Taking a business online
So what are the key differences between a customer in a physical shop and a customer online?
Imagine you just set a personal goal for 2019 to improve your fitness, and now need new running shoes. In the offline world your journey might go a bit like this:
You visit the local shopping centre, going from shop to shop. Ultimately, you make a decision based on price, quality, returns policy, friendliness of staff, and stock availability. You process all that information, head back to the store with the shoes you liked best, and make the purchase.
When it comes to online purchasing, you’re likely to engage in four distinct stages throughout your online shopping journey. Theses principles are described in the “See, Think, Do, Care” framework, and offer a useful way to identify where a business should invest effort in connecting with customers. Let’s take a look at our shoe shopping example, while highlighting these four stages:
In the SEE stage, you notice that some of your friends have taken up running, and are posting maps of their favourite routes on their social media accounts. This inspires you to start running yourself. In the THINK stage, you get your phone and type ‘what are the best running shoes for beginners?’. This introduces you to a whole lot of online content, from blog articles to targeted ads, giving you more factors to base your decision on. Eventually, you make your purchase, which makes up the DO stage, and perhaps post a photo on social media. This last step of sharing your purchase is part of the CARE stage.
Keep in mind that customers don’t necessarily experience all four stages every time – your individual journey might begin at the THINK stage, or end at the DO stage.
Now let’s combine offline and online activities together. Imagine you are in the sport shop having just tried on the new running shoes. You get out your phone and search for them online – perhaps checking if they are cheaper elsewhere. The chances are you might buy online after visiting a physical store- an approach called ‘showrooming’.
Understanding the differences and similarities between online and offline shopping can help you create a more balanced online customer experience.
So how can you identify where to focus your efforts online? To choose the right channels, find out out who you’re talking to, when you should talk to them, and what you should talk about. This is called audience segmentation.
You can segment customers in many ways, from basic demographics like age and gender, to specific interests. For example, segmenting customers by location may benefit an e-commerce store if certain products are only available to ship to specific areas. Segmentation can also help with your online advertising; as most channels allow you to target paid advertising to specific audiences, based on information like what an audience likes or dislikes. You can also make your ads appear only to people within a certain radius of your shop or business, which can be handy when offering promotions to local shoppers.
To wrap up, when it comes to taking a business online, think about the customers and put yourself in their shoes: which channels do they use most? How do you engage differently with them online and offline?
At Entwined Media Limited, #WeCanHelp!!
The Online Opportunity
It’s no secret that the world has embraced all things digital since the birth of the internet. Now we’re going to talk about how many people are online worldwide, and find out how those people are spending their time online. And finally, tell you how your business can benefit from the still-booming digital trend.
To give you an idea of the explosion of online usage over the last 15 years, consider this: In 2000, about 361 million people were online worldwide. In 2016, there were over 3 billion. That’s a growth rate of 764%! Today, nearly half the world is online.
For instance in India, the numbers are growing at an impressive rate with over 34.8% Indians having Internet access in 2016. Indians are so connected that they have an average of 0.80 mobile subscriptions each, that’s nearly one mobile line per person!
No matter which device they use, on average, people spend over 3 hours per day which is more than 90 hours in a month!
So what are they doing with all that time online? And how can your business tap into this opportunity?
Many of these digitally connected people are shopping.For example, there were close to 100 million online shoppers in India by the end of 2016.
Online video has also seen double-digit growth in the last five years, with millions everyday watching video on social sites or via websites such as Youtube, Netflix, etc.
And people are spending hours, socialising and sharing—nearly 2 and a half hours of their time spent online per day is on social media sites.
If you’re a business owner, all these people doing all these things online presents loads of potential for you.
And as time goes on, people will continue to use the Internet in even more ways that will impact your business.
It’s been truly a modern miracle to witness how the Internet has transformed our daily lives in such a short span of time.
In every country, in every region, across the globe, the world has made a fundamental and profound shift to digital. This is an opportunity any business can embrace.
Talk to us and we’ll show you how.
How much does Social Media cost in Kenya?
Businesses in Kenya are increasingly realizing the value of social media; and that is a good thing. But with value comes cost and that is what I would like to delve into today.
Is Social Media Cheap?
The word out there is that social media is cheap and many a social media practitioner in Kenya will attempt to prove this to you through case studies, research, and sometimes actual implementation. Internationally as well, it is common knowledge that social media represents the cheapest marketing option for businesses. But beyond marketing, the value of social media is seen and felt in its facilitation of many other business functions like sales, customer care, research and development etc. So I ask again, why is social media considered cheaper yet it is the most versatile platform for businesses to advance themselves?
Cost Misconception
I guess all the blogs written about how cheap social media is have led to this prevalent misconception that social media should cost next to nothing. Businesses are trying to employ social media at no cost and while the dive into social media is welcome, the just as many casualties of social media disasters point to this wrong approach tiered on a flawed perception. Cheap or cheaper does not mean nothing or next to nothing; it means there will be a cost attached albeit cheaper either in terms of same costs you employ in marketing but better ROI or a fraction of what you use in marketing or R&D for similar ROI.
Cheap Cheapens Social Media
The blogs that should be going out should not be stating how cheap social media is but rather how relatively cheaper it is. Stating social media is cheap cheapens our work as Social Media solutions providers because it creates the perception that anybody with knowledge of these shiny social media tools can do what we do. And that is the reason most businesses try to pull it off using interns. Our work is not being seen as an executive level grasp of business objectives infused with an understanding of emerging technologies with the end result being a strategic deployment of social media across the organization in a way that fundamentally changes how the business runs and ultimately improves the bottom-line.
Social Media Costs
The truth is that social media is relatively cheaper. You will get but ROI given the same resources. And it is important to realize that social media does not replace most business functions but rather facilitates most of these functions in a way that enables them to scale. Social Media is time intensive and human resources intensive as well; both of which have a cost connotation. There are services that cost cold hard cash and those have to be factored in too. So the next time someone says social media is cheap, what they mean is it is relatively cheaper.
How to Get More Followers on Social Media
If you want to gain more followers on social media you should follow the following rules:
- Know your target audience
- Don’t ask for followers
- Make good content.
In this article i will focus on GOOD CONTENT. Your content on social media should be one that goes VIRAL. In this case we can take viral to represent:
- Valuable
- Inspirational
- Relevant
- Authentic
- Looks good
Making Viral content is a top way of growing an organic following online. The content despite being viral, it should be unique. To also gain followers ensure you share other people’s content, have an online presence and share your own genuine and authentic content.
Creating and publishing great content can be a lot of work, so you need to get organized and figure out a schedule that works for you and your business. When you have put together a content calendar that you feel comfortable with and you can commit to, social media marketing becomes that much simpler.
A content calendar can help you, This Content Calendar will organize the way you curate and create content, and help develop your editorial and social media strategy!
Get in touch with us We can Help in guiding on creating your content
Digital Online Management – Get A Specialist To Manage Your Online Assets
The content that potential customers find online about your brand can be the difference maker for your business. We specialize in providing Digital Online Management services that help build trust in your organization.
Your online position is the merging of every piece of information about you online. This data comes together to form an opinion in a person’s mind about you or your brand, whether positive or negative. The easier it is to find the information, the more of an impact it will have on your reputation. The primary platforms that define your online reputation include:
● Google Search
● Google Autocomplete
● Wikipedia
● Google Reviews
● Online Directory
● Social Media Profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.)
With Digital Online Management, we work hard to make all of the positive information easy to find on a day to day basis. We act as your representative on the different platforms by providing rock-solid team management that engages potential clients for you. At the same time, we use many different strategies and tactics to diminish the visibility of negative content, or in some cases, remove it from the web altogether. The end result is a positive online reputation because when people search your name or brand, they instantly find positive content.
What makes online communication unique from others is its immediate access to consumers and outcome. As with any media, a successful approach to digital- and social media requires knowing what you are doing, how you are doing it, and why. Social media networks have become vital to success as traditional media outlets, especially for reaching younger constituents. And when you don’t work with digital media on a daily basis, it takes time and effort to stay updated on the know-how for managing all your social communities effectively. That’s why we offer you the services of managing your accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media.
You only get one chance to make a first impression, at Entwined Media #WeCanHelp you make it a great one.
Lead Generation – Successfully Converted Your Leads Into Sales
Lead Generation is the process of stimulating customer attention into your business for the purpose of further rendezvous. It is the sowing of seeds.
Today, lead generation is carried out in digital platforms. Online lead generation is your marketing weapon and to win the war depends on how you utilise this powerful weapon. Utilising lead generation begins from understanding the importance of lead generation and its impact.
It is the process of getting an individual or organisation’s contact information of who/which is showing interest in the product or service that you offer. In order to generate such leads on a digital platform, first, you have to drive traffic to your business website.
Traffic to your website can be generated in numerous effective ways. All it takes is consistency.
You can do so by SEO, softwares, keywords, guest blogging, sales prospecting methods, social media platforms and much more.
The next step would be to have a lead generation form. Just driving traffic to your website and not getting their contact details would make them a site visitor and not your lead. You should communicate with the site visitors to convert them into a leads. Such communication for a long term relationship can be best done through emails.
Lead Generation Form:
Lead generation forms are the most important component of lead generation. It facilitates the overall process by collecting information of the site visitors. This helps you convert such visitors into actual leads.
It helps you compile user data
Site visitors don’t just submit their contact information. You need to a plan in order to compel them into submitting. This can be done by providing offers.
An offer is something that you offer to the site visitor that compels them to give their contact information. It becomes a critical part of your lead generation process as it persuades the visitor to share their personal information.
The important part in lead generation campaigns is the CTAs or Call To Actions.
Call To Action is either a button on the website that directs a site visitor to take a particular action. A compelling CTA takes users to your offer thereby allowing them in providing their contact information.
Lead Management
Leads come from different sources such as Web sites, social media, direct mail, third-party providers, events and call centres. Businesses undertake marketing strategies to attract potential customers, whether at the shopping mall, over the Internet or in person on the retail floor. It is vital to identify, understand and take relevant action immediately, as soon as the consumer states an interest.
Managing the generated leads helps you understand which tactics are bringing in the best or most leads. Thereby, you can optimise your plan to be both efficient and effective.
Lead Nurturing
Lead Nurturing is a relation-expanding process. It uses media platforms such as email, whitepapers, blogs, telecommunication, social media, third-party articles etc. The aim of lead nurturing is to support the prospects with relevant information and engage the same leads in an ongoing dialogue.
The goal of lead nurturing is to support and nurture long-term opportunities with the hope that these prospects or leads may indulge in future sales
Lead Conversion
Lead conversion is the final stage in this process. This means that the prospect has successfully converted into a sale. It helps us organise our prospects and move them through the sales cycle. This is the sole reason behind generating leads; to convert leads into paying customers. Leads become a dead asset if you’re not keeping in touch via follow-ups.
This doesn’t mean that the customer contact can be scrapped. It is of utmost value to the company. Even after the transaction is complete with the customer, the relationship still goes on. The existing customers are the best in generating more leads. And converting these leads is not as hard as they were referred by the existing customer and he adds brand value.
What is your lead generation process like? Do talk to us #WeCanHelp
Internet Advertising – Increase You ROI
Digital advertising, also called Internet advertising is when businesses use Internet technologies to deliver promotional advertisements to consumers. Digital advertising includes promotional advertisements and messages delivered through email, social media websites, online advertising on search engines, banner ads on mobile or Web sites and affiliates programs.
Digital marketing uses digital channels to market or promote the services and products to customers and businesses thus charting an efficient way to build a relationship with the customer with great depth and relevance.
EXAMPLES OF DIGITAL ADVERTISING
For anyone who has done a search on Google or gone to any professional media website, you’ve probably seen this at work. Examples include:
● Pay-Per-Click Advertising: These are the ads that show up on page one of search engine results. You bid to have your ad appear with the results for particular searches. You only get charged for the ad when someone clicks on it.
● Remarketing: Remarketing involves adding a tag to Google Adwords to pages on your site. When people go to a particular page, you can put them on a list for a related keyword or search term. From there, you can design a marketing campaign so these viewers see relevant ads whenever they search for the same terms or related ones.
BENEFITS OF DIGITAL ADVERTISING
Unlike billboards or TV ads, interactions with online ads can be tracked and measured effectively. The benefits that come from digital advertising include:
1) BOOSTS SALES
Research has show that every dollar spent on digital advertising yields back three times. This is as a result of increase in sales
2) HELPS YOUR OTHER ADVERTISING EFFORTS
Digital advertising doesn’t just yield you high returns in itself—it increases the return on investment of your advertising campaigns in other media too.
Research has shown that including online ads helps your other media perform better across the board.
3) GUIDES CUSTOMERS THROUGH THE BUYER’S JOURNEY
A big concept in modern marketing is the buyer’s journey. Basically, it’s the process a consumer goes through to buy a good or service. It has three stages:
● Awareness
● Consideration
● Decision
Entwined Media Limited has the tools, skills and experience to help you guide customers through each stage. We can work with you to craft advertising that speaks more directly to your audience.
4) STIMULATES INTERACTION AND WORD OF MOUTH
It’s the hard truth—no type of advertising can match word-of-mouth recommendations. People are much more inclined to use a product or service if a friend or family member like it. Online shares and recommendations have almost as big an impact as personal ones.
When someone shares a piece of your digital advertising, you get to tap into that immense power.
Entwined Media Limited can help you craft advertising content that does just that. #WeCanHelp
Social Media Management – Why Do You Need An Expert To Manage The Service?
Social Media Management is a service where we both create and manage your online presence, to help develop your business and brand throughout a variety of key Social Media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube and Pinterest.
Our Social Media Management Service helps in creating and managing a solid presence and well-crafted identity for any individual, business or company. We provide a detailed step-by-step process and best practice approach to establish and maintain a successful social media presence.
Here are a number of the elements we offer, in social media management:
Social Media Profile Audit
Right from the start, we conduct a complete audit by examining all your social media profiles, as well as your website and any additional information you provide. We evaluate your presence, branding, content, and audience engagement.
Along with the audit is a Social Media Profile Checklist that consists of recommendations on modifications for your existing profiles, and a checklist of what other accounts need to be created.
Social Profile Creation
Once we are done with your Social Media Profile Audit, we can handle the account refinement and set up any new accounts needed, based on the audit we conducted and your feedback.
Here are some of the elements we incorporate in setting up a Social profile for your brand:
● Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, GooglePlus, Pinterest, Youtube Pages
● Integration of Social Profile accounts
● Profile Naming
● Optimized Social Profile Description, About Me, etc.
● Installation of Social Apps
Social Profile Content Management
Social media sites are built around quality conversations, whether that be quality content, engaging questions, or captivating and interesting photos.
We offer both a comprehensive and detailed Content Audit and Strategy, to make sure you are engaging your audience properly and regularly. We incorporate effective elements of content management such as viral strategies, contests/campaigns, and community engagement.
We are also available to implement and manage your Content Strategy if you need us to.
At Entwined Media Limited #WeCanHelp. Contact us to get started with our Social Profile Creation and Management Services.
Social Profiles – The New-Age Tool
he creation of social profiles for the purpose of marketing is a new-age tool. Many SEO services tend to create fake profiles on social media networks to contact and tap potential consumers. However, they do not really follow a method that earn a favorable return on investment. The online users who are contacted are simply not interested because these social profiles are intruding on their privacy.
Our social profile creation services are markedly different. We do not believe in pushing across web links and spamming social media users. We carefully profile what kind of consumers we are targeting and process accordingly.
Different social media channels have specific demographics. While you will find people having a nice time on Facebook, those on LinkedIn are serious professionals. Our social profile creation services make this distinction while strategizing your online business. We keep in mind the consumer group that you are looking at. Then we create social profiles. Our social profiles are not half-baked jobs that are used to push links to your website on a random basis. A lot of study and research goes into creating online designs that are most effective for your business. Social media is not a teenage phenomenon anymore. It is a professional marketing tool and hence need to make optimum use of it.
It’s a off-page technique used by SEO’s to create profile for their client websites using various social channels. It is a one type link building technique. For a social profile creation you require:
● A company name
● Website address
● Company address
● A brief and detailed description of your company
● An email address
● Contact telephone
● Company Logo
To start off social profile creation services, we engage the following criterion:
● Well-researched and complete social profiles according to the stipulation of your business. The background information and a rough biography sketch is created so that SEO service administrators can handle them uniformly.
● Study social media networks and understand their demographic patterns. We focus our efforts on platforms that your targeted potential customers are using
● Social profiles are used to interact and post comments on social media networks. Also they are used to publish blogs and articles to generate opinion and interest about your brand
● Create a brand identity for your business by using social profile creation services
When you create a social profile you need to optimize your profile 100% so that the users can easily get view of your profile. Main importance is to provide information for the user.
At Entwined Media Ltd #WeCanHelp.
What is SEO – Search Engine Optimization all about?
SEO which stands for Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.
When you search for something in google, you get a huge number of relevant results and most of the people including you I guess try to get the desired content within the first page. Most of the time we don’t bother to move even to the second page of the search results.
Here the idea of SEO comes into play. When you own a website and have included good content there, it’s not obvious that your potential clients will get to the content. In this case you have to go through some rules and ways to make it familiar to search engines like google. An effective and well optimized content can take place in the first page of Google search results.
Now a question may arise that which words would the readers use to find your article. It is also a part of SEO. The words are known as keywords. You have to use those keywords in your website properly and by following the rules of SEO.
It involves strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website to obtain a high-ranking placement in the search results page.
It’s about making your site better for people too.
Search engine optimization is broken down into two basic areas: on-page, and off-page optimization.
1. On-page optimization- refers to website elements which comprise a web page, such as HTML code, textual content, and images.
2. Off-page optimization- refers, predominantly, to backlinks (links pointing to the site which is being optimized, from other relevant websites).
There are two major types of search engine optimization, white hat search engine optimization (the ‘good’ kind), and black hat (the ‘not so good’ kind).
All these helps in improving your visibility. When we talk about visibility, we mean how high up the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) your website appears for certain search terms in the ‘organic’ results. Organic results refer to those that appear naturally on the page, rather than in the paid-for sections.
Building a strong site architecture and providing clear navigation will help search engines index your site quickly and easily. This will also, more importantly, provide visitors with a good experience of using your site and encourage repeat visits. It’s worth considering that Google is also increasingly paying attention to user experience, including mobile optimization and site speed.
The landscape of SEO changes fast, at Entwined Media Limited we help navigate the unpredictable terrain. Whether it’s a new change in Google’s algorithm, or dealing with semantic natural language search, or implementing the latest accelerated mobile page technology, at Entwined Media Limited #WeCanHelp.
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