Social Media Trends 2020: 7 Things To Look At

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

1. Rebuilding Trust: Be Transparent

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

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

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

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

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

2. Effective Video Marketing

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

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

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

3. Using Paid Ads

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

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

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

4. Experimenting Micro Influencer Marketing

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

Who are micro-influencers?

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

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

https://youtu.be/8qJSfuSWOHU

5. Being Real Time

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

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

6. Making The Best Of Stories

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

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

To creative effective stories:

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

7. Using Personalized Messaging

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key highlights Of Budget 2019

The budget extensively caters to various sectors of the Indian economy, but what stays in focus is the MSME grants and allowances. The Indian government has

Here are the 7 key highlights from the budget small businesses must make the most use of:

We really look forward to see lots of budding startups in the world’s largest upcoming startup hub – India!

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

MSME Loan Alert: Get Rs.1 Cr In Just 59 Minutes!

The post Budget 2019: Key Highlights For Small Businesses In India appeared first on PayU Blog.

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

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

1. SEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Artificial Intelligence

“Ok Google call Mom”

“Siri what to do, I am bored!”

“ Alexa play a happy song”

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

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

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

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

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

3. Mobile Marketing

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

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

Image Source: Statista

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

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

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

4. Video Marketing

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

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

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

Explore the top trends of video content marketing

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

5. Influencer Marketing

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

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

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

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

6. Community Marketing

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

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

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

7. Lead Generation

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

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

Beginner’s guide to B2B lead generation is here!

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

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

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

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

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

The post 7 Blockbuster Digital Marketing Trends To Watch Out In 2019 appeared first on PayU Blog.

“Since a few of weeks various ministries of the India government came together to formulate these decisions. After all the inspection and checks, I want to inform the country about these 12 historical decisions. In the times of globalization, these 12 decisions will start a new chapter for the MSMEs”

– Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India (translated from Hindi, Source: Economic Times)

The MSME sector was hit hard when demonization and GST laws were rolled out in the country. In order to provide an empathizing shoulder to the sector, the Indian government introduced these 12 decisions charted below:

Gesturing the measures as a Diwali gift PM says that, the MSMEs will see new heights and will be the biggest employment generator following the agriculture industry. However, these loans range from Rs. 10,00,000 to Rs. 1 Cr with a starting interest rate of 8%. The MSME loans are a part of the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro & Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) and collateral coverage is not compulsory.

The Finance Minister launched a fast track portal for the MSME loan application. This portal helps MSMEs to secure loans faster and in an extremely secure way. Here’s how the portal works:

Image Source: PSB Loans in 59 Minutes

Documents Required For The MSME Loan Application

Please keep the following documents in a soft copy form ready for the MSME loan application:

• • GST Identification number

• • Income tax returns in XML format or PAN card details

• • Incorporation date

• • Bank statements (last 6 months) or net banking credentials

• Basic company ownership details: director or owner details

The 10 Steps To Get MSME Loan Approved In 59 Minutes

1.Provide all essential details and register

Image Source: Economic Times

2. Confirm answers to the four simple questions

Image Source: Economic Times

3. Enter your GST details

Image Source: Economic Times

4. Fill your income tax information

Image Source: Economic Times

5. Provide bank account details

Image Source: Economic Times

6. Give the company director’s information

Image Source: Economic Times

7. Select the bank you want to apply for the loan

Image Source: Economic Times

8. Select your preferred bank

Image Source: Economic Times

9. Pay the nominal convenience fee

Image Source: Economic Times

10. The process is complete. Download your approval letter

Image Source: Economic Times

The MSME sector comprises of a huge network of over 63 million units and facilitates work to 111 million people. It contributes close to 30% to the GDP. It accounts for approximately 40% total exports and 45% manufacturing output. This growth program will run for 100 days across the country. It is expected to provide a boost of fresh air in the sector in coordination to the efforts put in for its upliftment. The progress of the program will be under the constant surveillance of the senior officials.

[tweet=”“MSME sector is of vital importance to the Indian economy. This sector’s energy and dynamism is noteworthy” – PM tweeted. “]

Are you an online business looking for a robust, trusted and secured payment gateway?

Recommended Reads

GST For Online Businesses

GST Ready Payment Gateway

An Overview: GST Returns

The post MSME Loan Alert: Get Rs.1 Cr In Just 59 Minutes! appeared first on PayU Blog.

From Shrijay’s trunk of expertise….

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

1. Keep Your Focus & Dedication Intact

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

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

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

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

2. Watch Out For Data Trends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Legal Formalities & Protecting IPRs

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

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

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

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

Here are the thumb rules to follow:

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

Protecting IP leads to:

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

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

5. Balancing Emotions With Practicality

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post 5 Things Every Entrepreneur Must Consider Before Starting Up appeared first on PayU Blog.

As a business owner, you will know that irrespective of the size and profitability of a business, the sole responsibility of sustaining it lies in the hands of cash flow. If you are fumbling with the term “cash flow” read on to know the importance of a steady cash flow and how to improve cash flow to make it steady!

“Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters the most. – Peter Drucker” 

How To Improve Cash Flow: Cash Flow V/S Profit

When running a business, keeping an eye on these financial parameters: cash flow and profit is very important. 

1. 1. 1. Cash flow is the sum of money that is flowing in and out of a business as deposits and withdrawals, respectively.
      2. Profit, also known as net income, is the difference between sales revenue and your business expenses.

For example, you are running a highly profitable business. But some of your biggest customers are taking time (30 to 60 days) to pay. This in turn drastically affects your cash flow and even delays payments to your suppliers. No matter how profitable your business is cash flow is what keeps your business running!

Any business can have a positive or a negative cash flow and you can easily identify to which category your business falls from the following pointers:

Simply focus on these 9 steps on how to improve cash flow and change the focus of your business towards a positive cash flow.

9 Simple Tips On How To Improve Cash Flow!

1. Estimate Your Cash Flow

Estimating cash flow helps in planning your future steps ahead.

• • Start forecasting your cash inflow by putting down the previous year’s sale.

• • Also include GST rebates, assets sold, license fees, and cash inflow from other sources.

• • Then forecast your cash outflow by estimating the cost taken to make goods available.

• • Do include loan repayment, investment, building rent and so on.
  • Now, estimate overall cash flow by summing up cash inflow and outflow.
  • Finally, schedule a monthly analysis of your actual data with the estimated cash flow.

Pro-Tip: Use this information to identify potential issues and take strategic decisions to improve your cash flow.

2. Best Way To Collect Unpaid Invoices 

Implement easy and effective ways to collect payments from your customers on time! Some quick tips to make your invoicing process better include:

• • Sending invoices quickly 

• • Using reminders to prompt your customers of the outstanding invoices.
  • Changing your terms in such a way that late payments incur penalties.
  • Offering incentives for those who pay early  

Pro-Tip: Go for a plugin like “PayU Payments Plugin For MS Excel”, an all in one payments plugin. You can create and send payment links via SMS, email or both, track real-time payments and so much more. Learn more about how you can use PayU Plugin to collect payments easily.

3. Opt For Payment Platforms

Web platforms empower businesses to collect payments faster and in turn improve the cash flow. This makes collecting payments on time a cake walk. Irrespective of your online presence, you can always use a payment gateway to turn the way you collect payments easy for you. Know how to choose the best payment gateway and change the way you collect payments effortlessly.

4. Leasing Vs. Buying: Why Lease Instead

When it comes to maintaining a steady cash flow for day-to-day operations, leasing will be the best option. Leasing anything from supplies, equipment, real estate to any sort of asset, lets you pay in installments, which is a business expense anyway. Also, you can invest the extra cash on something that will benefit your business in the long run like research & development. 

5. Need Quick Cash? Extend Payables 

Looking for a quick way to improve cash flow? Then choose to extend payables – the money owed by a business or company to creditors, lenders, employees, or government (taxes).

This might not be a preferred option, but in a financial crunch, it is an easy way to improve cash flow. For this, maintaining a friendly relationship with your suppliers is a must. So, you can ask suppliers for a 30-day or 60-day extension. Also, make sure you extend the payables time in your terms as well, which gives you enough cash to make any large payments.

6. Cut Cost & Improve Cash Flow 

Figure out the unnecessary costs of your business, like operating, overhead costs and so on and get down to business. Some simple yet effective everyday tips are:

• • Opt for energy saving lights, turn off unused electrical equipment, and so on to reduce your electricity bill.
  • Keep your travel expenses in check by using tele- or video conference instead.
  • Change your shipping policies to ensure your employees use normal shipping instead of express shipping!

7. Check Inventory From Time To Time

If a large amount of money is stuck in your unsold stock then take necessary steps to maintain a steady cash flow.

• • Review your complete list of inventories like property, goods in stock, etc. regularly
  • Order less stock from suppliers when you have a surplus
  • Encourage your customers to buy old stock by offering discounts

8. Choose Steady Growth Plans 

Growing too fast might be one reason your company is running out of cash. This so-called investment can sweep away your cash reserves until you receive cash from sales. Also, before you borrow money for funds, opt for sources that offer money at lower interest.  A steady growth plan is a healthy way to improve your cash flow.

9. Make Wise Investments 

Now that you know how to improve cash flow, choose to invest your cash inflow by:

• • Repaying your loan obligations, without incurring penalties
  • Investing in ways that increase your sales
  • Opening a high-interest savings account, which can be reinvested in your business

How To Improve Cash Flow On Sales Front As Well

In addition to these 9 simple tips, here are 3 ways to improve cash flow and drive sales for your business:

1. Use Smart Strategy: Bundle Products 

Providing discounts is not the same as adding value to a product. When you bundle products along with services, you can achieve that. One great example is e-commerce companies offering free returns for dissatisfied products. This strategy increases sales by driving away the fear of buying a new product seen online. Also, read how bundling products drive sales.

Pro-Tip: Offer value to what you sell at a lesser cost to increase your selling point.

2. Generate Repeat Business

If you are running a business like the retail industry, you will know how repeated shoppers benefit you more in the longer run. You can encourage your customers to shop more by using loyalty programs, VIP cards and other offers to shoot up sales which in turn increases your cash inflow.

Pro-Tip: Offer extra stock that adds value as freebies, to make shoppers coming for more.

3. Pre-Sell To Sell Off   

Pre-Sell is an effective way for any business to promote their product even before it is launched and sell it to customers. This method saves your time and improves cash flow, as at least a part of the payment is collected even before the product is packed.  When you pitch the product you can use terms like ‘a wise way for you to plan your future by shopping now’ or so on.  

Pro-Tip: Offer to buy back old products at a fixed price to encourage sales.  

Keeping your cash flowing requires discipline, planning and more than anything proper strategies such as the 9 simple ways from your end. Now with the knowledge of how to improve cash flow, you need to make every effort to keep cash flowing as it is the life blood of your business.

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!

7 Frequently Asked Questions and Answers about Cash Flow

1. How does manufacturing improve cash flow?

Manufacturing increases cash flow as the more you invest in your business, the more goods or services you produce, it will increase your business’ cash flow.  

2. How can negative cash flow be improved?

You can improve your negative cash flow by looking at your financial statements such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. It is essential to know the root of the issue. Next, you should avoid slow payers or improve your payment terms, so that people pay you on time. The other one is to cut down on your overhead expenses. Take a look at your operating costs and overhead expenses and spend on items that are actually needed and are on priority. Talk to different vendors and see if you can negotiate with them and cut down on some costs.  The last suggestion would be to find new ways to improve your sales and provide more and easy payment options to the customers. You can do this by integrating with India’s best online payment gateway PayU.

3. How to improve cash flow from operations?

You can increase your business cash flow from operations by taking a look at your current assets and current liabilities. For instance, you should examine your inventory, finished goods, and supplies to check and identify the goods or items that have not been used over a long time. You can scrap or sell those items so that a loss can be reported and cash will not flow for income taxes. Selling your old inventory at a lower price is better than keeping it on the shelf all life! Also, it will take up space that can be utilized for keeping something else.

4. How to improve cash flow in small businesses?

Small businesses can improve cash flow by:

1. Sending out invoices immediately – Send out invoices to your customers or clients immediately after they purchase the item from you. This will help you improve your cash flow.
2. Give all payment options to your customers – Give all payment options to your customers so that they are able to make the payment through their preferred mode. You can integrate with a payment gateway such as PayU to give your customer a seamless online payment experience.
3. Analyze your cash flow statements regularly – It is essential to review your financial statements to know your business performance and improve if needed.
4. Invest in your business – Invest in your people and business such as boosting marketing campaigns so that they bring in more business and thus, improve your business cash flow.

5. How to increase free cash flow?

You can increase free cash flow in your business by

1. Improve your net earnings: You can do this by increasing your sales, increasing your pricing and decreasing costs. You can increase your sales by boosting your marketing activities etc.
2. Minimize the use of working capital:  A reduction in working capital will help you improve cash flow. Review your inventory and scarp or sell out items that are no longer in use.

6. How to improve the cash flow forecast?

You can improve your cash flow forecast by:

1. Analyze your business indicators: Review your business indicators such as the various stages of your sales funnel so that you know where to invest and your cash flow improves. 
2. Estimate your sales: Gauge the monthly or weekly sales of your business to get an idea of the revenue. this way, you will know how much you can invest to maintain healthy cash flow.
3. Be diligent about payment collection: Avoid slow-paying clients and make sure you provide your clients with all the payment options so that they are able to pay then and there.

7. How to improve cash flow management?

To start with, make a cash flow budget for your business. You can improve your cash flow management by:

1. Creating a separate account for business: Open a separate account for your business and get a business credit card. This will help you understand your credits, debits and cash flow better.
2. Use short term financing: You can use short term financing for making emergency purchases. 
3. Keep a track on slow-paying customers: It’s very easy to lose or neglect follow-ups on customers whose payments are due. Keep a track on such customers, keep sending them reminders so that you are able to recover the amount owed.
4. Monitor your inventory:  Review your inventory regularly and sell-off the one that is not needed.

Recommended Reads

Importance Of Customer Feedback To Increase Your Sales!

4 Secret Ingredients Of A Successful Online Business

The post 9 Simple Tips On How To Improve Cash Flow For Businesses! appeared first on PayU Blog.

Ladies & gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts as you might experience some factful turbulence ahead!

Travel for us is all parts of human emotion combined, it ties into it a sense of wanderlust, a sense of purpose, fear, excitement and happiness among other emotions. A famous saying beholds, “Blessed are those who travel, as they will have adventures.” Whatever your reason to travel might be, booking for the journey and back and the hotel stays is an experience all of us have gone through. That itself brings a ton of emotions on the surface: nervously keeping track of ticket prices so that you book your tickets well in time, anxiety jitters of last minute bookings and booking in tatkal is a bigger challenge like no other! It is no wonder that the industry built around this whole experience is vibrant, ever changing and always primed for disruption. It is this beauty of the experience that spurs all firms on to revolutionize this experience.

The travel booking industry has come a long way. Remember the days, when local travel agents ruled the roost to to the current day where travelers are spoilt for choice for both price and offerings provided by various websites and apps? They range from travel aggregators which combine flight + hotel bookings from different vendors in one place, to specialized aggregators that only allow travelers to book train, bus or other kind of tickets to standalone websites by individual vendors.

PayU is the largest payment gateway firm in India allowing businesses to collect payments online. This has allowed PayU to have a ringside view as the travel industry has evolved in the past few years. With its deep penetration in the sector, PayU has a wealth of insights into how travelers behave when it comes to booking their travel. Below is an attempt to uncover those insights and unravel how India travels. This covers data across major travel aggregators and the most popular standalone vendor websites. PayU accounts for 70% of the travel transactions processed online in India giving the data a diverse richness and accuracy.

The trend in both: ‘amount spent on bookings’ and ‘the number of transactions’, increases as the year progresses. Despite all our planning, it is evident that Indians are last minute planners. Travel bookings spike in the last 2 quarters when, the holiday season picks up with a flurry of festivals such as Diwali, Christmas and the New Year. A stark example is August, for both Airline and non-airline merchants, the bookings are higher because of public holidays (Independence Day, etc) and a couple of festivals are just around the corner. People travelling through flights/airlines are more likely to book ticket on an immediate basis (previous or next day). For non-airline travelers, in case of festivals at least this duration increases to 2 days.

What is also interesting to note that the non-airline bookings rises in the last quarter. The last mile connectivity becomes important as, Indians want to be home (during festivities) which have good road and rail connectivity to major metros. The last 2 quarters also represent the season of long weekends and the frosty weather which results in a spike in travel bookings.

It clears that the first quarter which sees no major holiday, marks the exam season for kids and is the closing quarter of the financial year, sees the least number of travel bookings. Further, the number of bookings peaks up in the year’s second quarter with the rise in professional travel bookings (as the new financial year kicks off for firms). So next time you plan that trip with your buddies to Goa in December or with the family during the summer holidays, make sure to book early to avoid the surge in prices that last minute bookings bring along.

Another really interesting trend to look at is, when do Indian travelers freeze travel plans? Is it during the day or the millennials booking travel at night; which is the dominant and emerging trend. Also when in the week do Indian travelers start planning and booking for travel purposes?

Most of the tickets are booked online by travelers during the day time from 9 am to 6 pm. A concentrated peak appears in a 6 hour zone: 9 am to 3 pm

This either indicates that travelers  tend to make bookings during the day from offices or a wider trend that the travel agents still act as aggregators to book tickets for customers. The trend seems to persistent  for airlines or non-airlines bookings.

So how does this trend play out over the week? The data there also tends to support the hypothesis above:

As observed, majority of bookings happen in the middle of the week further minimizing as the weekend dawns.

The deeply entrenched web of credit cards and the wide spread of debit cards

Some highlighted trends begin blossom once we start looking at the data from how Indian travelers choose to pay:

• Indians mostly pay using Credit Card (CC). This is not surprising, given the high number of exclusive tie-ups airlines have with card issuers for offering co-branded card. Most CC transactions are incentivized by linking purchases to miles on select airlines. But, it also shows that Indians are not shying away from traveling on credit.
• Debit Card (DC) transactions offer an interesting mix. Incase of volume processed using debit cards, it actually goes beyond CC usage. Whereas, the number of transactions show a very interesting trend that, Indian travelers shop more for travel with debit cards. They are willing to spend more money on credit card transactions, though transaction volumes are lower there.
• Net banking is the third highest, but there the number of transactions processed closely mirrors the amount being spent overall.
• Another trend is the much lower ASV on debit cards compared to credit cards across airlines and non-airlines bookings. This is even lower compared to the average trend in ASV for all transactions.
• Even across non-airlines bookings, the trend for bookings made via credit cards remains high. Debit card emerges as a winner, indicating that it is not transacting on credit that attracts travelers. The eco-system of rewards  introduced by issuing firms around credit cards pushes them to use credit cards way higher than they would do for other kind of bookings.
• The fact that the ASV for credit cards is the highest even for non-airline bookings (despite low penetration in the segment) indicates travelers se value proposition in credit as a payment option.

Another interesting parameter to observe is the best time credit card/debit card/net banking transactions occupy a significant market share.

It is clear that credit cards have a maximum share in the first quarter of the year when it comes to both number of transactions and actual volume spent through the PayU platform. Whereas, the last quarter has the lowest share for credit cards. We had seen earlier that the growth trend is good for no-airlines bookings in the last quarter. This points to the fact that debit card usage is maximum in terms of share of transactions in the last quarter.

This is indicative that,

• People prefer to reach home by any possible means during festivals and holidays.
• Lower cost transactions go on the rise increasing the usage of debit cards for non-airline transactions.
• This trend is also seen in net banking transactions, with transactions peaking in the last quarter of the year (in value terms (Rs.))

So a few points are very clear about Indian payment behavior as far as it comes to traveling. It is interesting to note that the trends bust a lot of myths.

• Are Indians averse to credit? No, as it seems.
• Are Indians booking travel themselves? Not really. Maybe the Indian customer needs more education and faith building.
• Indians follow very conventional habits when it comes to booking tickets during the week and during a day.
• With new payment instruments such as UPI coming in, it will be interesting to how traveler behavior changes as the days pays by.

Does more convenience in paying widen the net of customers served online? Or does the usage of online aggregators become more democratized? Well, only time can tell as it moves on its steady march, but we will be here looking at the trends as the weeks and months pass by, so stay tuned!

Take a glance at the excerpts of this article covered by leading Indian news dailies.

The post An Exclusive Overview Of The Indian Travel Industry 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.

There has been much talk about how UPI payment is changing the P2P (Person to Person) payments space. It is also giving wallets a tough fight in the light of KYC regulations, that recently led to a lot of users discontinuing wallet usage. But how has UPI payment caught up in the P2M (Person to Merchant) space which is the lion share of transactions. It really determines how sticky long term usage will become, as UPI aims to become the payment instrument for doing commerce across the country.

At PayU, being the leading payment gateway provider in the country, we looked through our data and deciphered how the UPI journey was progressing. PayU enabled UPI payment across all its merchant offerings in August 2017. PayU is also on track to double its monthly transaction volume to roughly $2.5 billion in its core business by March 2019. Our data brought up diverse insights:

With A Variety Of Players In The Market Offering UPI Payment Services, How Do They Stack Up? 

It’s interesting to see that BHIM has maintained a steady position while Tez and PhonePe emerge as the dominant private players. 

Some other key insights are:

• The three predominant players in UPI are – PhonePe, Tez and BHIM.

• PayTM has a low but steady market share of UPI while Tez has massively increased its market share over time.

• ICICI is 4th amongst UPI apps and with WhatsApp making its UPI ID public the share for ICICI could grow even further in coming months.

• With Increased competition from private players BHIM is losing its market share consistently.

• Others majorly comprise of handles created on Banking Apps such as Axis, Kotak, SBI etc.

UPI Payment Growth In Average Transaction Size

What is more interesting to note is how the average transaction size has emerged across the months. Most players had lucrative cashback offers to customers to incentivize using UPI payment. This is how the numbers stack up:

While it is interesting to note is that the ASV trend mirrors that of debit cards. The numbers hold and see an increasing trend rivaling wallets and credit card transactions. Thus, signaling widespread usage of UPI payment for actual use cases showing that, it has picked up organically apart from the growth provided by offers doled out by various players. Continuing the thread of:

How Wallets Have Fared With The Onset Of UPI Payment?

The share of wallets is continuously eroding to UPI 

How does UPI payment usage split across the sectors and how does it compare to other payment modes?

Figure 1: UPI GMV Across Segments 

E-commerce is the dominant segment, while professional and technical services is the second biggest segment. How does this compare to wallets which are losing to UPI and to Debit cards whose transaction behavior they so closely mimic.

Figure 2: Wallet GMV Across Segments 

Figure 3: Debit Card GMV Across Segments 

As per the PayU Insights, here are the key takeaways of the article: 

• PhonePe, Tez and BHIM are the dominant UPI payment players

• UPI experienced 188% growth witnessed in past 6 months v/s 41% of wallets, credit/debit cards

• E-commerce sector dominates with 72% UPI payment GMV followed by technical services and education

In this piece of research, it is evident that in the coming months UPI payment is all set ready to take the country by a storm!

Have a glance at the excerpts of this article covered by leading Indian news dailies.

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. SignUp on PayUmoney now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

Recommended Reads 

How To Accept Payments Using UPI Payment Gateway? 

The post UPI Payment – Making Sense Of The Biggest Disruption To Hit The Industry appeared first on PayU Blog.

Not convinced yet? Here are a few daily life examples we’ve got for you which reflects the proactive use of AI & ML: 

1. 1. 1. Popular cab services running across the length and breadth of the country – Uber and OLA, heavily make use of ML. They make use of this technology to get a fair estimate of the ride timings and fares.
      2. Do you know how your email portals intelligently separate primary emails from spams? It’s ML! It learns your activity and behavior on your email portal and overtime starts separating emails automatically.
      3. While uploading an image on Facebook, it automatically recognizes faces of people in the image and displays their names to tag them. This is a chronic form of artificial intelligence in business.  

We have just stated 3, but there are many such instances where we heavily rely on AI and ML. It is a trend and a technology to advance and stay for long! You might wonder why we are talking about this technology trend when it’s also an era of implementing low-cost marketing strategies?  

AI & ML are meant for all types and kinds of businesses – big, medium and small! 

Let’s introduce ourselves to AI & ML technology of 2018 before we dive deep to know the impacts of artificial intelligence in business (irrespective of its size). 

What Is Artificial Intelligence In Business? 

Too complicated? In simple words, AI is a scientific art of creating human-like intelligent machines.  

For example, any Apple product owner is very well versed with Siri, especially at times of acute boredom. Siri is nothing but sheer AI. Apple introduced this voice interface to second the owner’s intelligence. It is a voice command that surfs through playlists, attend calls on your behalf, have entertaining conversations with you and much more.  

AI can be considered as a parent concept to many baby concepts, machine learning, robotics and many more.  We will emphasize on artificial intelligence and machine learning in this post.  

Now that you know what AI is and different functionalities it comes along with, let’s take a close look at; 

Top 5 AI Trends You Need To Inculcate In Business Now! 

1. Retarget Ads On E-Commerce Sites 

As a business owner, targeting the right set of audiences online is very important. Using machine learning, which is one of the most vital arenas of AI, proves to be of great advantage here. As mentioned above, ML overtime learns user habit, behavior, preference and accordingly segments them for better targeting. For e-commerce sites, ML maps your audience, studies them and assists you with clever product retargeting wherever your audience is on the worldwide web.  

For example, a potential customer searched for a mobile phone on your e-commerce website. He found a good handset on your site. He checked out the price, features and other specifications of that particular handset. ML studies this behavior and further retargets him by showcasing ads or other product promotions of the same handset on other websites he goes.     

Also, machine learning can be used to target your customers at the right time so that they will buy.  For this, ML finds out the time they are most active online and targets them at that time. 

2. Use Chatbots for Customer Service & Care

Source: Chatbots Magazine 

Chat + Robot = Chatbot! 

The chatbot is a software that communicates with humans through text messages, answers their questions and even performs actions when asked to. Chatbots can be integrated with your website and mobile applications externally as they:  

• • • Empower your employees by assisting them.
    • Stay with you round the clock for prompt customer support.
    • Promote quick customer call transfers. For example: When you call your service provider, most of the times you will hear a mechanical voice asking your perform certain actions like, press 1 for bill payments, press 2 to continue in English and so on.

Chatbots are mainly used to stay in touch with your site users at every step. It is a great customer engagement and care tool of artificial intelligence in business!

3. Convert Visitors To Customers Using CRM 

AI is revolutionary when it comes to selling products to your customers! All that is needed for this revolution is your customers’ data stored in your customer relationship management (CRM) system. CRM is actually a technique that compiles customers’ information like their email, phone, & social media and their interaction with the company.    

When you integrate AI tool into your company’s CRM: 

1. 1. It analyzes your customer’s data
   2. So, your sales team understand your customer better
   3. It predicts whether he/she will be lead or not  

Source: Salesforce 

In this above example, the AI tool is predicting that the customer is a lead by analyzing his personal details, interest, and activity. Now, you can turn this lead into a customer by targeting him with marketing strategies like promotional emails and various offers to increase their engagement.

4. Marketing Analytics Using AI  

With artificial intelligence in businesses, you can market any of your products at a much lower budget. This is possible through AI tools that manage marketing campaigns. These tools analyze your ads’ performance on various parameters which includes reach, users, bounce rate and more. The tools also prove helpful as they suggest campaign budgets, keyword bids and so on.  

Similarly, you can also pull out vital marketing metrics, for example, email sent, clicks and open rates, the best time to post, etc. This data then enables you to increase your customer database and provide the best services to them at the perfect time! 

5. AI To Build Customer-Centric Products 

You should know whether your customers like what you are selling or not. If not, you are missing out on ways to make your product better. Using tools of artificial intelligence in business helps you with this! For example, in the screenshot below, you can observe there are green and red tabs lined at the bottom. The tool basically alarms you with customer feedback you received for your product or service. The red tab indicates negative feedback and the green tab refers to all the positive feedback. Now that you know your product negatives and positives from your customers’ point of view, you have the potential to change all the red tabs into the green ones quickly and easily using various efficient marketing strategies.  

Source: KEATEX 

Leading AI Tools To Grow Your Business  

So how do you include artificial intelligence in business? Some of the free and paid tools available online include:  

1. 1. Re-targeting Ads: Facebook Ads
   2. Customer Service Chatbots: FlowXO (Free) and MEOKAY
   3. AI-powered CRM: Salesforce Einstein and ZOHO CRM (Free)
   4. Market with the expert: Conversica (Free) and Adobe Media Optimizer
   5. Customer Feedback: Keatext (Free) 

Call it artificial intelligence or AI, according to us it is time you introduce artificial intelligence in business strategy! It’s okay to burn money on useful AI tools than on unfruitful marketing campaigns for long. This will always keep you ahead of your competitors and also increase your cash flow tremendously. To keep up with the latest technological trends and boost your business subscribe to PayUmoney blog.

Recommended Reads

15 Important Web Metrics On Google Analytics For Website

Marketing Strategies For Your Online Business

Leading Digital Marketing Strategies For Your Business

The post Top 5 Trends Of Artificial Intelligence In Business For 2018 appeared first on PayU Blog.