W hat are the biggest challenges a small business faces today? Investment, Sales, lead generation, recruiting people to list a few from a whole load of responsibilities. Another major dilemma, a need to know little about everything be it accounting, marketing, technical knowledge of your product, management hence focusing becomes an area of concern. A diversified mind would lead to not a lot of productive work.
I don’t have a solution to all the above mentioned problems but yes somewhat can help you out in Sales and Marketing being from the field. Trying to spend those thousands on generating leads to a Marketing agency or even Just dial can (sometimes) lead to no help at all and ofcourse if you are a startup then doing 1 of them or any of them could be impossible. Website optimization is a good solution for lead generation (my opinion). There is no harm in being on the top of the biggest search engines mainly Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Rediff. Today everyone is going on the internet for the smallest requirement so why not you be there too.
Search Engine Optimization means looking at what people search for, what is typed in the search engines and which search engines are opted by your targeted audience. Optimizing a website, in technical term, means editing the content of the website and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers. Hence SEO is a must to drive traffic to your website. Let’s look at more ways to drive traffic to your website.
To drive traffic website it is important to do 4 things :
1. Search Engine Optimization : Discussed in the above para’s.
2. Social Media Marketing : I do not want to write too much about it because there is nothing new I would say which is not said before about Social Media Marketing. Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin to market your business is an effective way to spread awareness of your product and traffic to your website. Though in actual terms how effective it would be to generate prospective sale leads depends completely on your product/service, its demand/supply and not to forget a good brand name.
3. Email Marketing : ‘A medium which helps people not forget you exist’ is how I would term it. Be it any festival or new discount offer, sending across emailers is a good option to be remembered by people. You might think it is not required but a mail once in a while does no harm to you.
4. Search Engine Marketing : This includes a lot of things Pay per click, Cost per impression, Search analytics & Web analytics. In a broader outlook, SEO is also a part of search engine marketing (SEM). Being in the field of web & graphic designing SEM comes very close to our nature of work. However it has taken much time and effort to figure out how it actually works.
SEO is one part of internet marketing where in you are on the top of the list of search engines. There are other ways to do internet marketing by contextual advertising & paid placements.
Search Engines like Google and Yahoo started a new business model that would finance their services, and called it Pay per click. Wherein you put up your ads on these search engines and pay only if someone clicks on your ad, much better then ‘Cost of impression’ where you are not even sure if your ad was fully looked at and it barely drives any traffic or is of any help to increase your potential to get sale leads. Hence pay per click is buying advertisements at a price for a click.
Search Analytics means analyzing the statistics for an effective SEM. Search engines provide access to their statistical data helping you improve your search on the search engines. Web Analytics is the visitor’s journey on your website without the knowledge of the visitor, which pages they visited and what all information was browsed, what lead to a sale etc. It is mainly used to improve website and marketing campaigns.
Finally after trying everything and after all the extra knowledge in this article, I believe that word of mouth was, is and will be the most effective way to spread the word(though it takes much longer for it to start happening) All of the above will surely support your efforts to spread the word.
As I explained in my previous blog what social media is, this blog is what so many companies are doing to build their online identity.
I have read many articles over the internet about social media guiding about how it works, the various platforms, having a website, a logo, presentations, eBrochures helping make an online presence. Although they were all extremely educative and some even opened up new horizons to reach, I feel that there is no strategy as such, it is the human nature, managing it, who builds the strategy of marketing (this is completely my perspective)
There are certain things to concentrate on I agree, as it is going to affect your company’s identity. But overall it totally depends on what you are trying to sell. That is where the most important part of it comes, your WEBSITE. If you believe in online marketing, I am sure you will comprehend that your website represents you and your company on the web. The only way I can judge you is by having a look at the impact your website has on the viewer.
Since the time I have started working at THR3E, I have seen that most start-ups make a mistake of not concentrating on their brand image due to lack of knowledge or financial crunches or come what may. Your Company Brand is going to be reflected by every interaction your company has with the public. A Brand is the personality of the product or service or your company. It becomes conducive to let it encompass and enhance your identity.
When your Company Brand is identifying to the nature of your business and people are perceiving it the way you want, it means you have a successful social media strategy.
In my previous blog, I wrote about the drawbacks of designing. Inspite of
having a wonderful design, if not chosen, it is of no relevance. In this blog
I am going to write about a more grave problem, plagiarism of designs.
Plagiarism is very common in any creative field, be it designing, writing or
film making ..... It is unfortunate that even laws cannot protect your creation
from getting INSPIRED (an enhanced word for copying) In designing, it is the
simplest to copy something, if only the colour or the formation is changed,
it becomes another design and there is no way to prove it is your design.
In this field there is a high possibility of the designs not getting approved
and then you find out that your design is being passed off as somebody else’
ideas and then getting recreated by someone else under their name. This is
plagiarism.
One such incident, one of my client, an eclectic jewellery designer
(although we were told that she had her own brand of bags and belts) came
to THR3E in order to create her logo. She was extremely finicky and wanted a
particular imagery of a peacock in her logo. After providing her 8 logo designs
(officially we give only 3) she did not like anything or rather pretended that
way, then got into an altercation, accusing us of not serving her and that
she made a big mistake by coming to THR3E for the logo and then went
away without any work from us. Now after 2 months her website is live
with the same design logo THR3E provided with just a colour change. She got the idea of using a particular font from our designs and now claims that it was her idea. It is easy to lie but how can one lie to themselves.
It is pitiful to learn that literate, talented and creative people cheat with people
from the same fraternity.
P.S : This blog was solely written to create awareness of the presence of such unethical people.
It is funny I must say I usually never write but when I decided to write this blog, ideas and thoughts have been flooding in my mind. I constantly keep thinking of something and write it down on a piece of paper or a book and at times on my hand when there is no source. While trying to make this blog meaningful and helpful to you, I realised how much I have learned in the bargain. So yet again, I am going to do the same in this article.
The most common question I face is, "Now there are tutorials available to help you create your own website why should we come to you?" And my only answer to that is, everyone can click pictures but for a wedding you need a professional photographer. It is the matter of educating people who are not aware of the strength and impact of art & design. Social Media Marketing is going to take a while to create its niche in India.
I am surrounded by design all day long. I am asked by my designers all the time to comment on what they make. As simple as it sounds, it is not that simple. I agree what they do is much more commendable than my comment but in order to give a meaningful comment and in order to let it make a difference I need to analyse certain aspects of the design. First and foremost I study the requirements then I visualize it in my mind using the examples provided and it needs a lot of wiring in the brain to build the connections and think of what will be the most appropriate solution to it. Even a simple comment can make a difference then I do not need to say how much a design can.
It is also important to be aware of what you are putting on your website. There have to be functional links available, good navigation, proper distribution of space, not too many ads, clear ,balanced and balanced sized fonts, making it search engine friendly. So all of it matters at some point, you will simply lose your traffic by not having one of them.
Well I think that is too much gyaan for now I shall save some of it for my next article.
