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.

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.

We, as an organization, are glad to have met and be associated with one such powerful woman – Vandana Chhabra. Vandana is the founder of an NGO called Vanaja Organics. The NGO aims at creating opportunities for a dignified living for underprivileged women by providing them vocational training.

Click here to read how PayU helped Vanaja Organics grow its business!

Getting back to Mother’s Day celebrations, this is the opportune time for online businesses to kick their Mother’s Day marketing efforts a notch higher.

According to data, one-third of Mother’s Day shoppers wait until a week before to make their online purchases, while 18 percent hold off until the last 48-hours.

So, don’t worry if you haven’t started with your Mother’s Day marketing yet! It’s still not too late. You have time between now and Sunday to target the Mother’s Day crowd and increase your sales. People like to do last-minute shopping. Here are five easy & quick marketing ideas to connect with your last-minute online shoppers:

1. Create Special Deals for Mother’s Day and Promote them Extensively

Creating promo codes, coupons or special deals for Mother’s day could be a great way of grabbing your audience’s attention and increase your sales. People love discounts! Therefore, you could offer them a discount on your existing products through coupons. Also, creating coupons would not take you much time. You can either get a page designed in-house terming your special deals or create a custom promo code using various online coupon makers.

Read more on Beginner’s Guide To Coupon Marketing Strategy here.

However, after you have created the special deals, it is essential that you promote them both online and offline. You can start with promoting your special deals on social media i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and also on various groups created specifically for Mother’s Day.

Also, you could promote it prominently on the landing page of your website so that it is the first thing that people notice after coming to your site. You could also use web push notifications to bring it to your customer’s notice.  Another way could be of sending push text messages to your database as SMSes boast amazing opening rates.

2. Make Good Use of Online Forums

There are many online forums like Reddit, Google+ and others. You could join some of these online forums, wish the mothers and offer your products or services, wherever relevant. To win the audience on these online forums, make sure you have quality content and post it only to extreme niches.

For instance, in Reddit, you will find, subreddits that will give you an idea of some of the narrowest and specific interests. You can find such subreddits for Mother’s Day and make good use of it! You could cash in on self-gifting too!

3. Make an Eye-Catchy Infographic

According to data, infographics can increase web traffic by up to 12%.

Make a small infographic around Mother’s Day that has easy-to-digest information of what you intend to do or offer them and circulate it on social media. Creating a small infographic would not take much time. You could hire a designer for a day or Do-It-Yourself! Also, you could post the infographic on Pinterest, as many people go there to look out for options!

4. Run a Contest on Social Media

People love free gifts! You can create a contest for people to post photos of them with their mothers or children and win exciting prices. You could also give them a voucher and ask them to visit your store for shopping, this Mother’s Day! There are chances that people will come to your store after winning vouchers or participating in the contest. You will then get a chance to showcase your other products and service, increase reach and boost your sales too.

5. Offer Free Shipping or a Click and Get Service

According to reports*, 9 out of 10 consumers admit that free shipping is the number one incentive to shop online more.

Also, since nobody wants to give overdue gifts, you can make your business stand out by offering free shipping (or at discounted rates) to make sure your customers give the perfect gift at the right time and are happy! Take a glance at how Aveda does it for its customers!

Also, if your target audience is in your proximity, you could ask them to order for their Mother’s Day gift online, or come and check your store and get the gift delivered at home, at the time they want, for free. You could also offer mid-night deliveries to your customers.

Conclusion

While we talk of mothers and their special day, it is interesting to share that Mother’s Day is the most searched keyword in India for the last 5 years. Don’t believe us? Well, Google trends tell us so. Have a look!

This is one of the reasons why you should consider having great campaigns around Mother’s Day (if you haven’t already). Mother’s Day could be a big sales opportunity for online retailers. Work not only on attracting new customers but also on delighting the existing ones with your products and services. Most importantly, think of it as a special day and a chance to grow your business.

If you are an online retailer looking to provide your customers with the best online shopping experience, sign up on PayUmoney for making your online payments smooth and hassle-free.

The post Mother’s Day: 5 Last-Minute Marketing Ideas To Boost Your Sales 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.

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.

Yes, marketers are gorging over the most ‘engagement-oriented’ app for promotions.

Yes, there are millions of Instagram business tools out there.

Yes, you are in the right space, because you want make the best use of Instagram business!

With your Instagram marketing in place, we now bring yet another most searched topic: using Instagram business tools for marketing.

Today, using Instagram for personal account is pretty easy and quick as compared to the business account. Are you facing the same issue? Don’t worry! We are here to help you choose exceptionally intelligent Instagram business tools for your business.

12 Must-Use Instagram Business Tools For Marketers

To begin with, there three important elements of Instagram:

• Profile Bio

• Pictures

• Hashtags

Trust us, once you get these 3 points correctly, no one can stop your business from ruling Instagram.

We have listed the top Instagram business tools to assist you with content creation, editing, scheduling, analysing and much more! These tools are segmented into 6 use cases for your convenience:

1. To Click & Edit Pictures Like a Pro

Instagram is a visual medium. What appeals to the eyes is consumed rather sold instantly. Hence, putting up good product or service pictures on your Instagram is of utmost importance.

If you skim through Google Play or App Store, you’ll find a bunch of apps promising best quality pictures. But which ones you should opt for your business undoubtedly:

• VSCO: This app is used by leading marketing firms and influencers. The fun, professional and unique effects or filters it enables. Their photography app is one of the most powerful in the market.
• Snapseed: This app is of great value and importance if you are always on the run. It is easy, simple and creative for candid clicks

Both these tools are mobile based applications and have free as well as paid services.

2. To Create Exceptional Content

Now that you have clicked pictures and edited them well, it’s time to make amazing post or content. The 2 most feasible tools include:

• Canva: It is a free, handy and easy to use application (mobile + web). It has thousands of customisable templates and lakhs of stock images of your choice. Choose the best ones for your business and publish undeniable content. You can also create amazing Instagram stories on Canva!
• Repost: It is not necessary to create original content at all times. You can also “repost” someone else inspiring and top performing post on your handle via the Repost app. This will help you boost your Instagram engagement and followers as well. Instead of creating content leverage what’s already existing because, it will always benefit you.

3. To Run & Evaluate Contests

In order to keep your audiences engaged at all times contests are always enduring. Instagram is a very hyper active social media channel, hence to keep your life sorted, you can make use of:

• Wishpond: The app supports photo and hashtag (#) contests on Instagram. You can also use the app to creatively design contest landing pages, highlight prizes, approve and deny entries and so on. The app has a 14-day free trial eligibility after which, it is chargeable.
• Comment Picker: If your contest is about asking people to comment in order to win prizes then, this is the apt tool to use. It randomly picks comments and your winner is selected! So, no need to spend hours evaluating comments.

4. For Competitor Analysis & Scouting Influencers

Competitor analysis is an integral part of any business hosted on any platform. Hence it is essential be on the top of your game. Hunt the top-rated influencers that suit your business perfectly. To perform this activity efficiently, you can make use of:

• Buzzsumo: Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach target audience without pinning hopes on paid media. Buzzsumo tool enables you to find, evaluate and analyse Influencer outreach for laying better business strategy.
• HypeAuditor: The tool makes use of advanced AI to analyse any Instagram account on the basis of true followers, demographics, etc. This is a good way to keep an eye on your competitor!

5. To UseTheTrending Hashtags Of All Times

• Focalmark: It is an intelligent tool designed specially for finding hashtags relevant on Instagram. It uses human research and ranking algorithm to suggest apt hashtag for your brand.
• Autohash: This particular tool smartly makes use of computer vision algorithm to suggest hashtags relevant to your pictures

6. To Schedule Posts

This is one thing every marketer looks for – how to schedule posts on Instagram? Well, the answer is right here. Leave all your worries at bay and handle your business or ‘vacay’ peacefully with these tools at your disposal:

• Later: This is an epic tool! It not only schedules your Instagram posts but also auto posts them at the set time. Later is also epic because of the acute analysis it provides for your posts. You can auto post videos as well using Later.
• Preview: Want hashtag suggestions along with the ease to auto post on Instagram? Preview is the app for you. Create your Hashtag groups, discover and schedule the best time to post for your audience and much more on this app. Preview is available on android in select countries only, whereas it is easily available on iPhone globally.

These 12 Instagram business tools may seem quiet over the top or at first. You might think they require too much prep, but to be honest, it will make your life much breezy.

Keep Instagram post sharing on other social media channels ‘on’ for optimal results. So, before you resume your Instagram marketing activities, do check these Instagram business tools to grow quickly on social media.

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

Benefits of Instagram business

Expert’s Guide To Instagram Content Strategy

How to promote business & drive sales on Instagram

Instagram marketing strategies

The post 12 Must-Use Instagram Business Tools In 2019 appeared first on PayU Blog.

In this 2018 milestone post we will highlight some of the PayUmoney blogs that did well through the year and helped businesses in some way or the other.

Hit List Of Top 10 PayUmoney Blogs

1.Introducing All New PayUmoney Dashboard: We have always thrived to make tracking and managing business easy for our users. So, if you want to make the most of all the exclusive PayUmoney features, then this is the best time to SignUp (if you still haven’t) or simply Login to your account. Let your customers experience the best online payment service ever!

2. PayUmoney Web Checkout: This year we had only one aim in our mind and actions: to make our payment gateway an extremely seamless, easy and convenient option for all its users. The moment we released a new checkout system this year, our merchants were all “yes!” for key features which includes:

• re-directionless checkout
• easy retry option
• payment mode intelligence and,
• Nitro flow – for safe & automatic access to saved cards without login

All these features in combination contributes to a better success rate! Login in to account or SignUp to experience the best if you still haven’t.

3. How PayUmoney Payment Gateway Helps Businesses Grow?: This blog post rightly and largely focuses on the fact that we are more than a payment gateway. All the features introduced by us highly revolves in churning out better growth and success rates for your business. Read the complete blog to explore our exceptional features that will help you boost your business 5X.

4.Video Content Marketing Top Trends Of 2018: Today every business wants to create a benchmark and be different than it’s counterparts. We do witness the curve of change rising higher when it comes to flourishing marketing trends and techniques where video content marketing takes the driver’s seat rather! Let’s explore this rising trend all the more in this informative write up.

5. How To Use WhatsApp Business To Sell Products: If the app has an attractive base of 1.3 billion global users and 53% people shop on direct messages (DM), then it is bound to be a hub of all things saleable! The app is a selling hub for all marketers, salespersons, established or aspiring businesses. Why do we call it a hub to sell products? Go through the entire write up to explore more about WhatsApp business’ unique features, functions and more.

6. How To Use PayU Payments Plugin For MS Excel: Innovation is motto! We all use Excel sheets to manage our business and keep a track of all things. Then why not make the most of MS Excel to accept payments as well? Does the concept interest you? Get all the details you ought to know about the plugin right away!

7. 6 Simple Steps For A successful Brand Building Process: This particular blog piece has been loved by all our readers immensely and is always topping the charts. One reason being, a successful brand building process increases your sales and advocates your product or service. Read more to understand and process your brand better.

8. A Quick Payments Settlement Guide For Businesses: The ultimate goal for any and every business is to get customer payments in their bank account. Undoubtedly this is a rock star blog because of all the obvious reasons! If you are curious about the working of online payments then, click on the blog name to know more.

9. UPI Payment Gateway: UPI surely has been the hero of 2018! As the UPI juggernaut has gained steam, major players from across the world have jumped on the bandwagon including Google with Tez, Facebook with its UPI payment facility within WhatsApp. Get the glimpse of the UPI success and otherwise curve in the blog itself.

10. Expert’s Guide To Instagram Content Strategy: India is the 3rd leading country globally with a base of 59 Million active Instagram users just after US & Brazil. Instagram is getting highly popular in the world and so is our blog on the essential things and strategies to plan content for the gram. Read more!

11. Instagram For Business And It’s Benefits: Yet another Instagram blog topping our charts in 2018! Do not exclude this ever-growing social media channel from your business plan. Explore why and how you can use Instagram for your benefit.

Once again thanks a lot for your undying support to inspire us write better each year! Continue to be a part of our journey and unfold many more useful reads. Grow your business effortlessly with PayUmoney payment gateway.

The post Hit List Of Top 11 Blogs That Faired Well On PayUmoney Blog  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.

In this extensive write up we will emphasize deeply on the digital marketing trends that 2019 beholds for small sized businesses specifically. We will also shine light on some vital apps, techniques and tools you have to possess in order to excel in these trends.

Let’s understand the digital marketing trends of 2019 right here and now!

1. SEO

Search Engine Optimization. By the time to read each syllable of S-E-O you might feel like skipping this article, but wait a minute.

2018 might have been a great SEO teacher for you, but there is one thing you must be still unknown to about SEO: Smart Magnet Method (SMM).

The SMM method takes your efforts to hunt for a long tail keyword away and gently replaces it with a smart method to use keywords from Google ads itself!

This method pulls all the chances of going wrong with your keywords and hence ranking. Here’s a simple example of how SMM works:

I write blogs for PayUmoney. Depending on my blog topic of the week, I’ll use SMM as described in the steps below:

1. Go to the incognito mode of my browser.
2. Type my intended search topic. Eg: best payment gateway
3. I am sure the top searches that Google or search engines will reflect will be an “ad”
4. I’ll choose the most common word used in these ads
5. I will use this keyword to write my highly optimised blog. And I am done!

Apart from smart magnetic method there a couple of more SEO best practices that will definitely and actively breathe through the next 3 years! Check out these best practices for SEO right away.

To keep your SEO in place at all times tools such as Semrush, Grammarly and Uber Suggest or Google Keyword planner are of great advantage here.

2. Artificial Intelligence

“Ok Google call Mom”

“Siri what to do, I am bored!”

“ Alexa play a happy song”

“Your order is on its way, please be patient” and so many more auto (chatbots) and voice messages are doing your work for you.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are the gen next technologies the world is eyeing keenly.

AI is not only about chatbots and voice messages, it is deeply involved with automation. Today AI is heavily used in marketing as well.

Before you can directly reach out to an Amazon customer care executive, you will interact with a robot. The same process is being used by most of the large and small businesses as well.

AI makes work easy and faster for humans. Here are some really benchmarked AI tools for businesses you can have a look at and implement as well.

3. Mobile Marketing

“If your plans don’t include mobile, your plans are not finished” – Wendy Clark, Coca-Cola

The legends describe Mobile as the TV of the new era. Today, 80% of internet users own a smartphone. Mobile internet traffic as share of total global online traffic is 48.2%.

Image Source: Statista

In-app notifications, push notifications, mobile adverts, pop ups and many more ways of marketing tactics marketers are barging on at present. Everything that was once done on desktop only is now migrated to a 6-7 inch handset.

In this age of digitalisation, mobile marketing is proving to be a disruption when it comes to the way people are dealing with brands. Hence, planning your mobile marketing strategy in a very precise and step-by-step format is the need of the hour!

Some really handy tools for marketing efficiently on mobile include Clevertap, AdMob, your favorite social media.

4. Video Marketing

Videos are quick to view, easy to understand and creative to visualize.

Though video marketing has been a game spinner time and again, it is gaining deserving impetus only now!

Digital marketing trends of 2019 are incomplete without mentioning video marketing as a crucial game changer in any marketing strategy. As a live example, we started gaining 3X more signups and blog views after we started creating and distributing videos.

Explore the top trends of video content marketing

Social media is a great channel of video content virality. You can find a variety of video creation tools online some of them include Powtoons, Animoto and a simple iMovies can get your traffic soaring high!

5. Influencer Marketing

Influencers not only influence but scoot your brand with their presence 10 notches higher! Whether you are a fashion or a hi-tech brand, you’ll find influencer in every business domain you are in.

A recent report points out to the fact that over 1,800 million people are actively using social media at present. As a business you must use influencer marketing which can prove to a be channel of hyper targeting your audience.

Chance upon a good way to gain quick insights into effective influencer marketing for fruitful results in a matter of time.

There are a few ways which can help you to search for quality influencers online. These tools include Cision, Buzzsumo and Onalytica.

6. Community Marketing

Quora, Reddit, StartupByte, Facebook and the likes are your goldmines! These communities with like mind people and interests are the place where you will be easily able to reach out to your core target audiences.

Post all important and vital content on these communities to reach out to many and more many people all at one go. Community marketing technically means you just sit at one place, for an hour and engage with the entire world all at once.

Create a community where people love to see what’s next coming up from your end. Keep your community filled with diverse content and always buzzing for more engagement.

7. Lead Generation

Today, almost all the websites you visit will either have a pop asking your name and email the moment you land on their site OR will have an exit intent luring you to stay and buy their product. What is this called?

Lead generation maybe irritating at first, but when you dive deeper into it, you’ll see the importance it withholds. Lead generation is a very important digital marketing segment. This is because of the after lead capturing scope it possesses.

Beginner’s guide to B2B lead generation is here!

Lead generation, capturing, nurturing and converting is a complete process by itself. Once you capture the desired leads, the way to nurture them to have them use your product in the end, is subjective on intent by nature.

For example, if you visit PayUmoney blog homepage, you’ll see a concise form which asks for your email. That’s it. Once you fill your details there, we nurture you with useful and customised content which will help you and your online business prosper.

Here our intent is to feed you healthy and customised content which is relevant to your business. However, your intent or aim of lead generation maybe different. Whatever your intent maybe, keep the motto “less is more” in mind and proceed towards success.

Apart from the above mentioned digital marketing trends, social media too plays an important role. We feel that social media is a given, now is the time for businesses to look forward to new avenues of marketing business in 2019. This new year onwards reach new heights and levels of successful with the 7 digital marketing tends of 2019 and let us hear your success!

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 Blockbuster Digital Marketing Trends To Watch Out In 2019 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.