The Journey Of Giants Online To Offline(O2O)
What’s a business without trying new techniques and tackling more challenges? More often, we see an offline store going online or entering the e-commerce world. But, how many times have you observed an online store willing to start an offline store? O2O (Online-To-Offline) business strategy is the new trend among big companies. The world’s largest e-commerce company-Amazon is also set to go O2O. Along with this, Google has also decided to choose this model as a customer-driven approach.
It was in 2015 when Amazon launched its physical books store. And now, in 2021, Bezos’s company is willing to create more offline stores for other products as well. The overwhelming response to the book stores (offline) would have given the kick to the idea of proceeding further with more offline stores. But, this does not mean that Amazon is going to shut down its online business. Instead, Amazon will act as a mixed advantage for its customers. Google of Alphabet Inc. is also set to serve its customers with physical stores along with the e-store.
E-commerce has put behind the offline market so far, but street shops and markets will never die. Maybe it is this assurance that has allowed Amazon and Google to enter into an offline world too. So does the O2O strategy work? For that purpose, we will have to wait and watch and the response that these two giants receive but for now, let us see why O2O is so popular!
Why are companies like Amazon and Google using the reverse business model (O2O)?
Amazon is one of those companies that have taken different risks and tried and tested several methods to enhance the business. Likewise, Google, like its counterpart, Apple, is trying out methods that can help them attract customers, especially for their Pixel phones. The three major reasons can be as follows
1. A Blend of Retail in the Future – According to the book “Amazon: How the world’s most relentless retailer will continue to revolutionize commerce” by Miya Knights and Natalie Berg, the future of shopping will be a combination of online and offline choices.
Most e-commerce companies are observing this blend, and thus, they are moving ahead with O2O.
2. Brick-and-Mortar Enhances Trust – In a country like India, although many people shop online, there also are people who don’t trust online shopping. For such people, these brick-and-mortar businesses work as trust gainers. Along with that, the people who are not very aware of using the devices or websites, physical stores can serve a better purpose to them. This can serve as a loyalty coupon.
3. Saves Shipping Costs – Shipping Cost is one of the drawbacks of online shopping as per most of the customers. Hence, offline stores may attract customers who want the item from Amazon or buy a device from Google and save the shipping charges alongside.
Additionally, the businesses are expanding from clicks to bricks because, as per Industrial research, people who shop online and offline, commonly known as “omni-channel shoppers/customers,” spend more time shopping than single-channel users. The same has been the reason for Ikea and Target when they opened their offline stores.
Even if Google is not completely into e-commerce, this step will help the customers experience the hardware of Google devices. These stores can also work as service centres for Google device owners. A major advantage these offline stores will provide will be picking up or returning the order placed online. It will also save the time that orders take to reach the customer.
“We think it’s a genuinely unique try-before-you-buy experience,” says James Elias, Google’s spokesperson.
A brick-and-Mortar business will allow customers for easy pickup and easy return, which is one of the most demanded wishes of online buyers. Although as per the reports, Google and Amazon might take some time to reach every nation or city across the globe. It seems like these giant companies are ready to put their heart and soul into trying out new challenges. But you need not worry; keep adding your items to the cart and get ready to experience offline Amazon-shop and Google-store in your city.
How is Social Media Shaping The Business World?
Over the last 20 years, with the introduction of social media, information and communication technology has evolved significantly. Today, there are over 3 billion social network users worldwide who use media to engage with brands. A recent study found that more people follow brands on social media than celebrities. Hence for the growth of business, companies should take advantage of social media, for not missing out on an easy, affordable, and effective opportunity to reach nearly half of the world’s population.
The curated list below will help in understanding the importance of social media in business communication.
1.Brand Awareness – With over half of the world’s population using social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, they’re a logical place to reach new and highly targeted potential customers. Companies build a name and engage their customers more intimately through timely responses and interactions.
2. Increased Website Traffic – Social media posts and ads are an effective way to generate organic traffic to a company’s website. Sharing engaging content from your enterprise’s blog or website on social media is a brilliant approach to gather new readers.
3. Generate Leads – Potential clients can express interest in your business and products through social media in a low-commitment and straightforward manner. Lead generation is such a vital benefit of social media for businesses that several social networks have advertising formats designed solely to collect leads.
4. Boost Sales – Social media can help companies sell anything. A business’s social accounts are an essential part of their sales funnel, which is the process by which a new contact becomes a customer. Social networks have become progressively common for product discovery and e-commerce as the number of individuals utilizing social media grows and social sales tools also evolve. Every company should align social marketing and sales objectives and simultaneously promote their brand through engaging campaigns.
5. Keeping Track of Competition – It is also critical to be aware of what the audience says about a company’s competitors. One of the main advantages of keeping track of the competitors online is that it will reveal issues and shortcomings of a company’s products. A brand can then reach out and address the same, gaining new customers in the process. Observing a company’s competitors on social media also means being informed when they launch new products, run discounts, or share reports or statistics. Further, if there is a particular trend going viral, a company can quickly implement the same by checking their competitor’s social media accounts.
6. Reporting and Analytics – It is always difficult for marketers to demonstrate return on investment. However, using social media tracking and analytics tools, a company can observe the full impact of their social media activity, from follows and engagements to purchases. Tools like Google Analytics evaluate social media website traffic, conversions, email sign-ups, and ROI for both organic and paid social media campaigns.
7. Targeted Advertisements – Social ads are an economical way to promote a brand and distribute content. They also provide powerful targeting benefits, allowing businesses to reach the right audience while making the most of their budget.
8. Customer service and Customer Support – Consumers expect brands to be active on social media and seek out their social networks for customer service. Brands that fail to match these expectations damage their bottom line. As a result, addressing and resolving issues through social media is critical to a business’s reputation and reliability.
9. Promote Content – Promoting a company’s content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and other online platforms is an excellent method to get a brand’s creative, well-researched content to new potential clients, demonstrating its expertise and increasing its audience. To make the most of social media for your business, a company has to ensure they have a proper content marketing strategy in place.
10. Reputation Management –Whether or not a company is present to answer, their customers are already talking about them on social media. If the marketing team of a brand is watchful, they can spot key social posts about the business and highlight the positive aspects while addressing the negative before it becomes a major issue. If someone is spreading false information about a company, the team has to come up with a strategy to present the brand in a positive manner. Similarly, if someone appreciates a company’s products and services, the brand has to thank them generously and draw emphasis to their pleasant words.
It is said that information is power. One of the main social media benefits for business is the distribution of information. Platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others have enabled instant access to information at the click of a button. Social media demands attention because it has completely reshaped businesses and consumer behaviour – a phenomenon that is still evolving and expanding as people of all ages begin to use this medium.
Businesses can use social media to form more meaningful interactions and get to know potential customers better. A small enterprise can quickly develop a fan base and solicit feedback from its target audience. It can generate new streams of traffic that can lead consumers to products and strengthen the brand’s reputation.
Social Media Marketing-Ways to Upscale Business Growth and Social Media Presence
It’s no secret that all the businesses, big or small, have turned their down sloping graphs into up sloping ones. The overall presence of business pages on social media has given them recognition in their respective industries and increased their overall credibility. But their mere presence isn’t just enough for a constantly up stepping line diagram. There are more than 2 billion social media users and tons of business pages, so converting audiences to followers and followers to potential buyers is easier said than done. Social media is a competitive platform, and one needs to up their game if they wish to become the best in the business. Here are a few tips for utilizing social media marketing to improve social presence:
- Setting up motives: One question that comes up in anyone’s mind is where to begin from? The answer to this is by laying out objectives and achieving them. Your approach towards the target audience, how you attract them, generate leads all depends on how you engage with them, and for that, you need to know what you want to accomplish and how.
- Selecting a target audience: To get proper engagement, one also needs to focus on the right audience. This starts by determining the audience that is genuinely interested in your business. For example, if you have a home decor business, your target audience will include interior designers, homemakers, the textile industry, and so on.
- Create relatable content: A business page should not merely be a faceless robot. It should be just as lively and consist of content the target audience can relate to. The page should be active, reply to queries, comments, and thank the audience for their support. This is one of the crucial reasons why purely automated pages do not have much engagement.
- Connecting with the audience: If you offer appropriate customer services, reply to their queries in time and give your utmost support, you can earn devoted buyers. Hosting giveaways is one such simple and effortless way of making your customers fall in love with your goods because who doesn’t like gifts?
- Content creation schedule: Content should not just be created; it should be perceived correctly by the audience. It should be associated with the three “I” – Innovative, Interesting and Inclined towards what the business offers. We should create content in such a manner that it reaches the maximum amount of the target audience. This should be done by making a planner in when you want to post the content, what should follow it, and all.
The flow chart:- Build a strategy
- Plan a schedule of posting content
- Be consistent
Tips to increase your business prospects with Social Media:
- Increasing leads and prospects: If you want a sudden spurt in generating leads, you need to build strategies. Strategies on improving traffic on your social media handle, expanding engagement, turning audiences into followers, and converting followers into potential customers. All these can be possible if you design a strategy, assemble it and follow it on a day-to-day basis.
- Gaining loyal customers: If you focus on gaining trust and connecting with the audience instead of selling them, you can attain loyal customers. Most social media users are highly sceptical about buying from social media pages because they don’t trust them. When you show how legitimate your page is, how much you can offer and how well you provide your services, you and your customer relationship genuinely grow.
- Improving traffic stats: To increase traffic, it is essential to be consistent. Being consistent on your page can make more and more people engage with your content. It keeps you going and your business growing. It’s a marketing hack that every successful page has used to get where they presently are. Another thing one can do is use sponsored ads that can lead to an increase in traffic. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat are many social media platforms that can be used for the same. Others include Linked In, Twitter, Pinterest, and so on can also be used for the same.
- Check on competitors: The world is full of competitors. If you wish to be the best in your field, you need to focus on your strategies and check your competitors’ growth. You can always learn from them without actually copying their tactics.
Do you realize how much difference an appropriately handled social media page can bring to your business? Need a marketing agency to set you up? Marcamor Digital Marketing Agency will help you in strategizing your social media, leading to better prospects and new business ventures.
Better Brand Engagement For Building Great Brands
Businesses typically establish their brands through advertising on television, radio, hoardings, billboards, digital spaces, and other media. These impressions increase brand visibility and may generate leads, but they do not guarantee conversion. These generic advertisements also get outdated. It may even result in an unfavourable brand image in today’s digital world.
According to experts, brand engagement is the better method for effective brand building. Brand engagement attempts to reach out to potential consumers to convert them into customers. If you are not establishing brand engagement with consumers these days, you lose valuable marketing and brand-building ground. Brand engagement makes use of social media to deliver brand communications that add value and keep consumers engaged. Customer engagement is the crux of marketing strategies, and it will generate more significant sales.
Customers who are highly engaged are more inclined to purchase more. Furthermore, highly engaged customers are more likely to spread the word about your business and products among their peers. Their loyalty leads to word-of-mouth marketing, which is always a promising approach for any firm to increase sales. When brands choose to focus on value creation and brand engagement rather than income generation, they are heading in the right way. Consider these six creative digital marketing strategies your brand can use to increase brand engagement:
- Customer-centricity: Brands that place their clients at the centre of their operations are far more successful. Customers should be inspired by advertising and marketing and providing better brand awareness. Highlighting customer reviews and testimonials about how valuable it is, rather than the product itself, can attract more customers. Brands that are swift and responsive in answering questions and resolving complaints will imprint a lasting impression on the minds of their customers. Also, rewarding brand loyalty through coupons, freebies, etc., will cater to customers’ best interests.
- Brand Partnerships: While social media influencers can assist your brand in reaching your current target audience, a brand partnership can link you with a completely new group of customers. This way, you can even sell your brand to a previously untapped market. In a nutshell, a partnership occurs when two brands with similar products/services and marketing sectors collaborate to raise sales and awareness on one other’s behalf. It’s best to make these connections with businesses that cater to a little different demographic to broaden your reach. Best of all, these collaborations benefit both parties. As a result, after establishing your brand, partnership becomes easier.
- Create a Community: Engage and offer readers control of the user-generated content relationship. Create excitement by hosting photo or essay contests, fun quizzes, recipe sharing, and voting on brand decisions. Consider how customers can vote for a new idea or colour of a product or try to make a call for photography competition entries.
- Live Video Sessions on Social Media: A live video session is another excellent technique to interact with customers and humanize your brand. Companies can use video marketing to personalize their brand and immediately reach out to their customers. You may host live video sessions with your users and customers using a variety of social media platforms.
- The Power of Blogs: Blogs can be beneficial when it comes to customer retention. It is capable of educating and engaging customers. The main problem is that me-too blogs do not profit much. Instead, you should be able to create fascinating and appealing blogs that your clients will be eager to read. Experienced and professional brands have extensively adopted this approach. They always remain on the top list because they educate clients with interesting articles in their field of expertise. They also demonstrate domain competence while maintaining customer loyalty and trust.
Your sales numbers are likely to grow if you can establish a solid relationship with your clients. Building an online brand is difficult, but you can promote your brand by engaging customers and producing quality content. To keep your customers, you should entertain and gain their attention. And, to achieve this goal, you must improve the client experience. Last but not least, it is undoubtedly advantageous to build a personal connection with your customers for the long-term growth and betterment of your business as a whole.
Do you want to boost your brand’s social media presence? Allow Marcamor‘s digital experts to drive your brand engagement campaigns with creative content marketing, blog management, social media testing, and more.
The Trends And Importance Of SEO
You might have heard a lot of people talking about SEO these days. Talk about online marketing and SEO is followed by it. But why has SEO become extremely important? And what are the latest SEO trends of 2021?
For a job, you provide an updated resume, right? Similarly, to visit a dedicated audience, your website, too, needs regular updates. And these updates are done by either a digital marketer or a Search Engine Optimizer.
Before telling you why SEO is important, let us tell you the basics of SEO.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, most conveniently called SEO, is the formula for ranking your pages higher in search engines. SEO is the art, and a digital marketer its artist. “Search” is what people do when they open any of the search engines. SEO is a vital part of website development services. Although it is a process that never ends, one has to keep updating information for SEO as per the products. That is how digital marketing works.
Now that it’s clear what SEO means let us move further to tell you about the need for SEO.
Why is SEO important for a website?
Let us suppose you own an e-commerce website. Your products are better than your rivals, your service is the best one, and you are putting your heart and soul into your business. Do you think only these things will fetch visitors to your site? Absolutely not. What is going to fetch customers for you digitally is SEO. No SEO, no customers. It is as simple as that.
E-commerce website design involves SEO, and SEM which make an integral part of any website. There, it becomes necessary to know how SEO can generate leads.
How SEO helps a website to grow online in 2021?
Here are some trends that work wonders in 2021 to rank your website higher than your rivals.
- Keyword: When you publish anything online, keywords play a very important role in optimizing your content online. So, you can search for your topic online and find out which latest keywords are trending.
- Organic Search: This is one easy way to attract leads free of cost. Organically, through SEO, you can reach a wider audience. This is one of the sought tricks by businesses online. Not only in 2021 but in the coming years too it will have its importance.
- Relatable Content: Whether it is 2021 or 2025, content is the king and it will secure its position in coming years as well. Your business might require blogs, social media posts, videos, or even podcasts, for that matter. All of this drives attention when the audience can relate to the content. Thus, content is the medium through which your business reaches your audience.
- Local SEO: ‘Local’- yes, of your area or near your business is what it means. Local SEO helps people find your business locally. This comes in handy for café and restaurants. In the current scenario of 2021, this is one of the best options.
- SEM: Search Engine Marketing means creating paid advertisements for your business. Pay per click is one of the examples of the same. From the year 2020, SEM has seen tremendous growth, especially for education and job providing businesses. And it seems the trend will continue throughout 2021 too.
Let’s assume that you want information about laptops under INR 50,000/-. So you type “laptops under 50,000” in the search bar. Then, you get a list of websites where the required info has been shared. Now what made that particular page appear on the top? What made other websites rank numbers 2, 3, 4, etc., respectively? It is nothing but SEO. How keywords have been added, design of the website, URL direction, and such related settings have been made supports the ranking of the websites on search engines.
Coming back to our laptop search assumption, it is mostly seen that a viewer trusts the suggestions given by any of the top 5 websites. Why is it so? It happens because the content is not only easy to understand but is also relatable to the people. The data is shared either in comparative tabular format or a FAQ format. All of these are the parts of SEO.
Here’s another example. Suppose your business deals in real estate. The audience will search “3 BHK under 20,000 in Hyderabad”. “3 BHK,” “Hyderabad,” such words become your keywords. And when similar meta tags or titles are added on your website, “flats under 20,000 in Hyderabad,” for example, will help you reach organically to your audience. And content here becomes the size of the flat/house, balcony, washroom details, etc.
In this case, anyone locally living in Hyderabad would be searching for a house, and thus “Local SEO” will help them find one through your website. And if anyone (student/office person) is willing to shift to Hyderabad, SEM will serve the purpose of finding a good accommodation. So, this is how SEO provides necessary outcomes to your business.
Hence, to hit the search pages on the top, the best solution you can follow is to keep your website maintained with all the trends of the latest algorithm. Then, when you focus on your business plan, let the SEO experts focus on your website. To save your time, we advise you to visit Marcamor and choose them for the best outcome of your online business strategy. SEO team of Marcamor is one of the best-experienced teams you will ever come across to see your website accomplish your digital marketing goals.
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Ways To Get Better Engagement From Social Media
Your social media engagement can always be improved upon, there is no maximum engagement level that one can reach. The more engaged your audience is, the more that other people will see your posts and the better you’ll achieve those social media goals.
Let’s dive more into the world of social media engagement so we can better understand these questions:
Visual content
Does really a picture speaks a thousand words? It is yes! One of the most important tools to hike your engagement on social media is visual content. The study reveals that images contribute to an 85% interaction rate on Facebook and increased shares of content by 35%.
The picture draws the eye and elevates the chances that people will notice and interact with your visual content on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. In reality, Virtual storytelling has gone to the world.
High quality content
If you focus on boring topics and don’t put in enough time and energy into content creation, then you cannot expect others to become engaged. Your content has to be exciting and informative. Whenever you curate content, think about your audience and the important thing is that the content has to be related to the image and business.
The first step is getting a customer to understand what you can do for them. That means you need to focus on them and their challenges before you start offering up solutions.
Engage in Conversations
Interact with the audience more than just general updates. Add value to your brand, followers, By doing this, you’re socializing your brand and your company, which makes trusting relationships come more naturally. Generally, people like to interact and give opinions, so this encourages them to interact
Use polls and surveys
This communicates to them that you’re interested in what their needs and interests are. Not only do the results from polls and surveys give you valuable information about pain points and problems, but they also give your audiences the chance to give their feedback and feel heard.
Hashtags
If you can come up with clever word combinations, use them as often as possible. Ask your audience members to use your hashtags, and you can also use theirs in your posts. Hashtags encourage social media users to explore content that catches their eye.
Rules That Never Change In Marketing
1. Listen
Before you begin tossing out advice regarding ways to help someone, take enough opportunity to listen to.
Listen to get a necessity. Listen to get a query. It’s amazing what people can tell you in the event that you provide them the chance to speak. Let’s let you know about their requirements.
As soon as you hear the things that they have been searching for, you are better able to manage your own pitch to show the way your services or products can fix your own problems.
Before you begin tossing out information on how you can help someone, take enough opportunity to listen. It’s amazing what people can tell you in the event that you provide them the chance to speak.
2. Keep it easy
Have you ever gotten on a roll talking about your business, and then noticed someone’s eyes are glazing over? Logically, it might seem like the more info you give someone, the better they’ll understand things. In truth, we have the attention span of goldfish, so when you overload someone with information, they tune out. People understand and remember simple, straightforward messages. So never forget the KISS principle.
3. Be client-centric
Small businesses and consultants often feel a need to prove their worth by placing their credentials at the forefront of their marketing efforts. The cold, hard truth is that a consumer doesn’t actually care. Your degree from Harvard might be very impressive, but how does that actually impact them?
That’s not to say that your experience has no value, and in truth your credentials can often help sway a prospect if they are deciding between multiple vendors.
However, that comes later.
The first step is getting a customer to understand what you can do for them. That means you need to focus on them and their challenges before you start offering up solutions.
4. Be Consistent
- When you are building a brand, you need to be consistent. That means:
- Your logo should always appear the same way
- You should always use the same brand colors
- Your tone of voice should not change
Tips On How Brands Should Respond To The Coronavirus Crisis
As marketing leaders still wrap their heads around how branding works within the digital age, many brands are in trouble. But it’s not the first time. More than once, experts have declared branding dead. Still, like superheroes, it never stays dead for long. If anything, branding might be more important today than ever.
Success is no longer determined by who has the biggest advertising budget or the most recognizable logo. It’s determined how best brands connect with their customers. As the COVID-19 crisis peaks in many countries, many brands are suffering. Lockdowns are keeping customers away from stores, affecting e-commerce sales and factory closures.
So Rethink your marketing strategy to make them more relevant. Let us recognize this as a new normal. How brands react to this crisis is going to shape consumer perceptions beyond. Brands have to prepare to emerge out of the crisis stronger than before. Here are a few tips on how to go about doing this.
Extend Support
This is not a marketing opportunity to think about how you could only concentrate on profits but instead how you can help your consumers during this crisis and think of contributing to the economy through different means. Additionally, making a donation or offering your products /services at a discounted rate to people in dire need at this time will be a gesture that can be remembered for years to come.
Communicate
Brands have to be extra cautious about putting out their communication in the right context. Every piece of content generated should resonate with the brand’s customers and their target groups. To avoid creating a negative brand impression and damaging the brand reputation, brands got to make sure that their communication is brand safe and unbiased.
Anticipate
people are asked to self-isolate and stay home, brands would have to anticipate changes in consumer behavior. Their needs and expectations might change drastically. The better you have anticipated the possible scenarios, the more prepared you are and the more confident you will be in implementing the changes. Keep testing the market.
Stay Connected
When everyone is practicing social distance at this time, leverage the digital power to stay connected. Brands need to stay invested in consumer relationships throughout the crisis. This is the time where brands got to stand by their consumers, add value to their lives, and establish new bonds.
