fixed. What one needs is to take time to understand the pain points, re-think the strategy, and come up with solutions to fix them.

Let us look at some of the common digital challenges faced by small and medium enterprises and how these can be addressed:

1. Finding customers – This is a huge challenge that any company faces. Marketers work hard in every company to bring in new customers but this problem is amplified in the case of SMEs’ as they are not a household name. There are many channels that they can choose from but which one to prioritize is the real question. To address these challenges, companies need to focus on building buyer personas to get an understanding of their target customers. Based on these buyer personas, the content should be created to get in front of the target audience online with messages that they care about.
2. Increase brand awareness – The target customers need to know who you are for them to buy from you. Strategies need to be adopted not only to spread the word about the brand but also to work towards building a good reputation for the company. There are many ways of creating brand awareness with activities focussed on PR, blogging, and co-marketing. PR activities should focus on finding a voice and place for the brand in the market. Partnering with other brands can help SMEs’ inherit some of the reputation and image and create brand evangelists. It works well to gain new contacts along with organic marketing activities. Maintaining a high-quality blog helps in building brand awareness and helps drive traffic to the website. This traffic can be converted into leads. Blogs also help in establishing authority in the industry and trust.
3. Building an email list – To convert prospects into loyal customers, the companies need to focus their efforts on building trust and provide value consistently. For this, companies need to build an email list with all the prospective clients. This should be done by having an opt-in email list which is mainly made up of subscribers who voluntarily share their email addresses for companies to send out emails to them. Blogs can also contribute to building the email list. Great content makes it easy for people to subscribe, build search authority, and increase the online presence.
4. Lead generation – Another challenge that the SMEs’ face is generating leads, especially high-quality ones that convert. A good lead generation strategy is what turns website visitors into prospective customers. To make this process work smoothly, the website needs to be optimized for conversions. Prioritize the most popular pages of the website like the homepage, the “About” page, and the “Contact Us” page. The next step involves implementing conversion tools such as pop-ups, Slide-ins, and taking advantage of the free lead generation management software and apps.
5. New Digital Marketing Avenues – Webinars continue to be the most efficient, and fastest way to use digital marketing to generate more profits. Webinars have become the best way to reach and engage an audience. Over 60% of B2B Marketers are already using webinars as part of a lead nurture campaign. More than 75% of digital marketers believe that webinars are the most effective or among the top content marketing strategies available.
6. Delighting customers – Customer delight is as important as customer satisfaction. It is the delighted customer that comes back to buy again, write testimonials, and refer a brand/ company to people. This requires brands to focus their energy not only on satisfying customers but also go beyond their expectations and deliver an extraordinary experience. Efforts need to be made to understand why a customer selects to for their needs, set expectations at the start of the engagement with customers, and then ensure that you can deliver on those expectations. Brands should look at ways to innovate to provide unexpected benefits and measure customer satisfaction.
7. Employing talented people – To achieve success the brands need to have a competitive and talented team that understands the company vision and supports the efforts. Hiring is often one of the biggest challenges for SMEs’ as hiring new employees is a complex process and the cost of onboarding is usually high. Hence, time should be invested in the careful screening of resumes to not just find good ones but try and get to the great ones. Creating candidate personas for each role not only lays out the traits you are looking for but also defines the company culture.
8. Managing workflow – Having the right people is not enough. The workflow needs to be managed with scaling up of operations. one needs to ensure that the team has the necessary tools and processes in place to work efficiently. To overcome any roadblocks that the team faces, there should be a proper channel to provide feedback. This can be done through employee satisfaction surveys, one-on-one meetings, occasional sip-level meetings, pinpointing the threats to the business and that issues that create roadblocks in their roles.
9. Financial planning g– to create smooth operations, the companies should focus on providing resources. The main challenge is the budget restrictions face by SMEs’ which are based on revenue and margin. With budget restrictions, it is a big ask to improve efficiency. However, this can be handled by some good decision-making which is based on financial planning. The focus should be on cutting costs wherever it is possible and manage the cash flow.
10. Scaling– it is one of the toughest things to do as it is important in every area of business. Companies are faced with the problem of either building scalability early which can overwhelm the team members who may still be getting trained.

These are just some of the digital challenges faced by SME’s today. With proper planning and strategy in place, these can be overcome to become successful in the long run.

Data is now an integral part of every sector and function in the global economy and much of the modern economic activity simply cannot take place without it. The large pools of data when collected and analysed can help identify patterns and help in making better decisions which form the basis for competition and growth for organizations. To determine the competitive advantage that an organization can gain with customer data-enabled learning, there are some important questions that they should answer.

• How much value addition is made with customer data?

The higher the value-added the higher the chance of creating a lasting competitive edge.

• How quickly does the marginal value of data-enabled learning drop off?

What this means is that how soon does an organization reach a point where additional customer data no longer enhances the value of the offering? When the marginal value of learning from customer data remains high even after having a large customer database, the organization still will have a lot of competitive advantages.

• How fast does the relevance of the data depreciate?

If the data become obsolete quickly, then the organization stands to lose its competitive advantage over others in the same industry.

Having looked at how data can help organizations, it is now time to consider the role of data for marketing agencies and how it is driving growth. The role of a marketing agency has been evolving due to the ever-evolving digital landscape. New sources of consumer insights clubbed with new technological advancements have transformed the way brands connect with their consumers. Agencies are now tasked with delivering unique actionable audience insights to provide the base for persona development, analytics, and more by

1. Crafting new client pitches – customer data can be crucial in forming new client pitches as they offer insights and opportunities to grow a business. This data helps in formulating a plan that will translate into client deliverables. Since the customer data will not be available for a comprehensive analysis, the agency can leverage what they know about the brand’s target audience concerning demographics, psychographic, and other data. In doing this, they can clearly show
   • A strong and distinct understanding of the target audience and audience segments.
   • Help in enhancing the brand’s existing customer files, campaigns, and analytics
   • Gather insights about the competitors and show prospects and untapped opportunities.
   • Help in planning of product roadmap based on untapped consumer wants and needs
   • Enhance and improvise on the customer experience based on consumer personas.

2. Formulate data-driven personas – data can be very useful not only in formulating new client pitches but also to develop personas for organizations. Personas focus on creating characters to represent user types for a brand, site, or product. These personas have contributed in a big way by helping a brand get a better understanding of their customers to personalize projects for better ROI. Strong personas can help brands
   • Improvise the customer experience by ensuring that brands are talking to the right people, delivering the right message through the right channel.
   • Invest in the right channel- personas help brand prioritize what channels to use to have the maximum return.
   • Craft relevant messaging-personas have known to help brands tailor communication by ensuring that the audience is receiving messages as per their preferences. With the right data, brands can pinpoint the key motivators and help determine what makes the audience different and tick.
3. Improving campaign performance– developing personas in the stepping stone to elevating the marketing efforts of a brand. Consumer data is a vital resource for agencies who are looking to meet and exceed the performance goals. By combining various kinds of data, efforts can be made to build sophisticated audience models that can be consciously used for the execution of the campaign through all the stages of a customer’s journey from acquisition to retention. This has often led to a better campaign performance from awareness to engagement to conversion.
4. Enhancing analytics and insights– analytics and insights based on consumer data are essential to optimizing efforts made for the future. Enhanced analytics is a key area of focus for brands. To capitalize on this, the agencies must have on-demand access to unique data sets and tools that can be used to the needs of the brands they serve. It is a well-known fact that third-party data when used with campaign analytics can help brands discover new audience insights that lead to new opportunities.
5. Provide data processing and consulting service– in today’s date, the agencies should not only be equipped with deep data expertise that helps in persona development, campaign performance, and enhanced analytics and insights but also serve as always-on advisors for data management and evaluations. According to a recent study by Forrester Consulting, companies are dedicating 21% or more of their marketing budgets to data and analytics. Having said that many organizations have hurt their campaigns due to inaccurate, outdated, and inconsistent data, thereby presenting an opportunity for marketing agencies to offer value by using data and analytics to their advantage.

For brands to get the most out of the marketing efforts, there needs to be a shared understanding between the brand and the marketing agency of the goals and the target audience. By offering high-quality consumer data and leveraging across the marketing funnel, from persona development to campaign execution and analytics and insights, new doors can be opened for a collaboration between the brands and the marketing agencies.

The generation we are born in defines who we are. Be it Millennial, Generation X, or any other generation, they are likely to respond to advertising in a way that aligns with others from the same generation. With Generation Z which mainly comprises of individuals born between 1995 and 2015 now entering the workforce, they are poised to upend the digital marketing industry.

How is Gen Z disrupting digital marketing?

• This generation is unique as they have always had technology as a part of their lives and they have never known life without social media and smartphones. This shift has led to the way we communicate, connect, and market to one of the fastest-growing consumer bases. They are also a generation that has transformed multitasking into an art form. Having said that, Gen Z stands to contradict themselves as they are comfortable with analog forms of communication instead of the digital channels.
• For Gen Z, a workplace is a primary place where they feel the most comfortable and prefer face-to-face communication. With more and more of this generation joining the workforce, it becomes essential for any digital marketer to gain a basic understanding of what makes them tick and their preferred channels of communication.
• Gen Z has values that include determination, independence, and a strong work ethic and they love to learn new things. They create anything and everything and use social media channels to promote it. It is in their era that influencer culture has picked up and become a unique marketing avenue. Influencers set the precedent for trends by promoting clothing lines, beauty products, social causes on their blogs, social media channels, or by creating videos. Influencer culture provides a unique opportunity for marketers to think outside the box and convert Gen Z followers into leads. Getting an understanding of influencers or channels that make them stand out will help in reaching a wider audience.
• Social causes are a major selling point for Gen Z. a large population of them believe and advocate for the environment. They are a contribution to promoting the sustainable product revolution. The cause coupled with digital interaction provides a perfect avenue for marketers to connect with Gen Z potential consumers who are willing to pay more for sustainable products. Gen Z is searching for sustainable fashion products video content to engage with providing a platform for marketers to reach them.
• Gen Z is accelerating the change in the communication industry. Marketers must focus on understanding the rules behind social media functionality. E.g. hashtag best practices- when these are used to grow the audience base, the focus should be on not only appealing to the target audience but also on the causes they support. Another important aspect of communication is the ability to adapt. Gen Z shows lightning-speed dexterity as they navigate their smart devices, switching between apps skillfully and easily. This generation is equipped to multitask and also are looking for a change. The digital marketing campaign should be designed to keep these principles In mind and prepare for the unexpected.
• Disruption is a part of the digital marketing world, making change a constant for digital marketers who need to navigate this change for achieving success. Staying on top of social media trends is not enough. The focus needs to be on technological advancements that will help expand the reach.

Gen Z is defined by its relationship with technology, its commitment to social causes, and transparency. The use of technology helps in documenting every aspect of their lives from leisure to work. This combination poses a challenge for digital marketers who are struggling to keep up with Gen Z.

The way to succeed in today’s competitive market is by reaching your prospective customers quickly. The majority of the buyers are looking for products online. This presents a huge opportunity for SMEs’ to focus their marketing efforts towards investing in a wide range of digital methods that they can adapt to suit their objective, budget, and industry. Whether they’re trying to grow a construction business or restaurant, digital marketing is necessary. Digital marketing has transformed the way SMEs connect and engage with their customers. SMEs can use digital marketing to effectively put their brand in front of the target audience at the right place and at the right time.

What is Digital Marketing and why is it important?

• Digital marketing is the form of marketing that relies on electronic media to spread the message across. This mainly includes websites, emails, search engines, social media platforms as well as TV and radio commercials. Investing in digital marketing is crucial for SMEs as both the consumers and the competitors are online. If the prospective consumer is not able to find you online, they are most likely to switch to other brands for fulfilling their needs. The consumer expectation has changed in the digital world of today. They search for products and services online, and if you do not have social media presence or a website, you can’t compete.
• It helps in measuring the effectiveness and performance of the campaigns- it is possible to monitor the performance of the campaigns in real-time. There is timely data available through various tools like Google Analytics to review the effectiveness and performance of the current strategies and make changes accordingly to refine them to focus on the customers’ requirements. Metrics like engagement and conversions help in measuring the success of the campaign.
• Drives new inquiries to grow any business, the customer base needs to grow for higher revenue and profit. Customers can be reached through social media channels, websites as well as video marketing. Mobile customers are a rapidly growing market and the above efforts help in attracting these users to ensure you can generate more traffic and capitalize on it.
• Websites serve as a 24/7 sales representative- For SMEs, having a strong online presence can help in boosting and generating sales and reach the audience more efficiently. A well planned and designed website works round the clock for you to attract potential customers by providing information related to the products and services.
• It is cost-effective- SMEs sometimes do not have the budget to focus on traditional marketing such as print ads, TV, etc. This can be a disadvantage for them. Digital marketing is far more cost-effective. A well-crafted digital marketing strategy can help reach prospective customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods. Attention should be paid to understanding the results of the data generated by digital marketing tools to increase revenue without spending a lot of money.
• Maximize ROI- high ROI is the ultimate goal of any business investing money in the marketing campaigns. With digital marketing being far more cost-effective than traditional marketing, it has been more successful in generating higher ROI. Analytics tools help in understanding what is working and what is not to make necessary adjustments ensuring effective utilization of marketing budget.
• Helps build brand awareness- digital marketing has revamped the way businesses engage with potential as well as current customers. It has served as an effective tool for building trust and fostering long-term relationships. Social media has helped businesses reach the target audience and connect with them. Content created to target the prospective customers can ensure brand visibility and develop trust by addressing the interest and their pain points.

After getting an understanding of what digital marketing is and why it is so essential in today’s day and age, let us look at some digital marketing strategies that SMEs should implement.

1. Optimization – It is one of the most important steps that any SME should take before going ahead with spending on online advertising. If the customers visit your website and they do not like what they see, chances are that they will never return. There are many aspects to website optimization, with SEO playing an important role in the ranking of the website on search engines. Optimizing helps in online visibility which can be attributed to website design, accessibility, user experience, content, and speed. Minimal designs are known to capture the attention of the audience. With the use of colours and visual content, you can establish your brand and its image. Websites should be designed keeping in mind the functionality to guide users to take action and look for products and services. It should be easy for a user to fill out forms, use drop-down menus, etc. With more and more traffic being generated from smartphones, the websites should be optimized for all different devices. Research has shown that when a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, the bounce rate goes up thereby losing half the potential customers. Optimizing the size of files, photos, and graphic content will ensure faster loading time. Last but not the least, the content of the website needs to be good in quality and should be informative to encourage a visitor to stay and come back for more. It should relevant to the target audience. Using keywords in the text content, image tags, links, etc will help when people search for your content online as search engines will index the website.

2. Social Media Marketing – Social media is a great tool for online marketing. It is the best way to reach people who are active on social media channels. Marketing on social media helps in many ways for SMEs to get noticed. Ads and posts can be created keeping in mind the target audience to reach the users who are likely to buy the product and services. Social media offers great ways to engage with the target audience and build strong relationships. Emphasis should be on interacting regularly on social media through posts. This not only helps increase the reach but Google also ranks organically as the brand is seen to be popular and worthy of organic ranking.

3. Backlinks – Linking websites on high ranking websites and online directories are referred to as backlinks. Sites with quality backlinks are ranked higher by Google. Backlinks should be added naturally over time. This helps Google in perceiving that the website is gaining popularity and is worthy of indexing for its quality content.

4. Google My Business – SMEs should get their business listed on Google. The profile should carry pictures and up to date information and encourage customers to review and rate the small business on Google. These ratings greatly impact in attracting customers to increase sales and grow the business.

To make digital marketing work for your business, you need to have a strategy in place to optimize and utilize all the resources available. An efficient digital marketing strategy means using all digital channels and creating a wholesome campaign. Integrating all the platforms goes a long way in achieving the objectives.

Backlinks are essential for a website to receive free visitors from search engines like Yahoo, Google, and Bing. A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. Backlinks are also referred to as “inbound links” or “incoming links” from an external site and are very crucial for SEO. They are an essential feature of the web that makes the web a powerful source to share content, ideas, and make these discoverable. Websites with a high number of backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings. In other words, backlinks to a website are a signal to search engines that others have confidence in them and vouch for the content.

How to get Backlinks to the website?

Gathering backlinks may seem like a complex process, but there are smart ways to obtain and earn links to a website.

• The broken link-building method – This works best to create one-way links to a website. It involves getting in touch with a webmaster to report a broken link on his website in your niche. You can recommend other websites to replace that link or your website. The chances of gaining a backlink to your website are high.
• Getting backlinks through infographics -Infographics is one of the most popular ways of bringing traffic to the website and gaining backlinks. They work well as it is easy to understand and share visual data. Care should be taken to select the infographics for your website which are unique and tell a story to the audience. Research and gather data for the content on the current trending topics relevant to your website and have the infographics prepared. List these infographics on the various infographics directories and reach out to people who have previously linked to similar infographics or have shared them on social media using email.
• Guest articles – Guest blogging is one of the most effective ways to reach out to a new audience. By publishing, articles on the popular website will get the content in front of a new audience and will help gain more exposure. It not only helps in gaining backlinks but also improves the online reputation and social media following.
• Spy on the competitors – To get more organic traffic, it is imperative to know what online marketing strategies are the competitors following. Spy on their social media and look for link building techniques and content marketing methods. A good way to know what the competitors are up to is by setting up alerts to know when they are publishing new content. Try and gather information on when and what backlinks the competitors are earning or building.
• Build internal links –Internal links are key to running a successful blog. With a good internal linking structure, the users can navigate through the website easily and have a good overall user experience.
• Promote the content – To generate backlinks, content should be promoted. Reach out to the current and new audience through email and social media channels to promote the content.
• Write testimonials – An easy way to earn quality backlinks is by writing testimonials for websites that you are using.
• Get interviewed – Online interviews are a great and easy way to earn backlinks to your website. Being showcased on a website that runs interviews provide a great boost for backlinks.

Earning backlinks can be a challenge but with the above ways, you can easily find many link building opportunities. Having stated how backlinks can be generated, let us now look at why backlinks are important for any website.

1. Backlinks determine how high the content of the website gets indexed – Search engines like google use search spiders to index websites based on the quality of the backlinks they have. Good quality backlinks and indexed content on search engines drive more quality traffic to the website. The website becomes more relevant. Inbound links to the website indicate the importance and relevance of the website. Google gives more weight to the website that has been endorsed by other websites. But remember, backlinks that lead to wrong content will keep the ranking low of the website on search engines.
2. Type of backlinks matter – Better results with inbound links can be achieved through proper placement of links within the contents of the website. Backlinks placed in the middle of sentences commonly referred to as “contextual backlinks” are important in SEO as the contents are subjected to having them linked. These links are directly related to the topics and keywords on the website so they generate higher ranks.
3. Building quality backlinks takes time – Backlinks that get added to a website abruptly will not have any impact. Backlinks added over a period of time are considered by search engines. The criteria for rating backlinks by search engines have become stricter than ever before.
4. Backlinks help in building relationships – Link building involves reaching out to other relevant websites for the promotion of content or infographics of your website. This helps in building long-term relationships with key influencers in the industry which can further lead to your website is highly regarded and trusted.
5. Backlinks help in generating referral traffic – We know that backlinks have a direct impact on the rankings, but it is important to note that a good backlink can help increase the traffic to the website too. This increase in traffic can lead to higher sales. The value of the link is not just about SEO but also about the customers.
6. Backlinks help in brand building – Good backlinks can help a brand establish itself as an authority in its niche. Link building techniques such as content creation help in showing the audience the expertise of the company and go a long way in building the brand.

Building quality backlinks is extremely important for any website for not only Search Engine Optimization but for achieving the long-term objective of brand building increased traffic and building long-lasting relationships.

The pandemic has made the businesses realize that customer engagement is what will help them sail through these times. Customer Engagement is the emotional connection between a brand and its customers. It is a process where customers interact with the brand through various channels to develop and strengthen their relationships. Customers that are highly engaged with the brand, buy more, promote it, and are more loyal to the brand. The focus of any business needs to be on providing value beyond just products and services to its customer. Products and services initially attract customers, it is the quality of the experience along with relevant content that helps in developing long-lasting relationships.

Why is customer engagement important?

The most important reason for customer engagement is that it leads to brand loyalty by the customers and these customers serve as loyal advocates of the brand. They are more open to any kind of marketing and communication and spend more on the brand than on the competitors. A study conducted by Ray Wang of Constellation Research found that companies that have improved engagements drive up-sell revenue from 13 percent to 51 percent, increase cross-sell by 22 percent and increase order size from 5 percent to 85 percent. These statistics indicate a direct correlation engagement of customers and the profitability of the business. Not having a customer engagement strategy in place means missing opportunities to interact with customers and building a relationship. There is no standard procedure for customer engagement as each company needs to tweak its plan as per their needs and target audience. However, focusing on clarity, empathy and simplicity is the key to successful customer engagement.

Having stated the importance of customer engagement, it becomes imperative to track the level of engagement at every step.  Let us explore the engagement metrics to track

1. Activity Time – Is the best metric for measuring the success of the customer engagement strategy. It refers to the total time spent by a user online interacting with the services offered and is one of the earliest indicators of how well the engagement strategy is working and if any changes need to be made to keep the users engaged. It measures the actual time spent by the user interacting with the service and factors out the time a user is idle. More time spend by the users on the website positively impacts the search engine optimization and increase the chances of the user converting to customers by buying the products and services offered. Similarly, time spent on social media channels helps to identify the content most valuable to the target audience.
2. Return Users – How often a user returns to you is a key indicator of the value they derive from your brand. It is often referred to as value frequency. Value frequency helps in understanding the patterns in customer behaviour and use it to the advantage of the brand. If the expectation from the user is to return daily then the value frequency should be measured against that. If the user is creating an account and then not returning may mean that the product or service does not appeal to him. This metric is important at later stages of growth and development in the design and addition of features. Keeping your user updated with the latest changes and developments is the key to keeping them engaged.
3. User Action – It is important to understand how the user is engaging with the brands. Google Analytics and other tools can be used to understand what the users are most focused on and what content is being viewed. Understanding the actions of the users will help in finding out any problems or pain points. These insights help in determining what is working well and what isn’t working well with the customers, which in turn can help in making improvements. Knowing the actions of the users’ help in understanding how best to keep them engaged with the brand.
4. Net Promoter Score – This is a measure of customer loyalty. In other words, how likely is it for a customer to refer the brand to others. This metric is important in understanding how well the products and services fulfill the needs of the customers. Customers are the biggest marketing asset for any brand. They do a better job of putting the brand in front of the potential user. The most common way to measure net promoter score is through a survey where the customers are asked to rate their experience and how likely are, they to recommend your product or service to a friend/family. To get the most out of the NPS is to ask some open-ended questions along-with some sliding scale questions. This helps in quantifying the NPS and take some necessary steps for improving customer loyalty and referrals. Ensuring a high score means exponential growth for the brand in the long-term
5. Daily active users vs Monthly active users– Daily active users are considered a vanity metric and do not have much weightage whereas monthly active users help in understanding the customer engagement in a better way. To understand how well the product/ service is performing with the users, you need to measure how many customers are actively engaging with the brand and how the brand resonates with them. By comparing the daily active users vs, the monthly active users will help in understanding if the users are sticking with the brand or not returning.

It is important to understand customer engagement and how it can benefit any business. It helps in understanding the customer interaction with the product/service and their likes and dislikes. It is ideal to have high customer engagement to have more loyal customers and higher returns. Tracking engagement metrics help in understanding what is working well and what is not to make changes accordingly.

More than 2 decades ago Bill Gates asserted, ‘Content Is King’. While this may be true to a certain extent, the most important aspect to consider is that content is king only if it is read. The focus of any business needs to be on creating good content to establish and build an ongoing relationship with its customers. ‘Content is not the king, but the kingdom to weave a story around.’ With the changing dynamics of the web and the evolution of social media, it becomes all the more imperative for organizations to focus on creating exceptional content, the kind that will get the attention of the target audience, engage them, provide them with the information they are looking for and generate results that you are looking for. As the famous marketing icon Neil Patel says “Good content should be interesting, challenging, entertaining and worthwhile. Otherwise, the producer (writer) has wasted his or her time.”

Good content is never enough as everyone in today’s day is putting out good content. It is important to have the knowledge to get content to reach the target audience using the various channels and ensure the traffic converts to customers/subscribers. Promoting the content through the right channels is as important as getting the content right. This requires a plan of action that clearly defines the steps to be taken to capture the audience, promote the content, analyze, and track how the content is performing and helps in conversion. As they say, ‘Conversation is the new lead’.

Marketers today understand the value of good content and the importance of having a content strategy in place to provide the target audience with the most relevant content as per their needs through the channels they interact with. Content strategy helps in aligning and standardizing the content delivery efforts of the organization in order to present a brand story and influence the target audience. Some of the key elements in creating a content strategy for an organisation are:

1. Align content strategy with the overall business objectives – It is important for any organization to have clearly defined objectives for the content strategy to ensure that it aligns with the marketing and sales of the overall business. Just producing good content is never enough. A well laid out a drafted plan which gives clear reasoning for creating content, the channels to be used and how best to optimize content to the advantage of the organization is essential for the success of a content strategy.
2. Get management to buy-in on the financial aspect of the content strategy – Getting approval from the leadership team and the management is the toughest part of content strategy. Clearly laying out the cost, benefits and the value drivers of the content strategy is imperative for it to be considered by the management. Value divers would be boost from effective targeting, timing, and content, lower cost through channel shift, deriving efficiencies through a focus on valuable and prospective customers.
3. Effective segmentation – Targeting content to specific audiences is an effective way to ensure that it is viewed by the audience. It is important to understand how well the content was received by the target audience in the engagement cycle. A road map should be designed to help understand the customer journey and support sales. This will also help devise plans for future delivery of content through the right platforms to the target audience and maximize the financial value for the organization.
4. Selecting the right platform – Having an understanding of the unique segments to be targeted along with their typical behaviour across the online and offline channels will help select the right platform giving the much-needed boost to the content. Viewing each platform from the user’s perspective will help in getting a better understanding of what they experience and adjust the strategy to help them view content as you want them to view it.

Having understood the key elements of content strategy, let us now look at the current trends that are changing the content marketing scene:

1. Visual Content – Has become an integral part of a content marketing plan as the target audience are drawn to the visual elements of all kinds. The advantage it lends is that it presents new and creative ways to help form a brand voice and personality. Higher engagement can be achieved for new content through the use of social media channels which can help drive traffic to the website.
2. Mobile-first content – Content today needs to be optimized for a mobile experience as many users access content through their smartphones or tablets.
3. Metrics for reporting – Having different touchpoints for the content makes it difficult to measure its ROI. However, a successful content marketing strategy must show ROI and data to support it.

For marketers, the content has always been a key powerful element of the kingdom gaining more important today than ever before. Creating valuable content is not the end but a means to achieve business objectives and assist in the attainment of sales objectives. A well-drafted content marketing strategy will help the organisation achieve higher engagement and conversion. Delivering content through the right platforms to the right person at the right time is crucial for optimization and measurements of ROI.

Loyalty, sharing, and recommendations represent relationships. The returns from such relationships are far better than what money can bring.  In today’s day and age social media is becoming a way of life for people and a way of business for companies who have realized the importance of it, especially for their marketing efforts. To be able to reach the target audience, companies need to focus their marketing efforts on building relationships and expand their metrics beyond Return on Investment to include Return on Relationship.

So, what is Return on Relationships? According to marketing strategist Ted Rubin, “ROR is the value you accrue by fostering a relationship with customers, whereas ROI is a measure of dollars and cents. ROR is the worth of each customer that will accumulate over time through effective social-media engagements.” Measuring the quality of customer relationships can help companies in establishing profitable, long term relationships based on trust.

Return on Relationships requires careful planning and execution. Let us dive deeper and look at what digital marketers can do to improve the Return on Relationship.

1. Listen and Hear: It is essential to listen to the consumers first, their feelings, pain points, and what they are looking for to be able to understand them and develop trust over a period of time. Once this is done, they will respond to the message you put out and listen to you. Marketers should gather customer feedback through the use of Google alerts and other social listening tools like SocialMention, Buzzsumo, etc. which help in gaining visibility into social media and online reviews. Have a strategy in place to respond to feedback on social media and online reviews to prove to them that you understand what they are trying to tell you. The response should be well thought off and timely.
2. Know your audience: The key to a good ROR lies in understanding the target audience to build trust and connection with them. Thorough research of the metrics like bounce rate, time spent on the website, and the behaviour flow help in understanding if what you are providing is what the customers are looking for.
3. Make it about the “Them”: Give the audience a platform to show what they want, need, and are interested in. Conduct online surveys to know what the audience is looking for, how they feel about the product, its price, functionality, and experience. Social media is a place where the audience share and influence opinion about the brand. This can be beneficial for a brand if they have positive reviews and can be detrimental if they gain many negative views. Use the reviews to gain valuable insights into what works and what does not work and respond promptly.
4. Look for ways to best serve them: The relationship between a company and an audience should not simply be about providing service for their time and money but should focus on how best to serve them. Digital marketers should provide free useful resources to help serve them by sharing expertise and creating useful content. Sharing expert opinions and content is a good way to boost the reputation and gain a new audience. This can be done through live sessions on social media, websites, podcasts.
5. Constant Engagement: to have meaningful relationships with the customers, it is important to engage with them. Focus on getting to know the customers and give them reasons to engage with you. Brands can constantly reach a customer through posts on social media, blogs on topics that are important to the customers, and by sending out newsletters that can carry information regarding upcoming events, customer reviews, new product launches, etc. Ensure that they are responded to promptly be it on social media or respond to the content that is shared by the company.
6. Be Genuine, Be Real: If there are any mistakes committed, own up to them. The consumers don’t expect perfection from companies but what they do expect is for them to be honest. To build trust and a solid foundation for a good reputation, it is best to own up on any mistakes and provide reasonable solutions. This leads to higher customer satisfaction and shows the prospective customers that you care. Ensure that responsibility is assigned to a person/team to monitor social media channels and respond to customers, prospective customers so that no communication goes unanswered.
7. Build Relationships, build brands: When the focus of the marketing strategy of a brand is to build relationships, they pay more attention to who the customers are, their needs and preferences. These customers buy the product and services the brand offers and promote the brand by recommending it on their network.

ROR ultimately enhances ROI. As you add the engaged, focused, relationship-building aspect of ROR, your ROI increases, often exponentially.

Return on Relationship enhances Return on Investment. It requires careful planning and attention. Keeping the focus on engaging with the audience, understanding their needs and desire will help build relationships, thereby increasing the ROR. Know your people well before investing in social media marketing to have a high Return on Investment.