If you are unclear on how to do competitor analysis, start by asking yourself these questions:

• Who are my competitors? Are they a direct competitor?

Typically, it is a company that sells the same products or services as yours or fulfills the same customer needs you meet. This company could be bigger, smaller, or similar to yours.

• What are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? This is called a SWOT analysis.
• Are there any gaps in the market that my company can fill?
• Are there any gaps in the products and services offered by my competitors?
• Finally, how can I use this information to increase my company’s market share?

Research your competitors well to get the answer to these questions. 

Why is competitor analysis important?

The benefits of competitor analysis are huge. It can set the rhythm and speed of your business’s success.

Understand your advantages and disadvantages

This is where doing a competitor SWOT analysis helps. Analyzing your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses will help you identify your business’s advantages and disadvantages in the market. 

Determine your past, present, and future business strategies

Analyzing your competitors helps you formulate effective strategies for your company. Knowing where you stand in the market can give you early warning signs of threats and opportunities. Use these insights and foresight to take steps that will lead you to your goals.

Know the objective and profile of competitors

By understanding where your competition stands in the market, you can think of strategies to either beat them or fill the gaps.

Identify what you need to get ahead

You learn from the success and failure of other brands. This analysis establishes the reasons behind the failure of unsuccessful companies, thus helping you identify the key assets and skills needed to beat your competition.

Know your threats to tackle them better

While analyzing your competition, you identify threats and challenges your competitors bring into the ecosystem. It helps you fortify your company’s strategy against the competition.

Leverage category convergence

Brands today are offering products across variant segments. Today brands are competing in segments where they have been historically absent. Hence, consumer perception of your brand plays a prominent role in defining competitive benchmarks.

Sources of information to study competitors while doing competition analysis?

Recorded data: It includes data that is published publicly, such as annual reports, brochures, newspaper articles, and press releases.

Observable data: It is collected from several sources, such as competitor pricing, promotions, and patent applications.

Opportunistic data: This kind of data involves exclusive planning. It is basically derived from customers, suppliers, seminars, and conferences.

Also read – Tips for Launching Successful Mobile-Friendly Online Store.

The post Competitor Analysis: Why is it important for your business appeared first on PayU Blog.

What is brand building?

How people perceive your business is your brand. The brand building process is about creating a unique image for your business. It starts with a strategy to define your brand’s relationship with its customers and how it will get there over time. A brand building strategy will help you be consistent in communication and experience across environments and assets, such as print and packaging, customer service, or social media.

6 Simple steps to build a successful brand

There are different ways you can build a strong brand. But here are six steps to get you started on a successful brand building journey:

Step 1: Determine Your Target Audience

The first thing you need to know when building a brand building strategy is your target audience. You can determine your audience based on age, location, interests, etc. This will help you define what you communicate, where, and how, so your audience can deeply relate to your brand. Depending on your target audience and their needs and aspirations, you can create a brand persona that resonates with them. Over time, your brand will need to evolve with your target audience to stay relevant.

• Pro tip: Start with smaller, specific sets of target audiences. As your brand awareness and loyalty grow, you can expand your audience base to include more diverse groups.

Step 2: Define your brand mission

Your mission and vision statements describe why your brand exists and what it is passionate about. The brand mission is what you promise to do and how you will add value for your audience. It also dictates how you execute your brand strategy daily. It will guide your branding process across channels. All this should help you achieve your brand vision – what you want to be for your audience.

Step 3: Research your competition

Every brand has its unique selling point (USP). Analyze your competition and find out what works for them, what does not, and where your brand can do better than them. The brand building process should focus on that differentiating factor. This will help you define what can set your business apart and use it to your advantage in branding and marketing. Competitive analysis is a continuous process that helps you:

• Define and refine your USP
• Improve your products and services
• Encourage research and development (R&D)
• Benchmark your branding and pricing strategies
• Identify business opportunities and threats

Step 4: Create a strong value proposition

You have studied your markets, competition, and audiences. Use this knowledge to clearly define what your brand offers and why your audiences should only choose you – what makes your brand unique and valuable. Include this value proposition in your marketing communication across channels to create a successful brand. For example, PayU’s scalable and robust platform makes it one of India’s best payment solutions providers.

Step 5: Set your brand markers and guidelines

Brand building is all about making your business recognizable and memorable. And it is done by playing on the human senses, particularly with visuals and sounds. Think Coca-Cola logo or Nokia jingle. Creating such unique and remarkable markers will create a special place for your brand in your audience’s minds. Once you have done that, document how your brand will be represented across channels. These guidelines will ensure consistency and quality.

Step 6: Market your brand

The last step is to tell the world about your brand! Set a definitive marketing strategy and create noise on channels your audiences frequent to grab their attention. Using your brand guidelines and marketing strategy, you can communicate with your audiences in relatable and engaging ways.

Apply your branding in every piece of communication, from packaging to stationary and website to marketing collateral. Identify new channels such as email, web, and affiliates to promote your brand.

Conclusion

Brand building is an ongoing process; you need to revisit it every now and then to ensure your branding is maintained consistently. The process requires expertise, and it is best to get professional help to get the best out of your efforts. You can learn more about branding in our blog on the importance of brand guidelines.

Frequently asked questions about the brand building process

What is brand building?

Brand building is creating awareness and promoting a business using different strategies and plans. In other words, it is building and displaying a brand identity through different campaigns such as on social media, websites, and events. Branding is essential for a company as it is what people see and think about it. It is your logo, tagline, ads, everything!

Helpful articles related to brand building:

• Social Media Marketing Tips
• Content Marketing Tips
• Quora Marketing Strategy
• Video Marketing Tips

Why is it important to build a brand?

Branding is important to build recognition and trust. This can help you acquire more customers and their loyalty over time.

How to plan a brand building process?

You can start with the six simple steps mentioned above to build a successful brand.

What is a brand roadmap?

A brand roadmap comprises concepts and strategies you can follow while building your brand. It includes goals, objectives, and ways to achieve them within set deadlines.

How can you build a strong brand?

We can build a strong brand with various methods and strategies. To start with, one needs to conduct a brand audit of the company. This includes a thorough competitive analysis and identifying your brand’s USPs. Make sure you are original and authentic across communications. Re-analyze your strategies regularly so you can maintain your brand identity.

How does advertising help in brand building?

The motive behind branding is to build recognition and attract more customers. Advertisement plays a great role here. It helps businesses remind their consumers of their presence. Advertisements help build brand salience. It reminds people of the product or services offered by a business by looking at its logo or advertising campaign.

What is brand reputation?

As the term suggests, brand reputation is how people see your brand. Do they see your brand as fun and quirky? Or do they see your brand as an authority in your industry? A good brand reputation means consumers trust you and like your offerings.

The post 6 Simple Steps For A Successful Brand Building Process appeared first on PayU Blog.

The image above shows the main integration steps.

API Integration Steps

Merchant website

To initiate a transaction, the merchant generates a POST REQUEST (which is a particular mode of interaction on the internet). The request must include mandatory and optional parameters. The mandatory fields include a key (provided by gateway), txn ID (order reference number generated at merchant’s end), amount product info, first name, email, phone, service_provider, and hash (checksum). Merchant also calculates a hash and sends it to the payment gateway.

PayU Payment Gateway’s Website

When the POST request reaches PayU, the customer would be re-directed to payment gateway’s (PayU’s) payment page. The customer now selects the particular payment option on payment gateway’s (PayU’s) page (Credit Card/Debit Card/Net Banking etc) and clicks on ‘Make Payment’. Now, payment gateway re-directs the customer to the chosen bank. The customer goes through the necessary authorization/authentication process at bank’s login page, and the bank gives the success/failure response back to the payment gateway.

1. When the transaction POST request hits the payment gateway server, a new transaction entry is created in the database. To identify each new transaction in the gateway database, a unique identifier is created every time at gateway’s end.
2. Our payment gateway marks the transaction status on the basis of response received from Bank.
3. A final transaction response is sent to the merchant through a POST RESPONSE. In this response, the merchant would receive the final status of the transaction. Merchant will also receive the hash parameter here. This is done to strictly avoid any tampering attempt by the user.

How Different Kits Ease The Payment Gateway Integration Process

Different kits provide different APIs to automate a lot of tasks. PayU provides developers with two kinds of kits for easy integration– shopping cart integration kits and platform-based integration kits.

Shopping Cart Integration Kits

Shopping cart kits follow an easy payment gateway integration procedure with the help of codes and APIs. Currently, the PayU provides more than 30 shopping cart integration kits. Some of which are:

1. Opencart
2. Interspire
3. Joomla VirtueMart
4. Magento
5. Prestashop
6. Zencart
7. CS-Cart
8. OScommerce
9. WordPress eCommerce
10. WordPress wooCommerce
11. Drupal Ubercart
12. WHMCS

Platform-Based Integration Kits

PayU currently provides integration kits in 4 different environments

• PHP
• JSP
• .NET
• ROR

PayU has the easiest and quick payment gateway integration process. Know more about the PayU Payment Gateways Integration with your website now!

Ask us more about PayU website integration process at merchantcare@payu.in

The post How Does Payment Gateway Integration Work With Your Website? appeared first on PayU Blog.

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.

Selecting the right customer acquisition channel that drives sale is therefore important. The key to understanding customer acquisition process is to identify how, where and why your prospect audience buy and engage with the channel effectively.

You must be well adverse to create and identify the customer acquisition channel that works best for your online business. There are various customer acquisition channels, from social media to email marketing, Google AdWords to YouTube Marketing which you can leverage to generate leads and drive sales.

Your online business needs loyal customers and as the need of your customer changes, so is the channel attracting them. Constantly evolving technologies and mobile experience have changed the way a customer interacts with the platform.

You must follow the best practice to acquire your customers-be it any channel. Before we identify the best channels for your customer acquisition process, let’s know the process involved:

• Know Your Customer: Always ask yourself who is your target audience, what is its’ behavior and demography.
• User Experience & User Interface: Audit your website such that it gives the best user experience to the customers interacting with your communication.
• Unite Feedback Channel: Value your customers and give them preference in case of any query or resolution.

Effective Customer Acquisition Process For Online Business Include:

Content Marketing

Content is King when it comes to acquiring customers. It is the best and most popular way to reach out to a mass audience. Companies write blogs and market them across channels in order to achieve massive engagement rates. Content Marketing helps your customer understand your product in a better way. It creates value which is the backbone of every customer acquisition cycle.

“Content Marketing is the relevant channel that targets your prospect audience and incorporates your value proposition at the same time”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you are creating a lot of unique content in the process of Customer Acquisition and if you are able to optimize it, then you can attract millions of potential customers searching for relevant content.  Search Engine Optimization is a free channel through which you can generate leads and drive sales.

Millions of people are searching for content online and they use relevant keywords to find the best answer to their search query. You must ensure that you are optimizing your content and working as per the algorithms to rank best across search engines.

Email Marketing

Nothing has replaced or displaced email as a super-valuable medium to engage your target audience. This is the reason most of the online businesses rated that lead generated through email marketing are of high quality. People are present on mails and it means that they will be more responsive to the content you are mailing them.

Since the internet knows no boundaries, it is clear that your email communication can reach anyone in the world, if you are targeting it correctly. It is the perfect marketing channel to acquire customers easily and that too quickly.

Social Media Marketing

Think of Social Media as a modern tool for “word of mouth marketing”. People are talking about brands on social media. They are sharing experiences and giving feedback. Your Prospect audience is constantly present on social media and hence you can tap into their interest by targeting correctly. Channels such as Facebook, Twitter and. In have millions of active users, thus making social media the most relevant Customer Acquisition channel.

Google AdWords

AdWords is the largest online advertising networks in the world. Millions of online businesses use AdWords to reach out to new customers in order to drive sales. Google AdWords is categorized as:

Search: Search network refers to pay-per-click advertising. In search, you need to bid as per the relevant keyword of your business. You can display your ad if a person enters those keywords into the search engines.

Display: It refers to the banner style advertisements which is shown on Google partnered websites.

Video: Video advertising refers to the YouTube marketing platform offered by Google.

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

The Importance of Mobile in Financial Services

The post 5 Best Customer Acquisition Channels For Your Online Business appeared first on PayU Blog.

In the recent years, mobile has contributed a positive impact on various financial services, with consumers shifting away from traditional practices. Mobile First solutions are cost-efficient, reliable and secure as sending money has become as easy as sending a text or making a phone call. Mobile First is at the center of transformation taking place across various key financial sectors such as:

• Banking
• NBFC
• Insurance
• Payments/Wallets

What is Mobile First?

Mobile first has become a popular trend, but what does mobile first mean? Mobile First is simply designing an online customer experience for mobile before designing it for the web or any other website.

In the past, when the consumer’s focus was on the desktop, the mobile design was an afterthought. But today, people are using their mobile devices for accessing various financial services and social networking than ever before.

Statistic Speaks

Mobile penetration is one of the most emerging markets and one which is showing no signs of any slowdown. This is one of the markets which is growing quickly, in the developing as well as in the developed countries. As per the International Telecommunication Union, the total number of mobile subscriptions has reached almost 6 billion, equivalent to a global penetration of 86%.

Today India boasts the second highest number of mobile users across the globe. The country has also now the world’s second-largest smartphone market, having overtaken the US in the first half of 2016.

What makes mobile a catalyst for financial services?

With the rapid growth in the user base, mobile today has increasingly become an important medium to reach the unbanked. It has the potential to create value on multiple fronts and improve the entire financial eco-system across sectors such as:

• Banking & NBFC: Adoption of Mobile First approach in the banking sector can lead to significant cost advantage in the distribution of financial services. Mobiles allow banks to do their business more cost-effectively. With the help of mobile platform, reaching to a broader population becomes feasible, thus enabling financial inclusion. M-Finance helps to expand operations in remote or sparsely populated rural areas due to the high penetration of cell phones. For example, A migrant worker can avail emergency loans without going back to money lenders if the financial services reaches his doorstep swiftly.

• • Insurance Sector: According to a study conducted by LIMRA, nearly 86 percent of consumers prefer to research online about insurance policies. Also it was noted that one in every five searches for insurance globally, is from mobile. Mobile can definitely help insurance sector in tackling the challenges of mitigating risk, increasing productivity and enhancing customer experience. Through mobile marketing, Insurance companies can attract new customers and regain former policy holders.

• M-Payments & Wallets: There are nearly two billion people across the globe that don’t have a bank account, out of these 1.7 billion have a mobile phone. Therefore it draws a huge potential for financial institutions to cater to such a potentially massive market.

Today Mobile money or M-Money has successfully substituted ATM and cash transactions across various countries globally. Almost all major banks, and many smaller banks, now offer some form of mobile banking application to support customers’ demands to be able to interact with their financial accounts anytime.

Banks are today well-positioned to leverage their position of trust by increasing the perceived value through various payments systems such as UPI, Wallets, NEFT, RTGS and IMPS. Mobile has the ability to create value for consumers at large and this is an exciting times where you should integrate mobile platform into your financial delivery systems aggressively.

Also read our blog on Five Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch in 2017. Stay tuned with PayUmoney Knowledge Platform and take your online business to next level.

The post The Importance of Mobile in Financial Services appeared first on PayU Blog.

Most of the online users are today publishing videos, photos, reviews and blogs across various social media channels. Simple activities such as replying to comments, responding to private messages or re-tweeting can build a strong relationship with your consumers.

However when every consumers is a publisher, getting relevant content on the top of social newsfeed becomes a challenge. Therefore, you need to focus on emerging trends that are bound to affect your social media strategy and campaign performance in the year 2017.

How social platforms will evolve in the year 2017:

Facebook: Continues to be the Market Leader

With 1.23 billion daily active users, Facebook will continue to be the unchallenged king of the social network. Used by more than 60% of the total internet users, FB will remain at the top of marketers list to drive conversions. With the launch of new features such as Facebook Live and FB Marketplace, online businesses will find new ways to advertise their products and services through Facebook.

Twitter: Real Time Experience

Twitter will focus on incorporating real-time moments to consumers at large. Businesses will continue to use Twitter to quickly service their customer’s queries.

LinkedIn: Peer-to-Peer Influence

With the acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft, we expect LinkedIn to invest in their content platforms. LinkedIn is aggressively marketing its news-feed by inviting businesses to tap into the power of peer-to-peer connections.

Instagram: Community Building & Sales Platform

Instagram will be a driving force to accelerate sales and generate leads for online businesses. It works well for creating brand awareness and engaging community of consumers.

Snapchat: Engaging Audience

Leading brands are today using Snapchat to distribute content across various segments. Snapchat will evolve as a content distribution platform which will further engage users.

I’d like to share five emerging social media trends that you may see in the year 2017 and beyond:

Trend 1: Live Video

Last year social videos stole the show on social media platforms. Next evolution will be definitely combining the emotional connect of social videos with the scale and reach of social media advertising. Live video platforms such as Facebook Live will fill the news-feed with the relevant, targeted and on-demand delivery of content.

“Facebook and Twitter have become the prime destination for video consumption. The rise of Facebook live might challenge the supremacy of YouTube”

Trend 2: Mobile First

Businesses will continue to optimize their communication for mobile in the year 2017. However, Mobile users interact with the ads in a different way versus desktop. Mobile experience will see a massive shift in the user experience. You need to treat mobile users swiftly as they have very limited time and it is crucial for your communication to get to the point as quickly as possible. This trend is coming quickly where you need to differentiate your communication for mobile and desktop.

Trend 3: Social Commerce

Buyers are actively researching about brands on social channels. The next step for consumers is to skip visiting websites and buy directly from social media platforms. With the up-gradation of Facebook Messenger, brands can now accept payments via social channels. Facebook has also allowed businesses to drive users to messenger with calls to action such as “Shop now”.

Trend 4: Artificial Intelligence & Chat Bots

Who would have guessed a few years ago that we will trust a robot to make an online retail purchase? Time is changing and so is social media marketing. Businesses may start using Chatbots as an easy way to interact with customers and cross-promote products or services at the same time.

Trend 5: Social Rivalry with Search Engines

Search engines are still the leader in helping consumers research and evaluate products or services. But social media is constantly evolving as an alternative where consumers are using it to discover about brands. It is being used as a research tool and social media will definitely catch in the year 2017.

2017 is going to be an exciting year for social media marketing. Live video, chatbots and search medium are trends which can dominate the social eco-system. Also read our blog on, “5 Content Marketing Trends You Should Test in 2017”.

The post Social Media Marketing: Five Trends to Watch in 2017 appeared first on PayU Blog.

Approximately, 20-25% of the total initiated transactions are recorded as bounced. This is a huge opportunity lost for merchants. So, how bounce rates can be reduced? Obviously, these cannot be controlled entirely but a significant chunk of it can be controlled. For that, it is essential for you to understand reasons behind transaction bounce.

It is crucial for you to understand the user intent and to achieve it, you need to incorporate an experience which is simple, easy and self-explanatory with a minimum number of steps required to reach the payment page.

What is Transaction Bounce Rate?

If the check-out experience of a website is not simple and intuitive, then the online visitor may close the website page. This leads to the bounce of transactions, which means that you are losing relevant revenue on transactions that could have been successful but were not due to a complicated checkout page.

You need to understand the intent of your user before providing a seamless check-out experience. For example, take a scenario where the intent of a user visiting your site is to buy a movie ticket in a minimum number of steps. Unfortunately, your check out page asks the user to fill in many mandatory fields before redirecting to the payment page. This increases the probability of a user closing your website without performing a transaction, thereby increasing transaction bounce rates.

How long does it take for your consumer to make a payment? It just takes few seconds. Here are some ways of making your online payments process easy and simple:

Use Google Auto-fill

Most of the online shoppers use either Google Chrome or Android where Google saves their personal information. You can utilize it by simply adding Google Auto-fill in your checkout form. It will make your form fill a simple and hassle-free process.

Make Simple Forms

You want visitors to transact easily and quickly. A simple form requires brief information about the users and their credit card. Visitors get frustrated with a complicated form and leave without completing the transaction. Ensure your form is straightforward and easy to fill. You should request for only the information necessary for an online transaction such as name, email, and credit card details.

Secure Online Payment Gateway

Use a secured payment gateway in order to ensure online visitors that their personal information is safe and secure. Customers will get the confidence to complete a transaction if you tell them that the online payment gateway is secure. Use India’s best payment gateway PayUmoney as it uses a powerful PCI DSS level 1 gateway to encrypt all the stored data.

Optimize Your Form for Mobile

Today most of the online shoppers are using their mobile to perform transactions on their favorite shopping websites. Increase conversion rate for your site by having a checkout form for mobile. You can use some of these tips:

• Align form fields vertically for easier navigation
• Put fewer images to allow forms to load faster
• Get rid of multiple steps in the checkout form
• Choose large buttons for your checkout form

Read our blog on, “How to Build a Successful Lead Generation Form” for making a simple and intuitive lead form.

Pricing & Payment Options

Avoid charging your consumer with any hidden pricing or charges. Customers usually abandon the cart during the checkout process if they find unexpected charges. Let your customer be aware of payment options and various charges such as shipping charges, payment gateway charges before they make payments.

The post Easy Online Payments Experience Reduces Transaction Failure appeared first on PayU Blog.

As per Google, nearly 60% of searches come directly from mobile devices. This number is huge and hence your content must be optimized for a seamless mobile experience.

To start with, conduct a small survey and ask people how they use their mobile. It will help you to formulate your strategies. Here are three simple questions which you should definitely ask in your survey:

• Which types of mobile devices do you use?
• Where do you access to content with your phone or tablet?
• What types of content do you consume on your mobile device?

The data you get from your survey will further guide you. Consider below-mentioned steps and boost your mobile marketing strategy like never before:

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

The first step is to identify your target audience and map its behavior. Most of the online businesses will have more than one set of audience. You need to define the demographics, behavior, and interests of your prospect target audience before starting any mobile marketing activity.

Identifying your target audience helps you:

• Determine which mobile channel makes sense for which audience base
• Determine what kind of content you need to create
• Set the tone and delivery strategies for your mobile messages
• Understand where your buyers get their information and how they want to consume it on a mobile platform

Step 2: Understand the Customer Life-cycle

Now that you have identified your prospect target audience, you need to define their customer lifecycle. It will help you in determining the entire decision-making process during the purchase of your products or services. Through customer life-cycle, you can directly speak with your customers at any given point of engagement.

The process of customer lifecycle involves:

• Awareness
• Research
• Sale
• Feedback
• Advocacy

Step 3: Define Your Goals

Once you have determined your target audience and mapped out its life cycle, you must define your goals. Making your mobile strategy should be a holistic part of your business goal and it should relate to the company’s overall business. The key to creating a successful mobile marketing strategy is to first identify what you are doing now for mobile engagement and then asking:

• Are you currently using responsive design in your marketing materials?
• Do you currently have a mobile app?
• Are you currently using push notifications?

This question enables you to define your goals.

Step 4: Define Your KPIs

Set your KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) after you have defined your marketing goals. While there are large numbers of possible KPIs, you may consider customer engagement as the most crucial aspect.  It is one of the keyparametersr to measure the success of your mobile activity.

How is this measured? Well, below are some critical aspects which you can consider to define your KPIs

• Number of app downloads
• Total number of mobile users
• Contacts and new customers attributed to mobile
• Spend per new mobile customer
• Higher conversion rates
• Closed sales connected to mobile contacts
• Customer lifetime value of mobile users
• In app purchases

Step 5: Integrate in Overall Strategy

Think about how your mobile marketing strategy fits into your overall marketing initiatives. Visit your marketing calendar to determine how other channels are communicating with your existing customers and prospect audience base. Deliver a coordinated customer experience across all of channels that your customers use.

Set the frequency of your communication if you are engaging in mobile notification of any kind. Also ensure that all your communications are in sync. Set a marketing calendar which records all your marketing activities taking place across channels at one place.

In order to communicate with your customers every day, you must include mobile as an important part of your marketing strategy. To create mobile campaigns that are engaging and compelling, you need to create a mobile strategy that shapes the state of your online business effectively.

Also read our blog on, “Tips for Launching Successful Mobile-Friendly Online Store”. Stay tuned with PayUmoney and grow your online business effectively.

The post How to Make Your Mobile Marketing Strategy appeared first on PayU Blog.

Consumers today want a seamless experience with the brands they interact, therefore as a business owner, you should be ever ready to provide an interruption-free service to your consumers. While traditional customer service is always the first logical step to keep customer engagement, yet you can use countless other ways to leverage interaction.

When you are in business, it’s always recommended to have a personal touch with your consumers. Whether it be a mobile notification, an email or a response through social channels, customer engagements now have many ways. By engaging consumers with consistent communication throughout the customer experience, you have an opportunity to engage with your audience like never before.

Consider the below-mentioned tips to plan your next activity to boost your customer engagements:

Welcome Your Customers

The first and the foremost thing you should do as an online business owner is to welcome your customers promptly. As soon a user signs up for the newsletter or makes a purchase, simply send them a welcome email and a welcome SMS. This is an awesome way to begin a relationship with your customers. Include an added benefit fueled with a Call-to-Action button to further boost this engagement.

By sharing important information through SMS or emails, you invite customers to your landing page. As a result, they are more inclined to visit your website. Putting a human name behind a sender email humanizes your engagement with the customers you are interacting.

Convey Value Propositions

Customer’s inbox is flooded with emails, therefore in order to stand out and make them actually read your email, use persuasive subject lines in mailer communication. Draw value into your subject lines and help people understand what’s worth their time. Include value propositions as people are more likely to open, read and click through your email if they perceive value.

“Before you start any form of communication, always assess what’ll resonate with your audience”

Frequency Illusions

One of the best ways to engage with your customers is to leverage them with frequency illusions. The idea behind frequency illusion is that, when someone encounters a brand, they suddenly begin to see it everywhere.

Brands that creatively leverage frequency illusion make a good engagement with consumers that are new to their brand. You can use re-marketing, Google display, and social media adverts to increase the frequency of illusions you create in the minds of consumers.

Engage & Try To Resolve

Ensure that your consumers are never left alone when they need your attention. Value your consumers above all and prevent them from walking out of your brand. If a customer gives negative feedback about your brand, then don’t ignore the feedback. Listen to, validate their concerns and then take the necessary steps to address their issues. In the process of addressing their concern, you grow closer.

“Always remember the worst interaction is no interaction”

Guide Consumers Without Charging

Getting in front of your customers and prospect audience is a powerful dynamic. Sharing insightful information and helping your audience to grow always attracts new customers while withholding the existing base. For example, here at blog.payumoney.com, we have created a free knowledge platform for our merchants where we help them to grow their online business.

Always remember that customer engagement is all about communicating with your target audience and ensuring that you care about their queries, their time and their interests. Use your brand presence across channels to attract and retain your consumers. Also, read our blog on “how to use programmatic buying as a lead generation channel”.

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