Optimization is critical for the success of your ad campaign. Optimizing twitter adverts help you control your Twitter Ads buck. Keep experimenting with several existing campaigns in order to understand targeting and creative types.

There are a few terms and processes which you need to be familiar with before starting twitter adverts optimization. Here’s what they include:

Impressions: It means the total number of times your ad has been shown.

Graph: Twitter Graph shows all the important statistics for your ad campaign.

Date Range: It provides a detailed view of the hourly breakdown.

Tweet Engagement: Number of times users engaged with your ad.

Twitter Cards: With this, you can add nice photos, videos, or any other media to your Tweets that can help you drive traffic to your website.

Conversions: Actions taken on your website by users. Action can be a sale or a lead.

Here are some of the best practices to help you optimize your Twitter advert campaigns in the best way:

Fine Tune Your Targeting

Targeting allows your online business to connect only with the intended users. We advise you to run multiple campaigns in order to optimize better. Use one type of targeting option with each campaign. You can target your campaign & create ads by user interest, behaviour, followers, keyword, and location. Each targeting option helps you identify relevant matrices that work for your online business.

Select 20 keywords and identify user engagement on each keyword. It will help you narrow down keywords that matter the most for your business & will help you get free twitter followers. Optimize location in case broad region doesn’t yield target audience. Narrow down to the specific areas in order to zero down geo patterns.

Refine Your Bidding & Twitter Advertising

Twitter adverts provide an “Automatic Bid” option that automatically optimizes your bid while keeping your budget intact. Automatic bidding is cost-efficient as you only pay for links clicked by users.

You can also use the “Targeting Bid” option. It allows you to fix the budget as per identified targeting matrices. Although it costs more you can reach the most intended user base. Try “Maximum Bid”, in case you want maximum exposure.

A/B Testing

In the overview section, you can quickly analyze which Twitter campaign is reaching the people effectively. Always aim for more than 1% engagement rate while defining benchmarks for your Twitter ads. If you are achieving lower than 1%, revise your copy and ad creative.

Ad engagement easily helps you identify which creative is performing better when the targeting is the same for multiple ads. Quickly go to “Edit Campaign” in order to edit copy or ad creative whenever required.

Use Conversion Tracking

Make sure you add a ‘conversion tag’ on your website. Double-check it and specify a key conversion tag for each campaign. It will help you to capture data in the most relevant format. Website tags let you choose whether you want to optimize your Twitter Advert for link clicks or website conversions.

For example, PayU with tags for Payment Gateway might specify the payment tag as the key conversion tag for a “Free Payment Gateway” promo campaign.

Device and Platform Targeting

Make sure you test your Twitter ad campaign for mobile and tablets. Check engagement rates across various devices as it will help you to identify the best performing device for your ad campaign. Make your ads more relative for mobile as users nowadays are interacting in real-time on their smartphones.

Twitter optimization is an ongoing process and the key to achieving maximum engagement is experimentation. Keep using the Twitter targeting option to filter your ad campaign. Also, read our blog on “How to optimize your Google adverts account”.

The post A Quick Guide For Businesses to Optimize Twitter Adverts appeared first on PayU Blog.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

12 Must-Use Instagram Business Tools For Marketers

To begin with, there three important elements of Instagram:

• Profile Bio

• Pictures

• Hashtags

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

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

1. To Click & Edit Pictures Like a Pro

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

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

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

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

2. To Create Exceptional Content

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

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

3. To Run & Evaluate Contests

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

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

4. For Competitor Analysis & Scouting Influencers

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

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

5. To UseTheTrending Hashtags Of All Times

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

6. To Schedule Posts

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

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

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

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

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

Recommended Reads

Benefits of Instagram business

Expert’s Guide To Instagram Content Strategy

How to promote business & drive sales on Instagram

Instagram marketing strategies

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

From Praveen’s trunk of expertise….

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 1: Start With Community Marketing

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

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

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

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

Step 2: Choose The Right Platform

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

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

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

Step 3: Build A community

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

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

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

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

Step 4: Define Engagement Strategy

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

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

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

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

• your product development phases for active feedback

• your efforts to acquire them as your customer

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

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

Step 5: Acquire The Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 6: Engaging Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 7: Weaving your startup around Community

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

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

Ideation Stage

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

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

b) Put forth discussions that can help drive valuable insights

Validation Stage

Here work towards prototypes and validating your idea by:

a) Using the community as a source of feedback.

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

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

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

Early Stage

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

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

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

Growth Stage

By this stage, your community will be decent sized.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. SEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Artificial Intelligence

“Ok Google call Mom”

“Siri what to do, I am bored!”

“ Alexa play a happy song”

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

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

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

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

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

3. Mobile Marketing

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

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

Image Source: Statista

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

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

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

4. Video Marketing

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

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

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

Explore the top trends of video content marketing

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

5. Influencer Marketing

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

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

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

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

6. Community Marketing

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

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

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

7. Lead Generation

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

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

Beginner’s guide to B2B lead generation is here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Understanding Pinterest For Business

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

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

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

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

Key terms used in Pinterest:

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

Pinterest’s Official Profile

How Does Pinterest For Business Work?

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

Benefits Of Pinterest For Business

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

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

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

1. Make Your Pinterest Business Profile Attractive

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

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

2. Post Creative Images

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

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

PayUmoney’s Pinterest Business Profile

3. Add Convincing Bio/Description

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

4. Redirect To Website

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

5. Add Rich Pins, Widgets & Plugs

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

PayUmoney’s Rich Pin On Pinterest

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

Image Credits: Pinterest

6. Pinterest For Distribution

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

PayUmoney’s Content Distribution On Pinterest

7. Best Time To Pin

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

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

Pinterest For Business Analytics

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

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

Are You Using Pinterest For Your Business Yet?

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

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

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

As per research, festival spending begins in October itself and not November.

So be smart and think through these 7 festive season marketing strategies (for B2B and B2C businesses) right away in order to binge on more sweet profits this festive season!

1. Email Customized Festive Season Greetings

Consider your favorite brand in the world sends you a beautiful bouquet of flowers, hamper of exotically flavored chocolates and a handwritten note greeting you festive happiness. How would you feel? Special, won’t you?

Treat customers and partners like your extended family! Draft a beautiful email, pampering them with customized season’s greetings, gift hampers or a voucher sitting in their inbox (if not to their address). This makes your customers sensitive to your business presence and also shoots word-of-mouth appreciation in their neighborhood and amongst friend circles. Thus, increasing your customer base and profit too.

Here’s a precise resource on how to write effective emails for sales. But if you think you need to enhance your email writing skill then read these 5 ways to improve emailers for your business.

2. Be Creative On Social Media

Social media and website are the places where your customers and partners first find and know you. Keep your online presence especially social media updated and creative.

• A simple seasons’ greeting post can also make a lot of difference to your followers. It gives a sense of consideration.

Image Sources: PayUmoney’s Facebook

• Run contests to improve engagement and to interact with your audience directly. If you think “contest” means giving prizes to the winners, then yes, that’s what I am asking you to do. Prizes don’t have to be pricey. You can invest a minimum amount but what you win back is priceless! Remember this is a one-time expense.
• If still ‘contests’ seem like a not-so-great idea, then make testimonial videos and post them across your social media channels. Testimonial videos include your customer’s or partner’s experience and what they have to say about your business. This will bring a lifelong value to your business. You can tag your costumers or partners in the video, description or comment as a cherry on the cake!

3. Offer Samples & Discounts

Today we live in a trial economy, where everything needs to be tried before the actual purchase. In supermarkets, you must have noticed a couple of salespersons selling tasters of a particular food item for free. This allows people to experience the product first and then make a purchase decision. Basically, by introducing trials for your products you are inviting people to judge your product. This, in turn, helps you to understand the true need of your customers and create apt products.

Discounts and sales during festive season are marketer’s favorite strategies during festivals. E-commerce businesses make the most of this: Big Festive Sales, Festive Dhamaka, etc is introduced in order to gain more traction. Also, consumers usually pile up their piggy banks for ‘Sales’ during the festive season. Make the most of this strategy for your SMB.

1. List down all the festivals (big and small)
2. Mention the products you want to put up on sale
3. Spread the word about these products via email, social media, phone calls, SMS
4. Allow your consumers to try your product first
5. Follow the points listed below

4. Participate In Online & Offline Community Markets

Community marketing is a very prominent part of digital marketing. Earlier offline communities were set up in the form of flea markets, exhibitions, town hall markets and so on. Today, all these communities have settled down online as well. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest have people from all walks of life and countries grouping up to form a common interest community.

Eg: Communities like the social pop shop or social crafts are created for people who want to sell or showcase their talent related to the community interest.

• The social pop shop – Lifestyle
• Social Crafts – Craft/ Art

5. Plan Simple Costumer Journey

Journeys are the ones which decide what goes next to your customer in the form of communication. This could be an engaging post on your social media channels, a follow-up email or SMS, new product updates as push notifications or simple banners or pop-ups in your website. This journey needs to be a part of the entire campaign, where the consumer is notified about your products simultaneous on different platforms.

Make sure you don’t bombard them with messages because this can increase your spam risk instead of your business. Pick the best channel and select the right time to send updates to your consumers.

6. Cross & Upsell Your Products Smartly

If your consumer wants to buy a notepad, then what is the harm in pushing them to buy a super smooth and fine quality pen? Cross and upselling is one of the keys to unlock the shackles of increasing sales. You are well versed with BOGO (buy one get one) or BOGF (buy one get one free) concepts. This is nothing but upselling. Cross-selling is selling a pen along with a notepad. You consumers are always looking for convenience. Sell your products conveniently to them.

7. Make Ad Spends Wisely

• Myth: Advertising is expensive and meant only for big businesses.
• Myth busted: Small businesses can make the most of advertising as well with cost as low as Rs.100 – 500!

Digital advertising is not expensive as traditional advertising (newspapers, radio, hoardings, etc). You can spend wisely by running test ads with a minimal budget at first. Depending on the response increase your budget to its best (according to you) and increase your business awareness as well.

Eg: if you spend Rs. 500 (keeping this as high value) you can reach out to approx 1000 – 2000 audiences in one go.

To maximize your marketing efforts on social media, discover the commonly made Facebook advertising mistakes you should avoid now.

Competition is on an all-time rise with multiple businesses offering similar products with enhanced price, quality or feature. In such scenarios, festivals are a hot season for marketers to push their products forth. In this crowded economy, these 7 festive season marketing strategies prove to be subtle but leave a high impact on your audiences in the (near) future. Gorge on these festive season marketing strategies to improve your marketing efforts and sales this festive season!

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 Unique Festive Season Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses 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.