Online Store
Before launching an online store, there are 8 things to consider.
The most popular and lucrative business venture today, for those who put in the work to operate it effectively, is launching an online store. There were major changes made to best practices as a result of the turmoil that many businesses experienced.
Although the emphasis on moving traditional business online has been ongoing for more than ten years, recent global events have provided the much-needed impetus for a long-awaited change. Take the time to review the most crucial information to know before beginning an eCommerce business if you are thinking about doing so.
If you intend to start an eCommerce, we’ve listed the eight most important factors you should be aware of.
The market analysis never ends
What we understand by “market research” is a topic of continuing discussion because it depends on a variety of circumstances. In order to build long-lasting partnerships, it is important to understand your customers’ requirements and goals. However, you should also keep an eye on your sector’s rivals.
Market research is a process you do not just when beginning on a new project but also for continual review of your entire efforts, according to successful eCommerce business owners.
Investment in Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Make the most of paid marketing by targeting the right demographics for eCommerce firms so that it is effective, especially in the early stages. People frequently launch campaigns and blow through months’ worth of marketing budgets in a single day simply because they neglected to make the necessary targeting modifications.
Therefore, if your target market mostly utilizes Facebook, for instance, you can think about engaging a Facebook Ads firm to assist you in establishing your objectives and expectations for your paid marketing efforts.
The unpredictable nature of the industry is the key factor indicating that businesses are best off leaving paid advertising to experts.
A long-term investment is organic marketing.
Many people view organic marketing as the less expensive, more time-consuming alternative to sponsored advertising. The outcomes of organic marketing, however, persist a lot longer than those of commercial advertising.
Making precise changes to your main website and any other place where you have a presence online is part of optimizing your eCommerce business for organic search. The objective of organic marketing for eCommerce shops is to attract potential clients while they browse around your industry.
Which Platform Is Better For SEO: Wix or WordPress?
The two biggest rivals in terms of SEO are Wix and WordPress. They each stand out in various ways. The technique of improving one’s website’s position in search engine results and boosting both the number and quality of internet visitors is known as SEO or search engine optimization. The capabilities and outcomes of SEO are directly impacted by the platform selected. Let’s first examine WordPress and Wix separately.
WIX
Wix is a website builder that combines hosting and website creation capabilities under one roof. It is an internet hosting firm that enables customers to create their own websites even if they have no prior experience with coding. There is a tonne of templates that are accessible and editable.
Features:
Designs and templates that can be altered Free and trustworthy hosting
- Mobile-friendly view
- Image editor for one page
- Unpaid fonts
- Integrated page protection in HTML
- Automatically styled blogs
- Live chat
- Tools for communication, finances, and marketing
- Google Analytics for website analytics
WORDPRESS
Users may develop websites or start blogs using WordPress, a standalone content management system (CMS). Users may develop and publish web pages while it saves material.
Features:
- Easy to control website content
- Countless pages, postings, items, etc.
- Integrated news and blog posting
- Versatile post-scheduling
- Simple to recover erased page contents
- Portable websites
- Additional editors can easily be added, changed
- Site security that is managed
- Stable and trustworthy
- Automatic backups
- Infrastructure that is diverse
Let’s look at a comparison now that we have a basic understanding of each of them and their qualities.
High level of availability
It relates to how long visitors to the site may access it. The audience will go to another website if they visit one and discover that the uptime guarantee is broken. In comparison, Wix provides a 99.8% uptime guarantee and WordPress has a 99.95% uptime guarantee.
Server speed
The audience is most irritated by the website’s slowness. A website’s viewers will undoubtedly leave if it takes too long to load and will never return. WordPress outperforms Wix in terms of server performance.
SSL Support
Google understands a website is trustworthy if the URL has an SSL (HTTPS). Obtaining a high position in SEO is one of the main concerns. SSL support is available from both WordPress and Wix.
Off-page SEO tools
A tool called SEO Wiz is included with Wix and offers planning and methods for enhancing SEO on a website. You may obtain assistance with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and keyword research. This tool might be quite helpful for those who are just starting out with website development or SEO. Installing (free) plugins is required for WordPress in order to obtain the off-page SEO assistance required. In order to write in an SEO-friendly manner and interact with Google Analytics and Google Search Engine through other plugins, one can utilize plugins like Yoast. If one is more experienced in website development and SEO in general, it is a better alternative because it is not integrated into WordPress.
On-page SEO
Both Wix and WordPress offer excellent on-page SEO features and let users generate meta titles, meta descriptions, headers, and subheadings as well as unique URLs and picture alt text.
XML sitemap
The use of an XML Sitemap improves a website’s SEO rating by making it simpler for search engines to crawl the site and understand its structure. Both WordPress and Wix have this capability, although WordPress makes it a little bit simpler to utilize. To construct sitemaps and submit them to Google automatically, one can install a plugin.
Custom Coding
The fact that Wix and WordPress are simple to use and enable the creation of attractive websites is one of their main advantages. But occasionally it’s necessary to update the current code or hardcode something into the website. Wix has an HTML Code option, however, it’s really challenging for novices to utilize. It is simpler to alter or modify the code for specific website pages when using WordPress.
Mobile optimized site
This function is provided by both WordPress and Wix. This feature is also very important for having one’s website appear higher in search engine rankings. Wix’s drag-and-drop functionality enables users to customize the mobile site to make sure everything appears fine. WordPress plugins may be used to enhance the mobile view and mobile responsiveness.
As a result of the comparisons shown above, you must decide between Wix and WordPress based on your preferences. Wix is a good choice if you’re just starting out and don’t know much about SEO since you want to have access to the fundamentals. However, WordPress would be a fantastic alternative if you are familiar with SEO and want to attract a specific audience to your website because it includes sophisticated functionality.
A digital marketing company called Thedigitalsolutions uses both paid and organic marketing techniques to assist firms in growing their online presence. You want to develop with us. Send us an email at [email protected] or get in touch with us.
Development Company for Custom CRM
The Digital Solutions
A fully functional and personalized CRM software development service delivers functions that are tailored to your business needs and help to cover a variety of client touchpoints.
At The Digital Solutions,
we create a whole CRM platform that is customized particularly for you and assist you in implementing it.
We adhere to the best practices for CRM creation through our best technology specialists, who have considerable expertise in software development and specialize in customer relationship management application development.
Why should your company choose to design a custom CRM?
A general customer management platform might not have the industry-specific solution and support you need.
We need to have a comprehensive and cutting-edge system that fits your particular business needs if you want to increase ROI and improve customer experience.
You may create unique marketing and sales campaigns, evaluate your market, automate your marketing workflow, and use sophisticated reporting tools for forecasting and analytics using custom customer relationship management software.
As a result, you may make your business strategy profitable and improve your capacity to understand your clients and consumers.
Using Custom CRM Development Services Has Many Advantages
- With your distinctive solutions, your company may stand out from the competition.
- With a personalized client management solution, you may only pay for what you use.
- It gives you the freedom to upgrade or make changes whenever your business requires it.
- Your system can be scaled to meet the expanding business requirements.
- Given that you are familiar with the platform, you will need less training.
- Customized platforms for customer relationship management are safer since you can use whatever premium security measures you desire.
CRM Development
With personalized CRM services from Thedigitalsolution, you can increase sales and improve client experiences.
A consolidated customer database with integrated CRM software is essential to achieving every company’s primary goal of fostering customer satisfaction and opening the door for greater customer interactions and connections. Thedigitalsolution assists you in streamlining your engagement operations by enhancing your CRM capabilities. Our CRM development services are always and implicitly focused on assisting you in setting up, organizing, and keeping track of your contacts, enhancing workflow productivity, and managing sales through transparency.
Development of a personalized CRM
We provide you with customized CRM software that can structure, integrate, and automate your business operations holistically. This enables you to get an effective and measurable business outcome that results from enhanced digital efficacy. Our experts created the CRM software with your industry’s needs in mind. It can help businesses with their lead generation, sales, marketing, customer service, and other crucial business operations.
By automating your procedures and making decisions quickly, you may elevate the splendor of your company to new heights. Our specialized CRM software enables businesses to:
- Automate Marketing
- Automate Sales
- Maintain accounts and finance
- Manage purchase by enabling task integration and reducing redundancy.
- Enabling production planning and control
- Managing inventory and warehouse
- Handle logistics and distribution
- Manage customer service and reporting
- Handle quality control
- Render after-sales supporHandle HR. Payroll and team management
Why Choose Us?
With our top-notch CRM development services, we at Thedigitalsolution thrive in empowering organizations. All of our employees have exceptional IT abilities that can help you streamline your business processes by following industry standards and the specifics of your industry. We construct CRM solutions by expanding a variety of corporate software programs, which can replace outdated workload management strategies with cutting-edge technology.
What is an eCommerce Platform?
An eCommerce platform is a comprehensive piece of software that enables online businesses to run their operations. This category of services includes customer service infrastructure, accounting and inventory management systems, and builders of eCommerce websites.
If you decide to start an online store from scratch or as an extension to an existing brick-and-mortar store, an eCommerce platform is a lifesaver. In this post, we’ll go over why your company undoubtedly requires this service, enumerate the key characteristics of a solid eCommerce platform, and briefly review five well-liked software programs.
Why would you want to use an e-commerce platform?
Building a website, handling payments, and keeping inventory are just a few of the complicated tasks involved in operating an online store. Software solutions make it possible for you to manage all of these procedures and spare yourself the hassle of handling each one separately. eCommerce systems have all the tools you require to run and expand your online business without adding complexity to your regular business operations. Using an eCommerce platform is more convenient and less expensive than building software from scratch. Comprehensive eCommerce solutions make it easier for customers to make purchases, stop system breakdowns and other technical problems, and assist you in troubleshooting them whenever they arise. So you can focus on streamlining your sales process and increasing your revenue rather than spending as much time assisting your customers with their purchases.
eCommerce platforms are valuable investments because of all these characteristics. Let’s dig into the specifics and learn what aspects to consider while selecting the best eCommerce solution for your company.
The characteristics of an eCommerce platform
- Options for interface design
- System for managing stores and processing payments
- Security
- Support
- Opportunities for promotions
- consolidating the data
There are already 7.1 million internet shops in the world, and that number is rising. It’s understandable why there are so many eCommerce platforms available on the market. Finding a solution that will work for your company’s needs might be challenging. Consider the following criteria for every eCommerce platform you are considering to choose the finest service.
What is Digital Marketing and How Does It Work?
Are you still confused about what digital marketing is? Would you like to find out more about digital marketing? Would you like to work in this industry? Let’s start.
Most folks have cell phones these days. Online purchasing is currently 15% more popular than it was three years ago, according to statistics.
Online shopping and purchasing have changed significantly due to the ongoing 5% increase in the number of adults using the internet. This shows that online marketing is more important than offline marketing, which is now less effective.
Digital marketing: What is it?
Digital marketing is the umbrella term for any online or technologically enabled marketing activity. Digital marketers and businesses employ a range of digital platforms, such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites, to connect with their current and potential clients.
Digital Marketing Types
Although there are many different sorts of digital marketing, there are primarily five. As follows:
- Search Engine Optimization or SEO
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay-per-Click Marketing
- Email Marketing
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Utilizing SEO is a strategic method of interacting with search engines. It is described as the “art and science of making online pages appealing to search engines.” SEO requires in-depth research into and consideration of a wide range of contributing factors in order to get the desired ranking outcomes. The Google algorithm is frequently modified. One must closely monitor these developments as an SEO professional and make the required modifications. The key factors to consider when optimizing a website are as follows:
- User engagement level and content quality
- Mobile-friendliness
- Inbound links’ quantity and quality
2. Content Marketing
Creating relevant and valuable content for your target audience is the foundation of material marketing, a crucial SEO component. The goal of content marketing is to draw leads and then gradually convert them into customers. Without the use of traditional advertising methods, it is a method of organic advertising.
The following are taken into account while determining content marketing goals:
- To create content experiences that are enjoyable and useful.
- Offer valuable content in the form of free written knowledge.
- Create content every day.
- Make interesting content and rate well in search results.
- Create enduring connections with pertinent material.
3. Social Media Marketing
To boost brand exposure and traffic, social media platforms are used for social media marketing. The use of social media has grown recently. Marketers see this as a platform for online discussion-based brand awareness efforts as a result. The most popular platforms for social media marketing include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and a select few more social networking websites. Social media marketing has built-in engagement measures that measure how well you relate to your audience. Based on these data, you can decide whether interactions (shares, comments, or visits to your website) are more significant to you.
4. Pay-per-click Marketing
PPC refers to the practice of publishing an advertisement on a platform and getting paid each time someone clicks on it. Your advertisement’s visibility depends on a variety of intricate variables. This relies on the settings for the advertisement, the audience type, the demographics, and a few other variables.
Each available ad is given a ranking by an algorithm based on various criteria, such as:
- Ad effectiveness Keyword relevance
- Landing page excellence
- Biding amount
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is built on the simple premise that you send a promotional message in the hopes that your potential consumer would click on it. The open rate will depend on how the news is presented. The following will help you ensure that your emails are wanted:
- Personalize the text in the subject line as well as the body
- Provide a clear unsubscribe option and specify the type of emails the subscriber will receive.
- Integrate promotional and transactional emails.
- You want your campaign to be seen by your potential customers as more than just a means of advertising.
Other Digital Marketing Strategies
These are some of the different forms of digital marketing:
- Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is a type of advertising in which a third party profits from the promotion of your company.
- Native advertising: Native advertising is marketing that consumers mistake for native advertising, leading them to purchase a good or service.
- Marketing Automation: Software that automates monotonous operations is used to support marketing.
- Online PR: Much like traditional PR, online PR is carried out through online coverage through blogs, other content-based websites, and digital newspapers.
- Inbound Marketing: All of the aforementioned digital marketing strategies are used as part of the inbound marketing technique to draw in clients at every stage of the buying process.
- Sponsored Material: You hire a different business to produce and market content that discusses your product or service through blog posts, articles, and videos on a public platform.
Digital Marketing's Advantages
Comparatively to traditional means, digital marketing may reach more consumers (hoardings, Boards, Brochures, Print, Radio, and TV ads). Digital marketing allows you to focus on the clients who are most likely to buy your products or services. It’s also more economical than conventional advertising and lets you monitor effectiveness every day. There are various benefits to digital marketing. Here, I’ve listed a few of digital marketing’s most significant benefits. Let’s investigate them now.
- A large geographic reach, an affordable target audience, and quantifiable results
- Competing with major brands is simple with personalization.
The Operation of Digital Marketing
When combined with the many digital marketing tactics we’ve outlined above, digital marketing is effective. These tactics assist in achieving a single important objective in several ways. It is comparable to a business where different divisions collaborate to achieve one common objective: a positive return on investment. Successfully reaching the target audience and appearing higher in search results will aid your business’s success. Together, the aforementioned digital marketing tactics increase traffic, raise awareness, and convert leads into repeat customers.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Without having to buy server hardware, cloud hosting offers the hosting required to run a website in a virtual environment.
Due to its practical and useful functionality, cloud hosting is a type of hosting that keeps gaining popularity. This service is used to administer databases, host domain names, and host websites. The use of remote server resources that can readily scale to handle peak loads makes cloud hosting more appealing than in-house hosting.
How cloud computing is used
Cloud hosting can be categorized as either Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) at the most fundamental level. Users are provided with the virtualized hardware resources necessary to deploy their software environment when they develop a Web application under the IaaS umbrella. On the PaaS side, users are already given access to a software environment that allows for quicker installation and development of the Web application. In a cloud environment, each server performs a certain set of functions.
Other servers act as backups in the case that one server malfunctions, providing the necessary resources to maintain the continuous availability of web hosting services. Your website’s data is distributed over several redundancies when it is stored in a cloud hosting environment, ensuring that it is always accessible to you and your website visitors. All essential components of website maintenance, including cloud storage and database management tools, are often provided by cloud hosting.
Many providers offer a kind of control panel with several features that make developing and administering a website easier than before. These services are created with non-technical users in mind. You may manage your domains, create FTP accounts for remote file transfers, directly modify databases, and perform some other tasks with cloud hosting.
In the use of cloud hosting
For instance, you can be required to develop a website that serves as an online portfolio of your achievements. To host your website, you’ll need to perform several tasks, including buying a server, setting up the appropriate software, learning how to operate that server, and making sure your website is always accessible. For those who lack knowledge, the cost alone might reach thousands. Instead of taking this approach, you could just pay a web host a monthly charge of under $10 to have the data on your website stored there and assure that it is accessible to the public. Your website would be ready for public access as soon as you uploaded its files to its servers.
Comparing dedicated servers, cloud hosting, and VPS
A shared resource approach to website hosting is referred to as “cloud hosting.” Your website is hosted remotely and makes use of a variety of services that the hosting company makes available. However, you are using a resource pool that several websites and cloud hosting users also use. If another website using the same resources as yours requires more server activity, this may lead to a decline in the performance of your website.
The final effect is unjust and challenging for a small business to deal with. By allocating server resources, particularly for your use, dedicated servers and virtual private servers (VPS) aim to allay that anxiety. Your cloud hosting will have a particular amount of bandwidth and hardware capacity whether you rent a dedicated server or a virtual private server. As with cloud hosting, the tools offered for administering and maintaining your website continue to function as intended. The main distinction is that you don’t share a server with any other users because you have your server. Dedicated servers are frequently more expensive, but the performance they provide can be invaluable for websites with large traffic.
You can rent a VPS instead of a whole server if your budget or traffic won’t support it. In this case, a single server has been divided into several virtual servers, each of which you can rent for a reasonable monthly fee. Each VPS performs like a mini-server, allocating particular resources to your hosting without the speed hit that comes with traditional cloud hosting.
The advantages of cloud computing
A wide range of advantages, from basic convenience to business-level solutions, are provided by cloud hosting. You can anticipate finding the following advantages of offshore hosting in addition to the cost savings:
Reliable. Cloud hosting takes place in an offsite data center made up of hundreds of servers with several redundancies that defend against failures and provide continuous availability for both you and your web traffic, as opposed to the ever-present chance of failure with in-house hardware.
Physical protection. Unauthorized people cannot access or disrupt servers since the data centers where servers are kept often have several security measures in places, such as ID card scanners and security cameras.
flexibility and scalability. The resources offered in a cloud hosting environment aren’t constrained by the physical limitations of a single server and can quickly scale to a client’s needs. If there are brief periods of increased demand for your website, the cloud hosting service can quickly borrow unused resources from other servers.
Cost of utilities You don’t have servers in-house that aren’t being used to their full potential because you only pay for the resources you use.
Solutions for cloud hosting
There are several cloud hosting companies throughout the world, and each one offers a unique set of features and functionalities to appeal to both technical and non-technical consumers. The most well-known of these is iPage, Go Daddy, and Just Host. For their services to be more valuable, each offers a variety of features and competitive monthly costs.
The Value of UI/UX in Growing Your Business
Recognizing UI Design
An application’s user interface is a feature that enables user interaction with a certain product. It is significant because a well-designed user interface anticipates user preferences and facilitates user use. A excellent user interface design focuses on a variety of factors, including appearance, responsiveness, effectiveness, and accessibility. Good UI also has appealing images, a consistent layout, and is simple to use.
Recognizing UX Design
The phrase “user experience” refers to several strategies and techniques used to ensure that your product is customised for your target market. A product is likely to go ignored if it does not appeal to a certain consumer base. An excellent UX should be simple to use, intuitive, and friendly. For high user retention and for them to refer other users to the product, we want consumers to have the greatest experience possible. Although it is at the very heart of a product, most individuals are not entirely aware of it.
UI/UX: Why Is It Important?
1. Bringing in and Keeping Users
You can understand what might be useful to users if you take the right user experience strategy. The initial few actions taken by a new user when they access the app are crucial. Their initial impression of the app will impact whether they stay on it or just close it. The second most important one is increasing user engagement with the app. Without making it too challenging for them to use, we should maintain their curiosity in exploring the app further.
2. Usability
The ideal method for making an app simple to use for a particular target market is a combination of UI and UX. Most users place a high value on comfort, which led to the development of popular devices and programmes aimed at making your life simpler. There should be no barriers preventing users from using the software. This might also affect how straightforward a product is, which will probably indicate whether or not the software succeeds.
3. Retention of Users
It is the trick to retaining consumers who use your software regularly. The largest example would be Facebook, where as of December 2018, 1.52 billion daily active users (DAU) were active on the social media platform. This is a rise of 9% from the previous year. The feedback loop, ongoing feature adjustments and redesign based on data, and keeping a balanced initial impression are some key UI/UX components for user retention.
4. User-focused
Create a user interface with the user in mind. In this context, empathy implies being aware of how a particular user demographic will interact with your product. This is only one illustration of how UX is used to maintain a user-centric strategy. A user-centric design should adhere to additional important guidelines. Remembering to design for users and their tasks is the most crucial. Iterative design, which steadily and progressively improves the overall app design, can optimise usability. This will be based on certain evaluations and information from the preliminary design stages. This procedure is an excellent technique to keep your product moving in the direction of further development.
5. Business Expansion
Because UI/UX places a strong emphasis on user happiness, it is crucial to the success of any business. The choice of whether or not to use your services or products can be influenced by your product. Since the highly competitive nature of the IT sector made it so inventive, UI/UX design has become crucial for establishing brand value and attracting consumers’ attention. This results in revenue growth for the company and is very important for maintaining the company’s reputation
The Impact of Social Media on Business in 2022
The Impact of Social Media on Business in 2022
Social media has had a huge impact on how businesses find and communicate with their audiences.
Prior to social media, businesses had to travel to live events to find a targeted group of prospects. Unfortunately, the average cost to attend even a small business conference comes in around $1,000, making it very difficult for startups to get in front of their target audience.
Social media has transformed that by:
- Allowing startups to get in front of a targeted group of people virtually
- Changing the way businesses communicate with their audience
- Replacing business cards (which often end up in the trash) by popping up in your audience’s feed
- Making it easy for businesses to provide value upfront prior to asking anything from a prospect
The Value of Social Media
Considering that 3.5 billion people (about half the world’s population) are on social media daily, it’s not surprising that 73% of marketers agree that social media is somewhat or very effective in their business strategy:That said, social media doesn’t impact your business overnight. In fact, building a presence and seeing the ROI will likely take years. However, if you use social media correctly, it can build long-term relationships that will transcend any ads you might run.
8 Ways that Social Media Impacts Your Business
In this post, you’ll learn not only the impact of social media marketing on small businesses but also how the most successful brands in the world leverage it with simple examples and actionable takeaways.
Table of Contents:
1) Allows Businesses to Become Omni-Present
The average person today has about eight social media accounts (nine for people aged 16-24). If your brand is present on even a few of those platforms, you will appear to exist “everywhere” in that person’s life.
You’ve probably heard of the rule of seven, which states that prospects need to see a brand’s message seven times prior to purchasing. That number is likely much higher in 2022, as people encounter over 5,000 branding messages in a day.
Therefore, social media is an amazing tool to help your brand rack up views and gain better brand awareness. Here at Single Grain, we tripled our traffic from 2017-2018 by using an omnichannel approach. A large part of that approach involved repurposing content with social media:
We also spent a lot of time testing various types of content and posting natively on each platform.
For example, we do a variety of pre-recorded and live videos, as well as written posts, plus we leverage Single Grain’s CEO Eric’s personal social accounts to help us gain traction:
Even without paying for ads, platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter still give decent organic reach, especially if your employees and friends are sharing and liking your content.
2) Increases Personalization
A major impact of social media in today’s business world is the new level of personalization that brands can achieve: One third of marketers claim that developing a more personalized experience is a priority. Additionally, 81% of consumers appreciate brands that get to know them and understand when it is and isn’t appropriate to sell to them.
With social media, it’s easy to slide into your prospect’s daily activities unobtrusively. That helps you develop a more personal interaction, as you can serve them ads depending on their interests and previous interactions.
For example, this HubSpot ad was shown after someone had looked into CRM software but not purchased it:
The image itself, which effectively conveys the product’s value, appears to be a simple cell phone picture. As most of your friends’ images on Facebook are not professional, the cell phone shot helps HubSpot blend in with your those posts rather than stand out as a slick advertisement. It gives the brand a much more personalized and humanized appearance.
Another feature that is helping many businesses stand out are messenger bots (primarily on Facebook and Twitter). Used correctly, these bots have the potential to bring personalization to another level. Why?
Chatbots are also a much less crowded channel than email:
- The average email open rate is 24.79%
- While the average chatbot open rate is 70-80%
By appearing next to messages from friends and family, your prospects will begin to see you in a more personal light.
But you have to be smart about your chatbot use. In this example above, only the first message is an automated one. If the message recipient is actually a bot, they wouldn’t reply. If a person does reply, it triggers a human being to take over the communication. Chatbots can get annoying if the bot can’t answer your prospect’s questions, so make sure that humans are available to jump on!
In addition, this company doesn’t use the chatbot to sell anything at the start. The conversation is directed toward understanding what the prospect wants and needs. Notice that during the chat the sales rep also mentions a piece of content that the prospect shared, which furthers the personalization.
3) Generates More Loyalty
Social media has had another positive impact on businesses: It helps them generate more loyalty. The first way that businesses can do this is by creating their own page on one or more social networks and encouraging interaction.
The best part here? The customer then posted it on Twitter, generated just under 600 likes, and the brand retweeted it! By sharing your customer’s posts, social media allows you to cultivate a loyal following as you can see how customers use the product after the sale. The love for your product becomes contagious and before you know it, you have hundreds of brand evangelists. Another amazing way social media allows us to build a loyal following is by creating private groups.
Noah Kagan of Sumo believes that building a platform on social media is one of the best ways to grow a loyal following. Social platforms already have your customer’s attention. It breaks down the barrier of trying to make them open an email or click on a link because they’re already right there. One of the keys to creating a truly loyal following is consistency over time.
Social media is also a great way to build a loyal following and then transition them into a channel you own such as email.
4) Increases Industry Collaboration
Social media can significantly impact businesses that rely on growth through collaboration. Influencer marketing is perhaps the most common form of collaboration and is also extremely effective: 65% of marketers say that their influencer marketing budget will increase in the upcoming year: For example, GymShark has been leveraging influencer marketing with great success on TikTok.
However, social media is more than just a platform for influencer marketing. It also allows brands to frictionlessly collaborate and expand their audiences by simply sharing a post. Without social media, collaboration is much more involved and usually requires either sending out a dedicated email to a partner’s list or even hosting a webinar.
This is particularly useful for startup websites looking to earn traffic. My Ignite My Site marketing blog is a great example of this – the website grew through interviews with influencers who then shared the content on social media. In fact, 73% of the traffic we earn still comes from social media!
5) Adds Credibility to Your Brand
If someone is researching a business prior to making a purchase, one of the first places they’ll probably check is the brand’s social media accounts to see if they have any discounts or just to make sure that they’re still active. Prospects can also see your fans and likes, which increases your business’s credibility.
Social media is a great way to help generate reviews since your customers are already accustomed to using social platforms like Facebook. To further increase reviews, consider sending emails to your customers asking them to leave a review, and be sure to include links to your social accounts.
Post it to your website as well. Social media also allows businesses to take control over reputation management. Even if you have a dissatisfied customer, potential customers can see how you respond to the situation. This is important because 30% of people view businesses that respond to online reviews in a positive light.
6) Increases Referrals
One of the biggest benefits of social media is that it’s a virtual word-of-mouth platform. If you are like 71% of other consumers, you will buy a product based on social media referrals at some point in time. There are a number of businesses, like Dropbox and Evernote, that were built on referrals.
So how can you increase referrals? Start by offering an amazing service and make every customer a raving fan. If you already have an amazing product or service, you can leverage social media by running contests. Unfortunately contests like “share to win” have become banned on Facebook.
That said, you can still run contests that allow you to ask for likes, messages, or comments. And they work – even if you’re a B2B company. While these engagement numbers might not be as high as some contests, it helps keep his fanbase active and looking at his posts.
The giveaway prizes (such as Tim Ferriss’ and Ryan Holiday’s books) were targeted at people who were a good fit with his brand, rather than just generating random likes from the public.
7) Helps You Build a Personal Brand
Regardless of whether your business is B2B or B2C, building a personal brand can be valuable. In marketing, experts like Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin, and Larry Kim all leverage social media to grow their brands.
Most of Neil’s content is educational videos. He presents potentially complicated concepts in simple, easy-to-understand formats that anyone can take actionable tips. He also posts very consistently with about 4-6 posts per week.
On LinkedIn, he always posts more videos than text-based posts, probably because this platform prefers to show video and live content over text-based content. Even if you’re using a scheduling tool like Buffer, make sure that you still check on your posts once they’re life.
If you check out Neil’s Twitter feed, you see that almost all of his posts are short motivational quotes with some links mixed in:
8) Helps You Gauge Audience Feedback
After launching a new product or service, the first thing you want to know is how people perceive your new launch. Is the product easy to use? Is it missing any important features? Did you list it at a good price point? While it’s not uncommon to have complaints from people who don’t even buy, social media is a great way to start a conversation with your audience and gauge their satisfaction.
