People indeed associate quality products with high prices. But if you price your product too high, only a few people may buy it. While pricing the same product too low might result in losses. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for pricing! Before we decode how product pricing is done, we need to understand what product pricing means.

What is pricing?

Product pricing is setting prices for products and services to help you meet your goals and make a profit. There are many factors to consider when setting the right price for your products. This blog will discuss 7 easy tips to ensure your product pricing is just right.

7 Pro tips for pricing your products correctly

1. Define the business goals your pricing should achieve

Before you start pricing your products, it is important to define business goals aligned with your brand’s overall mission and vision. Do you want to increase your market share? Do you want to increase customer loyalty or maximize your profits? The goals you choose will determine the pricing strategies you use for your products.

2. Include all costs efficiently

When you consider pricing, include all the costs associated with producing and selling your product. This consists of the cost of materials, labor, storage, transportation, marketing, and more.

Ask yourself:  

• Have I considered discounts or deals I can get from my suppliers?
• Did I include post-sales costs such as customer service in my pricing?
• Or any tax incentives and other benefits I can take advantage of?
• Is it just breaking even or adding to your profits as well?

Imagine this. Leena sells jewelry for Rs. 100, making it at a loss of Rs. 10. If Leena sells the jewelry for more than Rs. 110, she will make that much more profit.

Pro tip: Fill in all the costs in an Excel sheet, so you don’t miss out on anything and can easily see the gross revenue you need to generate.  

Here is a hypothetical example of the product pricing of a t-shirt:  

3. Understand your customers’ budget

Conduct market research to find out –

• who your target audience is
• how much they pay for similar products
• what the perceived value of your product is

The better you know your customers, the more value you can provide them. You can tweak the pricing according to your customers’ location, use cases, purchasing capacity, etc. It is good to ask customers for feedback to understand their needs and determine the right product pricing and development strategy.

4. Study your competitors’ pricing

You can also look at the prices of similar products. This will help you set competitive prices that are attractive to your customers and align with industry standards. See if your product offers any additional value or if there is an uneven supply-demand ratio. Also, pay attention to any special offers or discounts your competitors offer. This can help you determine if you should offer similar discounts or promotions to stay competitive.

5. Apply psychological tactics to pricing

Use psychological cues, like the power of suggestion, to influence customer behavior. For example, offering a product at $5.99 and another at $6. Customers will most probably buy the one that is priced at $5.99. You can also provide offers and discounts whenever possible to attract more customers.

6. Use different product pricing methods 

You can use many product pricing methods to offer your products and services. Here are two examples that are very easily actionable:

a) Tiered Pricing

Tiered pricing involves setting different prices for different levels of product features. For example, you could offer a basic version of your product at a lower price and an upgraded version at a higher price. This allows customers to choose the version that best suits their needs and budget. Service providers like software companies and travel agencies typically use a tiered pricing method.

b) Bundled Pricing 

Bundled pricing involves offering several products together at a discounted rate. One classic example of this is ordering combo meals at leading fast-food joints. This gives customers more value for their money and encourages them to make larger purchases.

7. Keep your pricing flexible

You can even keep your pricing flexible to quickly adjust your prices to changing market conditions. For example, if your competitors are offering discounts or promotions, you should be able to adjust your prices to remain competitive. You should also be able to adjust your prices to take advantage of any seasonal trends or changes in customer demand. Measure your sales performance and customer satisfaction to figure out what works best.

Set the right prices for your offerings and earn more

Remember, the product pricing process may look different for all. Focus on finding the right balance between earning profits and providing value for money. More importantly, pricing is a continual process. You may need to revise your prices with changing times.

If the pricing strategy works well and buyers start flocking to your stores, you may need some help to streamline all your payments and settlements. That’s where PayU can come in. With 150+ payment modes and plenty of useful payment solutions, PayU can help you provide the best checkout experience.

Click here to learn more about how PayU can help you grow your business.

The post 7 Tips for Product Pricing the Right Way appeared first on PayU Blog.

1. Burned out

Around 5% of start-up businesses cited burnout as their reason for failure. Stagnation in growth and team interest, improper work-life balance, and lack of innovation are possible reasons for a start-up business to experience burnout. Start-up founders find themselves overworked, which leads to an eventual fall in drive and enthusiasm.

Thus, it’s imperative to know when your efforts are heading towards a dead end, cut your losses, and redirect your energy toward a more productive venture.

2. Pivot went wrong

One of the most famous examples of a successful pivot is from Burbn to Instagram. When done right, pivots can be a shortcut to success. On the contrary, even a high-profile start-up business can suffer unimaginable losses due to a pivot if done wrong. A whopping 6% of start-ups have claimed it as the reason for their failure. Thus, pivots should be well-planned and executed to avoid unfortunate results.

3. Poor product

Often, it is not the people but the product that brings about the end of a newly established start-up – as was the case with 8% of the businesses in the survey. Using aggressive sales tactics is only successful when you have the reassurance that your services won’t fall short of the quality they’re promising.

Similarly, ignoring the needs and demands of consumers in favour of applying your innovation leads to failure. A good start-up business requires the ability to read trends and adjust products. 

4. Product mistimed

The timely release of a product is an essential factor in determining its success or failure. However, having a good product doesn’t guarantee success. Releasing it too early into the market may lead to the public disregarding it, while releasing it too late might make you miss your window of opportunity. This issue was faced by 10% of the start-up businesses, who mistimed the release of their product and suffered for it. 

PayU is a well-doing startup enabling other businesses to grow and find accessible payment solutions. 

5. Not the right team

A myriad of skilled individuals is required to keep a start-up business afloat. Around 14% of failed start-ups have regretted not being able to accumulate the right personnel for their ventures. A new start-up frequently fails for the following reasons: poor management, hiring inexperienced workers, and frequent leadership changes.

6. Pricing/cost issues

Striking a proper balance between pricing a product high enough to generate a profit yet low enough to attract customers is a delicate art. A business in constant loss will eventually lose its investors and possibly risk bankruptcy. 15% of start-up businesses were shut down because the cost of running the company was simply higher than the revenue its products brought in. 

7. Regulatory or legal challenges

Some start-up businesses sound perfectly plausible in theory. However, on implementation, they can encounter various legal complexities that might lead to their eventual closure. Changes in government policies, inability to meet consumer demands, and financial trouble are common factors from which legal challenges might arise.

8. Flawed business model

About 19% of failed start-ups agree that a dynamic business model is required to run a business successfully. Therefore, a single rigid business ideal is not conducive to running a successful business venture. Failing to capitalise on opportunities or coming up with new ways to make money at scale may leave investors hesitant to invest further in your business.

9. Got outcompeted

Sometimes, the market is too saturated with similar products for a new one to succeed, as was the case with 20% of failed start-up ventures. While new and emerging businesses are often advised not to pay attention to competition in the market, ignoring it also spells disaster as others try to capitalise on your opportunities. 

10. Ran out of cash or failed to raise new capital

According to 38% of failed start-up ventures, the most common reason for failure was being unable to raise new capital to support their business. Money and time are two precious resources for a new business, and being unable to secure financing from investors is the end of a business. Thus, it is crucial to have an attractive pitch and solid figures displaying your future success rates. If you cannot convince the investors of your potential, your start-up will sink before it begins. 

Frequently Asked Questions

The post Why Startups Fail: Top Reasons appeared first on PayU Blog.

Lenskart is a leading e-commerce portal in India that revolutionized the eyewear industry with its omnichannel approach. Take a look at this blog to find more about the vital metrics in detail.

How Data Can Be a Powerful Tool for a Startup’s Growth Journey?

Leveraging data depends on the stage of the startup. One needs to balance qualitative and quantitative inputs. When a startup begins, quantitative data may not be enough. Thus, relying on qualitative data is helpful.

As startup scales, multiple metrics like new user acquisition, average revenue per user, gross to net, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) come into the picture. It is always possible that an increase in any other metrics can impact the other ones. Hence, defining data metrics beforehand can help startups build the right growth strategy.

Creating monthly and daily dashboards to get a quick view using a plethora of tools and building data democracy also plays an important role.

What are Important Metrics for Scaling Startups Rapidly?

As Ramneek suggests, “Important metric we look at is the net promoter score (NPS)”. A business with very high NPS is a strong indicator that it’ll always grow. Having clarity on the number of consumers and NPS is helpful because it is one metric that needs to be driven. It makes sure that a company grows.

If you can solve the problems of customers who haven’t taken any action, it is 60% possible that they’ll make a purchase. These are the metrics that may not be easily available, but they need to be available to everyone to analyze them.

What is a Good Measure of Customer Conversion?

Customer conversion can be divided into two buckets for startups that are:

• Horizontal in nature
• Vertical in nature

The startups horizontal in nature, have a lower conversion rate of about 1-2%. These are marketplaces where people come to check out new products every now and then.  

The startups vertical in nature tend to have a higher conversion rate of about 5-10% because people come for a specific need. These may include platforms that cater to a specific line of businesses like fashion and many more! 

How Can Payment Solutions Impact a Product?

Payment gateways like PayU, bring in value-added services like Buy Now Pay Later and EMIs that create a direct impact. With the increase in usage of UPI and reduction in payment failures, there’s an uptick in payment solutions like subscriptions. Payment solutions like this increase average ticket size because customers get better payment options.

To find out more about metrics that matter the most in the product journey, check out this video.

To know more details about the upcoming episodes, click here.

The post The Most Vital Metrics in a Product Journey that Make a Significant Difference appeared first on PayU Blog.

But what is cash flow? It is the net amount of money being transferred in and out of business. In other words, it is the difference between what the company owns vs what the company owes. And ideally, there should a good gap between the two for conducting daily operations smoothly and business growth.

A negative cash flow, on the other hand, affects the ability of a company to expand & explore or even conduct their day-to-day activities. In this post, we will give you some tips on how to improve the cash flow management of your business easily!

1.Deposit Cash Balance in Business Savings Account

Always keep your personal and business finances different. This will make monitoring of your cash flow, tracking expenses, and tax planning easy. If you don’t have it already, open a separate business savings account, with the best rate of interest.

Compare different banks, the interest rates they offer along with the schemes. Also, make sure there are no hidden charges such as monthly maintenance fees, etc. Check that it provides a good return on your money as it is generally much higher than your personal savings accounts.

2. Liquidate Excess, Obsolete Inventory

The demand for products keep changing in the market. And the inventory that you have may get old and obsolete. Rather than clinging on to the materials in a hope that someday someone will purchase them or it will come to use, it makes sense to liquidate or resell it.

Selling your old inventory at a lower price is better than keeping it on the shelf all life! Some money is better than no money. Also, it will take up space that can be utilized for keeping something else. And moreover, not selling it is only adding on to your storage and maintenance cost.

If you have an excess of raw materials or equipment, you can consider re-selling it to other buyers within the industry. But if there are products or services that have gone out of fashion or become old, you can re-sell them by offering heavy discounts.

3. Ask for Advance Payment on Large Orders

If someone places a large or a custom order, don’t shy away from asking for at least 50% advance payment upfront. If it is a customized order, it will be useful for only that individual or organization. Therefore, taking an advance payment would provide you security as well as lessen the risk of getting a late or reduced payment at the time of delivery. Also, it will prevent you to use a lot of cash from your own pocket on the order.

Also, you can use the advance payment in producing the item or product. Customers do understand such things and you can also make it a part of your policies to avoid any arguments.

4. Offer Early Payment Discounts

First things first! Make sure you send out invoices on time. If you have a set procedure of sending out invoices quickly, you will not have to burn your time chasing them. What you can do instead is, send your customers reminders when the invoice is due.

Generally, companies give 30 days after the invoice is sent, to make the payment. However, you can offer your customers discounts for making the payments on time or even before it. For instance, you can offer a discount saying that people who make payments in the first 10 days of sending the invoice will get 2% concession! You might start receiving payments early, making your cash flow better. Make sure you set a procedure for this too!

5. Install Payment Gateway to get Payments Faster

Offer an online payment solution to your customers for quick payments. You can ask your customers to pay online via cards, UPI, wallets, etc. so that there is no issue of sending invoices and receiving payments later.

Payment Gateway such as PayUmoney offers all payments options such as debit/ credit cards, UPI, wallets etc. It is highly secure and convenient to use. Also, it has same day settlement feature for its merchants through which a merchant receives settlements on the same day of the transaction, via IMPS for the amount less than 2lac per day. Therefore, you will get your payments on the same day, the customer pays!

Signing up with PayUmoney will definitely improve your cash-flow and help in the growth of your business.

6. Revaluate Day-to-Day expenses

Managing cash flow is not just about getting more money in the system (inflow) but also keeping a check on the money going out (outflow). Check your business expenses regularly and see if all of them are necessary and the best available option in the price that you are incurring on them.

Streamline your processes with more efficient ones. Make use of various software and tools available in the market to cut down on time spent on lengthy processes such as sending invoices to all the customers.

Know that you do not have to buy everything new. Look around and see what equipment can be bought second hand and is of one-time use only.

Conclusion

Having a positive cash flow gives you a lot of courage and support to carry out new experiments in business. Using the tips above can improve your business cash flow to a great extent. It will keep you out of money stress and help you with your future growth.

As mentioned above, integrating with a good payment solution is essential for getting payments fasters as well as to provide a seamless payment experience to your customers. PayUmoney is India’s leading payment gateway. To know more,

The post 6 Tips to Improve Your Business’ Cash Flow appeared first on PayU Blog.

How To Write A Blog: 7 Steps To Master The Art

It is no wrong in saying that blogging is an art. It is an art of persuasion and sharing knowledge. You must have heard how blogging is one of the most successful marketing ways. But before you get started, it is important to learn how to write a blog. Here’s a quick guide to keep you at peace when you get started!

1. Understand Your Audience

Before you start writing your first post, have a clear understanding of your target audience. Find out what they want to learn. Understand their areas of interests. Analyze their online behavior (active platforms and hour of the day). Create a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer/reader.

The idea is simple: to understand your readers’ need. For instance, if your readers are enterprise businesses, you don’t need to provide them with information about how to get started on social media. They already know that. What you need to talk is how to shift from the formal & standard way to more casual and personal approach. This type of tweak is what will separate your blogging from the generic blogs.

2. Create Your Domain

After you have a clear understanding of who are you going to talk to, the next step is to find a place where you will host each of your blog posts. This requires choosing a Content Management System (CMS) and a website domain hosting service. There are several CMS providers in the market. If you wish to start a blog independently, we recommend choosing WordPress. Sign up on WordPress and select free/paid plans and get started.

If you own a company and wish to get started with a blog for the same, you can do that by creating a subdomain that lives within your company’s domain. Some of the best web hosting service providers are:

• GoDaddy
• HostGator
• DreamHost
• BlueHost

Pro Tip: Before choosing a domain, make sure it does not exist on internet. Keep the domain catchy, self-explanatory and easy to remember!

3. Customize Your Blog’s Theme

Ones you have your blog domain set up, work on the appearance to reflect the purpose of your blog. For instance, if you are starting a blog for environmental sustainability, green must be a good color because it is usually associated with the conservation of nature. On the other hand, if you are at a stage when you are thinking of how to start a blog for your automobiles business, incorporate images of vintage cars and let the appearance do the talking!

Here are other things you must update right away:

• Logo: Add a high-resolution image of your brand logo and allow people to recognize you on the go!
• ‘About’ Page: Create a quick mission statement and let people know the purpose of your blog
• Contact Details: While you are halfway through establishing your blog, invite people to connect with you via emails or social media

4. Choose Your First Blog Topic

Before you even start writing, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The best practice is to start with the basics. Identify the pain pointers your target audience must be facing and kick-off a conversation. If you are a service provider (like a banking app), create quick how-to guides that will assist your readers on the go.

Throw some light on the marketing trends. If ‘how to start a blog that beats the competitors’, is your question, the power lies in staying up to date and provide your readers with relevant knowledge. Most of the successful blogging sites plan a blog calendar for a quarter with a cluster topic approach. This approach refers to a way where you select one major topic (pillar blog) and write about it. This is followed by creating multiple supporting blogs about the same topic. This is one of the most important steps when you are starting off with your blog.

5. Create Your Blog

Ones you finalize your blog topic, start creating the first draft for your blog. The structure for all your individual should be consistent. The best way to structure your blog is to follow this rulebook:

How To Write A Blog: Beginner’s Guide

• Catchy Title: This is the first thing your reader will see. Make sure it is interesting. Keep it SEO optimized and catchy to read!
• Appropriate Images: Use self-explanatory cover image. You can experiment with GIFs too. Add images within the blogs. These can be an infographic, Graphical representation and so on. Remember, 75% of the marketers who use images in their blogs have better success metrics.
• Quick Introduction: Start with an introductory paragraph. Do not keep it too long but be clear with your topic. Let your readers know the gist of what they are going to read.
• Talking Points: Create a quick bullet list and introduce your readers with the major points covered in your blog.
• Main Body: Even though making the content SEO optimized is a must, make sure you don’t do keyword stuffing. Conduct proper research and produce quality rich content.
• Brief Conclusion: By the end of your blog post, give your reader a quick walkthrough of what was the takeaway. Connect all the dots and navigate them to other blogs.
• Invite Feedback: Know that each reader you get is an asset. After they have read your blog, invite them to share their feedback, recommendations, and suggestions.
• Related Posts & Shareables: Give links to more of your relevant blog posts and be open to social media sharing. This will directly increase your traffic! Do not forget to add appropriate call-to-action (CTA). This can be ‘Sign Up’, ‘Login’ ‘Buy Now’, ‘Subscribe’ etc.

6. Stick By The Checklist

Blogging is not just about writing a content piece and publishing it. There are various things apart from the main content. These includes:

• SEO Optimization: Tools like Keyword Planner have made the life of a blogger easier. After you have the first draft of your blog, look for the points where inserting your targeted keyword makes sense. Remember, Google is smart! Do not stuff your blog with keywords.
• Meta Description: Meta description are the descriptions that are shown below the title on your Google search page. They provide the searcher with a short summary of the entire post. Usually, the character limit is 150-160 words here. Make sure to make these descriptions actionable.
• Anchor Text: Anchor text is the word/ words that link to another page; either on your website or another website. Search engines takes anchor text as an important consideration when ranking your page for a certain keyword. Make sure you edit the anchor text carefully.
• Mobile Optimization: With the domination of mobile devices users, it is important to have a responsive website. In other words, having an interface that is designed for mobile has become a crucial part.
• Alternate Text: Search engines count on an alternate text as another important variable! Alternate text refers to the SEO optimization for your images. Make it a point to optimize your images so that you do not miss out on ranking on search engines!

7. Be Consistent!

Now that you are almost there, the key is in being consistent. Prepare a calendar and stick by it. Create a community of your readers and send them timely emails and newsletters. Another way to stay connected is to go for offline events. One on one conversation always gets the best results. Establish a connect with your audience and keep calling them back.
Create a mood board for your brand. A mood board is a type of collage consisting of images, texts and samples of object in a composition. To make it simple, create a brand guideline and stick by it.

At last, when these your basics are in place and you have a few blogs with you, start keeping a track of your blogs’ performance. Analyze what type of content works the best and plan your strategy accordingly. Blog performance: Measuring It The Right Way gives you an insight on how to measure your performance. Repurpose your blogs to different formats and share it across platforms to reach out to the maximum number of people.

These are the basics of getting started with your blog. In a world where millions of content pieces are uploaded daily, it is difficult and an important thing to make your content stand out. Blogging has come a long way from where it started. The advent of CRM, writing assistant tools and search engines have made the knowledge sharing platform a tough competition. How to write a blog is no more going to be a tedious task if you stick by these 7 points and execute them the best way!

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!

Recommended Reads:

• What Does Social Media Trends 2019 Exactly Look Like?

• Grow Your Startup By Effective Community Marketing

The post How To Write A Blog: 7 Steps To Get Started! appeared first on PayU Blog.

From Praveen’s trunk of expertise….

Are you a startup owner? Then you would agree with us on: building startups is no cakewalk. In fact, the bitter fact is, more than 90% of the startups fail! Community marketing can be a savior here, but first, let’s zero down on a reason behind this failure.

1. Waiting for the product to be entirely built and then going ahead with the marketing effort is where most of the founders feel the hit
2. As per a study, the top reason why startups don’t succeed is no market need or building something that nobody wants

The transition from reason 1 to 2 is painful because realizing that the product you built so beautifully is not actually needed in the market firstly!

It is never too late to turn the tables around if you really believe in your product or service. Let’s get a deep look at how community marketing can help in leveraging the growth of your startup.Mitigating the risk of failure calls for co-creating your product with your customer!

However, building customers alongside could be challenging as there are a lot of internal biases that cloud the founders’ judgment. So how do we get there? How can each startup have a community that supports them along the journey and ends up being customers?

Here are the 7 community marketing steps that will help you build and manage a wonderful community. Let’s get started.

Step 1: Start With Community Marketing

Verbatim: ‘Community’ is a homogenous set of people with similar interests.

It is very important to identify the relevant community that can add value to your startup.

Firstly, define and identify your customer segment that your startup is targeting. Picking the wrong segment or allowing everyone into the community might dilute the purpose of community marketing.

Understanding the customer is a key part of this exercise. It will help you to define a good engagement strategy. In the long run, making your customers feel involved in the community that you are building.

Step 2: Choose The Right Platform

Once you know your customer segment, it’s time to pick the right platform to run your community. These platforms can range from WhatsApp, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups to Slack, Disqus, Ning, Meetup.com, startupbyte.com.

The key here is to understand what kind of platform your customers are most active on so that you can reach out to them easily and make the best of community marketing.

Pro-tip: It’s a good practice to analyze various platform to see on how you can scale the community for future purposes and pick the right tool.

Step 3: Build A community

Once the above 2 steps are in place, here’s what you have to do next:

• Understand the purpose of the community that you are building
• Put together some key ground rules and best practices around running and managing your community

Assume that you are in the early stage of your startup and you are interested in building a community to co-create your product.

The thumb rule to onboard any new customer is to streamline the onboarding flow and create a set of rules. Make sure that every community member receives the same kind of experience and treatment. It is important that anyone coming onboard is clear of the purpose so that there is no misalignment in expectations.

Step 4: Define Engagement Strategy

Before kicking off the operations it’s important to build a solid engagement strategy.

What is an ‘Engagement Strategy’? It is a detailed guide that you, your team or the moderators will use as a reference to continually engage with the community. This helps in keeping the experience of the community kept intact as you scale.

To make it easy, let us use an example. Imagine you are building a startup that helps Pregnant Mothers. Here your engagement strategy will outline:

• how will you keep the pregnant mothers actively involved with you?

• your product development phases for active feedback

• your efforts to acquire them as your customer

At a broader level, you can use the framework of Pirate Metrics mentioned below:

1. Acquisition- how do you go about acquiring your users
2. Activation- what is your engagement strategy
3. Retention- maintaining consistency in communication
4. Referral- prompt your community members to invite their contacts
5. Revenue- ways to convert your community members into buyers

Step 5: Acquire The Community

Now that you are half way there, start acquiring the community. Align them on the purpose of the community and allow them to have a sense of belongingness. This will help the community members feel better involved. Simple things such as introducing the community members on an ongoing basis goes a long way!

Pro tip: If you see some of the members evolving as community marketing leaders who want to contribute in the development, do not hesitate to ask them to take ownership of some of the engagement activities.

Use the right combination of online & offline channels to market your community. Ask for references and steadily start building the community. Few words of caution include:

• Avoid building the community in an aggressive way in terms of member growth

• Design criterion for ‘who’ can be a part of your community

This might lead to turning down a few members but that’s the right to maintain the sanity of the group.

It is very important that in the first few months, the community should be relatively slower in growth and should feel tight-knit. This helps in establishing a wonderful culture for the rest of the community to follow.

Step 6: Engaging Community

At a tactical level, community marketing is a lot about building healthy relationships with your members and making them feel that they are part of a community. Some of the best engagement tactics are:

• Onboard Members: Get in touch with the members joining the community, get their profiles updated, ask them to introduce in the group, and understand their needs better.

• Stimulate Discussions: Share 2-3 posts every day (on your social media channels) in order to help the community with relevant information. Ask questions and understand their problems. Share about your product from time to time, take their feedback and show progress.

• Encourage Participation: Invite members to post their thoughts, challenges, knowledge resources, expertise etc. so that members start feeling comfortable about participating in the group. It is important to moderate the posts so that they don’t become pure marketing channels with irrelevant info.

• Engagement Activities: Plan and execute various online and offline activities. These can include online AMA (ask me anything sessions), webinars, mini-meetups, product demos etc. Offline events, both professional and social in nature to keeps the community engaged and enhance the bonding among community members.

• Take Feedback: Ask your members for feedback from time to time and use metrics to measure engagement to understand the health of the community. It’s important to act on feedback so that the community feels that their opinion matters.

Step 7: Weaving your startup around Community

The key element that you need to understand is that the community now trusts ‘you’ more than the product. Hence, they will be more supportive and responsive to you in the journey of building your startup.

Some of the ways in which you can blend your startup phases in the community are :

Ideation Stage

At this stage, work on understanding the what the actual challenges are and how you’ll tackle them. Some most productive ways of doing so include:

a) Be adamant and keep asking questions to keep the community buzzing, lively and interactive.

b) Put forth discussions that can help drive valuable insights

Validation Stage

Here work towards prototypes and validating your idea by:

a) Using the community as a source of feedback.

b) Illustrating product demos with those who are interested to give feedback.

c) Also, plan for offline meetups to source feedback over a coffee/brunch.

d) Lastly, ask for help in the community networks wherever you are stuck.

Early Stage

Once you reach this stage, you have the product in place and are looking at more targeted feedback as well as initial customer base. Try:

a) Giving special deals to your community to make them feel valued and empowered

b) Ask for references who can assist you to get your startup to acquire the initial traction and revenues. Read our blog on 7 Quick Steps On Product Pricing.

Growth Stage

By this stage, your community will be decent sized.

a) Build a lot of community leaders across locations that you are targeting, so that they start working towards building micro-communities for you.

b) ProductHunt, GrowthHackers, Xiaomi and OnePlus are some of the great examples of leveraging powerful community marketing.

These 7 steps should help you understand how to go about leveraging the power of communities and community marketing for your startup journey. The effort will be totally worth it if done well! A special note, it is always recommended to do deeper research to reap bigger benefits.

The above knowledge, tips, and personal experiences belong solely to Praveen Dorna of StartupByte. If you would like to write a blog for PayUmoney as a guest please do get in touch with us: marketing@payu.in

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. Choose the best payment gateway and grow your business effortlessly!

The post Grow Your Startup By Effective Community Marketing appeared first on PayU Blog.

From Saurabh’s trunk of expertise….

“Customer is like a girlfriend or boyfriend. If they don’t feel the vibe, they will just go away and you won’t realize why!” – Saurabh Garg, Co-Founder & CBO, NoBroker.in

There’s a lot of noise about customer retention strategies these days! It is considered an important marketing pillar. For a very good reason – Bain & Co study shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%.

While it is easier to accomplish in frequently used businesses such as groceries, e-commerce, and so on, but when you talk about businesses such as home buying and rentals, the customer does not return as fast. In fact, the customer having once used the service will return approximately in a year’s time. In businesses like these, the customer retention strategies have to be even more impactful. It is like you get one chance per year to impress your customer!

The Product

Firstly, strategy for any business is to build a great product that solves a real customer problem. The customer is always the king and must be served with best possible amenities. How can one do that? One can only do that by understanding the customer and not merely by building a ‘new’ product. The product should be ‘good’ and may or may not be ‘new’. The product should address the customer’s pain point. This one quality distinguishes successful businesses from aspirants.

Secondly, any customer is bound to remember a good service. If he is happy, he will gladly spread the word of mouth. Businesses who see happy customers as hyperlocal brand ambassadors usually survive the perils of time, fund crunch, trend change, etc.

Lifecycle

Once you understand the customer and his behavior well, you can tune your retention strategies around that. You have to remember that in today’s world the customer is bombarded with advertising and forgets a brand as early as 3 days. Therefore, it is important that you keep the customer engaged along the whole lifecycle till he comes back. There is no point in doing an untargeted advertising here as it will be much less impactful.

Let’s take the example of NoBroker

The customer typically comes back after 15-18 months once he has found a house. So, we divide the life cycle into 3 stages:

1. 0-12 months: Here we push engaging and useful content for the customer. Something he can use once he has found a house. Like locality highlights, décor and interiors tips, vastu etc. This content is pushed regularly to the customer and since these are things he finds useful we get a pretty high engagement here.
2. 12-14 months: This is the pre-transaction stage and we prepare the customers for the transaction. So, we will send them things like Guide to moving out, Guide to renting a house, testimonials etc. The person is about to enter into the zone and finds this content very informative.
3. 14 – 30 months: This is the transaction zone and we target the customer with high frequency content like “50000+ non-broker houses waiting for you”, “Saved 600cr in brokerage in last 1 year”. The customer who is looking for a house gets this at the right time and decides to try the service because of this.

Impact

Our repeat users have jumped 7 fold in last 1 year and is growing even faster. This is like a snowball effect which keeps on adding continuously.

Some Things To Remember

Integrated communication (IMC) approach- SMS, Facebook, Video, Push, Email, Google

It is very important to have an integrated communication approach in lifecycle management. A customer needs to be exposed to communication at least 3+ times before he decides to take any action.

Think one step ahead

For instance, in our business, once we know that a customer has rented/bought a place, we do not sit and relax. We foresee what the customer might need next- rental/home agreement, packers and movers, etc. Anticipating customer needs and communicating the services at the right time, goes a long way in gaining customer loyalty.

Customers today want convenience and value.

If they see a brand that is with them at each step of their house rental or shifting journey, they are bound to come back and recommend you for a hassle-free experience!

Reward them for social shares

Frequently, encourage your customers to share their experience on their social media handle. Reward them for those shares. The end goal is to form a community of hyperlocal and hyper-loyal brand ambassadors.

Endnote

Retaining your customers could be the most profitable activity a company can do. But important is to remain a start-up and keep experimenting. The idea is to not fall prey to regular customer retention strategies. Understand your customer and what he would want. There is no “one size fits all” strategy that will ever come to rescue.

The above knowledge, tips, and personal experiences belong solely to Saurabh Garg of NoBroker. You can reach out to him for any advice related to this topic on LinkedIn (please check the author section below for information). If you would like to write a blog for PayUmoney as a guest please do get in touch with us: marketing@payu.in

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!

Recommended Reads

[Streaming LIVE] PayU Event: Customer Retention 2018

The post StartingUp With Customer Retention Strategies appeared first on PayU Blog.

Understanding Pinterest For Business

Pinterest came to life in March 2010 and was founded by Evan Sharp, Paul Sciarra and Ben Silbermann. As all unique startups go through their rough patches Pinterest was no indifferent! Initially, the founders and a few programmers conducted operations out of a small apartment until 2011. A few leading publishing houses at that time turned down the offer to even meet the founders to discuss business. Soon the years progressed and so did the visual discovery platform – Pinterest.

Pinterest Co-founders (L-R): Evan Sharp, Paul Sciarra & Ben Silbermann

Nine months after the launch Pinterest had 10,000 users and Silbermann got in touch with these pinners personally to exchange good wishes. The app was also listed in the “50 Best Websites of 2011” in Times magazine. As days, months and years passed by, Pinterest community fondly known as “Pinners” increased in size and this eventually inspired the marketers to make space for the platform in their marketing strategies. Here are some stunning Pinterest statistics to pay attention to:

• The platform hosts nearly 175 billion pins today
• 60% pinners refer Pinterest for purchase ideas
• 72% pinners say Pinterest inspires them to shop when they are actually not looking for anything
• 55% pinners sat they use Pinterest to shop for and find products

Key terms used in Pinterest:

• Pins: Images uploaded on Pinterest
• Boards: Folders created to categorize pins
• Pinner: Pinterest user
• Repin: Sharing someone else’s pins by saving them in your boards
• Followers: Pinners who follow you on Pinterest for inspiration
• Following: Pinners you follow on Pinterest for inspiration
• Feeds: Pins you see on your dashboard once you log in

Pinterest’s Official Profile

How Does Pinterest For Business Work?

1. Signup or upgrade to Pinterest for business
2. Fill all required business details – profile picture, bio, website URL, etc.
3. Choose your interests (art, dance, writing, science, quotes, music, styling and more)
4. Create boards and add relevant pins with descriptions and links to redirect

Benefits Of Pinterest For Business

If “why should I including Pinterest for business in my marketing strategy?” is the question hovering in your mind then, we have listed down the key benefits of Pinterest for you below:

1. It’s free: You can create and manage your own Pinterest for business account easily and for free. Just follow the “how it works” steps above and you are good to go.
2. Visual communication: In the era of too-many-things-to-do-and-so-little-time, a picture is worth 1000 words! Pinterest communicates to its audiences in a direct, immediate and creative manner.
3. Highly inspiring: 60% pinners refer to Pinterest for purchase ideas. Pinterest is an inspiring haven for DIY artists, crafts and art lovers, writers, designers, stylists, shoppers, and many more professionals.
4. Very Decisive: Pinterest helps 90% of people to decide what to buy. Which means, before making any purchase Pinterest is highly regarded as an influencer to make purchase decisions.
5. Site Redirection: For any business redirecting people to their website directly, this is a super benefit. Pinterest does this right! Thus, boosting your site traffic and brand awareness.
6. Common Interests: All social media platforms have mixed audiences by default as it is available globally. Pinterest specifically brings these assorted audiences with common interests at one place to find ideas.
7. Run Ads: This is optional. You can as money to “promote” a pin which you can analyze as the best performer on your Pinterest business account. Pinterest has recorded that, it delivers $2 in profit to every $1 spent on ads. Note: Ad feature is currently available in select countries (limited audience targeting) and hence currencies for ad spends are listed and accepted accordingly (high ad spends in foreign currencies).
8. Follow People: Follow and interact with relevant pinners to gain visibility, follow backs and more repins. This helps to promote your business organically and form a strong base on the platform.

Though Pinterest is a very easy to use and manage app, as a business owner or marketer it is essential that you expose yourself to a few marketing tactics that work really well on Pinterest for business. These tactics that can bring in virality for all the content you pin on Pinterest are listed below:

1. Make Your Pinterest Business Profile Attractive

What contributes to an attractive Pinterest business profile? Apart from the images and description, you need to make sure that the theme of your profile speaks what you sell. Your Pinterest business profile needs to be diverse where all kinds of people definitely find something of their choice!

Eg: Your business centers around selling Indian traditional wear so, you can choose a particular color (pink, green, purple, etc) or a particular pattern (dresses, sarees, lehengas, etc) as your theme. You can use a festive theme as well as inspiration to post (Diwali, New year, Christmas,etc.).

2. Post Creative Images

As Pinterest a visual platform, you cannot afford to go wrong with the main essence of the app. It is important to keep a profile picture which is relatable or recognizable. Eg: If you are a company then you can put your company logo as your profile picture, as people’s recognition levels are high. But, if you are an individual blogger, artist, etc, you can put up your own image as your profile picture are people are likely to relate better to it.

When it comes to regular Pinterest pins, make sure your images or videos are high in resolution, clicked well and are genuine images. You can repin someone else’s pin, take pictures from other sources, click your own, edit a picture and pin it on your Pinterest for business account. However, it is always a good idea to give due image credits if outsourced.

PayUmoney’s Pinterest Business Profile

3. Add Convincing Bio/Description

Yes, a picture speaks volumes! Here’s a hypothetical scenario: You are an interior designer and mainly pin about the destinations you travel (maybe because your job demands travel, it’s your hobby or you natural interiors inspire you, etc). People might mistake you to be an avid traveler or a photographer instead of an interior designer. Putting a relevant description is to set people’s or rather followers expectation right about you and your profession. Never skip your bio.

4. Redirect To Website

The fourth essential aspect of Pinterest marketing is adding appropriate links to your business profile. This is because when people crawl through your profile, they need to know you better which is when they’d want to see your website as well. Apart from this having a website projects a very professional image of your work.

5. Add Rich Pins, Widgets & Plugs

• Rich pins: These pins are more informative than the regular pins. They provide more context to your pin or idea by showing extra information above and below the pin once clicked on or opened. Rich pins are a free feature for anyone using Pinterest and definitely, it’s a must use!

PayUmoney’s Rich Pin On Pinterest

• Widgets: You can add a Pinterest widget to your website or blog directly so that when people are skimming through your content at these destinations, they can check your Pinterest business profile out for more work testimonials.
• Plugs: Once you install or make Pinterest plugs available to your Pinterest business profile, you are allowing your audiences to shop for products they are looking for or are highly inspired by available immediately. This satisfies their desire to buy and yours to increase sales.

Image Credits: Pinterest

6. Pinterest For Distribution

If you are a blogger like me, you can make the best use of Pinterest to promote your articles or blogs. Put up infographics, gifs or videos of your articles and link them you to your blog. This will help you increase your organic traffic and readership.

PayUmoney’s Content Distribution On Pinterest

7. Best Time To Pin

As Pinterest for business is a global platform, there are no standard pinning or search timings on the platform. However, these days and timings change as per the location of both the pinner and the business. However, in India:

• Best time to pin: 2pm-4pm
• Best day to pin: Saturday

Pinterest For Business Analytics

Efforts seem best when they score well! You should know how your Pinterest business marketing strategies and campaigns are performing. Some key analytics to check are:

1. Impressions: Refers to the number of times your pin is viewed
2. Clicks: The number of clicks your pin gets
3. Demographics: It is the type of people you reach on the basis of location, gender, etc.
4. Interests: DIY crafts or travel? Makeup tips or scientific facts? Measure what are your audiences interested in

Are You Using Pinterest For Your Business Yet?

As successful takes time to knock doors, build a strong brand presence on Pinterest for business takes time too. However, the highlight of the platform is: it is creatives, visual and highly engaged at all times. So, say goodbye to all your doubts about Pinterest for business and start pinning all your content for marketing and generating high soaring sales for your business now!

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 Pinterest For Business: Interesting Tips For Businesses To Market Well!  appeared first on PayU Blog.

From Shrijay’s trunk of expertise….

Entrepreneurship is a journey by itself and just like any other journey, it has its own do’s and don’ts. I too, started this journey to provide business professional services a few years back. It’s only then did I realize that it would have been an added advantage for me to know the rule book beforehand! But to make the startup journey easier for all aspiring business minds reading this, here are the 5 things you must look forward to polish right from the beginning.

1. Keep Your Focus & Dedication Intact

Juggling job with a start-up on a part-time basis is a bad idea. The amount of attention, hard work and persistence your entrepreneurial venture requires is 10X vis a vis is a regular job. Eventually, I too had to call it a day at my full-time job and concentrate on my venture.

Take the hard and harsh decisions to follow the dream completely without any compromises.

Being focused on venture demands not only laser-sharp focus towards work but also on various other aspects of entrepreneurship like;

• Unique Value Proposition (UVP): Your prospective customers will have hundreds of other options. You need to work hard and smart towards making your offerings stand out from competitors despite offering the same service or product.
• Market/product fit: Keep your eye on the quality of your product/services and the size of your target market. These two points will easily help you gauge your way ahead.
• Single success metric: When you start a business, how would you define success? You need to shortlist a couple of essential metrics such as conversions, GMV and so on to choose the most valued metric for you in that time.

2. Watch Out For Data Trends

Keep a vigilant eye on your data. To achieve an armor of a successful industry leader, you need to focus on cultivating data maturity from the beginning.

If you are going to be an entrepreneur, you can’t fear failure. You have to develop a tolerance level of measured risk.  – Bernhard Niesner.

Personally, the following steps worked wonders me, you can try them too!

• Enable the current data structure to provide a holistic set of information
• Use various tools to help with data assistance
• Invest in custom data applications tailored to my services and business model

Then, I used that data to gauge whether I can take my business decisions based on the data. And then I took a closer look at how others, especially my competitors utilize it.

Sites like Etsy and Craig’s List, and even local trade shows for that matter is something wherein you can test-market early product prototypes or services and learn from mistakes. Failure is inevitable, it all boils down to how much can you learn and how fast can you pick yourself up.

3. Seek Support: Co-Founders, Employees And Consultants

Quite often, because of the way start-ups are perceived today, entrepreneurs feel shy or reserved to approach others for advice. There are loads of resources available online: blogs, videos, where you can find inspiration. But learning and consulting your own teammates, counterparts and seniors make a lot of difference. Also, the importance of venturing with co-founder enables the simplification of the gap filling process. The right sense of ownership and accompaniment gives a beautiful twist to a traditional equation of 1+1 = 11!

I would tip here with: Just go out there as a learner and implement all those lessons to be a successful entrepreneur.

4. Legal Formalities & Protecting IPRs

Newbies are often trapped in an enigma of whether to register a private company (Pvt.) or LLP in case of co-founders. Legal formalities involve more than just picking the right formation type. There are companies who tasted the sweetness of initial success and later called it a “quit” because of law enforcement. Here are the 5 things that I would like to share:

1. Choose a Right Business Structure
2. Know Licensing Regulations
3. Have legal documents and policies in place
4. Adhering to taxation compliances
5. Manage your Cash flow and Accounts

Given that many new-age startups are tech-based, protecting IP is not a luxury, it is a necessity! In fact, many successful startups enjoy massive evaluations just because of the intellectual properties and proprietary algorithms that they could create.

 It has been estimated that on an average, over 80% of the value of a startup company is based on their IP portfolio. (Shrijay’s sources)

Here are the thumb rules to follow:

• Get a Trademark: Protect your branding – name, symbol, sound or fragrance that creates a recall for your brand
• Protect with Patents: If your product or process is true to the test of the invention and creates a better value and efficiency, consider protecting it with Patent.
• Copyright for Works: If you have created original content, be it musical composition, photograph, write-up, or a sculpture; you must copyright such work.

Protecting IP leads to:

• Startup Valuation Based on IP Rights: Startups don’t necessarily have massive goods’ stocks or workforce to start with. Hence, most of the value of a startup is usually derived from its IP rights.
• No Over-Stretching the Finances: It has to be stated that unless your startup offers something that has zero production costs, you will have to loosen the purse strings at times to make money. What most startups don’t consider, are the expenses that may derive from not taking proper care of IP rights. {Need this as it talks of IP – subject specific}
• Impose Control on What You Have: Sure, it is nice to have someone else promote your services or goods for free. But what are you going to do when the quality is not up to your mark? In many cases, the answer is a simple “nothing” if you haven’t taken care of the IP rights. 

By keeping all IPRs and legal formalities in place, you will get the ability to restrict unauthorized use of your owned IP or license for others’ commercial benefit. It also helps you relax and focus on necessary.

5. Balancing Emotions With Practicality

Being an entrepreneur is not a destination, but a journey of constant improvement, evolution, and perseverance. It is a roller-coaster ride with quick highs and lows.

 It has been a long journey for me as well. But, above all, it is important to take practical decisions out of the emotional experiences.

Remember, when you hold that commanding position, by default trusteeship of everyone who signed up for the journey is an assumption. You have to make decisions that are good for the company at large.

Taking care of the employees and people who take care of your business is the ultimate key to grow. There are no shortcuts to valuing people. A compassionate entrepreneur sails the farthest! It is about understanding your customers as well. Instead of running behind clients and focusing on increasing your clientele, cater to a few clients in the best manner and others will follow suit as a snowball effect gradually!

The above knowledge, tips, and personal experiences belong solely to Shrijay Seth of LegalWiz. You can reach out to him for any advice related to this topic on LinkedIn (please check the author section below for information). If you would like to write a blog for PayUmoney as a guest please do get in touch with us: marketing@payu.in

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 5 Things Every Entrepreneur Must Consider Before Starting Up 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.