Quora Marketing For Business: Basics Simplified

Before we dive deep into how to use Quora marketing for business, let us get the grounds clear! Creating an account on Quora and getting started is easy and quick. Just follow these simple steps:

1.Create An Account: Start by creating an account. Quora offers you to sign up via Facebook, Google or email address. When you are looking to use Quora for business, it is recommended to use your business email. After choosing your preferred mode, click on ‘Continue’.

2. Follow Relevant Interests: Once you have created an account, you will be asked to follow a minimum of 10 topics. Choose the topics that are in line to what your business caters to.

3. Add Your Areas Of Expertise: Next, you will be prompted to enter your areas of expertise. As you choose, Quora will immediately filter out the questions they think you can answer.

Pro Tip: Choose your interests honestly and carefully! You will see what you choose.

4. Follow Other Users: Now that you have almost build your business profile for quora marketing, follow the people you feel are from your industry. This will help you understand the competition. Follow your target audience to understand what they are looking for.

5. Edit Your Profile: This is one of the most important steps. Update your profile photo and add some details about you. Be authentic about yourself. Once done, you are all set to answer on Quora.

The Awesome Dictionary Of Quora

• Upvote: A person ‘upvotes’ an answer when they find it to be useful and well explained. This can be the use of easy language, proper explanation, quality content, and accurate grammar.
• Downvote: A person may ‘downvote’ an answer if they find that the answer is not relevant. It can include highlighting plagiarized content, ethically wrong answers or discriminative or demeaning information.
• Share: Next to the ‘upvote’ button is an option to share an answer. You can choose to share an answer on your Quora profile or any other social media account like Facebook, Twitter or simply copy the link.
• Thanks: There is an option to send a virtual ‘thanks’ to an individual. You can choose to thank when the answer has been helpful to you.
• Suggest Edits: Quora allows you to ‘suggest edits’ to an answer. If you find that the information conveyed is wrong or misleading, you can instantly suggest edits and get things right.
• Bookmark: If you wish to keep an answer as a future reference or wish to read it later, you can simply bookmark the answer. Quora makes it easy to find content for you!
• Report: If you find that a piece of information provided is violating a law or the content is abusive or irrelevant, you can report on Quora instantly.

Best Practices To Use Quora Marketing For Business

• Keep Your Profile Updated: As mentioned above, keep your profile up-to-date. Add your credentials and topics of expertise so that people can reach out to you with ease. For example, add where do you work along with your designation.
• Focus On Increasing Followers: Follow people with the same interests as yours so that they can discover you. Establish your profile’s credibility by providing quality content and instant answers.
• Communicate With Your Audience: While answering on Quora for business, keep your focus on helping people with your answers. Use a conversational tone. Do not market your product/ services. Obviously, in a very subtle way, you can talk about your brand but do not deviate from the focus. Build a connection with your audience!
• Share Ideas And Experience: People like to read real-life experiences. Share practical and real knowledge. Use testimonials and let your readers put their faith in your brand. Further, add links to your website/blog to drive traffic to your business.
• Link Your Social Media Accounts: In the fast pacing world, the best practice is to interlink your social media profiles with each other. This will help your audience and the readers to connect with you over other platforms and help you expand your business in the long run!
• Use Images & Videos: You do not always have to answer a detailed answer on Quora. Sometimes, just let the picture/ video do the talking. A well-prepared infographic is quick to deliver information! Repurpose your content and add variations to your Quora profile.
• Check For Your Competitors: Occasionally, just take a sneak peek on what your competitors are doing and make it a point to stay a step ahead from them. Keep a check on the questions and provide the answers quickly!
• Do Not Promote Your Brand: The key is to NOT promote your brand. Quora is a platform to ask questions and write relevant answers. Start with offering a solution and if the communication goes ahead, redirect them to your company’s page. In a minimal way, talk about your brand and let people identify you with your answers!
• Start taking questions: One of the recent updates on the platform allows you to start taking questions on a topic in a fixed time frame. This feature notifies all your followers and hence attract quality questions! In the long run, getting visibility to your business.
• Explore ‘Spaces’: Quora has introduced ‘spaces’ which are collections and communities created around shared interests and tastes of an individual. You can find collections custom-tailored according to your interests and that caters to your business needs.

Pro Tip: Use Quora app to answer the questions while you are travelling or working remotely!

What’s More To Quora For Business

Now that you know how to get started with and the best practices to make the best of Quora marketing for your business, here are some quick tips you can refer to:

• Use Quora messages to reach out to your audience specifically
• Keep a track of your Quora statistics and analyze what works the best
• Maintain a blog on Quora and keep your profile catchy

With the introduction of the vernacular base on the platform, the user compatibility of the platform has only increased. To conclude, Quora is a present-day go-to hub for people looking for answers from different people. This can be the case when someone is buying a new product/ services or looking out for tips and guides or just want to hear people’s experience. If all the above-mentioned strategies are applied in the best manner, Quora can do miracles for your business. Quora for business has been proved efficient and has a lot of potentials. All you need to do is make the best use of the platform! While you plan a quora marketing strategy for your business, read this blog on Low-Cost Marketing Tips For Online Business and plan your roadmap to success now!

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

The post Quora Marketing For Business: How To Do It The Right Way appeared first on PayU Blog.

Online Payment Processing: What Does It Mean?

Now that we know we are at online payment processing era, let us dive deep and understand what online payments mean and look at the pros and cons it offers. Online payment refers to any transaction that is done electronically. It can be via a mobile device or computer or POS machines. This involves the use of an internet network, secure payment ecosystem and coded information, imprinted on your card or your confidential details.

In the war of offline vs online payment processing, the online method seems to be winning so far! Here’s why:

• Online method is quick and easy. You can easily transfer a huge amount of money within minutes
• It offers transparency in each transaction. You can have a record of each transaction hence, reducing payment frauds
• A number of payment gateways like PayUmoney, makes the entire process hassle-free, promising industry best success rates!
• Online payment processing allows you to make a transaction in any part of the world without facing the currency difference
• With the online ecosystem, you can send and accept payments 24*7!
• It allows businesses to offer multiple payment options to its customers like Credit/ debit cards, Netbanking, UPI, Wallets, etc.

Is Online Payment Processing A Necessity?

Historically, cheques were the most preferred payment methods. Organizations wrote, signed and mailed paper cheques as it used to save on costing and mainly because this was the only mode of payment available. But ever since the FinTech came into the picture, organizations and individuals started using electronic payment methods for faster and simpler processing. It saved their time and effort, hence reducing risks and fraud.

A recent report suggests that 81% of businesses find online payment processing better because of all the advantages it offers! This makes it clear that accepting online payments is no more a choice, it is a necessity.

Here’s the endnote: if you want to scale up your business and offer the best experience to your customers, then it is necessary to move in the direction of your customers: ‘online’ with a wide range of payment options. Read our blog on Why Should You Collect Online Payments here!

What’s Next For Businesses?

Newly ventured into an online or rather just created your e-commerce website? Then along with design and smooth interface you need a safe, trusted and fast payment gateway for the website. Now that you know what online payment processing means and what importance it holds in the modern world, the next step is to choose the right payment gateway. Read here to know What Is Payment Gateway For Website And How It Works? Before we understand the pre-requisites for choosing a payment gateway, let us understand why you need a payment gateway for your business:

1. Secured & Protected Payments: Payment gateways are highly secured and encrypted. Hence, they protect sensitive customer data such as credit card number, etc., from fraudulent activities or online theft.
2. 24/7 Store: Your customers can make a purchase anytime and from anywhere they want to.
3. Shopping Cart Convenience – Payment gateways facilitate customers with shopping carts for better shopping and complete checkout experience.
4. Tracking Abilities: You can track all your transactions (past and present) all at one place.
5. Multiple Modes Of Transactions: Your customers can make use of a credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI and even international cards to make an online purchase on your website/app.
6. Multiple Device Friendly: A payment gateway provides smooth payment experience to customers, be it on a desktop, laptop, mobile or a tablet, etc.
7. Faster Transaction Processing: A payment service provider is much faster than manual processing. Your customers can make a purchase without any inconvenience of waiting in long queues.
8. Integrated Payments & Settlements: The effort of individually reaching out to multiple banks naturally reduces by integrating with a payment gateway. It takes all the load on your behalf so that you can solely concentrate on building your business.

Ones you know why your business exactly needs a payment gateway, take a step further and choose the right payment gateway for your business. You can read here to know How To Choose Best Payment Gateway In India. You may like to consider PayUmoney because of the following features:

• Super quick and free set-up
• Test mode experience
• Easy onboarding and integration
• Advanced dashboard
• Leading E-commerce plugins
• Secure checkout options
• Competitive TDR rates

Currently, PayUmoney is offering services to 4.5 lakh+ happy businesses across the country. It is trusted, instant and secure. Here’s what some of our merchants have to say about their experience with PayU! “

“A successful business is built by people and not by money. We are glad to have found the right people to manage our online finances.” – Abhishek Chandrashekhar, Royal Brothers

“PayUmoney delivers on its promise of being a robust and quick to activate payment gateway. It outperforms to firmly support its merchants” – Arvind Batra, Events High

“PayUmoney delivers on its promise of being a robust and quick to activate payment gateway. It outperforms to firmly support its merchants” – Arvind Batra, Events High

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

This is not it! Our robust technology ensures your business gets all its payment-related services under one roof. Some of our industry best innovative products are:

1. Web Checkout: Add a completely redirection-less & secure payment gateway on your website
2. Plug-n-Play SDK: Accept payments on your Android / iOS app with our customizable SDK
3. Platform Plugins: Quickly accept payments on e-commerce platforms – WooCommerce, OpenCart, Shopify etc.
4. Payments On MS Excel: Choose the industry-first innovation to accept payments right from your MS Excel
5. Payments Button: Just copy-paste a single line of code to accept payments within minutes from your website/ blog

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. Sign up with PayUmoney to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post Everything You Need To Know About Online Payment Processing appeared first on PayU Blog.

Coupon Marketing Strategy: Getting The Basics Right

Before we dive deep and understand the execution part of scaling marketing efforts through efficient coupon marketing, it is necessary to understand why you should choose coupon marketing. The top reasons for you to use coupon marketing for your business are:

• Attracts New Customers & Generates Traffic: Coupons are one of the best ways to attract new customers. This can happen by social sharing, word of mouth and viral marketing.

• Helps In Customer Retention Activities: It is necessary to invest some of your efforts in retaining the customers from which you have not heard in a while. Sending coupons to them via emails and SMS and calling them back to your business will ensure your business growth.

• Builds Brand Loyalty: Building brand loyalty is one of the most important parts of growing business. Best coupon marketing has its top priority to build meaningful relations. Coupon marketing plays an important role in this process.

• Gets Relevant Database: As mentioned earlier, there are certain tools which can be used efficiently to create a database which further can be used in your retargeting campaigns.

• Increases The Sales Metrics: Every business has a set goal and at the end of the day, we all want to see the number going up. Coupons are provenly efficient to scale up your sales.

• Easy Controlling & Tracking: With all the easy to use dashboards functionality, it is very easy to control and track the performance of your coupon marketing campaign. Basis the performances, you can decide to plan your next steps!

Read our blog on How Businesses Can Make It Big Using Coupon Marketing to get detailed guide on types of coupon marketing and the best platforms to choose from!

How To Plan Your Coupon Marketing Strategy?

Now that you know why you should use coupon marketing, here is a 4-step guide to help you make the strategy to drive the best results:

1. Determining Your Target Audience

The first step is to understand who your target audience is. The success or failure of your coupon marketing strategy depends on how well it resonates with your target audience.

This means that before you plan on the ‘type’ and ‘platform’ for your coupon marketing, you need to ask questions like:

• what is the age group that will be more open to coupons and offers?
• is there any geographical area that will get the best ROI?
• should the targeting be on the existing customers or bringing in the new customers?

…and so on.

If you plan to target the existing customers, have a detailed competitor analysis in place and go over and beyond what your competitors are doing. On the other hand, if you are looking to target existing customers, carefully analyze their buying patterns and past behaviors and come up with coupons that best matches their buying styles. Statistics show that over 80% of buyers switch brands if offered with better coupons and discounts.

Statistics show that over 80% of buyers switch brands if offered with better coupons and discounts.

Takeaway: Tailoring your coupon marketing strategy to suit the needs and buying habits of your target audience is the best way to boost your conversions instantly. Do not let your customers leave you after redeeming the coupons. Instead, keep retargeting them with follow up coupons!

2. Deciding What To ‘Offer’

Now that you understand your target audience, it’s time to decide what should you offer to them? The best thing to do is offering coupons based on their preferences and choices. This is a very important step while you plan your coupon marketing strategy because this one choice decides the overall success of the entire campaign.

The key is to be careful when selecting coupons for your campaign. Make sure the type of coupons you select are aligned with the buying habits of your target audience.

For example, choose a rupee-based value system if your buyer loves instant saving on the purchase. Or, if your buyer usually shops via a mobile device, send them text-based coupons! You can also choose to send digital coupons via email to the buyers who left on the checkout window.

Takeaway: Choosing the right combination and having a proper plan in place will help you leverage the entire ROI of the campaign!

3. Selecting The Right Platform

After knowing your target audience and deciding on what are you going to offer, the next and the most crucial step is to select the relevant platform. You must be wondering, what are the best places to host these offers to drive tons of sales ready leads? One of the answers is online coupon websites like couponduniya, groupon etc.

Remember, 96% of buyers visit coupon websites before making a purchase!

Other research also suggests that 71% of buyers follow brands on Social Media to stay up-to-date with their latest coupons. Another 58% prefers getting coupons via emails. So you know what are the best possible channels to make a way to knock on the doors of your customers!

Takeaway: When people see coupons on social media, they tend to share the posts. This means free brand promotion, positive sentiments and awesome ROI for your business. Experiment on different platforms and see what works the best in favor of your brand!

4. Analysing The Performance Of Your Campaign

After all the research, planning and execution of your coupon marketing strategy, the last step is to track and measure the performance of the campaign. This will give you an insight if the campaign is working well and getting the desired result or not. And basis the metrics, you can plan to decide on the next steps.

If you provided a link to a landing page, then track the traffic by creating a trackable URL. Another essential step is to dive deeper and understand at which stage did your buyer consume the coupon or left the space. Monitor each step carefully and look for any number that will help you plan the best strategy for the next campaign.

Takeaway: Never work on assumptions when it comes to data. Make a habit of tracking and controlling your campaign from time to time to optimize it the best way! This goes a long way to maintain a healthy coupon marketing strategy.

Planning a coupon marketing strategy is much more than just designing an attractive coupon for your business. It requires a detailed comprehensive management system and that develops overtime. Be ready to offer omni channel experience and build personalized relationships with your customers/ buyers. The numbers and graph for the coupon marketing is only going to soar high. By incorporating the above-mentioned steps in your coupon marketing strategy, you are all set to execute a successful campaign!

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. Sign up with PayUmoney to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post Beginner’s Guide To Coupon Marketing Strategy 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.

1. Create an account on PayU by entering your email ID.

Please note: Select ‘Become A Merchant’ to integrate your Shopify website with PayU.

2. Further, enter your name and contact number & create a password. Add business details and get your bank account verified.

3. If you already have an account with PayU, keep your key and salt details handy. Here’s how you can find your details:

4. Now login to your Shopify account.

5. Click on ‘Settings’ and choose ‘Payment providers’.

6. Go to ‘Accept credit cards’ section and click on ‘Service Provider’. Choose PayU from the list.

Please note: If your merchant account is with PayU, it will only work with the option ‘PayU Money’ and not PayU India. PayU India is the option for the merchants who onboarded with PayUbiz.

7. Next, enter the merchant key and salt details available on PayU dashboard and click on ‘Activate’ to start collecting payments via PayU.

PayU’s integration with Shopify is that easy. Now you are all set to accept online payments via India’s most trusted payment gateway- PayU. However, if you have any questions, please Contact Us and we will be happy to help you!

Grow your business effortlessly with PayU.

Recommended Reads:

• PayU Review: Hear ‘About Us’ Directly From Our Merchants!
• PayU Payment Gateway Integration In PHP Website

The post How To Integrate PayU With Shopify appeared first on PayU Blog.

How To Do YouTube Marketing: A Success Story

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

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

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

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

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

Video Source: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

What Type Of Video Work Best On YouTube

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

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

How To Do YouTube Marketing?

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

Step 1: Create Your YouTube Channel

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

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

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

Step 2: Create High-Quality Videos

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

Step 3: Upload Videos

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

Step 4: SEO Optimized Description

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

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

Step 5: Distribute Your Videos

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

Step 6: Analyze Your Efforts!

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

Here are top YouTube analytics to look at:

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

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

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

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

Today, many leading online and offline companies across the globe make use of coupon marketing and discounts. Since we know, coupon marketing is not a modern-day phenomenon. It has been around since the launch of the first paper coupon by Coca-Cola in 1887.

India too has a classic coupon marketing case study of coupon marketing used by a leading e-tailing brand (name not to be disclosed). Initially, the founders of this company started their own business back in 2010. In the first three itself, they sold around 15,000 coupons! It is possible to achieve such numbers in the Indian market only with efficient coupon marketing ideas. So what was the big idea? They kick-started as a coupon oriented business and soon introduced referral programs on various commodities they sold. Apart from this, they also launched ‘Get your first deal free’ offer among many other promotional events where they made efficient use of coupon marketing.   

Coupon Marketing Statistics 

Coupon marketing has seen a roller coaster ride of evolution over years! Ranging from the paper coupons to digital ones, it has seen it all – the immense success, the wrongs, and even the odds! Talking about Indian upbringing, “Money Saving” is a not a strategy. Rather, it is a mindset and this mindset can never be ignored. Hence, with the heavy use of coupons and discounts, the year 2013-2015 saw a sudden growth of 13% to 65% in buying trends.

As predicted by the experts,  2020 will witness the global mobile coupon marketing  growth rate rise up to 73% +.

Some leading research suggests that: 

• Grocery stores (41%), departmental stores (41%) and clothing stores (39%) are the most popular locations for coupon redemptions 
• 77% of mobile users said that surprise points or rewards, birthday/ anniversary discounts leave a very positive impact on their brand loyalty 
• 71% of consumers followed their favorite brands on social media to get coupons 
• 44% of customers say that getting promotional offers via social media influences their online shopping behavior 

Types Of Discounts & Coupon Marketing  

There are umpteen number of discounts, offers and coupons modern-day marketers have at their disposal.  Let’s take a look at some frequently used ones:  

Free Gift

A gift with any purchase can be the best way to provide additional value to your customers. When used strategically, it can be used to increase sales too, because who does not like to avail free gifts!   

Scaling

As the name suggests, here the customer’s interest decides the discount value. For example: Buy 1 formal shirt and get 1 towel free 

Tiering

This means that customer’s discount depends on how much he/she spends. For example: Shop worth Rs. 5000 and get 15% off. Read our blog on 7 quick steps of product pricing for more details on tier pricing.

Percentage-Based Discount

This is the most popular way to offer discounts. This includes offering a small percentage like 10%- 20% off on products to drive sales and clear the old stock.  

Showing Customer Appreciation

Loyal customers are your business’s best friend. Send out coupons to them and let them come back to you!

Some most common and effective ways to maintain customer loyalty, acquisition and conversions include: 

• Monthly discounts 
• Pre-launch offers 
• Event attendance offers 
• Referral promos 
• Minimum purchase discounts etc.  

Best Platforms For Discount & Coupon Marketing

Coupon marketing and discounts have the power to accelerate your business growth 10x. But this is true and possible only with the right targeting and right platforms. Before you layout your coupon marketing campaign, you need to check these primary things:  

• who your audiences are? 
• their profession & age group 
• interest, demographics, and preferences  

Apart from the ones listed above, choosing the correct platform for coupon marketing also equally important. We have listed down a few trending platforms you can use :

Social Media

Since the advent of social media, the first thing that strikes into our minds is hosting coupons there. No doubt, statistics reveal high success rates of social media coupon marketing. Facebook ads can be a good channel to target the right audience. Instagram’s business profiles show an insight of your audience- run ads on Instagram and make a way through the most used photo sharing app!  

E-mails

E-mailers are the best form of communication for any business. They are personal, open and direct. Statistics show that on an average 20% emails are opened every day globally across various industries. Make the most of email marketing by sending follow up or trigger emails to your database regarding offers, discounts, deals, and coupons.

SMS:

SMS still gives best recalls. Imagine you getting SMS from airlines service providers saying that they have 80% off on the next flight you book. At first, you ignore this message. You get the same SMS again. Most importantly, since there is a recall, you will make it a point to visit their website. That is it! SMS marketing, if pitched in the right manner can prove out to be a gem.  

Other Media Channels

As the internet maybe difficult to access in the extreme interiors or far off places in the countries, going offline is a good option as well. Print media like newspapers, periodicals etc. and outdoor advertising have a stronghold in such places. As their expenses are on a lower side when compared to Tier 1 or 2 cities, discounts and coupon marketing works best.  

Pro-Tip: Choose the right platform for the right product. Offers on FMCG will perform well when hosted on Radio or Television but an offer on an online merchandise might not!  

Best Practices For Coupon Marketing

• Use bold, commanding & specific Headlines 
• Use illustrations & photographs 
• Sell the benefits, not the features 
• Make the best use of white spaces 
• Mention your logo in the coupon
• Use words like- free, guarantee, money, now etc. 
• Capture the customer database efficiently 
• DO NOT stop after the offer!  

Pros And Cons Of Coupon Marketing 

Everything comes with a two-fold modeling. So does coupon marketing for your business.  On one hand, generating sales is a priority and on the other hand, keeping the loyalty loyal is a recurring call to maintain. The pros and cons of coupon marketing needs a bit of attention as well.

Coupon Marketing Summed Up

Weaving all the dots together, we can say that offers and discounts are not right for every business! The pre-requisites for a successful coupon marketing campaign are: a clear goal in mind, a firm understanding of the product/ brand and the willingness to take risks and experiment.  Like the case study mentioned above, when coupon marketing is done in its best form, it can leverage your business by 10x. It is an unsaid goal of any growing business to increase sales, widen the userbase and onboard new customers. Coupon marketing proves to be a golden key to unlock all that your business needs! 

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 How Businesses Can Make It Big Using Coupon Marketing appeared first on PayU Blog.

What is B2B Lead Generation?

A Lead is basically a consumer who shows voluntary interest in a particular businesses’ products or services. Attracting these leads to your business with the help of various smart marketing techniques is called Lead generation. In case of B2B lead generation process, your leads or consumers are other businesses you need to attract. 

For example, you specialize in corporate gifts and gift wrappers. You have a website and social media presences for the same as well. Now with your online business set in full swing, you need to create awareness amongst other businesses, acquire customers and bring in sales. For this flow to take place smoothly, you need to generate quality leads first!  Before you jump in to know the B2B (business to business) lead generation mechanism in detail, set your online business on track by indulging in these 4 secret ingredients of a successful online business!

A recent report put together by a renowned marketing website reveals that over 63% marketers find steady lead generation as a key challenge.  

B2B Lead Generation: Super Techniques

In the corporate gifting business example mentioned above, the best way to generate leads would be to

• Place “order now” or “know more” forms at relevant places on your website
• Collect all necessary consumer information — name, email address, contact, address, etc..(understand which business needs to collect what data in the sections below)
• Once the high-intent consumers submit information via the form, they are your ‘leads’.
• Now you can connect with them directly. Send curated content such as engaging industry newsletters, product updates and so on.

Remember: A consumer who signs up voluntarily will never push your emailers in their spam. They want your service and so you need to make their need stronger by nurturing them well!

Broadly, there are 2 effective ways to generate leads:

1.The traditional way: Customer referrals, magazine/newspaper advertising, tele- calling, events etc.

2. The non-traditional way: Search engine results, social media, digital marketing and more.

However, you cannot hand the trophy to either of them as both play an important role in generating higher leads.

You Require B2B Lead Generation? 

67% of B2B marketers put forth that, they see at least a 10% increase in sales opportunities through lead generation.

Yes, you do! One of the biggest secrets to a successful business is a new lead generation.  A consumer lands on your website or blog because it’s their need and they happen to search deeper for it. They did their job! Now, it’s your job convert these consumers into customers by implementing an appropriate marketing strategy. If you fail to target the right audience, at the right time, all of your efforts in building your brand goes in vain. Thus, lead capturing is an important step to grow your business. 

7 Effective B2B Lead Generation Techniques 

1. Write blogs & e-books: Choose diverse topics to write on. For example, if you are a fin-tech or payments company like PayUmoney, you can write about various digital marketing trends and strategies as well apart from payments. This allows you to target a large audience, who not only owns a business and want a payment solution but also, wants to market their business well. Further, you can churn out useful e-books as well for better traction.

2. Use social media: Social media, on the other hand, is the modern-day bullet! Plan quality campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Boost these campaigns if necessary or you can opt for the complete organic route as well. Give relevant action buttons or commands as well. You can also run contests on your social media channels.

3. Create effective CTA: A CTA is a ‘call to action’ which redirects your audience to the right URL or window.  

4. Add relevant pop-ups: A pop-up is used to collect direct leads. There are various kinds of pop-ups you can use on your website: exit intent, interestial, banner, side push. Usually, websites use interstitial pop-up which gets displayed right in the center of the web page to gage attention. Even banners prove to be useful. Choose pop-up style as required. 

Side Pop-up

Pro-Tip: You can also add a sticky subscribe button at the end of the page

                                                                                                                        Website Banner

5. Slide in request after page scroll: As the name suggests, this is one of the easiest ways to generate leads. Slide in a request to ‘subscribe’ after someone scrolls through X% of your entire page. As per research, sliding in after 80% of page scroll gives the best results.  

 Pro-Tip: Use SumoMe to track the heat map and target your audience accordingly!

6. Add a side bar: Side bar is one of the best places to add a subscribe form. Just by setting up an appealing subscribe box on your sidebar, you can gently attract a lot of visitors. Ask them to subscribe to your blog or a newsletter by clicking on a relevant CTA.  

7. Launch a dedicated landing page: Keep a particular section of your entire website or blog dedicated to subscriber button. Here, offer something that will attract the visitors and design it beautifully.  

Apart from the above-listed ways, you can also run contests, use videos and gaming for a useful B2B lead generation.

What Lead Information To Capture? 

Now that you will be implementing the above-listed ways to make the maximum of your lead generation efforts, the most important factor is the type of information to be captured. This information captured while B2B lead generation is then used for passing on further marketing and business communications like emailers, newsletters, offers, etc.  You mainly need to capture: 

1. Name
2. Email Id
3. Contact
4. Age
5. Gender
6. Profession
7. Website Details or URL
8. Other Specific Information (cars, business type, house owned, etc)

You can choose any or a combination of the information to be captured from the ones listed above as per your industry type. Businesses mainly ask for the basics: name, email & contact.

Tools For Best B2B Lead Generation  

• FieldBloom: FieldBloom is an all in one customer feedback form-creating tool. Create beautiful surveys, CRM and lead forms and increase your B2B lead generation.  
• Sumo: Sumo is one of the most popular tools that provides multi features like creating pop-ups, welcome pages, social share bar and heat maps.  
• Instapage: Instapage integrates with popular marketing and Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) platforms like MailChimp and Hubspot. It offers drag and drop landing page creation feature along with heat maps.  
• Vyper: Vyper is a tool for creating viral contests. It allows you to make best of your ideas by adding actions like filling a form, asking customers to follow social media profiles and so on.  

Find out the top 41 B2B lead generation tools you can use to upgrade your online business now.

Once you are through with the idea of B2B lead generation, just follow these simple steps: 

• • Give an effective CTAs

• • Design appealing landing pages and emails  

• Make the best use of your social media

Make a way through your sales team to implement your campaigns in the best way! Remember, the more you tweak and keep experimenting with your and B2B lead generation ideas, the higher is the probability of welcoming new leads.  

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. Sign up with PayUmoney now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!   

Recommended Reads 

• How to Build a Successful Lead Generation Form
• Leading Digital Marketing Strategies for Your Business

The post B2B Lead Generation For Online Businesses: A Beginners Guide appeared first on PayU Blog.

Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook, videos rank on the top when it comes to best engagements. Be it establishing a brand, building customer rapport or promoting services or products video content marketing is used for almost everything. After all, there is a reason behind why 87% of online marketers use video content marketing! Recently, the “LIVE” feature, which initially started off with Facebook, and then on Instagram and Twitter is an instant trick to gain traction to your business. Let’s explore some more highly successful and conversion friendly video content marketing trends here.

What Is Video Content Marketing?

Despite the term being self-explanatory, it suggests, one of the most attractive and effective way to share your content: in a video format, where the basic content is supported with visuals and audio. The way it had evolved in the past decade is surprising and that’s the reason behind the buzz about how video marketing can accelerate your brand’s presence 10x! 

A recent report released by one of the leading marketing websites mentioned:  

• 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool
• Also, video content is more memorable when compared to text and images

Benefits Of Video Content Marketing 

Certain interesting findings about video content and its benefits in our lives point to the certain astonishing facts such as:

• More than half of the people agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose a video.
• It is a human tendency to capture things well when it gets an audio and visual of any thing.
• 1/3 of people’s online activity is spent watching videos.

Thus, creating useful and impactful videos makes a lot of sense if you are aiming to grow your business. While you design your videos with the help of certain creation tools mentioned later in the blog,  here are a few things we want you to keep a check on: 

1. Have your content in place to avoid last minute rush and stress
2. List down all the topics you want to cover in your video. Here having a storyboard will help you immensely
3. Select the most viewed and popular platforms you want to host it on 
4. Measure the video performance which includes: views, shares, comments, video view duration, etc.

Some Of The Most Effective Video Content Types Include:   

After getting a gist about what video content marketing is, the next question is, where and how can you create those videos and where can you host them? We have listed below some of the best tools to create videos! 

Top Platforms To Create Video Content 

Some easy, quick and amazing video platforms that allows you to create videos are: 

• Animoto: It is a cloud-based video creation platform which enables you to upload photos, videos, clips and audios within minutes!
• PowToon: It simply makes animation a layman’s job! It is an animated video creation tool to promote your business aggressively on social media channels directly.
• iMovies: One of the add-on that Macintosh users gets is iMovies! Create videos just like a pro with iMovies. You can support your videos with animations, music and voiceovers.
• Moovly: For all those who want drag, drop and animate feature while creating a video, this one is for you! Use hundreds of interesting templates and create clusters of video, in short duration. 

Best Practices For Video Content Marketing 

• Let people connect and understand 
• Keep it short and crisp 
• Remember humor is the best medicine 
• Maintain consistency 
• Optimize your video 
• Take them to the right place by giving an effective Call To Action (CTA) 

Now that you know the right ways and platforms to create your videos, all you need to do is read our recent blog on a step to step guide to perfect content distribution strategy. Grow your business with the right marketing strategies and stay tuned with PayUmoney blog.

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 Video Content Marketing: Top Trends Of 2018 appeared first on PayU Blog.

Amrish Rau, CEO, PayU. Featured in & Image Courtesy: Dailyhunt 

Microsoft Excel Plugin will enable all PayUmoney merchants to send payment links to their customers directly. They can do so by sending SMS or E-mail to their customers from an already existing Microsoft Excel sheet. By using the plugin, our merchants can simply use existing tools like Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, to manage and process customer orders and payments, instead of developing new applications. This in return helps you to save a lot of precious time and efforts in the long run!

As we are constantly working on making online payments simple and less troublesome for our merchants this newly launched exclusive feature enables PayUmoney payment gateway merchants to:

1. Send payment links to customers via SMS and emails
2. Track track payment status without login
3. Check real time payment status

Appreciating the launch Microsoft Excel Plugin by PayUmoney, Mr.Pradeep Singh Shekhawat, Head of SMB Business at PayU India proudly quotes:  

“We are committed to constantly innovate and keep introducing new capabilities to make the payment process seamless for our merchants and customers. Based on market research, we understand that a large number of businesses use Microsoft Excel to maintain their customer’s accounts and thus we are proud to be the first ever payment company to launch such a feature that integrates payment collection capability with Microsoft Office application – Excel. Our product teams strive every day to simplify our merchant’s lives in providing a friction less payment experience and this new feature is a great example which fits directly into their daily workflow.”  

Ready to use, these plugin can be downloaded from the PayUmoney website and installed with a single click. It does not require any technical integration or development effort. Thereby reducing time and money for o ur powerful merchants.

PayUmoney Microsoft Excel Plugin featured in BW Disrupt

Trusted by over 3.5 lakhs merchants, PayUmoney payment gateway is the first ever payment gateway to provide plugins for Microsoft Excel. Don’t kill time thinking, grow your buisness larger and better effortlessly with us. Signup with PayUmoney now!

After using our new invoicing feature, Shivam Agrawal, Partner at Mail Transcripts and a PayUmoney merchant says:

“With the Excel plug-in, I don’t have to provide complete access to our PayUmoney account with all employees. Instead, I have better control since each employee can send invoices using their Excel sheets that use the plug-in without viewing all account details.” 

You can have a look at what leading media houses have to say about us and our exclusive feature:

BusinessWorld . Yourstory .  Afaqs  .  ANI  .  Business Standard  .  Outlook  .  India.com  .  WebIndia123  .  

TechGig .  IndiaDigitalBrief  .  DailyHunt .

The post Use PayUmoney’s Microsoft Excel Plugin To Collect Online Payments appeared first on PayU Blog.