Digital Vaibhav

The 10 Best Marketing Strategies to Reach College Students

2021-01-15T09:27:00.001+05:30

One of the best purchases I ever made was signing up for Spotify Premium in college. I even remember when it happened, in March 2014. I had just signed a job offer for after graduation and Spotify released premium pricing for students. It was beautifully serendipitous and we’ve been in a committed, monthly-fee relationship everx since. In fact, now I pay for a family plan and have gotten all my family members (and maybe some roommates) hooked on it.

Moral of the story: if you market to college students early, they can become your most loyal customers. Look at Apple! The shiny-fruit company consistently gives discounts to college students, creating lifelong Mac users.

10 effective ways to market to college students

1. Leverage trials and samples

Let’s just address the elephant in the room outright: college kids love free stuff. I can’t tell you the number of events I attended in college because they offered free food. What better way to hook some long-term loyal customers than offering your product for free?

There are a few ways you can actually get your free samples or trials in front of your audience; try coordinating with residence life to have a move-in kit available for the fall semester or sponsored study break during midterms or finals. If you’re a food service on Seamless, GrubHub, or DoorDash, you can offer a discount for first-time diners; once they get a taste, they’ll keep coming back for more.

2. Offer targeted discounts

Just like personalized ads, discounts specific to your audience are a great way to engage them. Everyone wants to think that their school is the best—what better way to reinforce that than advertising “For a limited time, Villanova students get free fries with every cheeseburger.”

If you want an easier, more direct way to get feet in the door (or online orders), offer discounts if a student provides their student ID at the time of purchase. You can often get those types of deals listed in a coupon catalog handed out in Student Unions or in Move-In Day packets. Free advertising for all!

3. Write clever copy

Have you hung out with college kids recently? If you haven’t, you’re missing out. I truly learn new words every time I’m around the youths. Since college came into existence, kids have been creating their own lingo for academia and partying (and I’m really trying to make “groovy” come back into style).

While I wouldn’t recommend trying *too* hard to speak their language, catching students’ eyes with clever marketing and ad copy is a must. Whatever you do, don’t be lame. Not sure where to start? Here are some tips for writing creative copy that may help.

4. Mind your social accounts

If you’ve run social ads before, you probably already know that it is a great way to reach Millennials and Zillennials. When it comes to marketing to college students, make sure you’re leveraging those platforms; even if you don’t have the budget to spend on ad campaigns.

There are easy ways to engage college students on social media.

Leverage user-generated content; encourage your customers to tag your products in their posts so you can easily re-post.
Spend time liking and commenting on related posts; this will help the algorithms show your account to more potential customers.
Announce new products or releases on your social accounts; if you’re a big, national brand, think about making an account specifically for the college crowd you’re serving, e.g. “VillanovaDominos” or “MaybellinePHL.”

5. Try out traditional tactics

Don’t worry about going old school when it comes to advertising. College kids are still pinning coupons to their fridge or digging them out when it’s time to order food. Think about sponsoring on-campus events, or having an on-campus pop-up shop in the middle of the main through-way to get the most out of student foot traffic.

I can’t tell you the number of coupons just like this that were stacked in my kitchen drawer in my college apartment. They came in handy when we didn’t want to go grocery shopping or cook, but still needed to stick to a college kid budget!

6. Host a giveaway, raffle, or competition

If you’re trying to build up your social following or your email listserv, or simply get a lot of students engaged with your business, host a giveaway. You’ll need to make it tempting enough for college students to actually give away their information and/or money to win. That could be a Sonos speaker system to boost the music at parties, covering the cost of a parking pass on campus, offering a lifetime of free sides (french fries forever!), naming a product after them, the list goes on and on.

You can also pay into the competitive nature of college kids! Just like emphasizing exclusive discounts for colleges, if you have more than one university in your area, make a little friendly competition like this 5K did.

7. Engage student ambassadors

Pay attention to the students who are loyal patrons of your business. Whether that means engaging with them in your store or restaurant or keeping track of recurring orders online, make sure you’re acknowledging their loyalty. Think of your student ambassadors as nano-influencers.

Make some ambassador kits, including simple pieces of swag like a t-shirt, bottle opener, water bottle, etc. and arm them with materials to give away to their peers. This can work best if they get referral discounts themselves!

While not college-student-specific, Aerie is great at leveraging user generated content on their social accounts. They are regularly #regram-ing content from their customers—which just makes it easier to fill your social calendar!

8. Consider social causes

I was in college during KONY 2012. What a movement. And let me tell you, everyone was talking about it. I mean professors, students, residential life, school administrators, food service employees, and more. It was the social justice cause of the year.

By nature, college students are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to save the world. And this generation in particular is invested in social justice. Reflect on an issue that affects the community your business is in. Not only will it make the world a better place to have another contribution to the plastic-free or BLM fight, but students will also be more inclined to give your brand a second look if their money is also going to a cause they believe in.

9. Look for college media sources

Meet college students where they are and with what they’re consuming. Most likely, the students you’re targeting have a student-lead newspaper, weekly newsletters, or even a popular online student forum or app. Reach out to those publications to sponsor a post or display ad.

SImilar to reaching out to student ambassadors, look for student-run social media accounts to offer sponsored posts. Most schools will have an instagram account for their mascots or an “overheard at *school name*”. ICYMI, TikTok is taking over the world; reach out to student organizations (believe me, the dance team definitely has a TikTok account) and ask to be featured in a video.

10. Influence their parents

In the instance that your price point is a little too steep for the average college kid, target their parents. The best time to do this? Move-in day and parents weekend. Yes, this gets a bit complicated during, say, a pandemic scenario. But it’s not impossible! Do not underestimate the tenacity of college kids to bribe a buck out of their loving parents.

If you’re looking for ways to get to parents, think about care packages! Emphasize how your product will help their child slay their midterms, finals, job interviews, presentations, you name it. Or maybe it will help them stay healthy, or make their tiny college dorm feel like home (my mother bought me *many* happy lights to make it through the winter).

If you’ve seen success marketing to college students, we want to see it! Even better, if you became brand-loyal to a business that targeted you as a student, tell us what got you!

Best Web Hosting for Bloggers in 2021

2021-01-04T11:43:00.002+05:30

Nowadays, every self-respecting blogger ought to have a website. Luckily, getting one is no longer a problem. Furthermore, you can even launch it by yourself. It might seem insane, ridiculous, or unbelievable to you, yet you really can build a decent blog site completely on your own. So how do you do that? Here’s how.

Basically, all you need for creating any website is a WordPress theme or any other web template, a domain name, and, certainly, a hosting plan. Simple as it is. Most modern themes are equipped with drag-and-drop editors, which means that you will be able to make a fully functional website with no coding involved at all. Also, the themes come with various plugins that will ensure your site’s great performance. Finally, web templates simply look lovely. Moreover, there is a wide variety of different fancy themes, which means that you will definitely find something great for your blog.

However, what is also extremely important for the smooth performance of any website, and your blog is obviously not an exception, is decent web hosting for blogs. Well, hosting is basically the very thing that makes your website work. Having a website without it is pretty much like using a computer which is not connected to Wi-Fi. Best hosting for blogs is the very tool that makes your site available for millions of internet users all over the world. That is why it is so important to pick the best possible option for you.

How to Pick Up the Right Hosting Plan for Your Blog

Well, I guess it’s more or less clear why you need web hosting, so let us find out how to pick up a decent plan. First things first, you should determine your niche. There are various options for different types of websites. For example, if a person is going to launch an online store, then he or she might want to consider one of the best web hosting for small business. However, we are speaking about blogs now, so here is how you choose a hosting plan for this very type of website.

Choose a reputable company

First of all, you ought to make sure that you are getting a web hosting for blogs from a reputable company that will not let you down. Since the ability to load your website’s data fast as well as its protection and safety directly depends on the provider that supports your website, you have to be sure that you can trust the company you have chosen.

Pick the right plan

Pretty much all the providers offer a whole bunch of plan variants from the cheapest ones (approximately $3 per month) to the most expensive ones (up to $200 per month). Certainly, you might think that the cheapest options are bad and you surely need something more powerful. However, keep in mind the fact that you need a plan for a personal blog, not a multi-brand store, which means that your website will totally survive on an inexpensive plan. The point is, do not spend too much on it.

Beware of the cheap unlimited storage options

No, you don’t need a super expensive plan for a blog site, yet you must beware of those appealing cheap hosting plans that offer unlimited storage. Hosting sites for blogs would go bankrupt if they offered unlimited storage for everybody for just $3 a month. So if you see such an appealing offer, be ready for an unexpected (for you) shutting down of your site or, what’s even worse, becoming the victim of a scam.

Make sure that you actually own your site’s domain

This is important in case you would like to change your best hosting for bloggers over time. In other words, if your provider owns your domain name, you stuck with them forever and, as a result, it would be extremely difficult or even impossible to get a better hosting plan from another company.

Best Web Hosting Options for Bloggers

Now since you already know how to pick a hosting plan for your personal blog, let us take a look at some decent variants for you.

BlueHost:

BlueHost as well has been in the marketplace for quite a while, so this is a trustworthy company too. In fact, this very provider takes care of more than 2 million websites worldwide, which actually proves that people trust BlueHost. The starter BlueHost plan costs only $7.99 per month. Also, if you are a new client, you will receive a special intro offer and get this same plan for $3.95 per month.

BlueHost offers:

1 website support
50 GB SSD storage
Unmetered bandwidth
SSL included
Free domain and 25 subdomains
20 MySQL databases
Support service

DreamHost

DreamHost Helps You Succeed Grow your website faster by using DreamHost as your foundation. It's Super Easy to Use Our custom control panel is simple to use and removes the headache of managing your web hosting. Full Feature tool suite includes everything you need to be successful. Fast & Reliable If your website is slow or down, then you are losing customers, conversion and search engine rankings. 24/7 Expert Support are available to help when you get stuck — anytime, day or night.

The starter DreamHost plan costs only $2.49 per month.

Dream Host Offers:

1 Website
Unlimited Traffic
WordPress Pre-Installed
New Free Automated WordPress Migrations
New WP Website Builder
Fast SSD Storage
Free SSL Certificate
Add Email as low as $1.67/mo
3 Year, 1 Year & Monthly Plans

Conclusion

Finding a truly decent hosting for your blog might be a little bit tough. Yet there is a huge variety of companies such as SiteGround, BlueHost, and InMotion that will take good care of your site. Which particular provider you choose is completely up to you. Just keep in mind some of our tips and make sure that the price matches the quality of the services you get.

Which hosting for blogs do you think are the best for blogs? Let us know in the comment section below.

Top 20 Free Websites to List Your Business Online in 2021

2021-01-01T17:48:00.007+05:30

As a local business attracting customers in today's technology-driven world, you must get your business name and profile listed in all the major online directories. Many of these directories are well-known websites and social media platforms such as Facebook or Yelp, where any business owner can make a page for their company. However, many less-popular or local websites allow business owners to list their companies for free as well.

Listing your business on every possible business directory is the best way to make sure your business maximizes its SEO and is visible in as many searches as possible. In addition, creating a free business listing with the same information on a variety of local business listing websites helps search engines confidently show your profiles more often, focusing on keyword searches related to your products or services. In other words, listing your business massively drives your local SEO. This will increase the reach of your business profile in searches across multiple search engines in local and mobile queries.

What are Business Listings?

Business listings are public profiles which can be viewed by anyone. A typical business listing contains NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) details.

Advanced details such as website, working hours are also captured by certain business listings. A business should include its information on various platforms and directories with which they can be found everywhere on the internet.

Benefits of business directories

These are some of the many benefits of creating a free business listing on a business directory, social media platform or review site:

Boosting your online presence. Before the internet, businesses relied on phone books, newspaper ads, and other forms of traditional marketing and advertising to make themselves known. In the online era, no marketing plan is complete without maximizing your online presence. For a strong online presence, creating a business page for your company on every possible review site, social media platform and free business listing site is vital.
Making your business known locally. Local SEO is important to the success of businesses that target an audience in a specific geographic region. Without a proper presence in online directories, your business may fail to reach a potential customer who could travel just minutes from their home to get what they need from your company. Without creating a free business listing in directories – which almost always include geographic filters – you may struggle to make your business name known to that potential customer, among thousands of others.
Getting your info out there. Want potential customers to know when your store is open, how to get in touch, what services you provide and how much other customers trust you? Free business listings allow you to share information such as your business hours, contact information, and addresses on platforms where users can search for businesses based on specialty, location, and ratings.
Driving your brand engagement and reputation. Even customers who ultimately choose another business over yours or don't click on your link will see your business name. This recognition cements your brand's reputation in potential customers' minds – especially if your ratings are high – and increases the chances that they'll choose you in the future.

Important websites where you should be listed

Ready to get your business listed in all the right search engines and directories? This list shows the top 20 places where you can list your business for free. Following the list are a few pointers on how to get the most out of your local listing profiles.

List

Yelp
Google
Bing
Facebook
Better Business Bureau
Angie's List
MerchantCircle
LinkedIn
YP.com
Whitepages
Yellowbook
Citysearch
MapQuest/Yext
Local.com
Foursquare
CitySlick
USdirectory
BizJournals.com
TomTom
DiscoverOurTown.com

How to list your business on business listing websites

Although no two free business listing websites operate in the same way, you will likely need to follow roughly these steps to list your business on the platform of your choice:

Claim your business page. Your business may already have a page on some platforms. These pages tend to be incomplete placeholders that the platform – or a user – has implemented to ensure that your business at least appears in the directory.
Complete your business listing. Whether or not you have to first claim an existing business page, you will need to complete your listing with valid, up-to-date information so that potential customers get a full picture of your company. Include your address, phone number, services offered, hours of operation and any other contact methods.
Verify your listing. In theory, any internet user could claim your business listing as their own. That's why business directories require you to verify your identity and your business before your listing goes live. This is usually as simple as filling in a string of numbers that the platform delivers to you by text, email or phone call.

Checklist for when you do get listed

There is more to securing your presence in search results than just listing your business in these directories. Follow the checklist below to make sure that your listings work for you and generate the widest possible reach for mobile and local internet searches.

Ensure your info is consistent. Check to confirm that your business's name, address and phone number are the same on every listing.
Add a detailed company description. Let your company shine with a great description. You should highlight your company's history and product or service offering.
Include a link to your website. One of the greatest strengths of your local online profiles is the link to your business's site. This has the potential to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website. Local listings are mostly used in mobile searches, so be sure your website is mobile-friendly, or you could lose visitors fast.
Claim the listing. Some local search engines allow a user to claim their profile through a short verification process. Claiming your profile can increase its reach immensely.
Include secondary business information. Over 30% of local searches are for the phone number, address or hours of operation of a business. Be sure to include items like your hours of operation, menu or calendar of events on your local profiles.
Add pictures and videos. Visual media items like photos and videos have a much higher conversion rate than standard text. Be sure to upload images and videos to your profiles.
Gather customer reviews. Reviews send signals of confidence to search engines and mark engagement from customers. You should always encourage customers to leave reviews of your business and respond to those reviews

Contact Us If you want to List your Business Online & Want to Generate High Return form it. Let Us know About Your business By Signing up at Digital Vaibhav.

How to Acquire a Google Knowledge Panel for Your Business?

2020-11-28T11:19:00.003+05:30

How to Acquire a Google Knowledge Panel for Your Business?

According to Google, knowledge panels are automatically generated when searching for entities that are in the Knowledge Graph. The panel is automatically updated “as information changes on the web.”

What we’re talking about here are ways to make it easier and more likely for that knowledge panel to appear. First, check the SERP to see if one already exists for your organization.

If so, click on the “Own this business?” link in the panel so you can claim it. The verification process is pretty simple. Usually, Google can associate the knowledge panel entity with one of these accounts; YouTube, Google Search Console, Twitter, Facebook. If not, then you’ll need to provide additional information to verify that you’re an authorized representative.

Step 1: Make a Wikipedia and Wikidata page

Wikipedia and Wikidata are the primary sources of information for Google when creating a knowledge panel. So, you must build your online presence on both of these platforms.

How to create a Wikipedia page for your business?

Step I: Create a Wikipedia account

Creating a Wikipedia account is easy. Visit any Wikipedia page and click on ‘Create Account’ located on the top right corner.

Now, provide the necessary details such as:

Username
Password,
Email address.

Once you’ve filled all the fields, click on ‘Create your account’ and you’re done!

Step II: Edit Pages to become an auto-confirmed user

After logging in, you must become an auto-confirmed Wikipedia user, and one of the best ways is by editing Wikipedia pages. So, you must spend the initial one month editing old Wikipedia pages.

Step III: Create your page

Once you become a confirmed user of Wikipedia, start working on creating your page, but keep in mind these things:

Make it grammatically correct
Improve the readability
Write information-rich content

Other than this, citations need your utmost attention. You must provide the sources to support your content.

Sources that qualify include:

Books
Newspapers
Magazines
Journals

Sources that don’t qualify:

Social Media
Press releases
Professional/personal blogs

Step IV: Submit your page

When you are finished creating the content, submit it to the website. Wikipedia will then analyze the page and the citations to determine whether the information is credible or not. After Wikipedia deems it reliable, you will get posted on the platform.

Step V: Update it regularly

Here’s a piece of advice. Never stop updating your Wikipedia page. There’s nothing more harmful to your brand, Wikipedia, and Google, than outdated information.

How to create a Wikidata page for your business?

To create or edit Wikidata, you can refer to the step-by-step guide on editing wikidata.

Step 2: Be ACTIVE on Social Media Platforms

Social media profiles are listed in a knowledge panel. Also, they help Google learn more about your brand, its services, and how it operates. Apart from this, your online presence helps with visibility and allows users to discover your social profiles conveniently.

Step 3: Implement a Schema Markup

Implementing structured data on your website allows Google to study the contents of your site efficiently. It also helps the search engines learn how the content is structured. Schema markup implementation can enhance online visibility and CTRs as well.

Furthermore, provide as many details as possible about your website via meta tags. Optimize the meta tags, including the meta description and title with the primary keyword. Add details about the authors too.

Step 4: Create Listings on Local Directories

Local stores are listed in the Google knowledge panel as well. So, to acquire one for your local business, you should create a Google My Business profile.

You’ll need to create and verify a Google My Business account first. If you’re local, it makes sense to do this anyway, since that enables your business to get listed on Google Maps, allowing users to leave reviews. That’s basic local SEO.

How to create a Google My Business profile?

Step I: Log in to Google My Business

Open Google My Business and log in with the Google account, which you want to link with the local listing of your business.

Step II: Enter your brand name

The first thing Google asks you is to enter your brand name.

Step III: Select your brand’s category

Select the most accurate category associated with your business. This is crucial information that allows Google to list your business to the right audience.

Click on ‘Next’ to provide details about your services.

Source: Google My Business

Step IV: Specify your brand details

After entering your brand name, click on ‘Next’ to specify other essential information associated with your brand. This includes:

Location
Delivery Area

Based on your selection, Google will take the process forward. Selecting ‘Yes’ opens a window, where you must provide the service areas outside of your business’ location.

Selecting ‘No’ leads you directly to the window where you must enter your contact details.

Choose the most viable option for your business.

Step V: Verify your local business

The final step is to verify your local listing.

Ways to increase your chances of acquiring a Google Knowledge Panel

1. Create User-centric Content

Creating user-centric content increases your chances of acquiring a Google Knowledge Panel for your business. You must study the user’s intent behind a search and optimize your content accordingly. Satisfied users increase your chances of ranking in the Google knowledge panel.

2. Build User Reviews

User reviews can help Google better understand your business. The search engine analyzes the reviews to determine whether the brand in question receives a knowledge panel or not.

3. Boost Your Site’s Authority

Higher site authority means higher chances of acquiring a knowledge panel. And one of the best ways to boost site authority is through link building. Approach a high authority website and look for guest posting opportunities. Once you get selected as a guest author, create an article and link it back to your site.

Conclusion

Following these practices can help acquire a knowledge panel for your business. However, you must prepare effective strategies that assist you in creating user-centric content and build quality links for it as well.

Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Business

2020-11-26T10:14:00.001+05:30

Digital Marketing for Small Business

When small businesses get started, their focus is often on how to get their first group of customers through the door. They may rely on traditional forms of advertising, such as print ads and coupon mailers or even big signs on the side of the road. They may trust that since they know they offer a good product or service, it’s only a matter of time until customers will find their way to them.

While this strategy may bring in a trickle of business, there is a better and easier way. Small businesses should consider the huge marketplace of prospects online. No small business, no matter how new, should overlook this vast marketplace.

Are You Postponing Digital Marketing?

Why would you choose to postpone putting time and effort into digital marketing? Different small business owners may come up with a variety of reasons to avoid this form of marketing, but in the end, procrastination is still procrastination.

Small businesses sometimes believe that they don’t have the time or the money to be competitive online. They think they can only face so many challenges all at once and they are still learning the ins and outs of business in general. Many of them may prefer to take things slowly and to stick with one or two basic forms of advertising, assuming that their business will evolve as time passes.

They may even think the best strategy is simply to wait for customers to show up. Since they are a small business, they may think they only need a small number of customers.

This is not an effective approach. There is never a guarantee that your business will attract customers just by existing and even if it does, you may not attract as many customers as you need to make your business become profitable.

Benefits of Online Marketing

The group of potential customers that are found online is a much larger group of people than you are likely to be able to attract locally. Using digital marketing, you can reach an enormous audience in a way that is both cost-effective and measurable.

Other benefits of online marketing include:

The ability to interact with your prospects and learn exactly what they are looking for
The ability to reach a global marketplace
You can save money and reach more customers for less money than traditional marketing methods
Get to know your audience and allow them to know you personally which can help to create brand loyalty
You can track responses to your marketing efforts immediately

Your Competitors Are Online

For your business to be successful, you need to pay attention to what your competitors are doing and learn from it.Think of your competitors not just as someone that you are planning to beat, but as people who have something to teach you.

When you look at what your competitors are doing, you will get some idea of what is working and what isn’t working. Most likely, whatever type of business you are in, your competitors have established a web presence. What kind of content are they using? Are they blogging, or are they using a lot of graphics and videos?

How do they communicate their brand and what makes them unique? How well do they engage with the audience? Do you think you can do better? You can’t if you don’t participate in competing in the digital world.

If your prospects begin to search for a business similar to yours and are able to find your competitors’ website but not yours, your business is not even in the running. Your prospects can’t choose you if they don’t know about you. In this scenario, your competitors have just raced ahead of you regardless of whether they have an effective website or a clear message.

Your Customers Are Online

If you have been avoiding digital marketing, is it because you think you are simply not ready? Do you think you just need some time to get established and then you will figure out the digital marketing angle?

The problem with this approach is that your customers and potential customers are already online. Right now. Today. There’s a good chance they might already be looking for a business like yours, but if they can’t find you easily, they are probably going to choose someone else.

This is how people do business today. When someone has an interest in your business, whether it is in your niche in general or if they are curious about your brand, the first thing they are going to do is research online and see what they can find out about you.

They expect to find you there with a website and a social media presence. They may be looking for reviews so they can learn what other people are saying about your company and whether it is a good place to do business.

If a potential customer can’t find you online, they may conclude that your business doesn’t appear to be legitimate. There is a very good chance that a lot of these prospects may decide not to take your business seriously and they will quickly head somewhere else.

Once they have made that decision, they probably won’t be back.

Be Accessible to Your Customers

It’s clear that in today’s digital world, the first place the average consumer looks for what they want is online. Whatever product or service they are looking for, they will most likely start their search with Google. If you have no online presence at all, you won’t be found, and you can’t compete.

If you have an online presence but your competitors are easier to find and are found first, you still might not be found at all. Besides creating a website, learning search engine optimization is a strategy that can help you move ahead of your competitors just by being the first name that a prospect finds in a Google search with keywords that can lead them to your business.

Simple questions that your prospects may want quick answers to should be easily discoverable online, such as where you are located, what your hours are and what you specialize in. By looking at your website and your competitors’ websites side by side, your prospects should be able to compare hours, prices, special offers and more.

This is why it’s imperative for you to know what your competitors are up to. Your prospects are already checking both you and your competitors out. They are already comparing you against each other. What are they finding out?

Let Customers Come to You

Think of digital marketing as a way to make yourself accessible to the people you are trying to reach in order to offer your products and services. The scope of your business can reach well beyond your walls. You are able to attract a much larger audience than you possibly could by just catering to local prospects.

By creating a web presence, your business is open for business even when it’s closed. You can create an atmosphere in which your customers can come to you anytime day or night.

At their convenience, customers and prospects can send you emails with questions, make purchases and browse your inventory.Potential customers who have no way to physically come to you can still do business with you, whether they are limited by disability, transportation or simply living too far away.

Get to Know Your Target Audience

Digital marketing allows you to engage with your prospects. You can gradually get to know them and what they are hoping to find.On social media or on a blog you can start a conversation. Run a survey or try to get to know them. Pay attention to their comments or their responses to surveys.

By interacting with people digitally, you can start to get to know what they are looking for. Where is their pain? What is keeping them up at night? What solutions can you offer to them? Instead of trying to guess, digital marketing allows you tools and methods for finding out who your customers really are.

In this way, you start to build a relationship with your customers. You become much more than a business. You become a trusted partner. People are much more likely to buy from businesses that they have already bought from.

Few forms of advertising are as cost-effective as digital marketing. Small businesses frequently try to get as much as possible done on a small budget. Many forms of digital marketing allow you to communicate your brand and reach a wide target audience even when your budget is very tight.

Compared to advertising on TV, radio or through direct mail, digital marketing costs considerably less and reaches a much wider audience at the same time. Using digital marketing to promote your small business will help you to have a much better chance of business success.

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2020-10-21T08:51:00.001+05:30

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Overview

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of getting traffic from the free, organic, editorial, or natural search results on the search engines. Simply put, it’s the name given to the activity that attempts to improve search engine rankings. In many respects, it's simply quality control for websites.

SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, and news search engines. Employing a sound SEO strategy will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

Search Engine Crawlers

The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find the pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.

You should be careful to keep the following points in mind in order to ensure your brand is well positioned on search engines −

Search engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users to websites and content that is most relevant to what the user is looking for. This is determined by the site content, how fast your site loads, how often your site is linked to from other credible online resources, and user experience, including design, navigation and bounce rate.

The items that the search engines don’t want are: keyword stuffing, buying links, and poor user experience (too many ads and high bounce rates).

Domain naming is important to your overall branding. As a best practice, use sub-directory root domains (example.com/events) versus sub-domains (events.example.com). Other best practices with domain names are to use consistent domains and keywords in the URL.

Optimize for different types of results. In addition to optimizing for desktop experience, focus on mobile and tablet optimization along with other media.

Content on the site should have title tags and meta descriptions. Although meta tags aren’t as important as they used to be in the past; if you do use them, ensure they are formatted correctly.

Basics of Mobile Marketing

2020-10-21T08:48:00.001+05:30

Mobile marketing is marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a smartphone. Mobile marketing can provide the customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, and ideas.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is similar to advertising delivered over other electronic channels such as text, graphic and voice messages.

Mobile

SMS messaging (text messaging) is currently the most common delivery channel for mobile marketing.

Search engine marketing is the second-most common channel, followed by display-based campaigns.

New Mobile Marketing Channels

The expanding capabilities of mobile devices enable new types of interactive marketing. New mobile marketing channels include −

Location-based Service (LBS) involves detecting the area the user is connecting from (geolocation) and sending marketing messages for businesses in that area.

Augmented reality mobile campaigns overlays the user's phone display with location-specific information about businesses and products.

2D barcodes are barcodes that scan vertically as well as horizontally to include much more information. A mobile user can scan barcodes in the environment to access associated information.

GPS messaging involves location-specific messages that the user picks up when he comes into range.

Ways to Drive Conversions

Beyond having a mobile-optimized site or app, certain strategies are more likely to improve the user experience, while boosting sales. In this section, we will discuss the four ways to drive engagement and conversions.

Optimize for micro-moments

Increasingly, users turn to their mobile devices for quick, in-the-moment advice, help, or information. Instead of sitting down to research a topic or issue in depth, they’re more likely to take immediate action, and to expect instantaneous answers.

Use QR codes to streamline user experience

One way to provide relevant information as quickly and seamlessly as possible to mobile users is through the use of QR codes. Whatever you’re using QR codes for, they should ideally act as shortcuts for getting valuable information into the hands of your customers and prospects.

Use hyperlocal marketing

More than ever before, consumers are turning to their smartphones for location-specific information. And not just citywide information – but hyperlocal based on very small, specific geographical locations (like neighborhoods or even specific streets).

Use SMS marketing

Use SMS marketing to connect with users on-the-go. A few ways to do this include offering incentives, publicizing sales and events, sending appointment reminders, and sharing customer surveys.

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Basics of Conversion Rate Optimization

2020-10-21T08:45:00.005+05:30

Conversion Rate Optimization

CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimization. Whatever may be the ultimate goal of your website, a conversion is the successful completion of that action. CRO is the process of optimizing the site to increase the likelihood that visitors will complete a specific action.

Conversion Rate is a key metric in e-commerce, as it reveals the percentage of the site’s total traffic completing a specific goal. The higher the conversion rate, the better.

Conversion Rate

Once you have defined what conversions you want to track, you can calculate the conversion rate.

Let’s assume you regard a sale as your conversion. As long as you are tracking the number of leads you get and the number of resulting sales (conversions), you can calculate your conversion rate −

$$Conversion Rate = \frac{Total Number of Sales }{Number of Leads} \times 100$$

When you know what the value of a lead is, you can determine how many leads you need each month to sustain your business and how much you should pay for advertising. This is true whether you are using pay-per-click (PPC) or any offline advertising like mailers or print ads.

What is CRO?

Conversion Rate Optimization is −

A structured and systematic approach to improving the performance of the website.

Informed by insights − specifically, analytics and user feedback.

Defined by the website’s unique objectives and needs (KPIs).

Taking the traffic that you already have and making the most of it.

What CRO is Not

Conversion Rate Optimization is not −

Based on the guesses, hunches, or what everyone else is doing.

Driven by the highest paid person’s opinion.

About getting as many users as possible, regardless of the quality or engagement.

Why do Companies Use CRO?

CRO plays an important role in improving the efficiency of critical processes. Here, we will discuss the most common areas where companies evaluate CRO.

A/B testing − What is A/B testing? In basic terms, you set up two different landing pages, each has a different element from the other. Your site presents the “A” version of these pages to half your traffic and the “B” version to the remaining half. Then you can see whether or not a small change to a call-to-action (CTA) can make a difference in conversion rates.

Customer Journey Analysis − How did your customers progress from brand awareness to purchase? Also often referred to as a Conversion Funnel.

Cart abandonment analysis − Investigate the cause of not checking out, once the items have been added to a shopping cart.

Segmentation − Segmentation shows approaches to grouping prospects and customers to deliver more relevant communications and offers for better response rates to these communications.

In addition, CRO is used for copy optimization, online surveys, and customer feedback.

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Basics of Social Media Marketing

2020-10-21T08:41:00.000+05:30

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media today is essentially word-of-mouth marketing. Getting people to connect with you online in the social arena helps spread the word about what your company is and what are your products and services.

SEO and Social Media

For many teams, there are different sets of people who work on SEO and social media separately; however, this scenario is changing lately.

The two may still officially belong to separate teams, but social media marketers will need to be more informed on the SEO strategist’s agenda, so that the SEO strategy can go hand-in-hand with content promotion.

SEO strategists too need to know how to work with social media marketers in order to receive the social signals it needs to make sure their company ranks high in search.

There are two functions of social media for business −

Are you participating in the conversation and sharing?

Are you listening and monitoring what is being said about you?

Start Social Media Marketing

If you’re starting from scratch with your social media strategy, here are the basic steps to get you started −

Step 1 − Choose your social networks

Step 2 − Fill your profiles completely, remembering to load in your keywords

Step 3 − Find your voice and tone

Step 4 − Pick your posting strategy - how often, when, and what type of content

Step 5 − Analyze and test

Step 6 − Automate and engage

Although we’ll be getting into the specifics in the latter half of the tutorial, here are a few things to consider in your general social media strategy.

Facebook tops the list of social media strategy

For many, social media starts with Facebook. Just having a page, however, does not suffice. Sophisticated content marketing is now the way to foster engagement on Facebook. If your business doesn’t have a content marketing strategy or a blog, but wants to maintain a strong Facebook presence, it may be time to create a content marketing strategy for Facebook. We’ll get to know more on this in a subsequent chapter.

Optimize for mobile

All social media efforts need to be optimized for mobile. You’ve probably heard, but everyone needs to make sure their websites are optimized for mobile. Social media managers need to be aware of this to ensure that the format of any promotions they do (especially those that include driving people to their company websites) are optimized for mobile. Any images used on social media should also be viewable on mobile for optimized user experience.

Emphasize on human experience
It may be digital, but you need to consider the “human experience.” Google and Facebook have made changes to their platforms to push businesses to focus more on the “human experience.” For social media marketers, your social media posts need to be more relevant, provide more value to your audience, and the engagement needs to be more “human.”

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Introduction to Email Marketing

2020-10-21T08:34:00.001+05:30

Email Marketing Overview

In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations.

Any email communication is considered as email marketing if it helps build customer loyalty, trust in a product or company, or brand recognition. For instance, when a company sends a commercial message to a group of people using electronic email mostly in the form of advertisements, requests for business or sales, or donation solicitation.

Email marketing is an efficient way to stay connected with your clients while also promoting your business. Doing so, you can easily and quickly reach target markets without the need for large quantities of print space, television or radio time, or high production costs.

Target Markets

Additionally, while using email marketing software, you can maintain an email list that has been segmented based on several factors including the length of time addresses have been on the list, customers’ likes and dislikes, spending habits and other important criteria. Emails are then created and sent out to specific target members on the list, providing them with a personalized email detailing information that they are interested in or have requested.

Email marketing can be carried out by −

Email newsletters

Digests

Dedicated Emails

Lead Nurturing

Sponsorship Emails

Transactional Emails

Email Newsletters

Email newsletters offer the following three advantages −

They can spread your brand awareness. By building habitual communication with your email subscribers, you enable them to recognize your brand and associate it with a positive sentiment.

They can leverage the existing content. Many companies do quick summaries of their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their newsletter.

They give you the freedom to include different types of content that might be important to your organization.

Digests

Digests are generally easier to consume than newsletters as they generally consist of links and lists. One popular option is the blog digest, which collects notifications about the articles you publish throughout a certain time frame and releases an email with the links.

Return Path

Dedicated Emails

Dedicated emails also known as stand-alone emails, contain information about just one offer. For instance, you can use a dedicated email to notify your target audience about a new whitepaper you've released or invite them to attend an event that you're hosting. Unlike newsletters, dedicated emails don’t need to include many graphical elements to separate the different blocks of text and prioritize information.

Lead Nurturing

The concept of lead nurturing introduces a tightly connected series of emails containing useful content with a coherent purpose. Lead nurturing is timely, automated, and is typically a low financial investment.

Sponsorship Emails

If you want to reach a totally new audience and generate net new leads, you might want to try sponsorship emails. In sponsorship emails, you pay for inclusion of your copy in another vendor’s newsletter or dedicated send.

Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are the messages that get triggered by a specific action your contacts have taken, enabling them to complete that action. For instance, if you are signing up for a webinar, you will fill out a form and then receive a transactional (thank-you) email that provides you with the login information in order to join.

Transactional emails are also the messages you receive from ecommerce sites like Amazon that confirm your order and give you shipment information and other details. The biggest advantage of transactional emails is that they enjoy a high click-through rate (CTR).

Transactional Emails

Popular email marketing services include MailChimp, Constant Contact, and My Emma.

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Hostarmada: Best Hosting service for small business

2020-10-13T11:26:00.006+05:30

"Host Armada"

Best Hosting service for small business

Hostarmada is a newly launched independent Hosting Company founded in the last quarter of 2019. Please notice one thing that I mentioned them as Independent which means they do not resell hosting from anywhere. They have their own dedicated Team for everything, from server management to Client Support.

HostArmada : Powerful Hosting

HostArmada have powerful Hosting Infrastructure which is main and most important Pros of it. But it is not only, here are few more pros of using hostarmada.

LiteSpeed Technolody to enhance server speed.

Cloud SSD Based Servers to handle request frequently.

Highly Scaleable infrastructure.

Good Quality 27×7 Support.

Simple Hosting Dashboard.

cPanel Included.

Free Domain with All Plans.

Daily Backup with one click Restore.

Free Speed Optimization to Speedup your website.

Huge Server Resources to handle sudden traffic growth.

Very Affordable as Compared with others in same configuration.

9 Server Location from all over the world.

Hostarmada : Server Locations

As a starting company, I am very impressed with HostArmada Server locations. As per my research, and also told by one of their executives (Bogdan Toshev) that they are using Linode Cloud Infrastructure which has a benefit for Indian Users because they are going to get Indian Server.

They have servers in ->

USA West Fremont, CA,
South Canada Toronto, ON
Europe London, UK
USA Central Dallas, TX
USA East Newark, NJ
Europe Frankfurt, DE
Mumbai India, IN
Asia, Singapore, SG
Sydney Australia, AU

You can better recognize geolocation of all servers provided by HostArmada by checking the above image.

Hostarmada Plan & Pricing

Now many of you are thinking that they are using Cloud + SSD + LiteSpeed which will cost you very high than normal hosting. The answer is, You are absolutely wrong. They provide the most reliable, most powerful and better optimized hosting platform.

No Cancellation fees in case you don't like our service

No additional costs for canceling your service or binding contracts which demand forfeit!

Free Website Migration Service

For every Web Hosting Package we have included a FREE one time transfer service for your website!

45 Days Money-back Guarantee

Test our servers and fall in love with us, or if you decide to leave - receive all your money back!

Shared Hosting Plan

Benefits of using HostArmada Shared Hosting

Low number of Clients per server

We maintain a lower number of clients per server than anyone else! This allows for low server load and optimal website performance!

Cloud SSD Technology for 99.9% Uptime

Cloud-powered Shared hosting servers for optimal uptime and no hardware failures! SSD powered Storage for fastest read/write times!

24x7 Technical Support

Human-powered technical support service for fast and secure website transfer, template or module installations, and any website-related issues!

What makes our Managed Shared Cloud SSD Hosting awesome?

The most important features - on one click away!

1-click Application Installer

Open-source Applications are the easiest way to build fantastic websites at basically no cost. Installing an open-source application has never been that easy! Thanks to our 1-Click Installer, your website will be up in no time!

Automatic Daily Backups

Backing up your website is quite an easy task, but maintaining healthy daily backups is always a challenge. Thanks to our Offsite daily backup solution, our customers will always have a backup one click away!

SSD Cloud Storage

For the storage of our Cloud SSD Shared Hosting packages, we are using best in class, native SSD Drives. Combined with the battery-powered RAID controllers, we ensure the data integrity of our customers!

Tight Website Security

Innovative, AI-based Security technologies are taking care of every website on our Cloud SSD Shared Hosting plans, providing an optimal level of protection against the most dangerous web attacks!

Easy to pilot service with cPanel

What is a web hosting service without a wheel to steer it in the right direction? Over the years, cPanel became an industry standard when it comes to reliable, native, and easy to use web hosting control panel!

Managed Web Hosting service

With our Managed Cloud SSD Shared Hosting packages, our customers will never have to worry about the health and the up-to-date state of our web hosting environment! We will fully take care of that aspect!

Web Server Cache

With an intuitive caching mechanism, our customers' websites not only load faster, but they also have a minimal resource usage footprint, allowing even more website visitors on smaller and cheaper plans!

VPS Hosting Plan

Benefits of using HostArmada Cloud VPS Hosting

Full ROOT Level of access on demand

Our Cloud SSD VPS Hosting packages allow complete control, thanks to On Demand granted access to the root user of the Operating System!

Cloud SSD Technology for 99.9% Uptime

Cloud-powered VPS Hosting for optimal uptime and no hardware failures! SSD powered Storage for fastest read/write times

24x7 Technical Support

Human-powered technical support service for fast and secure website transfer, template or module installations, and any website-related issues!

Dedicated Hosting Plans

Dedicated CPU Server full of features!

Perfect combination of usability, stability and high security!

NGINX Web Server Cache

Here at HostArmada we take the caching to the next level! With intuitive caching mechanism our customers' websites not only load faster but they also have very small resource usage footprint, allowing more website visitors on smaller plans!

Consistent Backups

Backing up a website is quite an easy task but maintaining healthy daily backups is always a challenge. All Dedicated CPU Server plans have automated cPanel backup service activated by default with the option of Weekly backups enabled by default. This can be extended to Daily and Monthly backups as well

Latest Services for optimal performance

The core services we offer are always up to date! This allows for quick bug fixes as well as immediate vulnerability patching when a patch is officially released! We maintain multiple php versions so every website - old or new, can feel comfortable on our Dedicated CPU Server plans!

ROOT Access for advanced users

Since the main advantage of the Dedicated CPU Server hosting plans is their complete control and their unlimited customization options, we supply root level of access on every Dedicated CPU Server hosting plan. This does not affect the Management service we include nor require any additional fees!

Payment Methods

Payment methods is one of most Important things while choosing any product. It can be hosting or domain OR Any tools, Because when you decide to buy a hosting and you goto checkout and your payment method is missing there. How will you feel? Ofcourse Irritating.

So let me tell you here that how many and which payment methods are supported by Hostarmada Hosting.

payment method for hostarmada

For this time they accept Visa (USD Enabled) and PayPal (USD enabled). Like other hosting provider they do not offer different site for different country which means local payment methods are not going to work there.

Tools and Dashboard of Hostarmada

Hostarmada provides traditional cPanel to monitor and Manage hosting and website. I have attached the cPanel Dashboard picture that shows all tools provided by them. So let see them one by one.

They provide all the tools and features that you need to manage your website like Free SSL Certificate for encrypting, Daily backup for making your site ready to restore any time and many more tools like that.

As usual Cpanel, you can monitor the usage of hosting and can access everything from FTP to MySQL database.

Which web hosting is best for beginners

2020-10-12T10:19:00.001+05:30

Best Web Hosting for beginners & small business

*BlueHost.com:

Bluehost is a web hosting company founded by Matt Heaton and Danny Ashworth in Provo, Utah. They have a staff of 750 people working around the clock. Being a recommended web hos by Wordpress.org, they feature 1-Click installations in all their plans.

If there is one name you know in the world of web hosting, Bluehost is probably on the top along with Inmotion and GreenGeeks. It got its start back in 1996, which makes it ancient by web standards, but I like them none the less.

which web hosting is best?

Bluehost offers five main types of hosting plans:

Shared hosting
VPS hosting
Dedicated hosting
WordPress hosting
Cloud Sites

If you are looking for something inexpensive and basic, shared hosting is probably what you need. This is what most beginners and small businesses are shopping for. Dedicated hosting is the most expensive option, appropriate for large commercial firms that need full control of their resources.

With dedicated hosting, you are essentially renting a physical server. VPS hosting is a middle-ground option where you share a physical server with others, but you have your virtual operating system, so the server functions as if it is physically yours. WordPress hosting is of course what it sounds like—hosting optimized for WordPress customers. Let’s take a look at the plan tiers for each.

Shared Hosting

Basic: Beginning at $3.49 per month, this plan jumps up to $7.99 per month at the regular price.
Plus: This plan is regularly $10.99 per month.
Choice Plus: This plan is $23.99 per month.

These prices are all pretty good. But with this deal, you can make sure you get the best price! At the Basic level, you get one website, 50GB of space, and unmetered bandwidth. You also get one domain, five parked domains, and 25 sub-domains. Additional features include 5 email accounts with 100 MB of storage each.

With the Plus or Choice Plus plans, you get unlimited websites and unmetered space and bandwidth, which is awesome. You get one domain included, and you can have unlimited parked domains and sub-domains.

Email accounts and storage are unlimited, along with $200 in marketing offers. Plus it includes Global CDN and one SpamExperts (over $24 per year in extra benefits).

The highest level plan is Business Pro. It includes up to $180 in extra annual benefits, including two SpamExperts, one premium SSL, one dedicated IP address, domain privacy, enhanced performance, and SiteBackup Pro.

VPS Hosting

Standard: $19.99 your first month, up to $29.99 after that
Enhanced: $29.99 your first month, up to $59.99 after that
Ultimate: $59.99 your first month, up to $119.99 after that

These prices are in line with typical costs for VPS hosting industry-wide. The speed for the first two plans is 2 CPU cores, up to three and four cores for the top plan. You get 30GB SAN storage at the lowest tier, up to 120GB at the highest level. RAM ranges from 2 GB up to 8 GB. You get 1 TB of bandwidth at the Standard level, up to 3 TB at the Ultimate level. Each tier includes one domain. The Standard tier includes one IP address; you get two with the rest. Every plan is backed by 24/7 support and a money-back guarantee.

Dedicated Hosting

Standard: $79.99 your first month, $119.99 per month after that.
Enhanced: $99.99 your first month, $159.99 per month after that.
Premium: $119.99 your first month, $209.99 per month after that.

With the Standard plan or Enhanced plan, you get a 4 x 2.5GHz CPU. The Premium plan offers you a 4 x 3.3GHz CPU. Storage is ranging from 500GB to 1 TB (mirrored), and RAM starts at 4 GB at the Standard level, ranging up to 16 GB at the Premium tier. You get 5 TB of bandwidth at the Standard tier, 10 TB at the Enhanced tier, and 15 TB at Premium. One domain is included with every plan. You get three IP addresses at Standard, four at Enhanced, and five at Premium. All plans are backed by 24/7 service and a money-back guarantee.

WordPress Hosting

Basic: Starts at $2.95 with a 36 months subscription
Plus: Starts at $5.45/mo with a 36 months subscription
Choice Plus: Starts at $5.45/mo with a 36 months subscription

These plans look the same as their shared hosting plans, and they cost the same.

Basics of Content Marketing

2020-10-11T09:02:00.005+05:30

Content Marketing Overview

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. It ultimately aims to drive profitable customer action.

Content Pyramid

Content marketing is an umbrella term covering a set of strategies, techniques, and tactics to fulfil business and customer goals by using the most relevant content to serve, attract, convert, retain, and engage customers. Content uses blogs, podcasts, video, and social media sites as a vehicle. It’s a practice now being used by 86% of businesses today. However, effective content marketing is not so easy to find.

Goals of Content Marketing

Given the fact that content plays a role in virtually all marketing techniques and tactics, there are no goals that can’t be reached using content. However, from a content marketing perspective, we see that marketers focus on some key goals such as −

Brand awareness

Lead generation

Engagement

Sales

Lead nurturing

Customer retention and loyalty

Customer evangelism

Up-selling and cross-selling

Although these are the typical goals found in content marketing research, think out of the box and look at the goals of your “audiences”.

Start Content Marketing

Here is brief set of guidelines that you can follow to start content marketing −

First, find a reason to start using content marketing. Knowing what the reason and the purpose is important. In a few years from now, people will say content marketing doesn’t work. It’s like in social media: people start saying it doesn’t work because they often forget for what and whom they wanted it to work in the first place.

Know the different people and types of customers and prospects you want. Be aware of how they “act”, what they want, and how they will use your content.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Before dreaming up new content, see what you already have. Often, the best content for your customers and business is already in the mind of your customers and the people in your business. You just need to present it in a way everyone understands.

Once you know what content you have, figure out what you need.

Now, it’s time to get that content organized and check out the best formats and channels. Know the different formats of content your prospective customers use and there are some good tips and tricks to make sure that your content is “engaging”. Align the content to the types of channels you think that it will be best received.

It’s time to make sure that the content is found or used! If not there is little sense in spending all the energy, is there? Promote, connect and engage.

Finally, test, measure, and optimize continuously. Try different types of content. Check analytics. Monitor your expenditure. And always adapt.

Basics of Facebook Marketing

2020-10-11T08:59:00.002+05:30

Facebook Marketing Overview

Facebook has 1.68 billion active users and is currently the largest social network – that adds up to a lot of potential brand exposure.

Facebook Page

Your Facebook Page makes your business −

Discoverable − When people search for you on Facebook, they’ll be able to find you.

Connected − Have one-on-one conversations with your customers, who can like your page, read your posts and share them with friends, and check in when they visit.

Timely − Your page can help you reach large groups of people frequently, with messages tailored to their needs and interests.

Insightful − Analytics on your page will give you a deeper understanding of your customers and your marketing activities.

Start Facebook Marketing

Ready to get started? Let’s walk through the steps!

Step 1: Set Goals

Any strategy begins with goals. What do you want out of your Facebook Page? Sales is the obvious choice, but there can also be secondary goals that lead to sales.

Consider some of these Facebook marketing goals as you craft your plan −

Increase overall exposure and awareness.

Create a loyal and engaged community.

Establish authority and showcase your knowledge.

Step 2: Research

Your Facebook research will include these areas −

Identify your audience and where they spend their time.

Research your competition and watch what is working for them.

Understand the latest techniques. Make sure you know the latest techniques on Facebook that are effective. Keep up with the trends so you know what is working for others.

Step 3: Design the Facebook Experience

Now that you have your goals set up, work backwards from those goals to determine how you will achieve them.

Set up an editorial calendar. Plan your content that you want to share. You can schedule your daily activity, weekly activity and monthly activity by using a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Set up an activity calendar. Map out your long-term activity and marketing plan, along with an estimate of your outcomes. Also decide when and how often to engage with your key influencers.

Step 4: Measure Your Progress

Take time to look back at your progress on Facebook so you know if your marketing is working. Become familiar with how Facebook Insights work so you know which posts are working for you.

Basics of Web Analytics

2020-10-11T08:54:00.004+05:30

Web Analytics Overview

Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.

The focus of web analytics is to understand the users of a site, their behavior, and activities. The study of online user behavior and activities generate valuable marketing intelligence and provides −

Performance measures of the website against targets.

Insight on user behaviors and needs, and how the site meets those needs.

Optimization ability to make modifications to improve the website based on the results.

Web Analytics Tools

An average web analytics tool offers hundreds of metrics. All of them are interesting but only a few would be useful for measuring the website’s performance. Focus on what is important to get meaningful insights on your website, and start your web analytics initiative by defining realistic and measurable objectives for your site.

In order to identify the users, web analytics tools need to report on user sessions (also referred to as visits). There are different techniques to identify users such as IP addresses, user agent and IP address combination, cookies, and authenticated user.

Nowadays, the most common user identification technique is via cookies which are small packets of data that are usually deposited on the user’s computer hard disk when the person visits a website.

How to Review Web Metrics

When reviewing metrics, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you are encompassing the set of data that best evaluates your efficiency −

Think People and Process

No doubt, technology is important, but you need to go beyond it. Take time and care to thoroughly understand your stakeholders’ measurement needs.

Segmentation

There’s more to data than just total number of page views. Many organizations unfortunately still report on total page views and miss out on all the non-page view interactions such as video, downloads and rich media.

Analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, MixPanel, Flurry and others, are very powerful and allow us the ability to go beyond simplistic hit collection, and really dive into rich data and patterns.

You can easily report and derive insights with visitor segmentation, have quick visibility into buyer or non-buyer behavior, group content by asset type, measure gated or ungated content consumption, and with relatively ease run a cohort analysis. These are just a few views that could be utilized while segmenting your data.

Think Visitors, Not Visits

Explore data such as where visitors came from, what course they took between pages while on your website, and where they spent the most (or least) time during their visit. Later, after two or three visits they got converted to customers. With this information, you’re able to gain increased awareness of visitors and how they interact with your content throughout the buying cycle.

Optimize What Matters Most

Optimize conversions on all things digital. Take it one notch higher and optimize on the Lifetime Value of a customer. Put into place a system that gives you the ability to measure behavior and interaction across multi-devices and multiple channels for (most) users that come from mobile, web, etc.

Maximize Returns

You’ll maximize the return on gathering, reporting and analyzing data, when you do so consistently. Commit to the process and develop a list of priorities and a measurement “roadmap.” Audit what you have periodically. Websites and mobile apps are constantly evolving, so ensure your analytics implementation is in-line with such changes.

Basics of Digital Marketing

2020-10-11T08:50:00.003+05:30

Digital Marketing Overview

In simple terms, digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media. Digital marketing is often referred to as online marketing, internet marketing or web marketing.

Digital marketing has been around for quite some time but it hasn’t been very well defined. We tend to think that digital marketing encompasses banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click. Yet, this is too narrow a definition, because digital marketing also includes e-mail, RSS, voice broadcast, fax broadcast, blogging, podcasting, video streams, wireless text messaging, and instant messaging. Yes! digital marketing has a very wide scope.

What Digital Marketing is Not?

To clearly define what digital marketing is, it’s sometimes easier to start with what it’s not. For instance, it does not include more traditional forms of marketing such as radio, TV, billboard and print as they do not offer instant feedback and report.

Why Digital Marketing?

In digital marketing, a reporting and analytics engine can be layered within a campaign which allows the organization or brand to monitor in real-time how a campaign is performing, such as what is being viewed, how often, how long, as well as other actions such as response rates and purchases made.

The use of digital marketing in the digital era not only allows for brands to market their products and services but also offers online customer support through 24x7 services to make the customer feel supported and valued.

The use of social media in digital marketing interaction allows brands to receive both positive and negative feedback from their customers as well as determine what media platforms work well for them.

Digital marketing provides increased advantage for brands and businesses. It is now common for consumers to post feedback online through social media sources, blogs, and websites about their experience with a product or brand.

Not surprisingly, billions of marketing dollars spent on traditional channels is already starting to shift to digital marketing campaigns and this will continue to increase as the Web matures.

Which is the cheapest and best web hosting & Domain service?

2020-10-10T09:56:00.004+05:30

Bluehost : The Cheapest and best Web Hosting & Domain Service.

The Best Web Hosting

FREE Domain for 1st year
FREE SSL Certificate Included
1-Click WordPress Install
24/7 Support

Starting at ~~$7.99~~ $3.95/month*

Choosing a domain name is important for your website because it represents your brand or business online. We recommend choosing a short domain with relevant keywords so visitors can easily access your website. While your domain can include letters, numbers or hyphens, you'll want to avoid any special characters so it's easy to remember and type into a web browser

It All Starts With A Domain Name

Each Domain Includes

Easy Management

Once you use our domain name lookup and find a suitable web address, you can manage your site through a simple interface. Managed your domain and all of its aspects from an easy-to-use control panel. Change DNS records easily across multiple domains.

Auto-Renewal

Protect your domain from expiring and accidentally being lost by enabling auto-renewal. Switch back to manual renewal at anytime. Using this service ensures that your website domain names are always protected.

Domain Lock

Once you find your perfect domain, lock it down to prevent unauthorized transfers. Unlock it for transfers at anytime. Our domain name service will save your preferred name and keep it secure for when you are ready.

If you're starting a Wordpress site, BlueHost has one-click integration and a free domain.

Basic: $3.95/month
Plus: $5.95/month
Choice Plus: $6.95/month
Pro: $13.95/month
Features: free domain, unlimited traffic, easy Wordpress integration

The basic package on Bluehost will run you $3.95 per month. Once you sign up, you'll get a free domain and access to the site builder. You'll also be able to install Wordpress, one of the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management systems, in just one click. In fact, Wordpress even recommends using BlueHost to start your website.

BlueHost gives you four different package options: Basic, Plus, Choice Plus and Pro.
The key differences are, the Basic only lets you host one website whereas the other two give you unlimited site hosting. You're also capped at just 50 gigs of web space with the Basic plan, but with all three packages, the web space is unmetered. The amount of traffic you bring in is unlimited with BlueHost, but you get $200 in marketing offers if you sign up for Plus or Choice Plus to spend on Google or Bing services.

All Plans Include

Domains

Our domain manager makes it easy to track, update, transfer, purchase, and administer all of your domains in one place. Plus and Business Pro accounts support unlimited add-on and parked domains, subdomains, and even domestic and international domains.

Resource Protection

Our technology identifies websites using excessive resources and temporarily re-assigns them to isolated systems. This defends your website performance and mitigates the risk normally associated with shared servers.

Scalability

Start with what you need and move to more powerful options as your website grows. Our custom technology lets you upgrade in just a few clicks.

SSL Certificates

Powered by Let's Encrypt, each SSL Certificate provided helps secure the connection between websites and your visitors. This helps keep personal information, e-commerce transactions, and other sensitive data safeguarded.

Marketing Credits

Receive $100 for Microsoft Advertising and $100 for Google Ads when you spend your first $25 on a new Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads account.

Get Verified on Google My Business

List your local business online to quickly connect with customers in your area. Allow them to see your location and your hours of operation on Google Maps.

*Basic Plan

* Plus Plan

*Choice Plus Plan

*Pro Plan

Advanced Plans and Add-Ons

Upgrade your plan for advanced features or enhance your account with optional add-ons

Multi-Server Management

Need more than one account? Add shared, VPS, or even dedicated services to your account with ease. Simply log in once and effortlessly manage all of your shared web hosting services in one place.

Access Control

Create unique passwords restricting access to different areas of your account. Generate one for billing and ownership information, one for cPanel and dedicated server access, and of course a master password for the entire account.

Content Delivery Network

CloudFlare is built directly into your account. An advanced content delivery network, it automatically increases the performance of your site. Enable CloudFlare instantly on any of your websites for free without any coding changes.

Advanced Capabilities

Use advanced capabilities like Secure Shell (SSH) access, server-side includes, log file access and web-based managers for files, databases and email. Customize your own .htaccess files, cron jobs and php.ini files.

Unique IPs

Enable advanced control of ports and further protect your account by securing an IP address assigned to your websites only.

Domain Privacy + Protection

Help to prevent identity theft, spam, and phishing attacks by masking the personal information associated with your domain name. Receive SMS alerts (message and data rates may apply) for changes to your domain and avoid domain blacklists with Domain Privacy + Protection.

SiteLock

Defend your websites against attacks and malware by detecting and fixing vulnerabilities and threats before they cause problems.

CodeGuard

CodeGuard works behind the scenes, taking daily backups and saving each as a separate version - making it easy to turn back the clock should disaster strike.

Spam Protection

Powered by Google, Postini filters out harmful and unwanted content before it reaches your inbox, isolating quarantined messages for you to review.

*Note: Bluehost's Shared Hosting is perfect for getting started online. Built on top of a reliable platform and backed by 24/7 expert support, Bluehost's Shared Hosting is perfect for blogs, hobbies, and even small business websites. Choose the plan that's right for you and get started quickly and easily.