Category: Business

“If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.” When asked about network marketing, that was Bill Gates’ response. Now more than ever, this rings true because life happens online as much as it is offline. Everything, from the latest TV shows to social justice movements, is now online. As for the business sector, the e-commerce industry is booming, search engine developers are developing algorithms to help users filter through millions of search results, and online ads are all over the place. This only goes to show how much the internet has shifted the way business is done. In order to succeed, you need to adapt your marketing plan to a world where success is defined by likes, shares, and followers. This article will show you how to promote your business and get the traffic you need to generate a buzz for your business. 

Social Media

Social media can be a very powerful marketing tool. If you haven’t realized that by now, then you’ve been looking at the wrong examples. Take a look at how Spotify used its #yearwrapped campaign to engage users all over Instagram and Twitter. At the end of 2019, Spotify compiled each user’s most played tracks into one playlist. The streams recorded from these playlists were just under three billion. Of course, social media platforms don’t welcome just about anyone with open arms. To generate a social media following, you need to post little bites of highly attractive content that engages your followers.

Your two main goals should be: making content that generates an organic following through users voluntarily interacting with your posts and getting people to visit your website. Both goals can be fulfilled by piquing people’s interests through posts, captions, stories, and videos. Along with your posts and in your profile, provide your link. By making yourself accessible to interested users, you’ll be massively increasing your conversion rates. Remember to keep your content short and entertaining enough for users to stay engaged. How many seconds do you have until you lose a user’s attention? Let’s just say that the average attention span of a Millennial is 12 seconds. The younger the user, the shorter the span.

Email Marketing

It’s not as flashy as social media marketing which is why people underestimate its power, but this doesn’t change the fact that email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools. Here are some numbers to get you excited. According to the Direct Marketing Association’s Marketer Email Tracker published in 2019, email marketing has the highest recorded ROI which is $42 per $1 spent. As for the open rate, 76% of businesses recorded a steady increase. Keep in mind, the key to success here is constantly adapting your emails to the changes in consumer trends.

Email marketing is all about personalized communication and well-crafted messages that offer specific valuable content to prospects. Given that there are several platforms available on the market, this shouldn’t be hard. Many platforms offer useful features, from webinars to attractive interfaces for easier campaign management. Once you’ve figured out your message and the tone that accurately reflects your brand image, you can use a platform to arrange your mailing lists. Better yet, you can personalize emails based on a prospect’s information, and automatically send out scheduled emails.

Blog Articles

Articles serve two main functions. The first is generating leads in the awareness stage of the marketing funnel. Most businesses nowadays fill their websites with blog articles related to their industry. Software development companies post blog articles about the pros and cons of one software over the other. Law firms post articles that help people understand how and when to take legal action. When a user searches for their topic of interest online, these related articles come up, directing them towards a business’s website. By offering informative content, articles generate web traffic and contribute to a company’s brand image by showing off its expertise and professionalism. An added bonus here is that when a search engine’s algorithm sees that a website is providing useful content and is getting many clicks, it automatically places it above the rest and closer to the top of the page, thus easier for a user to find.

The second function is nurturing leads during the following stages until prospects get to the intent stage. Let’s say, you own a business that sells phone accessories. Capitalizing on the coronavirus pandemic, you created a Facebook post that stresses the importance of keeping a clean phone screen. How do you get the reader to go to your website and stay there? By providing valuable content. In this case, a good example would be a how-to article about cleaning phones where you mention your selection of cleaning kits in passing. This will keep the people coming your way interested in what you have to sell. They may not buy from you the first time around, but they will note your potential value and keep a close eye on your content.

These are the three most powerful online marketing methods, but to achieve success, one needs more than knowledge of the methods. Now that you know the available tools, you need to prepare a solid marketing plan that takes into account the market trends, your target audience, brand image, and company goals. Combined with the platform you intend on using, your target audience should dictate the type of content you post. Younger audiences, for example, respond to flashy graphics and dynamic videos. Older audiences respond more to simplified information. If you’re going to market yourself on Instagram, you’ll need to rely heavily on pictures. Meanwhile, email is text-based, so you need to hone your writing skills, or hire someone with the relevant know-how. The true power of marketing lies in the ability to control how people see you. Before you start posting, make sure you have a good grasp of what you want to tell people about your business. That’s all there is to online marketing. Once you put in the effort, you’ll start seeing the results. What’s your next move going to be?

Have you ever wondered that the app you have been using for so long is as safe as you think? With such a fast pace of digitalization, our smartphones have become multifunctional devices with the help of innumerable apps on mobile phones. These apps are what make your smartphones so distinctive. The Apps ask for your personal data and permissions to access different data sources on your mobile phones ranging from your browsing history to your location or contacts. But have you ever pondered upon how these apps are using this data? Using big data and analytics to study user’s online browsing patterns, individual preferences, etc., for showing commercial campaigns have become the new norm.

According to a study conducted by Verizon, 2020 Mobile Security Index, in 2019, 43% of organizations faced mobile security breaches. It also predicts that those who already experienced a mobile security lapse are twice as likely to face a mobile security relapse.

Another study, the 2020 McAfee Mobile Threat Report states that hidden mobile applications downloaded from mostly illegitimate sites were responsible for 50% of user’s mobile threats in 2019. Also, the numbers of malicious apps increased by 30% from the year 2018 to 2019.

You must have come across many news pieces of even most reputed apps that see attacks from hackers and data breaches have left users’ data exposed. On the pretext of data collection, some of these apps ask for permissions much more than what is required by them for normal operations. What if the data that you have trusted with these apps is breached?

Although, you can have some control over the access granted to these apps through phone settings, and you can see and delete what data Google has collected about you and choose privacy settings to stop these apps from tracking. But still, there is no way to find out whether these apps are not tracking you even if you have asked them not to. So, is there nothing that we can do about it? The good news is, yes, there are a few good security practices that can harden your smartphone security and safeguard your data privacy. Then, how to keep security for apps? Here are some very useful hacks that will surely help you improvise your data privacy status while working with these apps.

1: Secure Yourself by Downloading Apps Only from Google and App Stores

Please stay safe and make it a regular practice to download apps only from the official store or Google and App stores. These stores have a reputation of first putting the apps on their stores, only after putting them through a rigorous verification procedure, having them meet a high quality of user data protection. However, not all the apps on these stores are reliable. Still, these apps have to abide by strictly presenting a specific privacy policy for their users, elaborating on the procedures to protect users’ data.

Downloading apps from unofficial sites puts you at high risk of getting infected with viruses, malware, etc., exposing you to many complex cyber threats like DDOS attacks, which can cause heavy losses to organizations. There are a few more considerations that one must keep in mind while deciding on the apps to be downloaded to your system. Always check the publisher’s credibility, don’t go for the ones that have only one app to their portfolio. Check for the reviews of the apps and the period for how long it has been there on the store so that you can get to know any real issues with it.

You should also be aware of some apps using fraudulent reviews to impress users. Learn to see the difference between genuine and fake reviews put out there. Fake reviews are usually recognizable with many high ratings with no explanations, no descriptions, etc. However, the best reviews to be considered would be through your peers.

2: Using Code Signing to Secure Mobile Apps

It is not wrong to say that using Code Signing to secure mobile apps will occupy the top position in the list of suggestions of App Security Guide of the greatest number of Data Privacy experts. But, what is code signing? Code Signing is a process that essentially involves attaching a digital signature by the developers to their software, codes, or apps. This guarantees that the downloaded app has not been altered after the digital signing was done. It also gives authentication to the publisher of the app.

If any modifications are done to the app by a third party, then when the app is downloaded by the user and the system checks the signature, a warning is immediately flashed to the user for the app being unsafe. This saves the user from any potential malware infections. So, here comes the role of the Code Signing Certificate. It offers an effective solution to protect the integrity and authenticity of the mobile apps that are downloaded and installed. Code signing certificates can be purchased from many reputed Certificate authorities (CA), depending on your budgets and security requirements. Moreover, it helps build trust with the users that your app is safe for downloading.

3: Pay Full Attention to Credibility Research of the App or the Publishing Company

Although the credibility of any app or a company is difficult to know at the face of it, there are a few very useful tips that can help you know a good deal about the past performance records or give a glimpse into any history of data breaches. First, check if any online frauds or scams have been associated with the company in any way. Next, look for how the company responded to, in such situations, whether data leaks are common occurrences with the app.

 This little information collected from Google can give you a fair idea of the reputation of the app and its publisher and help you in deciding whether to download the app or not. As a thumb rule, you must not go for the app if it is the sole production of the developer or if the publisher in any way was associated with controversial apps.

4: Be Watchful of The Permissions You Grant to The Apps

It is always advisable to think twice before allowing certain permissions to apps. Think whether the permissions being asked for are required for carrying out the functions of the app. If not, there is every reason for you to believe otherwise and doubt the app’s intent. A very good pointer to some shady intent is to note how fast your battery is getting discharged after downloading a certain app. This could well be pointing towards some malicious program continuously running in the background. Stay away from such harmful apps.

5: Protect Yourself on Public Wi-Fi by Always Using a VPN

Working on a public network on your mobile phone has always been full of risks, with your crucial data getting into the wrong hands. Therefore, using a Virtual Private Network(VPN) is always advisable when on a public network. A VPN encrypts all your communication with the internet and hides your IP address when you use the internet, making you invisible to everyone else on the network, thus protecting you from cyber-attacks and data breaches. In addition, it safeguards you from other users who might try to gain access to your phone, working on the same free public network.

A VPN also helps you access wider content as it gives you full access to it without applying any filtration on the internet. There are many VPN apps available in Google and App stores. Settle for the one with a clean track record and go through the terms and agreements section carefully so that you are fully aware of what data will be collected and where it will be stocked.

6: Limit Information Shared on social media

Too much private information shared on social media can be a real cause of concern in any unfortunate incident of a data breach. So shell out the only minimum required information about yourself which is an absolute must and not more. Companies these days are involved in collecting all this information and profiling your likes, dislikes, location, family size, etc. So you would never like to share on public platforms lest it gets into the hands of the wrong players and is misused.

7: Take Regular Software Updates

Be very consistent with taking any operating system updates for your mobile phones. It protects you from any vulnerabilities in the previous version and updating, only helps you to eradicate any potential future cyberattacks. The new updates also make your phones work with better speed and increased efficiency.

8: Having a Password Manager Is a Must

Protecting and managing different accounts on the internet is not so easy, especially when you have put in some effort in using strong password protection for each one of them. Protecting your account with a strong password which is a long one with a good mix of upper- and lower-case characters, numbers, and special characters, is good to protect your account from brute force attacks by hackers. But remembering them and then safeguarding them can be a real task. Here the Password Manager comes into the picture, which safely stores all your account details and passwords in a safe digital vault and assists you in generating strong passwords, making your life very simple.

In conclusion, it can be said that with so much personal data shared by the users with the various apps on your smartphones in this era of the digital economy, it is only befitting for the users to have control and demand autonomy over their crucial information. Therefore, it is only in your interest to give due importance to the privacy settings on your mobile phones and be watchful of the permissions you give to the various apps before downloading them and weigh your data privacy against the services offered by the individual apps and then only take a decision for downloading them onto your smartphones. By incorporating some good security practices discussed above into your daily online behavior can take you far with safeguarding your precious mobile phone data and at the same time improving your data privacy health. 

Are you thinking of ways to attract more people passing by to your business place? 

Whether big or small, every business needs to grow, and this growth only happens when many people recognize the business. 

In this era of technology, most people believe more in doing business online as it is believed that online marketing attracts more people to your business. But, what happens to those businesses that have a walk-in store or office? How can you get the attention of those people passing by?

You may feel you have a set of loyal customers that keep coming back, but what makes your business stand out from its competitors is when you attract and maintain new customers. This is because those old and loyal customers will not come around every day. They can decide to move to another seller or even decide to cut down on their spending. When any of these happens, how will your business survive? 

Getting few, consistent customers doesn’t mean you should stop advertising your business. You need to ensure your business is always attractive and relevant to people passing by who may become long-term customers. When you keep having different customers, your business keeps waxing stronger and more revenue keeps coming in. This simply means the business is growing. 

Do you feel your business revenue is stagnant, or is the business getting too slow? Do your loyal customers have cold feet? Then it’s time to re-strategize and make your business stand out for people passing by. 

Below are a few great ways you can make your business stand out;

Let’s start with Neon Signs

Most people have indeed given up on their walk-in stores and business places. They concentrate more on beautifying their website and making it attractive for online users. However, the few businesses still keeping their offices updated and making it more attractive keep looking for more ways to make it inviting. One of those ways is using Neon signs. The fact is, most businesses already know about the neon sign, and it has been used on several occasions to attract people that are passing by. The neon sign is very effective because of its light and the relevant information about a particular business. There’s no way one can pass through a neon sign without looking at it twice. You can buy wholesale neon sign products online and try this tip. Investing in neon signs is good for every business. However, for it to be attractive, one needs to ensure it is visible and quite easy to understand, and the information it carries should be relatable. 

Give out discounts and promotions

This is a common technique that almost every business uses because today’s customers love to get free items or even get an item for half of the price. How do you get people to know your products are going for a discounted price? You can do a temporary banner that will be outside your business place for the sales period. It could be during a festive period, or you can decide to do it on your birthday or the anniversary of your business. When people who are passing by see that the product they want is going for half the price, they will walk in and purchase, and in the process, they could even get more items. Discounts and promos are great ways to attract people to your business.

Your business place should be neat at all times

Nothing beats a neat business premise, and it is an amazing way to attract more people to your business. Investing in your business environment is a huge investment. People like to walk into a neat place to either buy products or do business. Nobody likes a filthy environment. Hence if you want to attract people passing by, ensure your environment is very neat, and you will just watch people trooping in. 

Look for ways to announce your business

In the environment your business is located, you need to look for ways to make your business known. You can decide to use a billboard with your business name and services boldly written. If you run a bar, you can always play some nice music to attract passersby. If you run a food business, then let the aroma of your food attract people who are passing by. If you run a fashion house, most people passing by will get attracted to the kind of clothes you showcase in front of your business place, and they will be forced to stop by. Whatever business you do, ensure something is there to attract those who are passing by. 

Ask your customers for referrals

Another exciting way you can attract more people to your business is through referrals. Once you can get the loyalty of a few customers, you can always ask them for referrals. They only comply with referrals when you treat them nicely. For instance, if a customer is satisfied with your services, their instinct forces them to refer to neighbors, family, and friends. You can always ask them politely to refer people to your business place. Furthermore, the satisfaction of one customer has every tendency to attract more than five people who are passing by to your business place. 

Get involved in community events

According to research, when you get involved in some community events, you are already advertising your business with minimal effort. When you look around the environment your business is located in, you can help other small businesses. You can organize free training sessions or even get involved in some charity events for the kids in the same vicinity where your business is located. This way, more people will know about your business, and your customer base will automatically increase. Anyone who passes by and realizes you are the good man or woman that impacted people’s lives won’t hesitate to stop by. 

Sometimes getting people to walk into your store can be hard especially when you are located in a business hub area. It is therefore important that you stand out and you can do this with any or all of the effective tips discussed above. Try them and see your store traffic and revenue increase consistently.