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Uber Yourself Or Get Kodaked.

Uber Yourself Or Get Kodaked…

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Apple easy, Google fast: The experience management culture

Technology has taken centre stage in the success of companies today. With the likes of Uber, Amazon, and Deliveroo changing the way we live, shop, work and consume content, innovation is happening faster than ever before. In light of economic uncertainty, it’s become even more vital for businesses to deploy cutting-edge technology to maintain competitiveness.

Over the course of the next year, board-level conversations will be dominated by ways to ensure a seamless customer experience, formulating tactics to embrace disruptive technologies, as well as grappling with the implications of the future workplace. 

Digital disruption is affecting nearly all businesses:
Consumers can now order a meal, book a taxi and do their shopping with a few clicks of a button, without even leaving their living rooms. As a result, customers are increasingly expecting services to be ‘Apple Easy’ and ‘Google Fast’ in all aspects of their lives, demanding quick and seamless experiences across the board.

Customer experience management will continue to be a driver of success across all sectors in 2020. For many organizations, this means going back to the drawing board and incorporating customer-centricity at the core of their business models. As digitally native brands take a data-driven approach to provide frictionless experiences, customers will no longer tolerate dated technology with legacy systems and antiquated processes.

In the retail sector for instance, roughly 93 percent of UK internet users are expected to do online shopping by 2021, the highest online shopping penetration rate in Europe. However, as the e-commerce market becomes increasingly saturated, and the high street continues to decline, customer experience will be the central factor to help incumbent brands cut through the noise in the market.

Experience management extends beyond the end user to include other important stakeholders such as suppliers, partners and employees. Over the next 12 months, companies will increasingly need to acknowledge the need for a close link between good employee experience and exceptional customer service.

Engaging and retaining employees requires a big shift in company culture. A data scientist might choose to work in Silicon Valley not just for the financial benefits but for the culture of innovation it fosters and the opportunities to grow.

This results in companies such as Facebook and Uber – already excelling at customer experience – attracting the best talent. To avoid this brain drain, companies must look to emulate this culture and provide similar opportunities on this side of the pond, creating a superior experience for their employees.
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Source:  Marcell Vollmer

3 Reasons You Could Be Getting Junk Leads From Your SEO Campaigns

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Trying really hard but getting junk leads for your business using SEO?

Join me to understand 3 reasons why this could be happening?

Reason #1: Incorrect Audience Profiling

This generally happens when we target Google rankings and traffic as key metrics in our campaigns. The focus is on numbers rather than quality.

What would you prefer? Handling 15 targeted enquiries or 150 sales calls from all over the park? Imagine marketing a 500 ltr water cooler to an organization of over 5000 employees OR Marketing a 50 KVA UPS to companies with less than 25 computer systems? by optimizing terms like “best water coolers” or “UPS power for your business”.

Its not going to work right? Although you may receive enquiries, get into meetings, make presentations but there is big mismatch in your offering vs the requirement conceptually.

Remember: Get your audience right. Don’t go for traffic. Go for customers.

Reason #2: Are you Engaging your customer enough?

Most websites often carry “information” about themselves, their services and offerings, etc. The customer is frankly least interested in knowing about you (at this stage atleast). Instead he is looking for

1.What is in it for him?”

2.Should he spend a couple of minutes of his valuable time reading what you have to offer?

3.Is there something different to offer? Something that matches his requirements?

4.Can he ask questions to you? Does he feel confident about you? Does he feel safe dealing with you?

All this forms part of user engagement which is extremely critical to make that connect.

Please evaluate your online presence on these factors. Extremely crucial. There are a lot of sophisticated tools out there to help you with this analysis.

Remember: An engaged customer buys and stays with you.

Reason #3: Inconsistency in marketing and/or too much chop-n-change approach.

Just when your campaigns are about to deliver some meaningful responses, you feel this isn’t working well and decide to change approach or methodology.

Sounds familiar? Inconsistency is a big let-down in many marketing campaigns across the globe. If planned well, then make sure you stick to it and keep going.

You may ofcourse tweak and adjust according to your analytics, but don’t deviate too much or stop it completely.

Remember: Plan well and then be patient enough to see results coming in.

What are your reasons? Would you like to discuss?

Do send in your messages/comments to amod@zoomyourtraffic.com and I will touch base with you to discuss with you.

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The im”pending”​ death of SEO…

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The day since Google’s content and link relevancy mapping algorithm (Panda) was introduced in late 2012, every year brings in a whole new set of theories about how “SEO is DEAD” or “RIP SEO” or “End of SEO”.

2019 is no different and there a ton of articles, videos and other material that explains that SEO is thing of the past for good.

Here are some questions to ponder about:

•Have you stopped using Google search (or any other search for that matter) to find things online?

•Are you the only business in your domain so there is no need to be searched online at all?

•You don’t use a mobile phone to locate shops or cafe nearby while travelling?

•You don’t use online media at all?

If your answer to all these questions is big YES, the article ends here for you. You are one of the most happiest guys on the planet (angelic really).
Please keep spreading that happiness.

If your answer is a big NO, then SEO not only survives, it thrives!

What does SEO mean?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization – a method or concept by which you can optimize your websites technical data and content in such a way that search engines will rank your content high on their search consoles for visitors to reach you.

Old School Perception of SEO

Since all search engines are basically programs or bots (as they are popularly known today), smart techies found out a way to outthink these programs.

These counter programs and methodologies decoded the bot’ logic and manipulated chinks in their design to ensure content (implementing these smart programs) always stayed on top of search listings.

Needless to say, they received the highest traffic and hence best conversions.

Then it became rampant.

Then it led to abuse.

Then it led to visitors shying away from generic search and that’s when nice search based platforms took birth (Youtube for video, Amazon for products, LinkedIn for professional contacts, etc).

This jolted Google’s revenue model big time and thus awoke the sleeping giant …

The Big Change Comes In – the New Avatar of SEO

In 2012, they introduced a series of updates to their search algorithm (Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and almost all flora and fauna versions over the coming years) to strengthen “QUALITY” of content that showed up when a particular search was punched in.

With Quality, content mapping became subjective (just what Google wanted).

They introduced parameters to “judge” user’s experience on your website to determine its quality when ranking it on their search engine. (Fair as long as they apply this uniformly across all domains and brands)

o How much time was a user spending on your webpage?

o How many pages did he check during one session on your website?

o Did he click on links or fill out forms or clicked phone actions on your website?

o How frequently did he visit your webpage?

o External factors like reviews, ratings and reputation forums

o and a lot more factors that were “difficult” to manipulate using smart-programs (although there are smart cookies doing even that .. it’s a race for domination)

SEO now became Search EXPERIENCE Optimization

The experience of the user’s engagement with your online presence became de-facto ranking and rating signals for search engines to place your website on top of their search results.

This is changing year after year as marketing companies and businesses vie for user attention, interaction and engagement.

As this evolves in 2019 and beyond, a lot of new factors will be incorporated to map relevancy, recency and urgency of the customer’s journey towards your online brand.

Imagine this scenario: You visit an online store to buy a mobile phone but don’t make a purchase. The next time you visit your facebook profile or gmail or other sites – do you see advertisements of the same model you were exploring a few days ago? Yes J. This is how powerful search engines are becoming. They are tracking your journey across the web and mapping your experience with marketing technology to enable you to make that buying decision. Isn’t that powerful ??

SEO is not dead, it has shed its skin and transformed into a resplendent new avatar !!

Use it to grow your business online….

Article coming up – Is The Blatant Misuse Of The Word SEO Across Community Giving It A Bad Name?

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3 Reasons Why Businesses AVOID Online Marketing. What’s Yours?

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A new year dawns in with a lot of expectations and hope that my business will zoom to the next level this year using online marketing and SEO. I am super excited and decide to look out for help to grow my business online.

Being a traditional manufacturing business I have my questions (skepticism, really) about the media and hence reluctant to make a move. A lot of talk around me in friend circles, social media, WhatsApp messages and competition add to the fuel – using technical jargon like Google rankings, SEO, SMO and Online marketing but something inside keeps asking me, “Will this SEO thing work for me?. Then I make up my mind to go for it … yes 2019 is going to be my breakthrough year with an online version of my business (feeling very happy).

That’s when I hit the second hurdle – “I need help to do this. But, will I get the right help to execute my plans?” – the same friend circles, social media, messages and competition also wail about “money down the drain”, “this SEO is some mushy job that I have no clue about what’s happening?” or “get someone from my sales team to work on this for and see if it helps?”

“Shucks … now I am confused. What to do??”

As a business, do you see yourself getting caught in this yo-yo thought process?

Do Not Worry. You are not alone. 88% of SMEs across India face this every time they look at options to grow their business.

The three KEY reasons Why Businesses (SMEs) DO NOT trust online media to deliver for their business:

A. I am too SMALL to think online.

•I am a small trader or local manufacturer or a grocery shop owner. Either people walk into my business or I reach out to them by phone or visits. Mine is an offline model of business

•Who will find me online? Will it matter?

•Am doing good business with my established network. I don’t think I need to grow any further than this. Am happy with what’s on the plate!

•I can’t afford big bucks needed to “spend” for online marketing.

B. I don’t have TIME to even look at that stuff.

•Everyone I talk to tells me – I need to create content, provide time for developing online strategy. Am too busy handling client calls and meetings. Let’s talk later.

•There is too much to do. Website, blog, stores, Google, social media, video. Who has the time to do all that? Excuse me please ….

•My team is managing this for me. Let them handle the show. I don’t need to be involved. All I want to see is if whatever they do helps our business?

C. I don’t TRUST anyone would “really” help me.

•Have tried before with external agencies. They make their money and I am left in the lurch with nothing to gain.

•They say it will take time. How much time? LOL … I can’t wait for ages to see if this thing is working for me?

•Am not sure most of these agencies or freelancers we hired, had any knowledge about online marketing? I found them wanting on real business issues

•At the end of every month, I used to get complex PDF reports that are hardly understandable. Am left wondering what’s happening?

•Am really not sure how much I should invest in this because no one tells me what will be the ROI? Everyone just talks deliverables – postings, social media links, SEO, etc (aha … am atleast getting to learn the online jargon through these experiences now J)

IMPORTANT: We have listed these out based on our internal survey of the Indian market. We observed most businesses remarked atleast one of these three reasons in our first meeting with them. Please respond with a 1 or 2 or 3 or all 3 to establish your reason to avoid online marketing. OR if you have a different reason to avoid online marketing for your online business than the ones above? feel free to share them via email or comments below. We look forward to reading them and understand your perspective.

If you have any questions or need help creating successful online strategy for your business, do write to us at business@zoomyourtraffic.com

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Welcome 2019 – Can I Trust you? Can I Respect You?

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Hey All,

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2019

Last week, I had a peculiar conversation with one of my friends in the US over WhatsApp. He is leading a big team at an IT blue chip corporation. He ran me through an amazing article by Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business professor.

The 2 Things People Judge You On Immediately

She then goes on to explain the two questions people ask themselves when they meet you

  • Can I trust this person?
  • Can I respect this person?

Basically, warmth and competence is what they are trying to figure out. Pretty simple so far? Its gets interesting now.

The sequence is the first aspect. Warmth first, competence next.

We are living in a world where we go crazy showcasing our competence to look smart, intelligent and the boss!

Little do we know that all people are looking for in you initially is your warmth and trustworthiness. Can you be a trusted company is on top of their mind.

Competence follows Trust. Not the other way round (as widely believed).

We decided to investigate this further and ran a small experiment.

  1. We divided all external communications (existing customers and prospects) into control groups.
  2. For Group A – our interventions began with genuine “warmth” based interactions followed by the “competence” showcase
  3. For Group B – this was reversed.
  4. We started recording these meetings for insights and inputs.
  5. After 20 such interactions each, we decided to review the entire process.
  6. We were absolutely stunned to see the results.
  7. From Group A – we had 15 positive interventions where most customers showed inclination to associate in some form or the other
  8. From Group B – we had just 3 positive interventions where customers wanted to associate.
  9. We handpicked 3 from each group and I personally had a session with each one of them to establish reasons.
  10. Group A members said they felt an instant connect to know more about us because we came across as passionate and eager to help rather than as transactional. Interactions like “Tell me more about this?”, “How can we arrive at a win-win situation?” and “Can you implement this idea for me?” were prevalent here.
  11. Group B members said they felt awkward taking the discussion forward since it was talking about project goals and milestones. Some of them just snapped up discussions with statements like “We’ll let you know”, “Let me think it over and come back to you”, “Not interested at the moment”

Do you think this is powerful way to connect and engage with people? What has been your experience? Feel free to share your thoughts and inputs.

In this “tech” world, gadgets are already smart enough to take care of most of your things. The standout factor is your value system and we should look to strengthen that to the core in building a cohesive and connected global community.

Does that mean that mediocrity can prevail through warmth or being compassionate?

Absolutely not. Absolutely never. Competence is an absolute must but that alone will not ensure successful collaborations, associations and interventions.

Our message for 2019 – Spread warmth around the community and your competence will naturally shine through!

Happy New Year once again!!

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