Why you need to be on Google?

It’s true. Google can make or break your business. It’s safe to say that Google can be a sturdy back bone to your business and help you achieve success that you could not have imagined with the traditional marketing efforts.

Still not convinced why your small business needs to be on Google? The answer to that is simple and complicated. It is simple because Google is our answer to every question. Did you know that 62% of searchers never go on to the second page of the results and 90% do not go after page 3? This also means that one has to be on the first page of Google search results to be really able to make a possible mark into the target audience’s mind.

Here are a few reasons why your business needs to be in Google‘s good books:

1. Huge market

There are billions of searches happening on Google every day. Some of these searches might be pertaining to your business and if the search leads to your company website, you might get a small share of the big pie.

1. Local searches

If your target audience is city specific, then Google is even more effective and affordable. In case you are planning to advertise on Google for reaching out to potential customers in a specific city only, you might have to spend less and get a high ROI.

2. It’s complicated!

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea to understand Google and make it work for them. If you can do it for your business first, you will be beating a lot of competition even before they think of getting there. Hence, start now and understand how you can get there. An easier and effective way of doing so is to enlist your business on a B2B product search engine such as bizporto.com.

Bizporto.com spends a lot of time and effort in making the website very search engine friendly. Once you are listed there, you will be on Google’s first page result when a potential buyer is searching for your category of products.

3. New business

It is estimated that for every 10 online searches, 7 searches happen on Google. Thus, if those 7 people cannot reach you website when looking for your products or services, you are allowing potential customers to go to your competitors. Don’t you think you should do something about it?

4. It’s worth it!

It might seem cumbersome and tedious and too high a cost, but investing time and money on Google pays off. Imagine being the top search result for your business on Google. Business will go exponentially and all the efforts will then seem worth it.

Simple Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

You have a small business and limited resources to market. Is that a problem? Absolutely not! Here are a few tips on how you can best utilize your time, effort and money on marketing your business:

• Add a personal touch: Be it a Facebook post or an email message, add a personal touch to it. Make your brand more human by giving its voice a touch of emotions and sentiments. Whatever you write or send out, even the content on your website, should have a personal touch and a human tone because It helps in connecting with your target audience faster!

• Use your existing network: Charity begins at home and so does marketing. Your family, friends, associates are the first target audience that you have to reach out to. Their support will help you get further. It’s like a ripple effect. If your network promotes you on their social network or circle of friends. Their network promotes it among their network. That’s how the word gets out! But the most important in this is how you sell your business idea to your own friends and family and make them believe in you and your product.

• Let the picture talk: A picture speaks a thousand words! It has been concluded that images can potentially attract more attention, capture mind share and engage people. Hence, use images more than text on Facebook, websites and elsewhere. It allows you to build a better positioning of the brand. Even product images should be good quality so that the user experience on your website and other online portals is enhanced.

• Contests: Small contests and giveaway are a great way to engage existing and potentials customers. Keep aside a monthly budget based on your will and utilize that money for gifts and giveaways. Such activities go a long way in increasing your number of loyal customers. And if they like what they win, they will come back to you and buy the product!

• Get together: If other similar players in your industry are also small and mid-sized, it would be a great idea to join hands for joint promotion. A combined marketing activity is a great way to increase awareness about the product segment and reduces cost of marketing. You can approach media for PR stories on all the brands together. It’s a win-win situation for all.

• Network: Networking helps increase your personal brand and generate credibility in the market. You are the brand ambassador for your product by default hence people judge your product and brand based on your personality. Hence, meet as many people as possible and create a good impression on them to be able to generate a good impression for your brand.

7 mantras of successful positioning

Positioning is about building a brand image and sustaining it. Brand experts often find themselves wondering as to what is the best way possible for positioning a brand that captures the mind space of the potential consumer. While every brand has its own course to follow to build an impactful positioning, there are some basic mantras that can help put the brand on the right track.

Here are some tips that one should keep in mind while setting out to implement a positioning strategy:

 

1.     Aim to be different

You have to position yourself something different from what already exists in the field. There are various products in the category, why should they choose you over the rest? If you can answer this question, you have a focus as to how you want to position yourself.

 

2.     Find your core competence

You will find that there is an advantage that you have which your competitor doesn’t. Figure out what it is – what are you able to do better than the competitor, and focus on that while positioning.

 

3.     What do you stand for

If you had to describe your brand in one word, what would it be? When you say ‘Tata’, you invariably think of trust. That’s what they stand for, what do you stand for? When you know what you stand for, you get more aligned with your positioning strategy.

 

4.     Competition monitor

You know what you stand for, but do you know what your competition stands for? Your positioning should be stronger than your competitor. But for that you need to overrule what your competitor already positions it to be. If Idea stands for social causes, Vodafone stands for best Value Added Services. Both have made a very strong positioning for themselves, and both have their own audience to appeal to.

 

5.     Customer’s Quest

Do you know what will make your customers happy? Do some firsthand research, talk to people and see what they are missing in the options available to them. When you know what your customers want, you can easily align your offering to their needs. And that will be your positioning guiding light.

 

6.     Stay Focused

In all your communication with the existing and potential customers, hammer only what your key positioning is. There should be a very clean alignment between all forms and medium of communication when it comes to the message you are giving out.

 

7.     Relevance is the key

Your positioning should be relevant to the product as well as to the customer. If there is no relevance, establish it. Again, look at Idea. It has made social causes relevant to the brand, thus generating a soft corner for itself in the minds of the people. Now everybody perceives Idea as a brand that is very sensitive to social issues. The positioning is relevant to the Indian consumer.

Success Mantra: Retain customers than acquiring new ones!

Every small business must understand the importance of retaining the existing customers. Most small business owners get into aggressive customer acquisition and invest and all their marketing efforts, time and budgets to getting new customers and do not take any initiatives towards retaining the existing ones.
A repeat customer is good for any business but more so for a small business because of the following:

1. A repeat customer is as good as a new customer. Instead of going to the competitor, if the customer comes to you, it means you get a customer without any new investment.

2. Acquiring new customer is far more expensive than retaining an existing one.
Your competitor may take aggressive steps towards acquiring new customers and take away your customers too. Hence, once you have a customer, take extra steps in retaining him. On an average, it takes a small business at least 10 times more to acquire a new customer than retaining an existing one. Hence, the key to saving cost and growing a stable business is to retain the existing customers.

The following are the simple initiatives a small business can take towards retaining customers:

Be their support system: If you are a small business, you have a great opportunity to know your clients / customers personally. Give them individual attention and understand their specific needs, business requirements and feedback. If you make them feel important and valued, they will return the same gesture to you by sticking around.

Be responsive: the single most important key to retaining customers is to let them know that you hear what they have to say! Even a minor customer complaint or issue or feedback, if acknowledged immediately, helps the customer in developing the trust towards you and more importantly towards the brand.

Keep in touch: Make it a point to keep in touch with your customers / clients on a regular basis. If you don’t hear from them in a while, drop in an email asking if they are doing well. You can also send out periodical emails, newsletters, company/product updates on a regular basis to remind them of your presence.

Reward them: Reward your customers / clients for being committed to you. An annual discount, loyalty bonus, a public acknowledgement of your association with them, priority service, etc are all ways to give your customers more reasons to stay with you instead of wandering away.
Acquiring customers is important and a necessity for any business to grow but retaining the existing ones is critical for it to stabilize and have a higher return on investment.

B2B Marketing – What is it?

B2B is an acronym for Business to Business. There are over 10 crore B2B traders in India and the number is increasing as you read this. These B2B traders want to connect with each other to form win-win partnerships so that they can benefit and grow together.

A B2B trader thus has unlimited opportunity to grow and capture market however there are a few hurdles that he faces on the road to success. These hurdles are specific to the B2B sector:

1. Different target audience
Since the target audience for a B2B trader is not the final consumer, the marketing techniques cannot be the same as those used by a retailer or a B2C trader. This means that the marketing communication strategy for a B2B trader has to be different and most traders do not know how to develop the most efficient marketing plan for them

2. Lack of budgets to develop an online presence and branding
Most traders do not have the budget to set up an online presence for their brand. In fact, they are unaware of the benefits that they can derive out of ‘branding’ initiatives.

3. Lack of skilled man power
B2B traders do not have the skilled man power to develop a team that can handle sales through direct marketing. Thus, they need an alternate sales channel that is cost effective, efficient and easily manageable.

4. Buyer decision making influenced by online search results
These days, all prospective buyers do an online search before approaching a seller. This means that if somebody wants to buy a raw material, he will look for that online, see which traders are offering it, at what price. There will also be a comparison based on quality, credibility and brand recognition of the seller. Based on this preliminary research, the potential buyer will approach a potential seller. If both agree to each other’s terms and meet each other’s requirement, a B2B transaction takes place.

But what if your business is missing from the online search results or has not online presence at all. In such a scenario, you are completely losing out on a huge set of potential buyers who are looking for the product that you are offering. A B2B trader might be aware of this but does not know how to go about in setting up an online sales platform for its business.

5. Too many products
A B2B trader usually has hundreds and thousands of SKUs and finds it difficult to maintain the online presence for those because they are so high in number and do not have ready-made software that can come their rescue.

6. Competition
There is a lot of competition based on price point and thus all traders of a particular type of product offer similar products at a similar price point. To make a mark in the buyer’s mind, a trader needs to develop his brand and most of all, create an online presence.

7. Traditional marketing does not help
What works for retailers for mass marketing – such as newspaper insertions, point-of-sale display, banner ads, etc will not work of B2B traders since the target audience is not mass but niche. Hence a specialized approach is required when planning marketing for B2B sellers.

Ethical Consumerism

Today everyone understands that industrialization have depleted natural resources. If brands can make up for what they have used up in alternate ways, the consumers and other stake holders will differentiate the brand from its competitors. Ethical consumerism is a concept that they should harness upon with the target audience. Today more and more people are opting for products that assure them that they are choosing something ethical. If a brand can establish that positioning about itself, a consumer would make the effort of sticking to that brand, no matter what.
Today, brands want the government, businesses and organizations working for social causes like environment to collaborate so as to make sustainable production.
Following are the various examples of ethical consumerism that brands can choose to inculcate in their offering by taking a few simple initiatives:

1. Energy Efficient Appliances
Companies should research and manufacture goods in the relevant category that are energy efficient. A washing machine that automatically switches off when not in use or a refrigerator that saves energy by adjusting the temperature of the fridge according to the requirement are the kind of things people prefer because they understand that even though they cannot contribute much to the environment, they can contribute the best they can by using energy efficient appliances. Thus companies should manufacture products that are energy efficient.

2. Local Produce
Consumers prefer to buy goods that have been produced by local makers because this not only means that these products will be priced lesser compared to the products that have been imported or sourced from a far off land, but this will also mean that by buying these products they is helping the local economy and improving the standard of living of the people who are involved in it. Companies should thus buy raw material from local sellers.

3. Lesser Carbon Footprints
Buyers are now aware of the concept of carbon footprints and realize that they need to curb their carbon footprints as much as possible. Today, there are dedicated organizations that assist other organizations in reducing their carbon footprints. One such example is Agneya Carbon Ventures based in Maharashtra. They help organizations in managing their carbon footprints, thus ensuring that the negative effect on the environment because of their operations is minimum possible. Also, these can be publicized to gain consumer’s credibility. Thus, every company should make use of such services which help them manage their carbon emission better.

4. Energy Efficient Travel
People are now more and more aware of the ways they can help save the environment. Eco-tourism is one such way. A lot of resorts today offer eco-friendly stay for their guests, which essentially means that they will be treated with natural way of living involving less water usage, more greenery, less use of toxic substances for use, etc. People prefer to spend vacations in such places instead of travelling to a far off destination that involves a lot of travel, which results in more carbon being emitted in the environment.

Why Word Of Mouth Marketing is Credible

It is obvious that you would trust the opinion of people than going by the self-proclaiming advertisements. Even if you had to buy a new SIM card, you would rely on others opinions as to which service provider has better service, better network and practical plans. Why does WoM provide so much credibility which other marketing initiatives do not? Let’s consider the following points:

1. Trusted Source
WoM is more credible because one knows where the information is coming from. And that is more reliable than advertisements. If you are reading about a product on a personal blog of a friend, you are bound to take that opinion into consideration. You will think about it and remember it next time you see or read about that product. Thus WoM gets the benefit of more credibility. Also, in case of offline WoM, when a friend or a family member has an opinion about a consumer product, you are most likely to make that as your opinion too, especially if it’s a beauty product, a service, an expensive gadget etc.

2. User Generated Content
In case of online WoM, if you key in a product’s name in the search engine, you will see all sorts of results pop up. Some of these results will be user generated content that would have been posted by those who have experienced the brand or used the product. This content about the brand will be based on real experiences of the users and thus depict the reality. You will be inclined to believe these posts – be it on review sites, blogs or even consumer forums.

3. More Impactful
Since WoM involves real people passing on the information, it is far more impactful than what you read in the newspapers, magazines or the ads. Thus WoM beats any form of marketing. If you get some information from the first hand user of a product, it will have a greater impact on your opinion formation and purchase decision making.

4. General View
WoM is also more credible if more than just one person is of the same opinion about the product. If the similar kind of opinion is being passed onto you by a number of people, it is concluded that the opinion is the general view on the product or the brand and thus it is bound to be true. This makes WoM a far more credible source of information. When you learn that the general opinion about the product, by those who have used it, is negative, no advertisement will succeed in changing your opinion.

5. Bias
WoM is more credible since we are biased towards our family and friends. We trust their opinion and support their view out of our bias towards them. Whatever they tell us, we are most likely to empathize with that and become prejudiced towards products and brands even without using them ourselves. That’s why WoM is far more credible source of information than any advertising or marketing communication.

CSR for Internal Marketing

CSR can give the employees a sense of pride. They feel they are working with a responsible organization. A lot of organizations are now realizing the importance of internal marketing for higher employee retention and internal brand building. CSR comes as a great tool of internal marketing and employee development in the following ways:

1. Self Enhancement
CSR initiatives in an organization provide for self enhancement opportunities to employees that helps them with their personal and professional growth. They learn to be more sensitive towards the society along with displaying the attributes of being a responsible citizen. CSR initiatives can sensitize them to the growing societal concerns that demand attention. Employees appreciate that they get the opportunity to work towards these causes through their organization. As a result of this, they develop affinity and respect for their employers.

2. Work Life Integration
CSR initiatives help employees make meaningful integration between their work and life. It is observed that by indulging in socially responsible practices at work, employees find themselves capable of blending work and life seamlessly. While employees try to keep the two separate, it is practically impossible to do so. Although some employees might be interested in getting involved in social work, they may not find time and right space to do so. In such a scenario, if employers provide that much platform, it keeps the employees motivated. This is another way CSR can help the organizations in internal marketing.

3. Higher Self Perception
When employees get involved in socially responsible work, they develop a higher self-perception about themselves. When organizations enable them in these kinds of activities, their connection with the organization becomes stronger and goes beyond just employee-employer relationship which helps the organization in bringing the employees together and building a more profound internal team. This also goes a long way in keeping the employees motivated, as their respect for themselves goes up. They feel a sense of satisfaction by contributing to the society.

4. Internal Team Building
CSR initiatives can be a great team building tool as well. Organizations that take up activities and involve their employees directly in implementing them on field can succeed in making the initiative a team building exercise for the employees that brings them closer and helps develop informal groups within the organization. This can result in a congenial working environment and smoother work flow too. For eg, a field visit to the village which the organization had adopted or a trip to the school which the organization has established can bring the employees together to do something apart from the official work. Something as small as visit to a local NGO can help organizations in taking their internal marketing a step further.

5. Employee Needs
Certain CSR initiatives are focused towards employees of the organization. For eg, health camps for employees, relevant employee training and development, special activities for employee’s families, etc. These initiatives help the organization in fulfilling employee needs by way of CSR. These policies differ from one organization to another.

Marketing Strategy Sins

Marketing is not everyone’s cup of tea. You could make the best-in-category product but if you can’t market it well, it’s a waste of time and resources. One needs to plan and execute the marketing strategy well, but the planning of the strategy is even more critical because it not only includes understanding the market, it also implies knowing what the market will perceive well.

Here are a few sins that you should keep at bay while chalking out your marketing plan.

1.     Not differentiating from your competitors

Just because the competitor is able to sell something doesn’t mean that you will be able to do it too. This is so because the competitor has probably built the positioning and is already well accepted by the customer. To break into that will take a lot of time. So it is better that you differentiate from your competitor, build a separate positioning and develop patrons for yourself.

2.     Wasting resources on other useless resources

Sometimes, while starting out, marketers end up hiring people which are cost savers but serve bad quality work. This is the deadliest of all sins. Right people are the basis of success for any brand. Invest in the highest quality of human resources.

3.     Not keeping in touch with past customers

Once you sell a product to someone, make it a point to ensure that the customer comes back to you. A lot of marketers ignore this and end up investing a lot more in getting new customers. They don’t realize that getting new buyers is far more resource consuming than nursing the old ones. Aim at converting your customers to your ‘loyal’ customers.

4.     Not having a marketing plan

Organizations set out to achieve their marketing goals without thinking much about which path to take. They try everything they can without focusing on what’s best for their brand. This is a marketing sin. Before heading out, draft a clear plan – which resources to use, which audience to target, which medium to communicate from, et al. This will bring a focus to the efforts.

5.     Not measuring marketing results

Marketers tend to pay less attention to measuring what works the best for them. A marketing activity like an event sponsorship may or may not generate publicity. Take time to see whether the effort yielded any considerable results. If not, then you know what not to invest in for future.

6.     Not paying attention to social media marketing

The future belongs to social media. It’s not a fad. Don’t ignore it because today buyers are slaves to the internet. If you are not online, you are not in their view. Also, some marketers initiate social media platforms for their brand but do not maintain it. You don’t want someone to look up your Facebook page and see the last update to have been made 7 months ago. It kills their interest in you right then.

7.     Using wrong marketing tools

Are you sure that a hoarding will work for you but not a newspaper pamphlet? Do some research before you choose your marketing tools. Answer the questions: Where is my target audience? What interests them? Where do they spend most of their time? Depending on this, figure out which marketing tools you should use.