Month: July 2020

For businesses to remain in the competitive online landscape today, they must adapt to the rapidly evolving changes. Owing to these changes and the development in Artificial Intelligence (AI), what was once considered as mere fiction, is now becoming a reality. Marketers can no longer rely upon old methods and educated guesses forever as we are living in an era where marketing technology is moving fast and consumer interests and behaviours are difficult to predict. 

For savvy marketers, AI is no longer a new vocabulary. Large budgets are allocated for its implementation. Marketers have witnessed various applications with Machine Learning (ML) to successfully manage marketing campaigns with AI in digital advertising. AI-powered tools have now become widely available to small and mid-sized businesses. 

Artificial Intelligence in Digital Advertising 2020

Implementing AI in advertising is helping marketers build in-depth customer insight reports, content creation, and data-driven marketing strategies. It has taken the marketing industry by storm without a large human influence.

Through AI in digital advertising, marketing practitioners have managed to improve their personalization approach with cheaper costs. AI records and stores the data for future optimization, whenever a prospect or a consumer interacts with a product. This increasing productivity and performance, showcasing one of the limitless possibilities of the AI technology.

Unlike traditional marketing practices, AI takes sales forecasting to a higher level with the ability to understand consumers better. Implementing AI in marketing leads to the creation of detailed and more accurate consumer profiles. Tons of data from advertising platforms provides measurable impressions, click-through rates, bid levels, and demographics across search, content, and social media channels.

Marketers optimize their digital marketing campaigns by analysing data on what works and what doesn’t. Therefore, AI makes a natural fit for advertising. 

Facebook Advertising

Facebook advertising, with the help of AI, helps to dictate how much you pay and how your ads are displayed. AI systems power today’s ad exchanges and the entire ad performance and budget effectiveness dictated by the complex interplay of data points.

Related Post- 7 Facebook Real Estate Marketing Strategies That Will Dominate 2020

Performance and Spend Optimization

AI in advertising analyses how your ads perform across specific platforms, then offer recommendations on how to improve ad performance and spending. It saves your time and highlights performance issues you didn’t notice. It also makes decisions on its own about how best to reach your advertising KPIs.

 

Ad Creation and Audience Targeting

AI-powered systems create ads for you partially or fully, based on what works best for your goals. Ad copies are written in a fraction of time, which perform better than human written ad copies. Platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Google have AI systems that look at your past audiences and ad performances. KPIs and real-time performance data is measured and new audiences are identified who will be likely to buy from you.

Google Ads

Google has implemented AI in its advertisement model. AI helps to identify the users’ taste, show ads as per interests, and create text and display ads. Google AdWords uses an automatic auction-based system, allowing advertisers to plan the lowest possible cost per conversion, giving a high return on investment.

For most of the business owners, innovative digital marketing trends are among the top priorities. 

Related Post- How Performance Marketing is Helping Clients Grow Better?

AI Revolutionising the Retail Industry

AI is changing the face of the retail industry, representing the future of modern business. It is revolutionizing the retail industry by making it cost-effective to deliver a personalized, immersive, and optimized experience for every customer.

Beyond data crunching, studying purchasing preferences, consumer behaviour, and buying sentiment, AI is put to good use to stay in the competition. AI-driven algorithms personalize the user experience, increase sales, and build loyal and lasting relationships into e-commerce retail processes.

For retail marketing, companies use AI to deploy chatbots, gather data, and predict purchases to create a more customer-centric e-commerce experience.

Here’s how some major e-commerce leaders are implementing AI in retail and advertising to boost sales: 

 

Chatbots 

Retailers have realized that excellent customer service is critical to run a successful business.

AI has an effective and better customer service solution with the help of chatbots.. Chatbots also help in backlinking to increase the traffic on the company’s website. 

Visual Search

Customers get the same or similar type of clothes, and also get suggestions about what would go well with them.  Visual search systems powered by AI allow customers to upload pictures and find similar types of products based on colours, shapes, and patterns.

Voice Search

Companies, such as Walmart, Kohl’s, Tesco, and Costco, use Google or Amazon AI technology.

They provide customers with easy and quick voice search. With the help of Alexa, customers can just ask for a particular product item and its delivery status by voice search, without typing anything.

Amazon

Amazon is the king of e-commerce retail AI. It has integrated AI at every step of its process right from its web service to product recommendation to automated ads. Amazon’s algorithm is strong and the entire business has been rebuilt on AI.

Olay

Olay, the Procter & Gamble skin care leader, has an AI powered skin advisor. The advertising campaign had an online service analysing a user’s skincare needs at a very granular level. The AI performed a deep learning-powered skin analysis and recommended more personalized skin care for women. The makeup and skincare business has disrupted the way in which the skincare industry functions with the help of AI. Know more about this case study to  understand how Parc built and enabled smarter skincare with ML and AI for Olay

 

 

Podcasts have been gripping audiences from everywhere, and there has never been a better time to start podcasting. Many business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers are capitalising on the popularity of this medium. Starting a podcast is easy, as it has tons of business opportunities. 

 

It is no surprise that podcasting is an excellent opportunity to build a genuine connection with your audience. So, you must be curious about how podcasting can help your business. This article is for you to understand how you can launch your podcasts and take advantage of this fantastic marketing platform.

Why Should You Podcast? 

As of July 2020, there are over 1 million podcasts only, but if you compare it to blogs, there are over 600 million blogs. It is wrong to ignore the benefits which podcasts can bring to your business, considering this number. Podcasting is a much less crowded space than blogging, to get a competitive advantage now is the perfect time to get started. People prefer tuning to podcast platforms as podcasts can be sanity savers; moreover, they are informative and educational.

People draw tons of inspiration and enjoyment from various podcast topics. From a business perspective, you can deliver content beyond written content and establish credibility for your brand by reaching a mass of people at once on the podcast platforms. Plus, podcasts in India are gaining a lot of popularity as they offer a unique experience. So why hop on the bandwagon? 

Leverage podcasts as a marketing tool

Podcasts are just a piece of conversational content that is communicated directly to the listener. Creating a podcast does not require significant financial investment. Sharing information through podcasts creates a more personable and intimate experience for your audience than reading your content. To put it simply- podcasts make brands even more tangible.

Also, every podcast platform provides the potential to drive traffic back to your website by a link. At the end of every podcast, you can direct your listeners to your site. Podcasting has genuinely gone mainstream on Apple podcasts. After it, Podcasts on Spotify have a massive number of active listeners as Spotify is available on both android and ios.

To help you avoid common rookie mistakes, here are a few recommendations on how to get started with podcasting and hack your way in the podcast journey.

 

Choose a Niche 

As a podcaster, you can attract your set of audiences, positioning yourself as an expert in a particular topic or field. You can encourage and influence listeners to purchase your products and services or promote your business. So find out your niche for your podcasts and be focused on those particular topics. Narrow your range of topics into multiple episodes and make it appealing to your potential audience to tune to your new adventures. Plan your podcasts topics and structure your content according to the episodes.

 

Gear to get started

Invest enough to create a quality podcast by using quality equipment. You do not need a professional studio to record quality content for your listeners. All you need is purchasing a high-quality mic. The better your microphone is, the better your podcasts sound quality will be.

Do your research while buying the right set of microphone, headset and pop filter. Browse a couple of options on amazon and see what best fits in your budget. Check which equipment can let you record your podcasts more comfortably. After finishing the recording, you will want to make specific edits and adjustments in your podcasts for better sound quality.

For editing your podcasts, you will find many podcast editing software at a surprisingly affordable price. Be a perfectionist, after recording and editing, make sure everything sounds right before releasing it to the world. Choose a professional introduction with fantastic music and catch the attention of your audience in the first 60 seconds to make them continue listening to your podcast.

 

 

Related Post- 9 Reasons Why Content Marketing Should Be Part of Your Marketing Plan

Hosting Your Content

Once you are ready to export, launch your finished podcast to distribution platforms, it’s time for hosting. It’s a misconception among podcasters; you can’t directly upload your podcasts on the platforms like Spotify and Itunes. Create an account on a media host on a subscription service to store your audio files.

Please choose the right hosting service as they make it easy to upload your podcasts by providing stats, marketing tools and RSS feed which is a URL. Publicize your RSS feed to the listeners and let them find, download and subscribe to your podcasts. Verify if your podcast landing page includes podcast artwork and description text whi9ch reflect the look and feel of your brand. Platforms such as iTunes and Spotify pay attention to these details while promoting you.

 

Related Post- Content Strategy: Your Company needs it, Surely!

 

Be a guest or find guests 

Just like movie promotions, you can head out to collaborate with other podcasters and make your guest appearances in your niche. In the same way, you can invite a few famous people in your podcasts. In this way, you will be able to get a new set of audiences by cross-promotion. You can recommend specific episodes on each other’s platforms and be benefited with increasing audiences. 

 

Advertise on Social channels 

Promote your podcasts most creatively on social networks. Use rich media, images, videos, teasers to communicate about your new podcasts. Link your posts with the URLs of the podcasts on Spotify. You can also create behind the scenes content for your stories on Instagram and Facebook. Poll your target audience on social media for the topics they would want you to discuss. 

At the end

Podcasting gives you access to movers and shakers in your industry. Boost your confidence and tie up your shoes to get started on launching your brand on podcast platforms. Make a difference to your brand by experiencing the podcast market.

 

Now it’s time for your voice to be heard!

 

There are over 326 million average monthly twitter users globally to share your content with. Every day about 500 million tweets are sent on Twitter. The audience you are actually looking for is most probably present on this platform and is actively listening. So let’s understand the nitty-gritty of Twitter Marketing to make an impact, drive results, build a strong presence on Twitter and connect to your passionate and powerful audience. 

 

Twitter is the fifth most popular social media network, with more than 145 million active daily users. Twitter provides a platform for people to discuss all the trending topics that they strongly feel about. When you’re excited about something and want to share it with a lot of people – you Tweet it. Twitter marketing helps individuals and businesses to reach their targeted audience and engage with them in different ways, whether organically or with paid ads. 

 

When brands connect with what’s happening on Twitter by creating their presence, it helps them in increasing their brand awareness by +8%, brand preference by +7% and purchase intent by +3% you can observe an overall lift across the marketing funnel. Unlike other platforms, Twitter is focused on conversations, mentions, tweet threads and retweets.

 

Let’s check some ways how you can organically market on Twitter:

 

How to market (Non-Paid) on Twitter?

Twitter has its own audience, which uses its native platform lingo. Though the basic use is the same as compared to other social media channels, the functionality and applicability are completely different.  

 

Create a Twitter marketing strategy

To start with, understand how Twitter as a platform works, the only key to success is creating strategic and savvy plans for Twitter marketing to add in your overall social media strategy. To grab and hold your audience’s attention, create a highly effective Twitter marketing strategy and implement it effectively as Twitter is a fast-paced network. (Best advice is to follow brands who have done it successfully.)

 

Set Goals 

You need to understand what you’re actually trying to achieve if you want a positive impact on your business with the planned strategies. For achieving success on any social media platform, you should have clear and measurable goals. Create SMART goals for your twitter marketing plan: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. And then, align your business objectives with the SMART goals so that you can break them down to measure success. (Understand your follower to lead to conversion ratio.)

 

Cultivate a voice for your account’s posts 

Twitter is a chatty platform as you can write the post content which limits to only 280 characters. Through your tweets convey different qualities of your brand. Be original with your content and show the personality of your brand by communicating it authentically in your posts. Make each tweet unique by having your brand voice consistent on all the other platforms. To create an appealing brand value, use creative graphic images and videos. You should sincerely connect with your targeted customers and build trust with them. (Use crisp messages with ideal sized photos.)

 

Twitter Polls

This feature allows the user to post questions and seek up to four answers. People love to express strong opinions on trending topics. This makes polls fun and easy to engage with your audience. You can learn about customer preferences and get various opinions and feedback by adding twitter Polls in your social media calendar. Polls are a quick way to gather useful insights. (E.g. Q: The long weekend starts now. What are your plans? O1: Long Drive O2: Lounging At Home etc.)

Hashtags 

Hashtag culture came from Twitter. By the use of right hashtags in your content, you can reach new audiences. The hashtag is one of the valuable tools to boost your discoverability on the platform. Understand how hashtags work and create unique hashtags for your brand. You can also get insights into your competitors’ hashtags.

Related Post- Why Is Social Media Important for B2B And B2C Healthcare?

 

How to Market (Paid) on Twitter?

The ads on twitter include promoted accounts and tweets and promoted trends. The way you interact with organic content in a similar way, you can interact with the promoted content. The ads are clearly marked with a “Promoted” icon. Your account followers can see your name associated with the promoted content if you happen to like or retweet it. You can follow trends and explore Twitter’s page displays with the current trending topics and hashtags as well. Take a look at how Twitter advertising works with easy steps- 

 

Choose your target audience

Advertising on Twitter helps you to reach your right audience by selecting simple options. Choose the targeting based on interests, geography, gender, device, or lookalike audience like your followers. You can maximize the relevancy of your posts by targeting the right keywords in other people’s Tweets.

 

Set a budget and get discovered

Amplify your message to get your Tweets, and the Twitter account discovered for people interested in your business. There’s no minimum spend for your campaigns; you can start, stop and tweak your campaign any time. You can have complete control on your campaign, and you will be charged only when someone likes, retweets, clicks on your promoted tweets.

 

Creative posts 

Get visuals for higher post engagement as tweets with images get three times as much engagement, while videos with tweets get up to ten times as much engagement. Videos can help you to capture the attention of your customers for a longer period ending up with comments, reactions and retweets. Visual assets help you communicate more with your tweets, for the informative tweets use a variety of visual content like charts and infographics. GIFs are also other additional delights for your tweets. 

 

Measure results in real-time

You can easily rack the growth of your follower base and campaigns to see how your targeted audience is engaging with every single Tweet you post. As you measure the results of your campaign performance on Twitter, it helps you in the long run to create and implement better posts.

 

At the Bottom

 

Whether you indulge in paid marketing or free use of twitter, results will be pompous. It’s the modern medium for the modern world, and if it’s rightly used, it will become the voice and face of your brand. 

Human resource earlier used to be a service organisation, but now, it’s strategic. It can use data analytics to ask and answer vital questions about the future of that organisation — outsourcing, cost management, succession planning, performance management, and more.

While an HR knows where the business is directing, it can serve as an asset while recruiting and training its employees. Anticipating future growths, the HR can start investing in its employees beforehand to get a fruitful outcome from them.

Recruitment:

Recruitment is a crucial responsibility of the HR department. While HR works in many areas including employee engagement, employee development, statutory compliance, data management and many others, one of the critical areas of focus for HR is to attract, select and onboard suitable candidates for the organisation. While doing this, one has to hire for attitude and train for skills. You don’t hire for skill; you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.

Effective Inductions Program:

The main purpose of an induction training is to integrate new employees into the company, inspire new starters, set out an organisation’s mission and vision for them, and educate them about the company’s history, culture and values and make them understand the systems and procedures followed by the organisation. Induction training helps new employees settle down quickly in the new work environment, and gives them a sense of belongingness.

Organisation Structure:

The structure of a team should be such that people can depend on one another and encourage one another to do better. After all, a person can accomplish anything once they realise they are a part of something bigger. So for me, the definition of a team culture that is strong satisfies three criteria:

1. It must enhance team performance and productivity.
2. It should help in making communication effective and effortless.
3. A good sense of team community would bring about a feeling of shared goals and visions.

Related Post – Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency for your Brand

 

Performance Management

Source: Techfunnel Website

Performance management is a key to successfully growing and scaling your company. It is all about making sure your employees are happy, engaged and working towards your collective company goals. It helps in setting goals and explaining your team what excellent performance is. It develops accountable people, managers who lead, organisational transparency and helps to give credit where it’s due.

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organisation to give of their best each day, committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, with an enhanced sense of their well-being.

HR Professional should:

Source: Hrpayrollsystems Website

Be an Inspiration: you are perceived as a designated leader by most of your organisation’s staff, and it’s not somehow farther from the truth. You are one who induces energy, motivation, training and other emotional and moral necessities in them so be one for yourself first.

Be more outside than inside: HR is usually perceived as a principle, and people would give second thoughts before coming up to you. If you’ll go outside your office and make your presence in other departments of your office, you’ll be able to acquire more first -hand information about the whereabouts and other affairs.

Have a vision: set a goal for yourself and why you want it, something preferably not given to you by your organisation. This way, you’d work more constructively to achieve your personal desires and provide a good outcome to your company simultaneously.