August 2009
2 posts
5 tags
Why Use Customer Testimonials To Benefit Your...
Let’s face it, today’s consumers are skeptical. Can you blame them? With all the marketing hype and sales pitches people receive each day, we are all a bit jaded. However, to make the sale we must overcome our prospect’s natural skepticism and create a relationship of trust. One of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal is customer testimonials.
...
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Is Your Marketing Spend Really Working for You?
One of my articles, Is your marketing really working for you?, was published in a newsletter of our client, Softlink Logistic Systems.
Businesses spend in a variety of ways in order to attract potential customers. These expenses are made with a view to generating enquiries, closing deals, and growing business. However, most of us do not know whether a particular marketing investment is really...
June 2009
2 posts
The 12-Step Social Media Program for Traditional... →
Audience Identification.
Platform Development & Design.
Brand Campaign Integration.
Content Creation/Coordination.
Goal Mapping.
Brand Identity.
Audience Attraction.
Social Media Listening.
Community & Social Responsibility.
Internal/External Community Engagement & Response.
Brand Advocacy.
Customer Service.
What will be the future of work?
Will social networking and instant messages replace the standard business phone call, the client lunch and the handshake? A new survey by Directions Research, Inc. commissioned by Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) points toward an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and coordinating their tasks, and how business will be...
May 2009
1 post
3 tags
5 Tips for Creating, Promoting and Managing a... →
It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a great place to network professionally, post and find jobs, and answer questions and build thought leadership. But if you’re using LinkedIn solely as a place to maintain an online resume, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to reach and engage with potential customers — LinkedIn groups.
April 2009
9 posts
5 tags
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Tips for pay per click landing pages
As we are setting up a series of landing pages to roll out a huge SEM and PPC campaign for a couple of our clients, I found the the 9 tips listed here very helpful and thought would share them with our readers:
Your landing page should be neat, easy-to-read and use a lot of white space.
Place call-to-action copy front and center on your landing page.
Provide simple and compelling...
7 tags
Webinars: Can They Help Your Business Grow?
Posted an article about “Webinars: Can they help your business grow?” over at our website. Check it out if you’re working towards generating B2B leads for your products or services and have ruled out the idea of hosting webinars (even in India) to:
Gain thought leadership
Branding
Lead generation
Lead incubation.
Designing and executing an effective webinar, however, remains...
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Free Webinar Series: Effective Utilization of...
MaxOffice, an organisation which is focussed on the effective utilization of MS Office products, has announced a series of FREE webinars in association with Microsoft to enhance your productivity.
Dr. Nitin Paranjape and Manmeet Chaudhuri will help you free yourself from the monotony of repetitive office tasks by showing you how to work smart with tools you spend most of your time on - MS Office....
6 tags
8 cardinal sins of B2B Search Engine Marketing
As a B2B lead generation tool, search engine marketing (SEM) is gaining popularity in the Indian context. We are in the process ourselves to start PPC campaigns for several of our clients.
We recently came across an informative list of mistakes that companies make which result in waste of money, disappointing results and lost opportunities.
Sin #1 - Not establishing a clear and realistic goal
...
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10 ways to measure social media success
Interesting article on econsultancy about how to successfully measure social media campaigns. Chris Lake who wrote the article takes an interesting approach in that he says:
Rather than focusing on the smaller, campaign-specific metrics, such as traffic from Twitter or the number of fans on Facebook, wouldn’t it be better to look at how it helps to shift the most important business KPIs, such as...
4 tags
Top 5 Lead Generation Practices
Jon Miller in a recent post at Marketo.
Top Five Lead Management Best Practices:
1.Be everywhere. “Cast your marketing net wide so customers will find you no matter where they are searching,” he advises. (as long as they are within your target market profile). 2. Build prospect profiles. Create a lead database to manage and store all your leads, and then make sure you have a strategy...
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3 Tips for Improving Ecommerce Experiences
Tip #1. Display differentiators and value propositions on the homepage
It’s as easy as constructing a simple statement, or bullet points, or a general voice that relays: Welcome. Here’s who we are. Here’s what we sell. Here’s how we’re different. Here’s why you should care. Here’s what you should do.
Tip #2. Look at the site from end-to-end
Companies should get into the habit of clicking...
March 2009
24 posts
6 tags
Study reveals PR scores more than advertising in...
Clients want to keep track of all their money spent in this economic downturn . They want to know how it helped in building the brand value. Keeping this in mind, recently Text100 Global Public Relations [Press Release] and its research arm, Context Analytics, announced the results of their Media Prominence Study [PDF]. The study establishes that public relations may be more important than...
3 tags
Brainstorming - An art or a process?
Over years of experience of coming up with ideas and making sure the creative juices flow in the right direction, our team has evolved certain best practices in brain storming. Here is a very brief list of the same.
1) Size matters. Make sure you have a group of not more than six people in your brainstorming session.
2) Prepare the group. Don’t surprise them. Allow your team to prepare by...
2 tags
Video lectures From The World's Top Scholars →
A user-friendly platform for educational video that would let anyone be able to freely access instruction from the scholars and guest lecturers at the leading academic universities.
The site offers 60 full courses and 2,395 total lectures (almost 1300 hours of video) from Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton that can be browsed by subject, university, or instructor through a...
4 tags
Low Cost Advtg. Campaign For a Low Cost Product
After spending just Rs 2.4 million, Tata Motors has been deluged by enquiries by the thousands from far and wide for their Rs 100,000 (2,500 USD approx.) car - Tata Nano says this news article from Mint.
The social networking era has become a great aid for the Tata Motors’ Nano sale buzz to flourish in the online world. The Nano campaign, prior to its release, has been intensified through...
3 tags
The Art of the Tutorial →
How many companies overcome the challenge to make people understand what the company does in two minutes or less using video?
As a small business owner your website has got to explain what you do in under two minutes. The explanation has to be fast, interesting, and compelling.
3 tags
Mediums, and the message
Political parties are using a mix of mediums to communicate with different voter segments…
While door-to-door campaigning and political rallies continue to be the mainstay of election campaigns, political parties in India are looking at advertising campaigns across media platforms to reach the elusive voter, especially in urban areas.Political parties are now more focused in their marketing...
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Research Quantifies the Success of Internal...
Gallup Research of 300,000 businesses indicates that 75 to 80 percent of your people are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be.
If all your employees were “fully engaged,” Gallup says, your customers would be 70 percent more loyal, your turnover would drop by 70 percent, and your profits would jump 40 percent.
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Made for India: Succeeding in a Market Where One... →
An interesting read on why, how & what for do international brands are willing to customise for their Indian consumer.
…Increasingly, multinational companies are selling products that are not just made in — but that are made for — India. Entire generations of Indian consumers, who once felt grateful simply for being able to experience the same brands as the rest of the...
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Measure Your PR Success: Focus on a sale not on... →
“PR, as a profession, suffers from a lack of high respect in the CEO’s suite when compared to finance, operations and R&D. But it need not be this way. The concept of demonstrating that wisely conceived and effectively executed PR may produce a clip book but more important, produces sales, can and should be applied to all of public relations. Digi PR provides the playbook for how...
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Think Before You Decide To Cut Costs
Rita McGrath from Harvard Business Review suggests better ways to cut costs. As she rightly indicates that all measures to cut costs might not be the best and the right ways to do so. Here are the things we think may help you contemplate your next moves towards cutting costs:
Beware of the hidden dependencies among different parts of your operations when you are evaluating areas to cut.
...
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Social Networking & Blogs More Popular Than Email! →
It’s true! It’s quicker to use Twitter, Facebook or an instant messaging service and there’s less chance your message will be lost or blocked.
Two thirds of us now use blogs & social networks— and their popularity is being boosted by the growing use of mobiles for internet access. Read the press release on the Nielsen report here (.pdf).
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7 Ways To Use Social Media To Improve Marketing
As Chris Brogan rightly says “Social media isn’t always the right tool for the job.” and we agree. There are many businesses in India trying to integrate the social media platform in some way or the other to reach out to their customers.
We have chosen below the 7 most preferred ways that if tailored correctly will impact positively for Indian businesses looking to try out social...
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Fortunately, You are inefficient!
Shocked to read these words?
I want to highlight the startling fact that most office workers operate at a low level of efficiency.
If you are intrigued click here and find out how you can save atleast one hour per day at work.
3 tags
Indian Politicians Moving Online
Internet campaigns and news sites are mushrooming across the Internet prior to the Indian General Elections 2009.
Whether it is an attempt to superficially duplicate Barack Obama’s successful online campaign (The full report on Obama’s Successful Social Media success can be accessed here) or if it really signals a change in the mindset of our Indian politicos who now want to connect with...
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Innovative medium for selling your product →
5,000 dabbawallas, men who deliver food to 500,000 people in Mumbai daily, promoted a mutual fund scheme. Dressed in T-shirts and caps embossed with the product logo, the dabbawallas delivered an investment form along with the lunch box at the customer’s office. They were also trained to begin a conversation about the benefits of the product.
Keep your eyes open to find new ways to market...
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Tips for engaging audience with a newsletter
1. Keep content focus on reader needs
Even if customers who are not ready to buy yet will stay “warm” if they are getting information which is helpful to them
2. Work around a theme
Aim for a handful of elements each month, organized around a feature article that provides fresh, useful perspective on a topic your audience has shown interest in. Over the course of a targeted email...
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Brands that Tweet
“Buzz Marketing for Technology: Brands that Tweet” http://tinyurl.com/6qpx6x
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C Level Tweeters List
“Buzz Marketing for Technology: C Level Tweeters” http://tinyurl.com/5tw43e
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Marketing Tip #3
Solicit email addresses & send out an email to business contacts & prospects 1-2 times yearly. You could offer special pricing to repeat customers. Or an update on new products or services.
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Marketing Tip #2
Increase business transactions by systematically offering customers additional products or services at the point of sale.
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Marketing Tip #1
Reward existing customers for referring new ones. This is one easy step business owners can take to increase their total number of customers.