If you are unclear on how to do competitor analysis, start by asking yourself these questions:

• Who are my competitors? Are they a direct competitor?

Typically, it is a company that sells the same products or services as yours or fulfills the same customer needs you meet. This company could be bigger, smaller, or similar to yours.

• What are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? This is called a SWOT analysis.
• Are there any gaps in the market that my company can fill?
• Are there any gaps in the products and services offered by my competitors?
• Finally, how can I use this information to increase my company’s market share?

Research your competitors well to get the answer to these questions. 

Why is competitor analysis important?

The benefits of competitor analysis are huge. It can set the rhythm and speed of your business’s success.

Understand your advantages and disadvantages

This is where doing a competitor SWOT analysis helps. Analyzing your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses will help you identify your business’s advantages and disadvantages in the market. 

Determine your past, present, and future business strategies

Analyzing your competitors helps you formulate effective strategies for your company. Knowing where you stand in the market can give you early warning signs of threats and opportunities. Use these insights and foresight to take steps that will lead you to your goals.

Know the objective and profile of competitors

By understanding where your competition stands in the market, you can think of strategies to either beat them or fill the gaps.

Identify what you need to get ahead

You learn from the success and failure of other brands. This analysis establishes the reasons behind the failure of unsuccessful companies, thus helping you identify the key assets and skills needed to beat your competition.

Know your threats to tackle them better

While analyzing your competition, you identify threats and challenges your competitors bring into the ecosystem. It helps you fortify your company’s strategy against the competition.

Leverage category convergence

Brands today are offering products across variant segments. Today brands are competing in segments where they have been historically absent. Hence, consumer perception of your brand plays a prominent role in defining competitive benchmarks.

Sources of information to study competitors while doing competition analysis?

Recorded data: It includes data that is published publicly, such as annual reports, brochures, newspaper articles, and press releases.

Observable data: It is collected from several sources, such as competitor pricing, promotions, and patent applications.

Opportunistic data: This kind of data involves exclusive planning. It is basically derived from customers, suppliers, seminars, and conferences.

Also read – Tips for Launching Successful Mobile-Friendly Online Store.

The post Competitor Analysis: Why is it important for your business appeared first on PayU Blog.

What is brand building?

How people perceive your business is your brand. The brand building process is about creating a unique image for your business. It starts with a strategy to define your brand’s relationship with its customers and how it will get there over time. A brand building strategy will help you be consistent in communication and experience across environments and assets, such as print and packaging, customer service, or social media.

6 Simple steps to build a successful brand

There are different ways you can build a strong brand. But here are six steps to get you started on a successful brand building journey:

Step 1: Determine Your Target Audience

The first thing you need to know when building a brand building strategy is your target audience. You can determine your audience based on age, location, interests, etc. This will help you define what you communicate, where, and how, so your audience can deeply relate to your brand. Depending on your target audience and their needs and aspirations, you can create a brand persona that resonates with them. Over time, your brand will need to evolve with your target audience to stay relevant.

• Pro tip: Start with smaller, specific sets of target audiences. As your brand awareness and loyalty grow, you can expand your audience base to include more diverse groups.

Step 2: Define your brand mission

Your mission and vision statements describe why your brand exists and what it is passionate about. The brand mission is what you promise to do and how you will add value for your audience. It also dictates how you execute your brand strategy daily. It will guide your branding process across channels. All this should help you achieve your brand vision – what you want to be for your audience.

Step 3: Research your competition

Every brand has its unique selling point (USP). Analyze your competition and find out what works for them, what does not, and where your brand can do better than them. The brand building process should focus on that differentiating factor. This will help you define what can set your business apart and use it to your advantage in branding and marketing. Competitive analysis is a continuous process that helps you:

• Define and refine your USP
• Improve your products and services
• Encourage research and development (R&D)
• Benchmark your branding and pricing strategies
• Identify business opportunities and threats

Step 4: Create a strong value proposition

You have studied your markets, competition, and audiences. Use this knowledge to clearly define what your brand offers and why your audiences should only choose you – what makes your brand unique and valuable. Include this value proposition in your marketing communication across channels to create a successful brand. For example, PayU’s scalable and robust platform makes it one of India’s best payment solutions providers.

Step 5: Set your brand markers and guidelines

Brand building is all about making your business recognizable and memorable. And it is done by playing on the human senses, particularly with visuals and sounds. Think Coca-Cola logo or Nokia jingle. Creating such unique and remarkable markers will create a special place for your brand in your audience’s minds. Once you have done that, document how your brand will be represented across channels. These guidelines will ensure consistency and quality.

Step 6: Market your brand

The last step is to tell the world about your brand! Set a definitive marketing strategy and create noise on channels your audiences frequent to grab their attention. Using your brand guidelines and marketing strategy, you can communicate with your audiences in relatable and engaging ways.

Apply your branding in every piece of communication, from packaging to stationary and website to marketing collateral. Identify new channels such as email, web, and affiliates to promote your brand.

Conclusion

Brand building is an ongoing process; you need to revisit it every now and then to ensure your branding is maintained consistently. The process requires expertise, and it is best to get professional help to get the best out of your efforts. You can learn more about branding in our blog on the importance of brand guidelines.

Frequently asked questions about the brand building process

What is brand building?

Brand building is creating awareness and promoting a business using different strategies and plans. In other words, it is building and displaying a brand identity through different campaigns such as on social media, websites, and events. Branding is essential for a company as it is what people see and think about it. It is your logo, tagline, ads, everything!

Helpful articles related to brand building:

• Social Media Marketing Tips
• Content Marketing Tips
• Quora Marketing Strategy
• Video Marketing Tips

Why is it important to build a brand?

Branding is important to build recognition and trust. This can help you acquire more customers and their loyalty over time.

How to plan a brand building process?

You can start with the six simple steps mentioned above to build a successful brand.

What is a brand roadmap?

A brand roadmap comprises concepts and strategies you can follow while building your brand. It includes goals, objectives, and ways to achieve them within set deadlines.

How can you build a strong brand?

We can build a strong brand with various methods and strategies. To start with, one needs to conduct a brand audit of the company. This includes a thorough competitive analysis and identifying your brand’s USPs. Make sure you are original and authentic across communications. Re-analyze your strategies regularly so you can maintain your brand identity.

How does advertising help in brand building?

The motive behind branding is to build recognition and attract more customers. Advertisement plays a great role here. It helps businesses remind their consumers of their presence. Advertisements help build brand salience. It reminds people of the product or services offered by a business by looking at its logo or advertising campaign.

What is brand reputation?

As the term suggests, brand reputation is how people see your brand. Do they see your brand as fun and quirky? Or do they see your brand as an authority in your industry? A good brand reputation means consumers trust you and like your offerings.

The post 6 Simple Steps For A Successful Brand Building Process appeared first on PayU Blog.

Optimization is critical for the success of your ad campaign. Optimizing twitter adverts help you control your Twitter Ads buck. Keep experimenting with several existing campaigns in order to understand targeting and creative types.

There are a few terms and processes which you need to be familiar with before starting twitter adverts optimization. Here’s what they include:

Impressions: It means the total number of times your ad has been shown.

Graph: Twitter Graph shows all the important statistics for your ad campaign.

Date Range: It provides a detailed view of the hourly breakdown.

Tweet Engagement: Number of times users engaged with your ad.

Twitter Cards: With this, you can add nice photos, videos, or any other media to your Tweets that can help you drive traffic to your website.

Conversions: Actions taken on your website by users. Action can be a sale or a lead.

Here are some of the best practices to help you optimize your Twitter advert campaigns in the best way:

Fine Tune Your Targeting

Targeting allows your online business to connect only with the intended users. We advise you to run multiple campaigns in order to optimize better. Use one type of targeting option with each campaign. You can target your campaign & create ads by user interest, behaviour, followers, keyword, and location. Each targeting option helps you identify relevant matrices that work for your online business.

Select 20 keywords and identify user engagement on each keyword. It will help you narrow down keywords that matter the most for your business & will help you get free twitter followers. Optimize location in case broad region doesn’t yield target audience. Narrow down to the specific areas in order to zero down geo patterns.

Refine Your Bidding & Twitter Advertising

Twitter adverts provide an “Automatic Bid” option that automatically optimizes your bid while keeping your budget intact. Automatic bidding is cost-efficient as you only pay for links clicked by users.

You can also use the “Targeting Bid” option. It allows you to fix the budget as per identified targeting matrices. Although it costs more you can reach the most intended user base. Try “Maximum Bid”, in case you want maximum exposure.

A/B Testing

In the overview section, you can quickly analyze which Twitter campaign is reaching the people effectively. Always aim for more than 1% engagement rate while defining benchmarks for your Twitter ads. If you are achieving lower than 1%, revise your copy and ad creative.

Ad engagement easily helps you identify which creative is performing better when the targeting is the same for multiple ads. Quickly go to “Edit Campaign” in order to edit copy or ad creative whenever required.

Use Conversion Tracking

Make sure you add a ‘conversion tag’ on your website. Double-check it and specify a key conversion tag for each campaign. It will help you to capture data in the most relevant format. Website tags let you choose whether you want to optimize your Twitter Advert for link clicks or website conversions.

For example, PayU with tags for Payment Gateway might specify the payment tag as the key conversion tag for a “Free Payment Gateway” promo campaign.

Device and Platform Targeting

Make sure you test your Twitter ad campaign for mobile and tablets. Check engagement rates across various devices as it will help you to identify the best performing device for your ad campaign. Make your ads more relative for mobile as users nowadays are interacting in real-time on their smartphones.

Twitter optimization is an ongoing process and the key to achieving maximum engagement is experimentation. Keep using the Twitter targeting option to filter your ad campaign. Also, read our blog on “How to optimize your Google adverts account”.

The post A Quick Guide For Businesses to Optimize Twitter Adverts appeared first on PayU Blog.

Social Media Trends 2020: 7 Things To Look At

We have prepared a quick guide and thrown some light on social media trends 2020. This will help you make your brand stand out in the market!

1. Rebuilding Trust: Be Transparent

2020, in some ratio, was a roller-coaster ride for trust on social media. In recent months, users and media observers have raised questions on privacy, ethics, and accuracy. A recent study by a media giant says that 60% of people no longer trust social media.

So, what is the solution? Social media trends 2020 show that smart brands are focusing less on maximizing the following base and more on establishing transparency.

Here’s a list of quick do’s to combat this fight:

• Create communities on social media
• Share insightful and researched content
• Incorporate filtered influencer marketing
• Run contest and focus on user-generated content
• Improve customer experience on different platforms
• Align best resources for ORM

The motive should be to let your customers put their trust in you. The personification of your brand is the best thing to do to stay on top of your customers’ mind.

2. Effective Video Marketing

Research suggests that videos out-rule all the other form of content. There are various types of videos like a tutorial, testimonial, events, vlogs, demos etc.

Videos that show human figure and has a personal touch allow a company to put a face to the business. It enables prospects and customers to get to know who leads and works in a business. We have a detailed guide on Video Content Marketing: Top Trends Of 2018 that will give you 360-degree knowledge about video marketing tools and best practices.

When it comes to social media platforms, experiment and see which type of video works the best for your brand. Make sure the length of the video is within 3 minutes. That is the average watch time since social media platforms are scrolled by users on the go! Create a checklist as to which format works on which platform. For example, Instagram does on support GIF format. It also has limitations for videos that exceed one minute.

3. Using Paid Ads

The bitter fact is we are in the pay-to-play era on social media platforms. Marketers have realized that to be the best player, it is mandatory to increase social ad-budget. One in every four Facebook pages now uses paid media to achieve the end goal. Back in 2012, on average, a brand could reach out to 16% of the audience without spending a penny. Today, this number has come down to just 6%.

Here are some tips before you plan your ad-spends:

• Understand and target the right audience
• Experiment with different ad formats
• Repurpose content from top performing organic content
• Invest in quality rich content
• Split test to analyze the performance

4. Experimenting Micro Influencer Marketing

In the past couple of years, social media influencers have become a major trend. There are Instagram stars, Twitter influencers, YouTube millionaires. These people have a huge following and a single post by them is instantly seen by hundreds of people. With an upsurge in the number of social media influencers, their prices have sky-rocketed. Hence, businesses are now in search of an alternative. This is where influencer marketing comes into the picture.

Who are micro-influencers?

As opposed to major influencers, micro influencers exist in every marketing strata. Unlike major influencers, they do not have a massive following. Usually, they have a following of about 10,000 followers but most of their followers are genuinely interested in what they have to say. The best part is that they are very engaged in what they do. Since they are not highly targeted by advertisers, they are trustworthy and down to earth. They hold a lot of marketing potential.

While you shortlist micro-influencers for your brand, make sure you pick up the accounts that are relevant to your business/ brand. Check their activity logs, interactions and have a quick verification (by verifying documentation, checking their collaborations etc.). Be aware of fraudulent cases and fake profiles!

https://youtu.be/8qJSfuSWOHU

5. Being Real Time

The near future of social media marketing is real-time marketing. Social media trends 2020 calls for 24/7 customer support, chatbots and social media monitoring in case of any social media crisis. This world where we live in now has no time to wait! Today, consumers want to be heard and get answers real-time. Not to mention, social media never sleeps. Consumers continue to use products, talk about them, and buy a new product anytime. To stay at par with this fast pacing world, we have automated tools that notifies when your brand is mentioned anywhere, can help you schedule your post anytime and generate an automatic reply. So even when you are sleeping, your social media isn’t.

Pro Tip: Twitter is the best platform when it comes to being a part of a real-time conversation. Keep a tap on your industry news and make sure you don’t miss out on getting your brand and your consumers engaged.

6. Making The Best Of Stories

Most of the social media today have enabled the stories feature. This is a feature that allows users to post photos and videos that stays on the profile for 24 hours. They are not only fun and creative, but they are also an awesome source to increase customer engagement, creating brand awareness and driving traffic to your website! Looking at the growing usage of social media on smartphones over a desktop, this feature of social media has a lot of hidden potentials.

Stories are visuals which are meant to be created and consumed on the go with nothing more than a smartphone and a creative eye! Since they are ephemeral, there’s more room for experimentation too! Stories feel immediate, real & personal.

To creative effective stories:

• Do a competitor analysis
• Understand your audience
• Tell a ‘story’ and be authentic
• Use effective CTAs
• Get creative and provide value

7. Using Personalized Messaging

The trend suggests that, across the board, people are spending more time on messaging and less time sharing the news on social media platforms. This shift from public to private spaces is changing the expectations of customers. A recent survey suggests that 9 out of 10 customers prefer one on one conversation with their favorite brands. It further says that getting in touch with the company personally makes them feel confident about their brand.

Create automatic replies on your Facebook & Instagram page. Have an active ORM Team and keep them well-versed with your product/ services provided.

Pro-tip: With all the ease of technology, setup bots to assist a visitor on your social media platform. It is the best way to scale your customer service efforts and create a better experience.

It is no wrong in saying that social media is here to stay. Social media trends 2020, as projected hold a lot of potential if understood well. Proper planning, powerful strategies and best execution on social media platform can do miracles to a brand. Stick by the above-mentioned listicle to rock this year!

With all the marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Be a part of PayUmoney family to enjoy the best payment gateway experience. Grow your business effortlessly!

The post What Does Social Media Trends 2020 Exactly Look Like? appeared first on PayU Blog.

Although content marketing is changing and evolving in many ways it interacts with the user, it is still the most relevant driving engine for Search Engine Optimization and Google Algorithms.

After working for a numerous years in the field of content marketing, I’ve immersed in the issue of latest content marketing trends. I have gathered my unique perspective to highlight the trends which you should definitely test in your content marketing efforts to gain desired results.

Here are few content marketing trends that will definitely change the way marketers prepare their content marketing strategy:

Content Marketing Trends for 2020

1. Year Strategy

Formal and organized content marketing strategy will replace a tertiary content. As I’ve grown in the content marketing efforts, I’ve concluded that a formal 12 month or a year strategy will document your content marketing plans in a more responsible manner. It includes the topics, themes, vision, audience and your business objective.

“A year strategy in your content marketing efforts can help you increase the amount of content you produce without compromising the quality”

Don’t forget to include all the basic necessities while planning your strategy. You need to cover every single perspective about why and how you are going to market your content. Go back to your analytical data and compare your efforts with the strategy you implemented in the past.

2. Increase Relevant Content

The amount of audience seeking relevant content is increasing every single day. Users are now consuming content which caters to their needs in the best possible manner. Many reports have suggested that numerous businesses are going to invest their efforts in marketing their content across various platforms.

This suggest that you need to activate every relevant channels where you can engage with your audience. It includes activating your own company blog just like PayU Blog. Keep your content relevant by continuing to publish key topics discussed by your users.

3. Value Preposition

Your value proposition is the unique selling preposition which your product or service market to its prospect audience. It is one of the single most important element which differentiate your online business from the rest. Clearly communicate what experience your brand offer for each product or service.

You must clearly propagate the purpose behind your product or service and how it benefits your users. Tell consumers how you solve their problem and what makes your online business unique and valuable.

Define below elements for your content marketing team so that it can generate value prepositions in the best possible way:

• Business Goals
• Target Audience
• Audience Needs

4. Video Content

We all know that videos continue to dominate online search queries. Therefore, it is quite important for you to start purposing your content into videos. Video marketing engages your user in a more efficient way than articles or blogs. Adding a video on your website definitely increases your conversion rate.

Video content also strengthens trust and creates long term relationship with the users interacting with your online business. Video increases the time spent by visitors on your site, thereby boosting your site’s performance in the eye of Google. You are likely to rank high on search engines if you have embedded a video in your landing page.

5. Increased Mailer Content

Email marketing still is the most consumed content marketing platform by consumers across the globe. It is easy to access and allows your online business to a niche target audience base. Email marketing is a great way to market your content in year 2020. Refine your email list in order to make it more targeted. Consider testing your subject lines to increase your open rates.

When it comes to conversion, there is no more powerful platform than email. Average click-through-rate of email is around 2% whereas average click-through-rate from a tweet is around 0.5%.  This makes email 6x times more efficient medium to interact with the audience base.

As we have witnessed content marketing over the years, 2020 definitely promises exciting times. Above trends will definitely add depth to your content marketing initiatives and the experience you incorporate to keep your users engaged.

The post 5 Content Marketing Trends You Should Test in 2020 appeared first on PayU Blog.

The payment settlement time is very good. Being a startup liquidity is very important, which PayUmoney has helped to achieve – Amit Saini, Founder, Let’s Ryde

Let’s Ryde: The Making

Dreamt of riding the power pact Royal Enfields, Harley Davidson, Duccati and many more luxury motorcyles? Let’s Ryde is your go-to place. The Delhi based company is an online motorcycle rental company founded by Amit Saini It is considered as the biggest motorcycle rental company in Northern belt of India. Let’s Ryde’s motto is to enable people enjoy your ride, wherever you go and have a lifelong love affair with the motorcycle your dreams.

Amit Saini, Founder, Let’s Ryde

Challenges Let’s Ryde Faced

The biggest challenge Let’s Ryde faced was processing payments. As the startup succeeded from renting just 2 motorcycles to now a 42, they quaked the need of a payment gateway to collect payments. Amit says that, payment gateway is very critical for them in their business. Hence, PayUmoney proved to the best choice for them to serve the best to their customers.

The best thing about PayUmoney is the relationship managers. He is the guy we call and reach out to. He knows our business, requirements, etc. in and out and he is at a position to solve all our problems. – Amit Saini

Let’s Ryde: Future

Going forward the founder aspires to go pan India and have outlets at every 250-300 km across the country. their main mission is to help people take some time out of their stressful lives and remind them of the importance of protecting our culture and land. Customer satisfaction is a key component of their business.

Recommended Reads

How A Payment Gateway For NGO Helped Vanaja Organics To Grow

Patel Tours & Travels Journey With PayUmoney Payment Gateway

EventsHigh’s Journey With India’s Leading Payment Gateway

The post Let’s Ryde’s Journey With PayUmoney Payment Gateway appeared first on PayU Blog.

As per research, festival spending begins in October itself and not November.

So be smart and think through these 7 festive season marketing strategies (for B2B and B2C businesses) right away in order to binge on more sweet profits this festive season!

1. Email Customized Festive Season Greetings

Consider your favorite brand in the world sends you a beautiful bouquet of flowers, hamper of exotically flavored chocolates and a handwritten note greeting you festive happiness. How would you feel? Special, won’t you?

Treat customers and partners like your extended family! Draft a beautiful email, pampering them with customized season’s greetings, gift hampers or a voucher sitting in their inbox (if not to their address). This makes your customers sensitive to your business presence and also shoots word-of-mouth appreciation in their neighborhood and amongst friend circles. Thus, increasing your customer base and profit too.

Here’s a precise resource on how to write effective emails for sales. But if you think you need to enhance your email writing skill then read these 5 ways to improve emailers for your business.

2. Be Creative On Social Media

Social media and website are the places where your customers and partners first find and know you. Keep your online presence especially social media updated and creative.

• A simple seasons’ greeting post can also make a lot of difference to your followers. It gives a sense of consideration.

Image Sources: PayUmoney’s Facebook

• Run contests to improve engagement and to interact with your audience directly. If you think “contest” means giving prizes to the winners, then yes, that’s what I am asking you to do. Prizes don’t have to be pricey. You can invest a minimum amount but what you win back is priceless! Remember this is a one-time expense.
• If still ‘contests’ seem like a not-so-great idea, then make testimonial videos and post them across your social media channels. Testimonial videos include your customer’s or partner’s experience and what they have to say about your business. This will bring a lifelong value to your business. You can tag your costumers or partners in the video, description or comment as a cherry on the cake!

3. Offer Samples & Discounts

Today we live in a trial economy, where everything needs to be tried before the actual purchase. In supermarkets, you must have noticed a couple of salespersons selling tasters of a particular food item for free. This allows people to experience the product first and then make a purchase decision. Basically, by introducing trials for your products you are inviting people to judge your product. This, in turn, helps you to understand the true need of your customers and create apt products.

Discounts and sales during festive season are marketer’s favorite strategies during festivals. E-commerce businesses make the most of this: Big Festive Sales, Festive Dhamaka, etc is introduced in order to gain more traction. Also, consumers usually pile up their piggy banks for ‘Sales’ during the festive season. Make the most of this strategy for your SMB.

1. List down all the festivals (big and small)
2. Mention the products you want to put up on sale
3. Spread the word about these products via email, social media, phone calls, SMS
4. Allow your consumers to try your product first
5. Follow the points listed below

4. Participate In Online & Offline Community Markets

Community marketing is a very prominent part of digital marketing. Earlier offline communities were set up in the form of flea markets, exhibitions, town hall markets and so on. Today, all these communities have settled down online as well. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest have people from all walks of life and countries grouping up to form a common interest community.

Eg: Communities like the social pop shop or social crafts are created for people who want to sell or showcase their talent related to the community interest.

• The social pop shop – Lifestyle
• Social Crafts – Craft/ Art

5. Plan Simple Costumer Journey

Journeys are the ones which decide what goes next to your customer in the form of communication. This could be an engaging post on your social media channels, a follow-up email or SMS, new product updates as push notifications or simple banners or pop-ups in your website. This journey needs to be a part of the entire campaign, where the consumer is notified about your products simultaneous on different platforms.

Make sure you don’t bombard them with messages because this can increase your spam risk instead of your business. Pick the best channel and select the right time to send updates to your consumers.

6. Cross & Upsell Your Products Smartly

If your consumer wants to buy a notepad, then what is the harm in pushing them to buy a super smooth and fine quality pen? Cross and upselling is one of the keys to unlock the shackles of increasing sales. You are well versed with BOGO (buy one get one) or BOGF (buy one get one free) concepts. This is nothing but upselling. Cross-selling is selling a pen along with a notepad. You consumers are always looking for convenience. Sell your products conveniently to them.

7. Make Ad Spends Wisely

• Myth: Advertising is expensive and meant only for big businesses.
• Myth busted: Small businesses can make the most of advertising as well with cost as low as Rs.100 – 500!

Digital advertising is not expensive as traditional advertising (newspapers, radio, hoardings, etc). You can spend wisely by running test ads with a minimal budget at first. Depending on the response increase your budget to its best (according to you) and increase your business awareness as well.

Eg: if you spend Rs. 500 (keeping this as high value) you can reach out to approx 1000 – 2000 audiences in one go.

To maximize your marketing efforts on social media, discover the commonly made Facebook advertising mistakes you should avoid now.

Competition is on an all-time rise with multiple businesses offering similar products with enhanced price, quality or feature. In such scenarios, festivals are a hot season for marketers to push their products forth. In this crowded economy, these 7 festive season marketing strategies prove to be subtle but leave a high impact on your audiences in the (near) future. Gorge on these festive season marketing strategies to improve your marketing efforts and sales this festive season!

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post 7 Unique Festive Season Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses appeared first on PayU Blog.

61% marketers believe that improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing strategy (source: Hubspot)

We have highlighted 6 SEO trends which are buzzing in 2018 and seem to go deeper in 2019 as well!

1.The Good Old Trends For SEO 2018

We do know that old is gold and hence, the basics of SEO are never running out of stock. Setting your keywords, meta tags, descriptions, images, and more right, is an evergreen formula that contributes to high search engine ranks. Search engines algorithms enhance every fortnight (almost). To meet the minimal requirements of these algorithms, having the traditional SEO system in place is vital. You can quickly run through these techniques in our ‘How to skyrocket your traffic by 500%’ now to avoid any mistakes in the basics.

2. Backlinks

Lately, on social media platforms like Instagram, you must have come across abbreviations such as S4S, L4L, C4C and so on. What are these exactly? These are terms used by prominent personalities or businesses to get more followers, likers, and commenters on their handles.

• S4S – Share for share
• L4L – Like for Like
• C4C – Comment for Comment

For example: if you own an online business and you want to grow your followers. You will identify similar players like yours in the market and ask them to share, like or comment on your post and in return, you do the same for them. This way you are sharing your followers with each other in order to gain more visibility.

Why I am putting this concept forth under “backlinks”? This is because, when it comes to content, backlinks work the same way as S4S on social media. Backlinks are basically, mentions of other blogger or influencers in your blog and vice versa. Backlinks are a big hit in SEO 2018, as it automatically builds brand credibility for your content. It seems easy, but it may get difficult if you belong to a very niche genre of business, where getting readers or visitors to your website is a task. However, do not skip this trend as it will get you places in the longer run!

3. Guest Blogs

Guests are always welcome. Be open and invite them to write for your blog. Guest blogs are basically in sync with backlinks. A blogger or an influencer writes for your blog to reach out something specific to your audience. Guest blogs work best if the person who writes for you or the blog you are writing for has high DA (domain authority), PA (page authority) or credibility in the industry (CEOs, independent bloggers and so on). Because of all the privileges that tag along with guest blogging, it is a mainstream SEO trend and component.

4. Smart Magnet Method

This method is where you need to bid for keywords smartly. The smart magnet method is about identifying the most used ad keywords and using them in your content or copy.

For example: I write marketing and payment blogs for PayUmoney. Here are the smart steps I will take:

1. Get into the incognito mode
2. Type my intended search. Eg: best payment gateway
3. I am sure all the top searches with have 2 letters for sure: AD
4. Now, I will see all these ads and pick the keywords. Eg: payment gateway India
5. I will this keyword in my article and make it strong enough to rank high

So, the smart magnet method is nothing, but identifying keywords from the ads and attracting more visitors by ranking high.

5. Multiple Content On Multiple Platforms

Multiple content connotes, repurposing content. Content is a vast field and carries multiple facades: long form, copy, videos, presentations, audio, gifs, infographics, memes, stories and so much more. But it is not necessary that all forms are consumed equally. Today’s fast-paced, less patient world demands something short and sweet. So it’s another smarter way to rank: create long-form content and break into small content verticals for better results and views. Try this experiment out:

1. Go to Google.com
2. Type “Instagram content strategy” in the search bar
3. You’ll see PayUmoney’s blog + video ranking on top of the second page.

Thus, having multiple forms of content published on multiple platforms is a plus point in the age of SEO 2018! You can checkout PayUmoney SlideShare and PayUmoney YouTube channel for a live demo on how to create optimized repurposed content.

6. Voice Search

This is the future! 2/3 people use their smartphones less often because of digital voice assistants such as Amazon Echo or Google Home (source: CNBC). Also, [bctt tweet=”at least 37% population uses Siri, 23% uses Microsoft’s Cortana, and 19% use Amazon’s Alexa monthly. ” username=””]

These statistics are enough to underline the fact that voice searches are the way to go for marketers. What people say is not what they type. For example: you want to learn “ways to collect payment online” but while typing you might go ahead with “how to collect online payments easily”. Hence, coating content with what people might voice search than write search is brimming up.

These 6 trends may seem very obvious. But it is always recommended to have a close view at it and explore new detailed horizons when it comes to topping up with SEO 2018. Before I close this session up I would like to provide a cheat sheet to the latest SEO tools which all businesses must have!

• SEMrush – for detailed content analysis
• Sumo – for clean email listing and subscriber forms
• Google Keyword planner – for accurate keyword volumes
• Yoast – for crisp SEO content recommendations

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all – in- one payment solution in place as well. Now enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post SEO 2018: Leading Trends and Tips For Marketers appeared first on PayU Blog.

How To Do YouTube Marketing: A Success Story

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

This viral marketing effort is no mystery or an unknown fact to anyone today. It all began with a small idea generated by an NGO making die-hard efforts to save patients infected with ALS disease. The popular challenge centered around a basic concept of :

• Dump a bucket full of ice water
• Capture it in a format
• Upload on social media with relevant hashtags (#)

In no time the challenge became a hit among the young and old! As per curated numbers, approximately 3,07,600 posts were created on Facebook and Twitter. YouTube was buzzing with celebrity videos performing the challenge. The final outcome of this innovative activity was, it helped raise $115 million in a short time span.

Hence, ALS Ice Bucket challenge is considered as a classic example of zero budget marketing efforts. Watch the video here:

Video Source: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

What Type Of Video Work Best On YouTube

1. Explainer & Tutorial Videos: Well-designed How-to guides are always helping and leaves your customers with satisfaction.
2. Thought Leader Interviews: Interviews with industry experts or thought leaders can help you amplify your company’s credibility on the platform and in the industry.
3. Video Blogs/ Vlogs: Vlogs are video form of expressing your blog. There are many ways to create quick and attractive vlogs to gain more viewers!
4. Customer Testimonial: These kinds of videos work the best to gain customer and user trust. Remember, a happy customer is your biggest asset!
5. Product Demonstrations: Demonstration videos are short videos with quality content. They are used to show the benefits of using the product.

[bctt tweet=”Interesting Fact: There are approximately 5 billion video views on YouTube every day!” username=”PayUmoney”]

How To Do YouTube Marketing?

With over 1.5 billion users worldwide, creating and managing a YouTube channel is no cake walk. To make it simple, we have divided the process into 6 simple steps.

Step 1: Create Your YouTube Channel

YouTube has made it very simple for anyone to create a channel. Follow these steps:

1. ‘Sign In’ to YouTube and click on the user icon on top right.
2. Now click on ‘Create A New Channel’.
3. Enter the relevant details like your business name, logo and click on ’Create’.

Pro Tip: Add an appealing cover image and customize you or channel. YouTube recommends uploading 2560*1440-pixel image with the maximum size of 4 MB!

Step 2: Create High-Quality Videos

Today, there are a number of online tools available to create beautiful videos in no time. Keep your video rich in both: content and the quality! Remember, the average watch time of YouTube video is 2 minutes. You can also read our blog on Video Marketing: Top Trends Of 2018.

Step 3: Upload Videos

Now that you are here, post a short video that explains what your business caters to. Keep it short, on-point and high resolution. Ideally, your video can range from 720p to 1080p which is considered high definition (HD) on YouTube.

Step 4: SEO Optimized Description

Above everything, describe in detail what your video speaks about. Keep your description SEO optimized. Add tags and place them in the right category. This will help you to increase the visibility of your video. Since there is so much video content created daily, you need to make an effort to stand out!

Pro-tip: Add CTA in all your YouTube videos so that the viewers know where they can find your content online.

Step 5: Distribute Your Videos

Ones you have created and uploaded videos on your YouTube channel, allow viewers from different platforms to find them. Some of the platforms can be:

Step 6: Analyze Your Efforts!

Since you have invested a lot of time and effort in the creation of a video, make sure you analyze the statistics of your videos. Visit YouTube analytics to have a look at your YouTube marketing performance. You can select the time frame or custom choose the date range filter.

Here are top YouTube analytics to look at:

• Watch Time: Shows the estimated total minutes spent by people in watching your content.
• Traffic Sources: Allows you to track the platform from which your visitor landed on your video.
• Demographics: Lets you know from which part of the world your viewers are from.
• Subscribers: Gives you an idea of how many people subscribed/ unsubscribed from your channel.

Today, videos are highly preferred as compared to a written form of content. YouTube marketing is evolving since it’s advent and it holds a lot of potential for your business growth, if done the right way! Hence, grasp all these 6 steps of how to do YouTube marketing thoroughly and implement it in your marketing plan to witness a skyrocketing business growth.

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all – in- one payment solution in place as well. Now enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post How To Do YouTube Marketing For Businesses In 2018 appeared first on PayU Blog.

The Making of Vanaja Organics

With rise in social awareness and willingness to help the needy and underprivileged, a large number of NGOs have come to life in the current world scenario. Vanaja Organics is one such venture of Prodigee Foundation, an NGO founded by Vandana Chhabra, S. Natraj and M. Kishan. The NGO aims at creating opportunities of dignified living for underprivileged women of the society by imparting vocational training. The key focus of the NGO is primarily on:

• Helping the ones in need by providing employment
• Supporting the society by providing fine quality organic food products at reasonable prices

The NGO is run by a bunch of ‘heartrepreuners’ who work towards the wellness of the farmers, consumers and the planet. Vandana (fashion designer) quit her job and paved their path to make a noticeable transform in the society. Hence, the NGO came up with a dream called Vanaja Organics.

Vandana Chhabra of Vanaja Organics

Challenges Vanaja Organics Faced

The founders were not 100% satisfied with their efforts vis-à-vis results achieved by their Vocational training programs. The dissatisfaction was caused because the teachers were not able to earn steady money from those skills. Soon, during a market study, they found out a shocking reality: most of the product consumed as food contain chemicals and are dangerous to health. Today, urban crowd loves to be healthy, fit and eat right quality foods!

This study struck a chord. Vandana and her team decided to divert their focus on this segment by producing organic food products. They employed the urban poor women in Vanaja Organic Processing Facility. The techniques used are age-old traditional one (hand chakki, etc) which are labor intensive rather than machine intensive, thus leading to employment generation.

“WE FEEL LUCKY TO BE A PART OF THE PAYU FAMILY AND ARE VERY HAPPY WITH THE SERVICES PROVIDED BY THEM” – Vandana

How PayU Helped Vanaja Organics Collect Payments Easily

“High price” is associated with “organic”. It is natural that if huge manpower is needed to cultivate good quality food, price is bound to be on a bit higher scale. Vanaja Organics, already had so much on their plate to handle manually, they didn’t want the same efforts to be put in payment collection as well. Thus, after building up a beautiful website they decided to integrate with a super easy and convenient to use payment gateway. PayU being India’s best payment gateway is the ultimate choice of all businesses in the country, Vanaja Organics being one of them!

Find out all exclusive PayU dashboard features designed to help small or medium businesses grow effortlessly.

The Future of Vanaja Organics 

Vanaja organics had their first sale in February 2018 and aspire to reach to great heights by helping more people and giving back more to the society. The NGO is highly driven to spread their business across India and have different units for each city. This means creating more employment and providing authenticated food products to the people according to the needs of that particular area.

We, the leading payment gateway for NGO wish Vanaja Organics good luck for the bright future they look forward too.

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all – in- one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

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The post How A Payment Gateway For NGO Helped Vanaja Organics To Grow! appeared first on PayU Blog.