This is a step-by-step content marketing guide that will help you right from creating a good content strategy to distributing it on all platforms. Let’s start!

1. Make a Content Strategy

Data suggests 64% of marketers want to learn how to build a better content strategy. And why wouldn’t they? Content marketing needs to be strategic. Basically, it should answer these 4 things: What, When, Why & How.

There are a lot of benefits of having a content strategy in place – whether it’s weekly, monthly, half-yearly or annual. Apart from giving the team a set direction and plan to work on, it also gives accountability and an eye for budget or resource allocation.

How to Create a Robust Content Strategy:

Segment Your Audience – Know your audience. It is extremely essential to figure out who you will be writing for and understand their needs. After you have your target audience, make a plan for the following:

• WHAT – What is it that you are going to deliver with your content? You could make a list of topics that you may want to write on through thorough research. You can use the topic- cluster approach to be more strategic about what you want as your main blog or the pillar blog and clusters.

• WHEN: Create a content calendar on when would you publish what content. It could also include the time of the day, date, etc.

• WHY: Give a thought to why do you want to write on a specific topic and would it be relevant or useful for your target audience.
• HOW: Spend some time finding out where the target audience engages the most, what platforms they use, where they are comfortable etc.

Read here to know more on How to Plan Effective Content Marketing Strategy.

2. Create Quality Content

It doesn’t matter if you are creating a blog, a newsletter, a presentation or a video, there are some techniques that you can use to enhance your content.

While the key point shall always be to produce original content, it is important to start the piece in a way that it grabs attention. Tell your target audience why they should read or listen, what is in it for them and how will it add value for them.

Make sure that your content keeps them engaged and curious throughout and pushes them to take the desired action. Also, close your piece of content with a specific action like “sign up here,” or “click here to read more,” or “get in touch with us”.

Want to know How to Create Content That Brings in Maximum Conversions.

3. Choose the Right Keywords

It is extremely important to know which keywords would be beneficial for your business! The right keyword helps in boosting your SEO and ranking higher in search engines. To start with, make sure the keyword you choose is 2-3 words long and related to the products or services you are offering.

Think like your customers, what they would search for in Google for a product and service and then select the keyword. For instance, if you are selling yoga pants, a good idea would be to use “women’s yoga pants” as your keyword.

Also, don’t forget to check at the end of the search page to find related searches for the same. You could decide on your keyword seeing those searches too.

#Tip: Use a keyword tool such as Google Adwords

You can use Google AdWords Keyword Planner to get ideas for your keywords. Just enter the keywords and press enter. The data will show you average monthly searches for the keywords, its relevance, and the competition. You can compare different keywords and decide which one is better!

4. Diversify Content-Type

Don’t be bounded to just creating blogs and articles for your business. There are different types of content that you could try such as eBooks, email campaigns, videos, research/whitepapers, industry reports, case studies, podcasts and audio to increase traffic and drive sales.

While blogging is mostly effective, newsletters and eBooks are a good way of generating leads and sign-ups. A diverse content marketing strategy is the best way to get significant results out of all the campaigns.

5. Re-purpose Your Existing/New Content

In simple words, repurposing or recycling your old/new content would mean making most of your efforts! A content that has been written in a particular style, can be recycled for better consumption and outreach. You can re-purpose your content into infographics, videos, and presentations.

For instance, if your target audience has missed on the blog, you can provide the same information to them on YouTube or Slideshare or other platforms and extend your reach. However, make sure the content you re-purpose is:

1. Evergreen: Is or will be relevant in the long run.
2. Popular: Something that your audience likes reading about!
3. Old but relevant: Once updated, the content might grab eyeballs!

Stats tell us that, only 29% of marketers repurpose content. However, this would increase as more and more people discover its benefits with this content marketing guide.

#Tip: You can use tools such as Animoto and Canva to re-purpose your content.

6. Distribute It Everywhere

After you have created your content, it makes sense to distribute it on social media and other community forums to bring more traffic to your site.

To start with, create a content distribution strategy wherein you name all the channels you want to distribute your content on. You may want to re-publish your content on channels such as Medium and Reddit. Your content distribution strategy may look like:

Apart from these, you could distribute your content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and more. However, after the distribution of content, make sure you analyze it with the number of views, comments, etc. you are getting for each post.

Click here to read in detail A Step-By-Step Guide to Perfect Content Distribution Strategy and maximize your traffic growth!

7. Do Community Marketing

Community marketing does not mean talking about only your content, but sharing information, networking, and learning. It’s all about engagement.

There are several marketing communities such as Quora, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter etc. that invite people to network while sharing knowledge. Become a part of such communities and participate in conversations that interest you!

Publish educational articles such as how to blogs or videos that are informative and help your audience understand your product or service and then talk about it! Answer all the questions like an expert in your industry and see your views and profile grow in months!

If you want to leverage communities to build your business, here is how to create an effective community marketing strategy.

8. Keep a track through Analytics

Google Analytics has a big part when it comes to analyzing the performance of your blog such as the number of sessions, bounce rate, the total number of visitors on the site, etc. How these visitors coming to your site: through referrals, social media or its organic traffic?

Apart from Google Analytics, you can use tools such as CelevrTap or Sendy to monitor your email campaigns. Also, you can use tools such as Hootsuite to analyze your social media data.

Regular monitoring of data will help you in understanding what works for you as a brand and what changes you need to bring in your content marketing strategy.

Want to know about the most important metrics on Google Analytics for your website?

Follow This Guide to Do Content Marketing Right In 2020

Establish your goals clearly and you will see a growth in the traffic on your site. The first step of a content marketer should be to have a great content plan or strategy in place. Use the tips used in this guide for better outreach and business growth!

With all your content marketing efforts in place, it makes sense to invest in a good payment gateway on your site for smooth and seamless transactions. PayU is India’s leading online payment solution provider. For more details,

The post A Step-By-Step Guide to Do Content Marketing Right In 2020 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.

From Shrijay’s trunk of expertise….

When it comes to getting the work done – swift and smart, it boils down to being a super ninja who has it all to combat everything that is thrown in the way. Here are the 5 proven ninja techniques to be a successful entrepreneur when followed cautiously.

1.Building An A-Team

Building your ‘A-team’ involves finding those who are equally crazy and passionate about your idea. The role of an entrepreneur in getting the A-team ready lies in, pumping more and more like-minded people that help to create a sense of startup community. These are the ones on whom you would rely on.

In return, it will help you start a marketing chain reaction without any monetary bet, building the confidence and revenue. From placing the right personnel at the right place to evaluating performances on the basis of their strength, is the key to get the work done.

2. Groom Your Persona

The true value of any successful entrepreneur lies in his or her persona. As an entrepreneur you can structure a persona which is approachable, easy going yet hungry for success. For a perfect balance, entrepreneurs need to keep an image, streamline it with the face-value of your company and shape it towards a brand. This is something which will offer a value proposition to your company or startup.

Here are a few things that an entrepreneur needs to indulge in for grooming an ‘all-arounder’ persona:

• Ambition: It is best to lead a vision with the passion that blends with burning and gut-wrenching need to see it come alive.
• Self-confidence: Keep believing in yourself even if you waiver a bit here and there.
• Adaptability: To changes and to things that happen unplanned. Groom yourself to be able to think from your feet.
• Smart working: Don’t be a hero. Share your work and split the tasks. Monitor, analyse and evaluate with the utmost scrutiny.
• Be at ease with risk: Take calculated risks and be responsible for everything that falls apart.
• Stick to the ground: Burn ego to go far and hit that milestone that you’ve set up for your startup.

Take risks and tap the opportunities that unfold by leading the startup as a dynamic leader!

3. Know Your Customer Right

Most of the time startups fail because there are not enough customers to buy the idea. If you aren’t sure of who is going to benefit from your service or product then it definitely means that there are no potential customer that exists.

So the first thing to do even before planning the budget, raising the capital, or even registering your business, is:

• To ensure that there exists a customer; the one who is willing to buy your product or use your service.

There’s no business without a customer and every successful entrepreneur will know his/her customer from the very beginning. Once you have known your customers in the right manner, you could also identify the quality value that you can offer to solve their problems.

4. Value & Use Time Wisely

Thinking that we have enough time is a trap of fallacy. Human beings are procrastinators and entrepreneurs are no different. The biggest misconception of having time by your side leads in delaying the most important tasks. Keep all distractions such as social media, texting and so on at bay for more productivity and hence results!

It’s a fact that you don’t have enough time to let go. Therefore getting the priorities set is the only option to make the most out of what you have. Remember: There are high chances that a big idea in your head is seeding somewhere else too.

Pro-tip: Break your bigger goals into smaller chunks that you can manage. Being an entrepreneur is not that taxing as it seems if you keep finishing tasks based on the fixed deadlines.

5. Networking Is Important

Enough has been said about this and I can’t really insist on how much networking matters for the early success of your company. The key lies in balancing both – business and networking activities. With more organized networking, idea exchange with other entrepreneurs initiates deeper business insights and connections. Join as many startup networking events happening in your town during the weekend and catch up with fellow entrepreneurs around to have a short chat.

The journey as an entrepreneur is filled with uncertainty and is not an overnight story. One has to deal with problems related to complex government regulations, resources and finances, and plenty of other things. It is, therefore, best to have someone from the same breed around to mentor, to look up to, and even share talks on business. Proper guidance opens new opportunities, especially for getting into the partnership and collaborations. Upgrading yourself timely with regards to the techniques mentioned above is a bonus! Keep going, keep sailing.

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 Proven Ninja Techniques To Be A Successful Entrepreneur 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.

Black or white? Heart or mind? Sweet or sour? Sugar or salt? These are the normal life question we succumb to quite often. However, these questions or their answers won’t directly affect your Rs. 1 lakh business but, creating and launching a right product will! Thus, A/B testing your product is essential and doing it the correct way is all the more essential. So, what is A/B testing all about and how it works? Read on to know more and explore your product’s or service’s true potential.

What Is A/B Testing?

Pro-Tip: Run your test long enough so you can actually differentiate between the two variations.

How To Measure Your A/B Test Results?

There are plenty of A/B testing tools available in the market. Some of them provide the same service for free or charge a price for the same service. Tools seem essential as they are automated, time-saving and above all instant result curating. Here are some of the best tools available in the market: Adobe Target, Google Optimizer, and Optimizely. You choose your pick and get started with your work.

Once you run the test, it’s time to read the results! Consider that your result of A/B testing is something like this: Group A gives 20% while Group B gives 23%.

1. Before jumping to a conclusion, note that the error rate might be 5% in most cases
2. Based on this, the conversion rate (click through rate or traffic) will be 3%
3. Check if the new version is the product or service you provide receives a better welcome than the previous one
4. if yes, then go ahead with it. If no, then go back to the original one. Don’t lose hope here. Going back to the older version is not giving up. Take this as an inspiration to create something more better and epic.

Common Mistakes To Avoid While A/B Testing

DO NOT make these 3 common mistakes businesses usually get trapped into:

1. Taking decisions too quickly without running the test for the full business cycle
2. Focusing on too many results at the same time. Before you look at the report decide on what result you want to know.
3. Not re-testing. This might give you false results.

A/B testing has been widely used by businesses to figure out that one factor that converts a visitor to a customer. When you run this test for a considerable time, you can gather enough data to make strategic decisions. But the key to unlocking this treasure is being consistent, with proper planning and execution. Follow these steps mentioned above to successfully kickstart A/B testing today.

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 A Step-By-Step Guide To Product A/B Testing (The Right Way) appeared first on PayU Blog.

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

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

1.The Good Old Trends For SEO 2018

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

2. Backlinks

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

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

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

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

3. Guest Blogs

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

4. Smart Magnet Method

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

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

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

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

5. Multiple Content On Multiple Platforms

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

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

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

6. Voice Search

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

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

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

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

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

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

A newsletter is a very popular and effective form of email marketing effort. It is no new phenomena or discovery that has taken place recently. It is a great medium of promotion for centuries now. The only difference between then and now is the medium. Emailer they came handy and now they come in the form of an email.  

In this blog, we will discuss and put forth the various factors present in your newsletter content that needs to be and can be analyzed regularly and perfectly.   

Evaluating Newsletters 

Shooting a highly relevant and smooth newsletter as a B2B communication for your clients is as important as water today!  First of all, what exactly it is? 

If simply put theoretically, a newsletter quickly captures and summarizes information and your latest business happenings to your customers. Typically, it can be sent out in the form of an email weekly, bi-weekly or on monthly basis.  

We will discuss various email newsletter metrics below:  

 Open Rate 

As email is the medium here, it needs to be opened to be viewed. You can have a specific handle for sending these emailers. For eg: PayU Tips.

Open rate is the exact number of people who have actually opened the sent email and viewed it. The open rate completely depends on how big or small your customer base is.  

The Calculation:  

Open Through Rate(OTR) or Open Rate: open/sent X 100. Once you have got the total email opens, for example, 23474 and you have sent the newsletter to total = 109569 then,  

OTR = Open ÷ Sent x 100, i.e. 23474 ÷ 109569 x 100 = 21.42% 

Just an additional shot of information: Your ‘Subject line’ matters a lot! It is the trailer for the movie sitting in that email. If you want your audience to open your email newsletter then make sure that you keep your subject line topic relevant, short and at the same time increase curiosity.  

 Click Through Rate (CTR)  

Total clicks refer to the people who have clicked on various newsletter topics after opening it. For instance, in the image below, if your customer clicks on ‘PayU’, he is redirected to its facebook page or wherever he clicks he lands on that particular page.

The Calculation:  

Click through rate refers to the number of people that have actually visited your site after going through and read it. In this case; CTR = total number of click ÷ total number of people(sent) i.e. CTR = 1859 ÷ 109569 = 1.70% 

 Click to Open

This mainly refers to the percentage of people who have clicked out of the number of people who have opened the newsletter.   

The Calculation: 

Click to open = Click ÷ Open × 100 i.e., click to open = 1859 ÷ 23474 × 100 = 7.92% 

This is an extremely important metric as 7.92% is the final number on the basis of which you can estimate the success rate of your efforts.  

Bounce 

Emails bounce due to various reasons depending on these two types: 

Hard Bounce: This takes place when the recipients’ email address is invalid or doesn’t exist anymore  

Soft Bounce: This takes place when the recipients’ mailbox is full, the server is dysfunctional or your message is too large or heavy for it to open in the recipients’ mailbox.  

 Subscriptions 

Subscription is the number of new subscribers who discover and sign up for your newsletter. You can track this information by making your ‘Subscription’ button link responsive. This can be done by making use of link tracking portals such as bit.ly or google analytics.

Unsubscriptions 

You must have observed the ‘unsubscribe’ button or tab below (mainly) every newsletter. Why do company’s put this when they want to have onboard continuously?  

Unsubscribe is meant for people who wish to discontinue such emails from a particular company.  

*Quickly take a look at the industry-wise and company-wide email marketing benchmarks.

 In addition to the above metrics or analytics, you can also track the share rate. Share rate refers to the number of people who have shared your newsletter via email or social media.  

Some Classic Tools 

MailChimp 

MailChimp supports all kinds of email creation starting from coding to templates to sending emails to multiple people on your list. It is a very useful tool as it provides analytics of those emails on the lines of open rates, bounce and so on.  

Google Analytics 

GA provides in-depth analytics of every mail to send on the basis of activity, source, referrals, etc. Time period or campaign duration is highly customizable in order to pull out relevant data.  

WordPress Plugins  

WordPress is a super site which plays host to blogs, emails and other marketing activity revolving around content. Nifty, Chimpmate Pro, OptinMonster, to name a few are the top WP plugins amongst many others.  

Eager to know more about analytics, social media, and online business? Check out the PayU blog for fruitful insights.

The post How to Measure Your Newsletter Performance appeared first on PayU Blog.

However, accurate and timely analytics of digital marketing activities is important for increasing the overall effect of your digital marketing. In this blog, we will discuss and put forth the various factors present in your content that needs to be analyzed accurately and regularly.  

Evaluating Blog Performance 

Blogs play an extremely important role in inbound marketing activities. So, when it comes to blogs, what are the basics you should actually look out for? 

View Traffic Source

‘Traffic’ here denotes the number of people who got on to your website via different channels, which is ‘source’. Seeping deeper into blog analytics, we would recommend that you opt for an advanced analytic dashboard such as Google Analytics. The reason being that it provides a wide range of analytical angles.

Traffic source is basically from where exactly are your viewers/readers landing on your page.  

You can also customize your search on the basis of topic and time period. You can create individual blog analysis. Depending on the source that helped you increase your readership or page visits, you can make use of that source.

Conversion Rates

You wrote a blog, your SEO is on track, you are ranking well on search engines, you have received high views and comments on your blog as well. Great! Now what?  

Ultimately what is your conversion rate? Conversion rate refers to the average number of conversions per click. Which means,

Conversion Rate = Number of Conversions ÷ Total number of clicks

Here, the number of clicks simply refers to click to action (CTA) buttons such as: Sign up or Subscribe now inserted in blogs in order to track conversion rate. You track your conversions by making use of trackable links. Google analytics facilitates building such trackage links.

In the end, its all about the money. So, how much did you make? 

Bounce Rates

The best part of Google Analytics is, it’s all ready! You don’t have to keep a calculator and sheet a loaded with formulas by your side to calculate bounce rate.  

What does bounce rate mean? 

In digital marketing, bounce rate stands for the number of visitors who landed on your page and left without any action on the page.  

For eg: If you came across a blog while surfing, the title and description seemed relevant to you. But once when you opened it you didn’t like the content so without performing any other activity and within seconds you close that particular window. This activity which you performed contributes to bounce rate.  

If your bounce rate is high then you really have to get your content, relevance, and SEO in place. The lesser the bounce rate the better it is for your blog or website.  

How is bounce rate calculated? 

It is usually valued in percentage (%). Its equation is: 

Bounce rate = Number of visits viewing one page only ÷ total entries on page 

Which means if:  

your number of visits on page = 20 , total entries on page = 50 

Then, your bounce rate = 0.4% 

The bounce rate of an average website is 40.5%. It depends on your category and content.  

Web Session

One single web session is the amount of time spent on your blog or page by a particular visitor. Web sessions may expire if no activity has been conducted over 1 minute by a visitor. Hence, the message ‘your session has expired, please refresh your page to continue’ flashes on your screen often. 190.4 seconds is an average time spent on a particular site. Again, like bounce rate, there are no perfectly measured time durations for such metrics.  

SERP

If put simply, Search Engine Ranking Points (SERP) is an important element in digital marketing. It indicates the rank of your blog or content on a search engine. You need to constantly track your rank on the basis of your keywords.  

For eg: If you have written a blog on “How to Start Successful Online Business” and ‘online business’ is your keyword, you need to keep a tab using your keyword as to on which page your blog results.  

Some Facts: Ranking on page one matters. This is a good sign that you are:  

• One of the top 10 and would get an average traffic of 32%, which is excellent 
• If you are on page 2 approximately 17.6% traffic will land on your page 
• On page 3 around 11.4% traffic crosses your site 

The numbers clearly indicate that the higher the page number the lower is the traffic.  

Some of the in-house or qualitative analytics you can perform include:  

Explore your Blog

Evolution is a continuous process, just like change is constant. Take a look at how your blog has evolved so far in terms of  – topics, tags, language, look and feel, depth of the content and so on. Once you competitively analyze your own blog, on the lines of before and after, you will get a clear picture of your own capabilities and where you actually need to reach. 

Analyze Basic Performance 

If you don’t wish to use platforms such as Google Analytics, you can simply analyze the basic data of your blog in your blog dashboard itself (you need to check out plugins for the same on WordPress). Here you will get a macro analysis of what is your reader activity like. Understand the time spent, count the new users coming onboard, which post performed best over a period of time (timeframe is customizable), how many people have subscribed to your blog for regular updates, etc. 

Check top performing posts

Keywords play an important role in ranking your post or content high in the search engines. Many times, it’s a possibility that you have exactly followed the SEO guidelines, but still, there are some posts which perform beyond expectations and some otherwise. The reason may not necessarily be the keywords, but it could also be the topic relevance and relativity. What if your audience is searching for footwear and not clothes under the ‘fashion’ category?  

Listen to what is being searched carefully. What we assume as marketers needn’t be the search terms of the audiences. High performing v/s low performing published posts analysis can be really interesting and comes with a humongous opportunity for improvement.  

Individual Blog Performance

Did the result match your expectations? If not, then what went wrong and if yes, then what more value can be added? Here, along with your dashboard analytics, you can also make use of HootSuite. It is a very popular and reliable tool to measure and analyze social media channels. Check out your individual blog performance across all platforms of publishing and promotion. 

Correct the Wrong

This the is the easiest step, if you think you falter in any of the above 9 steps, then its time to correct them and get back on track.   

Some Classic Tools 

• MozBar: This helps to check on page SEO along with page authority and domain authority. It is a free extension available for both – Chrome and Firefox. 
• SEO Book: You can check your content here for authentication, density, keyword volume and so on.    

Along with digital marketing analytics, analyzing visitor behavior of equal importance. You can run your advertisement, post content or spend time analyzing your marketing on various digital platforms, but the most important terms to ponder upon or to be used as a guide should be: 

• Acquisition – where will I find relevant people? Which channels will give the maximum ROI? 
• Retention – What retentions should I incorporate regularly? 
• Engagement – When is the best time to publish my content on the chosen active digital channels? 
• Monetization – Who are the most vulnerable audiences to make the purchases/view/read? 
• Referral – What website elements contribute to organic sharing on social media and other platforms? 
• Revenue – How does the current content influence our revenue system? 
• Activation – What do your customers who read/view have in common? 

You can strategize your own digital marketing plan efficiently now. Also, you can get fruitful insights into planning effective content marketing strategy for your business.

The post Blog Performance: Measuring It the Right Way! appeared first on PayU Blog.

Read about the various kinds of marketing strategies for online business to understand the basic difference between online and digital marketing.  

Digital Marketing Strategies: A Simple Explanation 

As mentioned above it is an umbrella term for your entire online marketing efforts and much more. Digital marketing broadly covers two types of marketing strategies: 

Paid Digital Marketing Strategy 

SEM

Search engine marketing ideally covers the complete paid form of advertising. You can perform a small exercise to figure out how SEM works on search engines and hence how it will work in the best interest of your online business.  

Ex: Type whatever you want to search using any search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc..) and hit ‘Search’. You may see something like this: 

First and the last 3 or 4 results will have ‘Ad’ written below them. This means, that these are highly SEM savvy. A marketer displays ads on search engines in order to: 

• Increase visibility: As it sits on the top of the page, it is more likely to be visible and hence clicked.

• Increase clicks: High visibility means more clicks. People think that it is on the first page and on the top means it is a reliable source (which could be the case), but they do not understand the ‘Ad’ bit here.  

• Scale up brand value: Surfers mainly rely on the first two pages of the search engine, the SEM controlled searches gain more clicks, thus increases credibility and brand recognition.  

Marketers bid for certain high volume search terms and concepts related to the main search term, to get a very evident ad placement on the first page of the search engine results.  

*SEM is a broader concept which is inclusive of SEO, CPC, display ads placement and so on. But in this blog it is mentioned as separate points, simply to bring out the depth of each concept well.    

Display Ad Placement

This type of digital advertising is mainly seen on the website. The ads displayed are mainly of 2 types: 

• Retargeted ads: For example: if you saw a product on site A and then you closed that site and hopped onto site B and C. The products which you saw on site A earlier will flash on site B and/or C as well. Basically, site A is trying to sell the products you were interested in. This is called retargeting. A wants you to make a purchase and hence wherever you go on the web it will follow you.  

• Informative ads: These ads are never seen by you earlier maybe. They are new to you and performing the basic function of ads – you create product or brand awareness amongst the viewers.   

The main contributors to display ad placement are: 

• Impressions: It refers to the number of people who have viewed the ad at least once. So, if there are 5 ads on the webpage, the impressions calculated will be 5 every time one visits the page.

• eRPM: It signifies, effective revenue per thousand impressions. This term notifies the amount of money earned for every 1000 views this is the standardized method of calculating the monetization of the traffic coming to the website. The higher the eRPM the more money you make.  

 CPC

 Cost per click or PPC (pay per click) means that when your display or search engine ads are clicked on, you will pay a certain mutually agreed amount to the site per click. For instance, if you get 5 clicks on your ad and each click is worth Rs.5 then, you owe 5×5= Rs.25 to the site. The other alternative to calculate CPC is the cost per thousand (CPM), wherein impressions in 1000s are considered regardless of the viewer clicking on the ad or no. CPM is more or less similar to eRPM.  

 Digital PR

Digital or online public relations is no rocket science. What PR professionals do in traditional media – newspaper, events, talk shows, digital PR experts the same online. There are many editions of e-magazines, e-newspapers, blogs, podcasts and so on. PR has proved to be a very powerful and effective tool offline and online it is all the more useful as it boosts your reach, shares, and awareness to a wider audience. The main advantage of digital PR is that it is more measurable than traditional PR. You can make use of UTM links and SEO tools to gain insights. You can precisely pull out the exact data you want to understand. It also focuses on evaluating domain authority (DA) and organic opportunities.  

 Social Media Marketing 

This term is very well known to all of us. If simply put, social media marketing is one of the most vital parts of digital marketing. It refers to the process of welcoming traffic or target audience via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and so on. Social media marketing is highly preferred by the marketers today because of its popularity, high reach, and greater visibility. This component is a must in your digital marketing plan. Social media content is highly driven by SEM and SEO.  

Affiliate Marketing

It is a way to earn commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products. Affiliate marketing is where you find a product you like, promote it to others and earn a piece of profit for each sale you make. It is a very preferred strategy today because of its effects and cost-effectivity.  

Content Marketing

It is one tool which can help you achieve these objectives. It is not only a cost-effective strategy but also a very important arm of digital marketing. If you observe, you absorb it everywhere – social media, advertisements, announcements, emails, blogs, search engines and so on. It is an art of storytelling. Digital is not only limited to just blogs and Youtube, it is expanding into OTT (over the top content). OTT includes distribution of diverse content via audio, video and other media by using multiple-system operators (MSO) with an internet connection. For example, you can view Hotstar shows on TV, laptops/desktops and even mobile phones. OTT enables a wide distribution of content and hence its consumption.   

Influencer Marketing

Today as the world is becoming a lot more social, marketers want to reach out to their audiences in the best possible channel, time and place. A recent report points out to phenomena that over 1,800 million people are actively using social media at present. Marketers want to target these people, millennials mostly, who are their consumers by utilizing influencer marketing. Usually marketers tie-up with social media influencers for a particular project or time span (depending on the prominence of the connectivity and impression amongst their followers) to promote their brand and products. 

Viral Marketing

Be it videos, stories or images everything funny, effective and realistic is viral. It is mainly structured and planned for social media. Are you aware of one day when your Facebook newsfeed doesn’t have a meme or gifs without any likes or comments? It is very effective on social media channels.  

Referral Marketing

The name says it all. It refers to reference! Your customer will refer your business to 10 others and those 10 will refer to other 20 people. This effect of reference also to power with word of mouth will take place only if you provide quality service and product to your customers.  

CRM

Customer relationship management is an important element not only in digital marketing strategy alone but otherwise as well. This is recuperating with your customers in a condition of crisis or disaster. For example, you sold a product to one of your customers and it didn’t come across as the one your customer wanted or it turned out to be defective. Then CRM comes into the picture. You may either give an upgraded product for a lesser price or introduce cash backs and so on. Maintaining a healthy relationship with your customer is very important to sustain and scale your business up. 

Mobile Marketing

It includes in-app advertising and promoting your products and services. You can also make use of digital mobile games to promote. Mobile has become a very crucial part of our lives. Be it rich or poor, rural or urban, making use of feasible data packs for entertainment and information is a supernova. Marketers today are exploring all means to reach their customers via the small screen which can easily slip into ones pocket. Mobile is empowerment and confidence to achieve whatever one wants instantly.     

Organic Digital Marketing Strategies 

SEO

Search engine optimization is a part of SEM but the only difference is – SEO is organic. Search engines have always been a major platform to drive bulk traffic to websites. With a change in Google algorithms, you need to be extra careful while optimizing your website. Implementing right SEO techniques is the best way to create a Google-friendly website. It helps you to maintain SERP (search engine results page)  ranking.   

Awesome Content + Targeted Outreach + Value Add Proposition = Links

Social Media Marketing

Yes, it is mentioned as an arm of paid digital marketing strategy as well. Social media marketing may not necessarily be 100% paid or organic. A combination of both is healthy for the business as paid one will target deeper and more and the organic one will increase credibility.  

Content Marketing

Similarly, for content marketing, you don’t have to pay yourself for drafting blogs or putting up timely social media content. As discussed above, it is a very vital component in any form of marketing. People see your content be it in the form of text, pictures or videos, and this content helps them to dive deeper into the decisions making process.    

Viral Marketing 

Not all forms of viral marketing are paid or boosted. Agencies thrive harder to get their videos and other content infectiously circulating on the social media. In this quest, they end up paying heavily to the agencies or the social media channel directly. A classic example of organic viral marketing is ALS ice bucket challenge. The crux of the content was so crisp that no money was required to be pumped in. In fact, the noble cause got charity in millions.  

Referral Marketing

If you have a business you can be the spokesperson and communicate your business to your close circle of friends and family, talk about your products and even give testers. All this for free. The word of mouth effect starts rolling from you and ends up reaching to millions.  All this free. The bottom line remains the same in both paid and unpaid form of referral marketing – the product or service needs to be exceptionally true and useful. 

CRM

It is not necessary that you give cash backs and reduced rates products to your customers to maintain relationships, a kind gesture of acknowledgment in your business – on your social media page or website is very receptive and appreciated by your customer. The recognition is of relevance than the money spent.   

Planning Digital Marketing Strategy 

Goal Identification 

Identify what is your aim for developing a digital marketing plan? Ask yourself why are you creating it? For whom is it? What will it give your business in return? Also, know what your customers are looking for? Answering these questions will make your marketing strategy stronger and relevant. Once you know what you actually want to achieve on the digital platform, measuring your success against the final report will become easy.   

Research 

With a strong digital marketing plan comes a lot of research. Knowing your target audience (TA) is extremely important, as you will be strategizing, creating and promoting it according to the TA you choose. However, your research shouldn’t be limited, it should include:   

• Target Audience: Depending on the categorization mentioned below you can zero down what and who are you looking out for and how do you want to target the best.  

• Online Market: Which sites are your audience viewing? For how long? What kind of digital content is your competitor marketing to draw users? What are people consuming online? What are they sharing? What is trending online? Where do the gaps exist?    

• Keyword Search: SEO is one of the most vital parts of online digital marketing. Which is the most used keyword in the market? Out that list, which keywords will work best for your business for maximum search engine optimization? 

 Unleashing Creativity 

Now is the time to sit down with your team and pitch some great digital marketing ideas creative enough to grab eyeballs and attention of your TA. Here campaigns are created keeping: 

• Campaign theme (central idea): What do you want to convey in the campaign? How you want your target audience to react and behave after viewing your campaign?  

• Tagline: This will explain what your campaign is about in as short as a line. Eg:  Coca-Cola – Open Happiness.

• Campaign Duration: Here, you need to decide the duration of your campaign. How long you want your target audiences to see it? How much time is adequate to run the campaign for its success.

• Creatives: A picture is worth 1000 words! Your creatives are the face of your campaign. They can’t be weak. Creative/ image is what your audience will see first and then decide whether or not to move ahead or dig deeper into the campaign. Here’s what you need to answer for yourself: How will the creatives be created and what will be the best font, color, texture, copy of the creatives?What will be visually appealing your audience? How your creatives will compel them to click on your campaign and take action? How will your entire feel and look of the campaign make them stay on your page or be glued to your campaign for longer? 

• Duration: Every campaign has a duration attached to it. Typically,  your digital marketing campaign can run for 3 months, 6 months, a year or for as long a particular occasion is. Then whether to extend or cut short the actual duration solely depends on your analytics numbers and the campaign effectivity. Example, you can plan summer campaigns, Diwali campaigns or even an Independence day campaign. Here, you need to make sure that the visibility and awareness of the campaign are created and started way in advance. If you are aiming for a summer campaign, there is no point in making your campaign live during Diwali or Christmas. You need to planned and prepared for your campaign well in advance so that when it’s time, it’s just the matter of executing your campaign and not creating it from scratch.   

• Digital Channel Mixing: Once you are clear about what and how it’s time to know where?! Digital marketing is a very vast field with multiple overlapping options. You need to choose whether you want to make use of only paid or only organic digital media? Google search ads or webpage banner ads? You want to use simply content marketing or team it up with referral and influencer marketing as well? You need to choose the best permutation and combination for your campaign.  

• Manage Content: Content even in the digital world is the king! No industry or campaign can work without content. Content can be textual, it can be in the form of videos or pictures. But it needs to lead your audience somewhere, a place of their deep root interests. For example, if your audiences are searching for “best marketing strategies for online business“, then they should land up somewhere by clicking on your link – blog, video, statistics, comparison chart, infographic and so on. Your campaign must provide quality and value to your searches and you can provide this with the help of valuable content.  

Distribution 

Social Media or SMS? Mobile or online marketing? Where do you want to distribute your digital marketing content and strategy to reach your correct audience is of utmost importance. Once you have decided the channels you want to make use of, distributing is as easy as 1-2-3! Because of digital marketing buying your preferred media space takes less time than buying a traditional media spaces – newspapers, magazines, TV, etc.  

Analysis 

You need to know which type of campaign strategy or creatives worked best. Where is the improvisation needed? How can you draw more audience to your campaign? How your result numbers increase? Also, check whether you have achieved your goals? Did your message reach the audience the way you intended it to? And so on. Analyzing your digital marketing strategies and its effects on the market should be your routine! 

Digital Marketing Budget 

There is no specified budget for any digital marketing campaigns. It solely depends on your analytics at the end of the day. However, it is advisable to not bank all your budget on one channel or online media. Allocate or invest your money in various channels – email, SMS, social media, YouTube, Online PR, etc.  

Before you go ahead with allocation you need to know: 

• Which digital platforms are leading in terms of viewership and then conversions. Here are some insights, 

• Analyze other successful digital marketing campaigns and plans from the past, on the basis of –

1. Appeals: whether the referred campaign struck the logical or practical chord, or was it successful because of its humor angle and so on. Basically, you need to figure out what element or the campaign was the most appealing to the audience.  
2. Emotions: People preferred P&G products because of its emotional and light mother-child videos? Or did the Dove real beauty testimonial ad create true empowerment, tender self-love, and celebration in the women?  
3. Usability: By making use of these emotions and appeals and other creative elements, what actually made the audience make up their mind to buy that particular product or for instance, participate actively in the ALS ice bucket challenge for a cause? How easy it is to make a decision in the favor of what they see? 
4. Views: What are people actually viewing on the digital platforms? This question is of utmost importance because today almost every brand – big or small has some of the other digital media presence be it on social media, websites, search engines and so on.  

Your budget can be as big as lakhs and crores or as small as a few thousand, pumping in money is always your choice. What really matters is choosing the right channel mix for your business and boosting it till you derive at satisfactory results.  

As per FICCI report enlarging 2016 statistics, India projected a good 15.5% which states that the country is a fastest growing advertising markets globally with a large consumer base. Also, the most reliable insights source points to the fact that, though India is marching slowly on 12.7% in the digital ad spend arena, it is the fastest growing mediums at 33.5 CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) from 2015-2020. Consumption of online video content has drastically shot up from 49% to 66% over the last year (afaqs.com).  

These statistics are not just about growth rates and numbers, but it clearly makes a statement that digital advertising and content is on an all-time rise and is also raising the business spectrum way high. 

Flexibility and change are the keys to owning and creating any digital marketing campaign. Keeping the above information in mind, successful digital marketing definitely takes time, creativity and work plan to fall into place. But it is worth all the efforts!  

Before laying the blueprint for your digital marketing campaign, want to kickstart your online business? Looking out for a simple, fast and safe payment gateway? Collect Payments with PayUmoney. 

The post Leading Digital Marketing Strategies for Your Business appeared first on PayU Blog.